Michael A. Meyer
LOOKING BACK: AMERICAN JEWS’
RELATIONSHIPS TO THEIR PLACES
OF ORIGIN
When people migrate from their land of birth to a new and different
land, something of the original ambiance almost necessarily clings to
the self. Memories of the old linger in the new. They may be painful
or comforting, nightmares of persecution or warm recollections of
what seemed a better place and time. As migrants grow into new
identities they shed their old ones only gradually, sometimes with purposeful intent and sometimes with reluctance. For a long time, perhaps for a generation or more, their identities remain composite, the
weight of the new increasing gradually while the old diminishes. The
place of origin long remains the fatherland or the motherland, and it
may for some time remain the homeland, among the German immigrants the Heimat. Multiple links connect the emigrant to the place of
birth: language, family ties, and news of political events flowing across
the border or ocean. They provide the continuities that make the
uprooting feel less traumatic. Gendered differences appear between
men and women, older and younger travelers, each relating differently
to the migration experience as the pain of casting up roots is weighed
against the vistas that may open up in a new historical setting.
Much has been written about the Jewish immigrant experience in
America: the voyage across the Atlantic, the acclimatization, the success or failure. But in general, interest has focused forward on what
the immigrants were or were not able to achieve. Less attention has
been directed backward to the immigrants’ continuing relationship to
the places from which they came. Did they see themselves as cutting
loose from an intolerable situation, as making a wholly voluntary decision for their personal benefit, or did they see themselves as living in
an American exile? Did they regard their migration as permanent or
did they hope one day to return, when they had saved up enough
money or when the political situation in their place of birth had radically changed?
My goal in this article is to explore these questions for each of the
major waves of Jewish migrants to America and to set them into a
doi:10.1093/mj/kjx020 Advance Access publication April 25, 2017
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Michael A. Meyer
comparative perspective, realizing that no group is homogeneous in its
relationship to its past. Necessarily, some individuals will look back
with nostalgia and even regret, while others will seek to expunge
unwanted reminders of the past. I intend to look successively at the
Sephardim of the Colonial period, the German Jews of the nineteenth
century, the Eastern European Jews of the end of that century, the
German Jews seeking refuge from Nazism, the Soviet Jews of the 1970s
and 1980s, and finally, the Israelis. Clearly, in the course of a single
essay it is not possible to delve into detail with regard to any one of
these groups, but it should be possible, by noting major characteristics,
similarities, and differences, to shed some light on the variety contained within the Jewish transnational experience.1
SEPHARDIM OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD
The Sephardic Jews, who formed a community in America as early as
the seventeenth century, came to their new home against a background of Catholic Church persecution. The Western Hemisphere
was for them both a refuge and a domain of economic opportunity.
Even as they looked back on persecution, however, they could also
relate positively to countries like Holland, and slightly later to
England, where they enjoyed rights not granted them elsewhere in
Europe and from which most of them, directly or indirectly, had
come. In particular, it was England, both before and after the
American Revolution, that served them not only as a business connection but also as a sort of homeland. Moses Franks, though born in
New York, was at one time sent for commercial purposes to London,
which the source refers to as ‘‘home.’’2 Both London and Amsterdam
were seen as possessing an attraction that was difficult to forget if one
chose to migrate to the less impressive American cities. One source
calls Amsterdam ‘‘great’’ and London ‘‘glorious.’’3 Many of the
Sephardim were merchants whose business brought them not only
from Europe to America but back to it, sometimes permanently.4
Wanderers for commercial purposes, they were generally more cosmopolitan than later Jewish migrants to the New World.5
Spiritually, Sephardic Jewry remained a colony of mother England.
Lacking in religious leadership of an equivalent high level, the
Sephardic congregations looked to London for guidance. There they
sought their ministers, from thence they obtained Torah scrolls and
prayer books, and there they turned for ritual decisions and for contributions. The Jews of Charleston, South Carolina, considered the
London Sephardic synagogue of Bevis Marks their parent community
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Looking Back
and called upon it for advice, even as early Ashkenazim turned to
London’s Ashkenazic Great Synagogue and its Chief Rabbi.6 The rigidity of lay discipline and of ritual practice maintained in Bevis Marks
and transferred to Charleston was apparently also a factor in the creation there of a more democratic, less hierarchical Reform Jewish alternative in 1825.
Jews from England, Sephardic and Ashkenazic alike, kept on migrating to America where the Sephardim, highly admired though soon
much outnumbered, continued for a long time to have a disproportionate influence. Even as the religious practices of the Sephardim had
imitated fellow Jews in England, the Ashkenazim, in turn, for a time
looked up to the American Sephardim. But as Ashkenazim numbers
increased and as a more educated and Germanized contingent, complete with their own religious leadership, arrived around mid-century,
Sephardic predominance came under attack. Complaining of the lack
of religious progress in Temple Emanu-El of New York, Rabbi David
Einhorn wrote in his periodical, Sinai, that the stagnation was solely
due to ‘‘the English, actually the aristocratic, Portuguese element,
having gained the upper hand.’’7 Increasingly it was now the
German Jews, linked especially to Bavaria and Posen, who set the
tone and who looked back on a quite different milieu from which
they had come.
GERMAN JEWS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Whether or not Jews should migrate to the United States was an issue
much disputed in Germany. While some urged emigration, others
demurred. No one was more enthusiastic than the Bohemian Jewish
writer Leopold Kompert, who issued a call, ‘‘to leave the land of unfreedom and care to seek out the transatlantic homeland.’’ To refuse
the call, he believed, was cowardice; to remain meant to live with
memories of degradation and humiliation that could only make one
a hater of the Christian perpetrators.8 But there were others who disagreed, urging: ‘‘Remain in this country and find sustenance in faith
and reliance;’’ and those who felt that: to ‘‘desert fatherland, friends
and brothers and selfishly to seek one’s own safety far away’’ was a
shameful act.9 Emigration, for example, left small Jewish communities
in Bavaria and Württemberg without the population and resources
they required to sustain Jewish life.10 However, as the hopefulness
surrounding the events of 1848 was increasingly displaced by a
period of political reaction in the German states, even Rabbi Ludwig
Philippson, who only a short time earlier had opposed massive
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Michael A. Meyer
numbers of Jewish emigrants, now admitted that he was ‘‘only glad to
see them depart.’’ Emigration, it seemed, was the best answer to the
worsening situation.11
Once arrived in the United States, the migrants’ look backward
toward Germany differed greatly. Those who came in the first half of
the century had had little exposure of German culture, often spoke
the Jewish dialect, and reflected back more upon the religious life of
their families and the self-contained Jewish community from which
they had come rather than upon a larger German ambiance, which
they had not yet internalized.12 Peddling was often their lot, both in
Europe and in America. Some looked hopefully forward, others—finding the work exceedingly arduous—glanced back with nostalgia upon
the close family life they had once enjoyed. Yet even when they had
initially regretted their decision, they looked more favorably upon it
once they had succeeded in establishing themselves economically.13
Then, around mid-century and thereafter, more acculturated
German Jews made their way across the ocean and their relationship
to their place of origin came to include not just kin and Jewish community but also German literature, music, and philosophy. For them,
America was, disappointingly, not just a place of economic struggle
but also of cultural lag and lack. Once travel became less arduous, the
wealthy among them made regular steamer excursions back to Europe
in order to visit friends and sometimes to find a marriage partner.14
And yet, despite the critique of American society—its materialism and
hypocrisies, its demagoguery and social injustice—not many were ready
for a permanent return.15 Even David Einhorn, the well-known
Reform Rabbi, as attached as he was to German culture, believed
that it was in America where the messianic destiny of Israel would
be fulfilled.16
Among some of the migrants there was a tendency to abandon the
connection to their German experience, to cut or minimize ties from
the start. This bothered the Jewish spiritual leadership in Germany.
Rabbi Philippson complained about those American Jews who ‘‘make
a purposeful effort to estrange Jews over there from German
Judaism.’’ It was regrettable that they were determined to extinguish
memories of their German origins and culture. And in fact, by the
1870s, German Jews in America were indeed acting to ‘‘emancipate’’
themselves from the tutelage of German Judaism.17 Religious reformers among them derided the slow progress of religious change in
German Jewry, which was a product of the constraints imposed by the
unified Jewish communities and, as well, by the generally conservative
political atmosphere. Sadly, they noted, the outstanding religious leadership of a progressive Judaism in Germany at mid-century had failed
to reproduce itself in succeeding decades. Even if, as David Einhorn
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believed, American Jewry was still not ripe, German Jewry, in his view,
was becoming rotten. It seemed no longer necessary to look back
toward Germany for inspiration.18
But that is only part of the story. The later German-Jewish immigrants might have left the physical Germany behind but an emotional
tie remained, even as they replanted the cultural and spiritual
Germany in American soil. One of the most prominent transcontinental links was Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise’s German newspaper Die Deborah.
Here, the relation to the land of origin received poignant expression.
From the first, the newspaper’s intent was to serve as ‘‘the connecting
link in the chain of Judaism between America and Germany,’’ between
the old fatherland and the new.19 In the second issue, Rabbi Max
Lilienthal published a rhapsodic, emotionally mixed tribute to
Germany: a land of oaks and joy, earnestness and knowledge, history
and goodwill. Alas, however, this Germany was also a faithless mother
who did not requite Jewish love.20 And yet even as the flame of love
for Germany flickered with the rise of antisemitism in the century’s
last decades, one immigrant believed that it could be rekindled if only
there were signs that the Germany of Lessing was reasserting itself.
When the German Crown Prince, who would very briefly reign as
Frederick III, denounced hatred of the Jews, another American
Reform Rabbi, Solomon Sonneschein, published a double sonnet in
Die Deborah, the first sonnet deploring the new ‘‘hep-hep’’ recrudescence of antisemitism, the second, extolling the apparent reemergence
of a noble and good Germany, great both in love and teachings.21
However, the German heritage in America was not seen as principally dependent upon events in Germany. It could flourish in the
‘‘new homeland’’ even if it failed in the old.22 Together with nonJewish Germans in the United States, the Jewish immigrants fashioned
a German culture that enabled them soon to look to their current
milieu for inspiration and made the turn back toward Germany less
crucial. To be sure, discrimination against Jews among non-Jewish
Germans was not absent even within the more tolerant American context but, for the most part, the prejudices remained hidden.23 Jews
and non-Jews had sailed to America on the same vessels, often shared
political views, and, most importantly, held in common the desire to
import especially attractive elements of both high and popular
German culture to the United States. Measured against the exclusions
Jews suffered in Germany, especially in the last decades of the century,
the common cultural activities in which they now engaged represented
a refreshing change.24
Though the German Jews in America had abandoned their fatherland, they clung to their mother tongue, redolent as it was with memories of the literature they had read in their youth.25 American
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Michael A. Meyer
landscapes could recall German ones; a neighborhood in Cincinnati
inhabited by German immigrants still bears the nickname ‘‘over the
Rhine.’’ There were German theater performances, glee clubs that
sang in German, and by no means least, an abundance of Germanstyle beer. Within Kleindeutschland (‘‘Little Germany’’) Jews were perceived to indulge at least in the finer elements of German culture, to a
greater extent than their non-Jewish neighbors.26
Aside from the German endeavors engaged in together by Jews
and Gentiles, there were the specifically Jewish institutions that used
German language and propagated German culture and fellowship, for
example, the Independent Orders of B’nai B’rith and its female counterpart, the True Sisters.27 Synagogues employed German rabbis and
replicated the familiar modes of worship; German was the language of
prayer in fifteen of the congregations as late as 1916.28 Middle-class
women, in particular, clung to the language of their youth. Shielded
from the commercial sphere they felt less pressure to acculturate and,
more than the men, were devoted to keeping the flame of German
language and culture burning within the domestic atmosphere of the
home. As Isaac Mayer Wise put it, ‘‘The German woman’s mind finds
comfort in the homeland’s sounds because the German mother wants
to know that she is loved in German by her children.’’29 In sum, the
immigrants did not need to look back to Germany with a great sense
of loss since what was precious across the ocean had migrated along
with them. The problem was transmitting the heritage to the next
generation. Their offspring, to the parents’ dismay, had even begun
to introduce English words into their German, creating a new, unappealing jargon.30
EASTERN EUROPEAN JEWS AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
It was a quite different jargon, the old Yiddish one, that characterized
the subsequent wave of Jewish immigrants, those who came from
Eastern Europe. Their memories of premigration years were more
negative than those of the German Jews. In nineteenth-century
Germany, there had been discrimination but, with a few exceptions,
not pogroms. Jews had shared a language and culture with the nonJewish population. In Russia, except for a minority of Maskilim (enlightened Jews), the Jewish cultural world remained separate, found
expression in Yiddish and Hebrew, and for most—though not all—retained a strongly religious character. The memories of these Jews, as
with the earliest German-Jewish immigrants, were also distinctly local.
The immigrant author Mary Antin recalled in her autobiography, The
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Promised Land, that the world of her youth was divided into two parts:
the town in which she lived and ‘‘a strange land called Russia.’’31
Here too, there were multiple motives for emigration: exaggerated
visions of economic ascent in America, as well as the pressures of life
in the Russian Pale of Settlement; the poverty of most Jews; the
dreaded army conscription; and also, after the assassination of Tsar
Alexander II, sporadic, widespread violence which, for those who had
experienced it, seeded their American lives with dreams of recollected
terror. Hannah Toperoff recalled that her mother never ceased to
have screaming nightmares as she remembered her harrowing
escape from the Ukraine.32 Yet the persecutions and horrors often
associated with departure did not mean that the decision to leave
Russia was an easy one. As in Germany, arguments could be made
on either side. Even though few Russian Jews saw themselves as
Russians, the emigrants did feel sorrow at leaving a continent where
their ancestors had lived for centuries.33 For those who chose to migrate and then found America problematic for economic or religious
reasons, the memories of the old country could take on a rosy hue.
‘‘My native village of Slobodka,’’ one successful immigrant wrote,
‘‘often seems to me to have had an advantage over the metropolis
of New York.’’ It possessed ‘‘cheerfulness and delight in sheer living
which is lacking in America.’’34 Similarly, Rabbi Max Raisin held in
frozen memory a romanticized image of his native Neszvich only to be
disappointed when he visited it many years later.35 Though most of
these immigrants stayed in America, some decided that, after all, they
would be relatively happier in Tsarist Russia, and so they made their
way back.36 It is estimated that in 1882 remigration reached as high as
29 percent.37 Although there were relatives and friends who had been
successful in America and who, therefore, encouraged prospective migrants, there were others who, in the words of Rabbi Moses
Weinberger, bluntly suggested: ‘‘Listen to us, and tough it out: stay
home.’’38 And, in fact, two-thirds of Russian Jewry did just that; they
chose to remain at home.39 Those who did come were advised to
make a new start and leave the past behind. The best formula for
success in America, one guidebook suggested, was: ‘‘Hold fast. . .forget
your past, your customs, and your ideals.’’40 Memories held too fervently would stand in the way of getting ahead. Mary Antin was eager
to emancipate herself from the drag of memory. ‘‘I want to be of
today,’’ she wrote in her autobiography. ‘‘It is painful to be consciously
of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness.’’41
The new environment of America demanded a broad adjustment,
not just of external life conditions but also of the inner self. A successful integration required a fundamental shift in values, a transformation that could be painful and which made longing for the old
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country also a longing for the self that had been lost. The editor of the
Yiddish Forverts newspaper, Abraham Cahan, poignantly gave voice to
the ambivalence induced by this metamorphosis: ‘‘My success as a
speaker, the stimulating taste of applause, the stunning feeling that
thousands knew me, intoxicated me. But they did not overcome my
homesickness. I was torn between the pleasure of new achievement
and the longing for home. Sometimes, in my restlessness, I didn’t
recognize my old self.’’42
Not all of the Russian immigrants left a life of poverty in the hope
of improving themselves economically in America. Relatively wealthy
Jews left simply to avoid Russian army service. Had they a choice, they
would have preferred not being forced to leave a comfortable existence behind. That was the situation with Abraham Denebeim. In his
memoir he wrote: ‘‘I left a country where I was born and raised in
luxury by well-to-do parents to go to a strange land to meet with all
sorts of imaginary troubles. . .. When I crossed the border, although I
felt like a bird out of a cage, free from the Russian government, I felt
homesick, as I didn’t know where I was going or what I was going to
do.’’43
Even as most of the immigrants were drawn by the inflated image
of America as a land of unparalleled opportunity, the materialism endemic to its culture evoked repulsion and made the new country seem
less humane than the society they had left. The contrast induced an
ambivalence: Were they willing to give up immeasurable personal satisfactions for those that money could buy? That they had chosen to
cast their lot with a new world that ‘‘stands on three things: money
and money and again money,’’ induced in some a measure of guilt
and a profound sense of what they had lost. America was prose, the
old country was poetry; here time was a quantity to be parsimoniously
expended, there it was far easier to disregard it.44
For Jewish women, leaving the Old Country seems to have been
an even more difficult uprooting than it was for most men. If life was
difficult in the Russian village it could later be romanticized as the
loving relationship to it increased with distance and time. Family ties
exerted a powerful restraining influence; the relatives that remained
tied especially the women emotionally to the land of their birth.
Frequently, wives left against their will because their husbands had
demanded it of them. Married women, expecting to join their husbands only after a period of years, often found their spouses had not
remained faithful. Where children had preceded them, reestablishing
the tie of motherhood proved difficult. There were problems associated with leaving the known and more stable life behind. ‘‘I wanted to
go home and so did she,’’ wrote one disconcerted daughter. She had
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come with her mother whose two sons, having preceded her in
America, their mother no longer knew.45
Although they were a minority among the migrants, there were
some who, unlike the religious traditionalists, had undergone secularization and whose Russian horizons stretched beyond the Jewish shtetl.
Of these the most prominent was Abraham Cahan. For him the early
days in America were filled with ‘‘agonized longing’’ especially for
‘‘vistas of Vilna. . .. My longing made my new homeland distasteful
to me. . .. Oh, how pleasant it was to write home!’’46 Similar to the
German immigrants, for Cahan, too, his place of origin was an old,
beloved homeland whereas America was initially a new and rather
distasteful one. Just as cultured Jewish immigrants from Germany objected to their children mixing English into their German speech,
Cahan was angered by fellow immigrants whose Anglicisms polluted
their Yiddish.
Like some of the earlier German Jews, those Jewish immigrants from
Russia who were most closely connected with the world outside the
Jewish community, looked for signs that Jewish life would improve in
the land of their birth. For Israel Kasovich, who was ‘‘filled with longing’’
for his old home and old life, news received from friends of the appointment of an allegedly liberal Russian minister of the interior helped to
bring about his return.47 ‘‘The moment I found myself on Russian territory,’’ he writes, ‘‘I felt that I was back home.’’48 It took the pogroms at
the beginning of the twentieth century to bring him once more to
America. For those young Jews who had been drawn to the revolutionary
socialist movement in Russia, America, with its materialist values, was, at
least initially, not a better place; it was an unhappy exile.49
Fortunately, the immigrants could retain established bonds forged
in their places of local origin through the formation of landsmanshaftn
(mutual aid societies) of which by 1910 there were more than two
thousand.50 These groupings provided necessary mutual support
among trusted, usually previously known fellow immigrants. Through
offering financial support they maintained a link with their towns of
common origin.
The Yiddish language too served as a bridge, easing the transition
from the old to the new. Unlike the German tongue of the earlier
immigrants Yiddish belonged entirely to the Jews, whether used for a
religious or a secular purpose. But here, too, a generation gap developed. Some parents rejoiced in the successful Americanization of their
children, but others were distressed by the fraying bonds of values and
of language.51 The second generation, born in America, lacked memories of the shtetl and soon became ashamed of the ‘‘foreign’’ behavior of
their parents.52 They forgot their Yiddish and possessed only memories
of stories their parents had told to them of life in Eastern Europe.
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GERMAN JEWS FLEEING NAZISM
The immigration laws of 1921 and 1924 drastically reduced the flow to
the United States, which proved disastrous with the rise of Nazism. In
Germany in the 1930s, the Jewish situation progressively worsened
culminating in the pogrom of 1938 and the deportations that began
on a regular basis in 1941. Those German Jews—over 90,000 between
1933 and 1941—who were able to obtain precious quota or non-quota
visas did not see themselves as migrants; the proper term for these
fearful Jews was ‘‘refugees.’’53 Until the defeat of Nazi Germany, there
could be no thought of return. Yet more than any previous Jewish
migration to America, this wave of Jews, after generations of acculturation, was rooted in its country of origin. Leaving it demanded giving
up the optimism the refugees had long harbored for Jewish life there
and trying to escape before it was too late. Even under these circumstances some held back, hoping for a better time. In general it was the
men who condemned flight while women, concerned for their children, favored it.54 Once in America, life demanded a separation of
memories: the warm recollections of earlier times from the more
recent devastating ones.
The refugees looked back on the contemporary Germany they had
left with personal horror and with fear for family and friends who
remained. The German Vaterland had turned out to be an evil
Stiefvaterland (a step-fatherland), persecuting its unwanted children.55
It was not possible to forget that their gentile friends had abandoned
them in their hour of need. They saw their country of birth as having
become totally other than what it had been. ‘‘Germany was for me no
longer the same land,’’ one refugee declared. ‘‘Everything had changed, not only the people but the city, the forest, the river - the whole
country looked different to me.’’56 Once in the United States and to
the extent that they were able, the refugees served in America’s armed
forces and in its war industry, seeking thereby to help destroy the
monster that had arisen in their country of birth.
The contrast presented to them in America was not, however,
complete. American antisemitism, both domestic and imported,
could not be ignored. The virulently anti-Jewish German-American
Bund, organized in 1935, was linked to the Nazi party’s overseas affairs
bureau.57 Beyond it there prevailed a widely distributed prejudice that
one refugee, comparing it to Germany before World War One, called
a new example of the bekoweten Vorkriegsantisemitismus, the broadly
acceptable mild antisemitism of the prewar years, less virulent than
the Radauantisemitismus, the rowdy antisemitism of the Nazis, but distressing nonetheless. One writer noted sarcastically that not long ago
German Jews were laughing about Hitler; now they were laughing
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about the American antisemites—Huey Long, and Father Coughlin—at
their peril.58 Even aside from the antisemitism, there were elements of
American society that these German Jews, like those who preceded
them to the United States, did not appreciate and which turned them
to earlier pleasant memories from abroad. ‘‘There’s so much deception and lying in this country,’’ complained Toni Oelsner, while Erich
Fromm expressed his dismay at the immense power wielded by the
captains of American industry, and Theodor Adorno would have nothing to do with the cheap popularity of American culture.59 After Pearl
Harbor, all of the refugees were classified as enemy aliens, their lives
restricted in various ways.
Thus this second wave of German–Jewish immigration, like its
predecessor of the nineteenth century, turned inward to preserve
what was valuable in the German heritage, except this time rarely in
a social context that included non-Jews. Alumni of German–Jewish
fraternities and Jewish veterans who had served on the German side
in World War One continued to meet in the United States.60 The
refugees were less interested in preserving a purely German identity
(which had been sullied) than a composite identity and culture that
merged pre-Nazi elements with a variety of Jewish ones.61 These new
Americans created a sort of cocoon for themselves, a closed-off Jewish
community that spoke Weimar German, celebrated Weimar values,
and was closely drawn together, often in refugee congregations and
associations, by the commonly experienced horrendous persecution
from which they had been able to escape. Yet few desired to effect
a clean break with the past. ‘‘A new Heimat? Was there really such a
thing?’’ one refugee asked himself.62 Another warned that overly hasty
Americanization could make one into a laughingstock.63 Better advice
was to look not only forward but also back. As one refugee put: ‘‘Just
as, when transplanting a tree one allows the old soil to continue clinging to the roots, so, in my opinion, it is not only not damaging but, on
the contrary, psychologically of benefit if one can replace for the newcomer in a foreign land, at least initially, a portion of the Heimat.’’64
There were even refugees who believed that their German heritage,
especially the ideal of Bildung, of character education, had a contribution to make to America.65 But all this looking back, the constant
comparison with an earlier life, the persistent use of the words bei
uns—the way we had it in Germany—could become a joke. Arguing
for a necessary reorientation of the old spirit, the editor of the refugee
publication Aufbau cited an anecdote: someone had once asked the
non-Jewish writer Erich Maria Remarque whether he did not at times
have a longing for Germany. Whereupon he is said to have replied:
‘‘But why? I’m not a Jew.’’66 Countering that attitude and taking a
strongly forward looking approach, Rabbi Joachim Prinz suggested
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that ‘‘emigration had to mean extricating yourself from the old things
and crawling into the new shell. . .. We must embrace tomorrow and
bury yesterday.’’67
The intellectuals among the refugees belong in a special category.
For these Jews, the ones most deeply enmeshed in German culture,
their stay in America was a genuine exile.68 In most instances they
could not find appropriate work in America, though some landed
positions in colleges, usually non-prestigious ones.69 The writers
among them rarely chose the American scene as a setting for their
fiction or poetry.70 Although for most of the refugees Germany long
remained under a symbolic ritual ban and they vowed never to set
foot on German soil again,71 after the war a few intellectuals did
choose to return to Germany. For them America had not become
home and they were willing to take their chances in one of the two
new Germanys.72 Others, who traveled to Germany in American uniforms as part of the occupation, found themselves once more in the
old position of outsiders, but now outsiders among the rulers, back—
albeit temporarily—in the land of their birth.73 A very different group
consisted of Holocaust survivors, whether from west or east, who initially could not bear to look back at all but who, in increasing instances and with the passage of time, became public witnesses to the
blackness of their past.
SOVIET JEWS OF THE
1970S
AND
1980S
The next large wave of immigration, which came from the Soviet
Union, was similar to the prewar one from Germany in that, by this
time, few Russian Jews, especially those from the large cities, spoke a
Jewish language and most were highly acculturated to their environment. Their secularization was more complete than among the
German Jews who in their majority had retained a liberal Jewish
faith. They came not on account of a worsening legal antisemitism
as in Hitler’s Germany but because of a persistent discrimination
that blocked their economic advance and stifled any expression of
Jewish identity. They also hoped for a more comfortable life in
America.
The estimated more than half a million Eastern European Jews
who immigrated during the last decades of the twentieth century,
like their predecessors, differed among themselves as to how they
looked back upon their origins. Especially for the older generation,
the departure was not easy. Some retained memories of the idealistic
communism of their youth.74 Like the older German Jews, they knew
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they would be less able to manage in a new linguistic and cultural
environment. They felt guilt at leaving behind the graves of loved
ones, especially those who had been the victims of pogroms during
the Russian Revolution. But even younger Soviet Jews had what one
scholar called a ‘‘love-hate’’ relationship with Russia, a deep ambivalence about their decision to leave it behind.75 Looking back from
the United States, they not only missed the specifically Russian
culture but also the state paternalism that was absent in America
and which had provided for such services as free abortions and,
however inadequately, also for the needs of their elderly. In
America much was left to their own initiatives.76 In Russia too,
some argued, friendships were deeper and more significant.77
American individualism contrasted with the valued sense of belonging that marked Soviet society.78 One immigrant thought that the
memory of formative experiences would always raise a barrier between Jews who grew up in Russia and their counterparts in the
United States. ‘‘I didn’t collect baseball cards, didn’t start driving at
the age of 15, . . .. wasn’t absorbed in comic books. . .. I was different. My personality and that of the Americans were formed differently.’’79 Another described the tenacity with which pleasant
memories of sites in the old country clung to the immigrants:
‘‘Every minute we dream we see these places and there is nothing
that will substitute for that,’’ he wrote.80
Giving up a life of dependence for a life of freedom was not at all
easy. Psychological barriers arose between the immigrants and the society around them. Like their predecessors, the German–Jewish refugees, they had difficulty relating to other Jews who had not shared
their experience and so, like them, they chose to be among themselves, establishing a Russian–Jewish subculture in their new places
of residence. Some were organized according to the particular
region of origin, resembling in that regard the earlier landsmanshaftn.81 For the intellectuals and academics among them, the transition to America was often disheartening. Especially the more educated
Jews missed the Russian cultural ambiance: the music, the art, the
literature. They had lost something of themselves.82 Not only did
most Russian Jews not find employment appropriate to their educational level, but it was now more difficult to maintain their earlier selfimage. Once they had belonged to an elevated intelligentsia; with the
decline in their social status they now defined themselves simply as
‘‘new immigrants’’.83 Once solidly middle-class by Soviet standards,
they found themselves closer to the bottom of the economic scale.
Unlike the earlier Russian immigration this one did not consist
mostly of the very poor.84
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Michael A. Meyer
Still, very few had regrets about their decision: a survey indicated
that only 2 percent would advise fellow Soviet Jews to forget about the
abundance of America and remain in a Russia of consumer goods
scarcity.85 Very few chose to return to Soviet Russia.86 For all of
their difficulties of adjustment they did not regard America as exile; they had not been forced to leave Russia. In the United States,
they became virulently anti-Communist, yet on the day marking the
Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany the veterans among them
squeezed into their old uniforms and proudly displayed their
medals.87
The Russians settled in close proximity to each other, for example
Brighton Beach, where the view toward the ocean reminded the
Odessans among them of the Black Sea. Their Jewishness, anchored
in the nationality inscribed in their internal passports and continuously brought to consciousness by antisemitism, contrasted with the
American Jewish identity whose principal pillar was religion. Educated
in Soviet secularism, many Russian Jews saw religion as simply silly.
Of all the waves of immigration, the Soviet émigrés—with a few
exceptions—were the least Jewish.88
THE ISRAELIS
The only large ongoing wave of immigration, the Israelis, is in a category by itself. They come from a state governed by Jews; they have
not suffered from antisemitism in their land of origin, though those
from an oriental background have sometimes felt internal discrimination.89 They are not refugees. The land they left behind is their land.
They have voluntarily chosen to abandon it for the diaspora, to live in
the minority status which Zionist ideology had firmly negated. They
bring with them a sense of guilt at leaving the state of which Jews long
dreamed, setting aside a commitment to which they themselves had
once been, and perhaps still were, devoted. In this case, the fleshpots
of America stand out most clearly against the backdrop of a life back
there that was of the Jews’ own making but in which they failed or, as
some would have it, which failed them. Justifications range from insisting that Israel is no longer its earlier pioneering self, to holding
that one could still love Israel from abroad, and even to arguing that
American values are the true Israeli ones.90 It has not been uncommon for so-called yordim to avoid facing their decision by claiming, as
long as it was plausible to do so, that they were in America only
temporarily. As one Israeli immigrant put it: ‘‘Our life here is a
make-believe. The reality is we live here and at the same time we
Looking Back
157
don’t live here.’’91 Nor has it been uncommon to maintain a residence
in Israel or to claim that, having fulfilled their duty to the state by
serving in the Israeli army, no one has a right to make a moral claim
against them.
Spiritual integration in America is difficult for many Israelis.
Raised on an ideology that calls existence for Jews outside of Israel
deprecatingly galut (‘‘exile’’), an existence outside the homeland that
Zionist ideology has long called inferior and characterized by submissiveness to reigning powers, they resist identifying with a diaspora
Jewish culture. Merging into American–Jewish culture involves a painful loss of self, which retaining ties with family and friends in Israel is
meant to relieve. Having become within the American Jewish population a minority within a minority, many look back longingly on their
majority status in the Jewish state they have left behind.
Migration from Israel to America has been most painful for older
children. They are more likely to want to go ‘‘home’’ than are their
parents. The youth culture of Israel, with its emphasis on service to the
country and study of a heroic history, differs radically from the less
idealistic atmosphere surrounding American youth. To create a bridge
and convey something of what was lost Israeli communities in some
places have established local chapters of the Tzofim, the Israeli scouting
movement.92 One such scout in Los Angeles felt out of place on Yom
Kippur as he saw people driving automobiles and eating in restaurants. He said to his parents: ‘‘I shouldn’t be here,’’ to which they
responded: ‘‘You are in the United States, you are not in Israel. You
should expect that.’’93
Unlike the German–Jewish refugees, in this instance it has been
the Israeli women who were more reluctant to depart from their land
of birth or earlier immigration and often agreed only in the professional interests of their husbands.94 They have been more eager than
their husbands to return and have been especially concerned about
the possibility that their children will marry Christians, a minor issue
in Israel. Among those who pushed the hardest for departure, it
seems, were the many well-educated, skilled Jews who could not find
appropriate positions in Israel, except that, unlike the Soviet migrants,
here in many instances they are able to improve their economic and
professional situations very quickly, if not from the start.95 Their favorable economic situation enables frequent trips back to Israel, in
some cases every summer, or, when the occasion demands it, to
defend Israel, as many did in 1967 and 1973. Not a few fully reverse
course, after varying periods of time changing their minds and returning permanently to a country they long continued to call ‘‘home’’.
Others have joyfully adopted an ongoing trans-national existence. As
also for the Russian immigrants, so too, and to a larger extent, the
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Michael A. Meyer
new communications technology makes possible quick and frequent
communication with relatives and friends remaining in the land of
origin.96 Forgoing strong national attachments of any sort, some
newly American Israelis take on an identity that is fundamentally
cosmopolitan.
Like the earlier immigrants, the Israelis in America have created
their own community, importing elements of Israeli culture to their
new home. Israeli films, restaurants and nightclubs, Israeli newspapers, and use of the Hebrew language, all provide a bridge back to
their earlier experience. Like the Soviet immigrants, the Israelis tend
to cluster geographically, especially in certain neighborhoods of New
York and Los Angeles, and also like the Soviet Jews, their Jewish
identities, with few exceptions, are more ethnic than religious.
They prefer to call themselves Israelis rather than Jews. Since they
do not want to assimilate, their Israeliness serves as a buffer against
overly rapid Americanization. And still, for these immigrants, who
usually know more English upon arrival than their predecessors, the
tug of the new environment is quick and strong. The resulting tension can be painful, as one Israeli in Los Angeles expressed it: ‘‘Israel
is my mother and America my wife, so you can imagine the way
I must feel.’’97
CONCLUSION
We may then conclude from this comparative overview that there has
been a broad, even contradictory variety of glances back at the places
from whence American Jews came. For the Sephardim to an England
or Holland that represented the religious life they wanted to emulate
in America; for the German Jews of the mid-nineteenth century to a
landscape and a culture which seemed in advance of what America, for
all of its attractive freedom, had yet to attain; for the Russian Jews to a
place of pogroms but also to the warm life of the shtetl; for the refugees from Nazism to a once beloved soil that had brought forth ugly
plants; for the Soviet Jews, to a discriminatory but paternalistic society
that did not make American demands for voluntary action; and finally, back toward Israel, one’s own possession, left behind with
great ambivalence, still a home to which one could return at any
time. But for all of these differences and more, one commonality
stands out: It was never possible to leave the ‘‘old country’’ behind
without looking back.
HEBREW UNION COLLEGE
159
Looking Back
NOTES
1. For a transnational approach to various topics related to the history of American Jewry, see Eva F. Kahn and Adam D. Mendelssohn
(eds.), Transnational Traditions: New Perspectives on American Jewish History
(Detroit, 2014).
2. Jacob Rader Marcus, American Jewry–Documents, Eighteenth Century
(Cincinnati, 1959), p. 11.
3. Eli Faber, The Jewish People in America–A Time for Planting: The First
Migration, 1654-1820 (Baltimore, 1992), p. 19.
4. Ibid., pp. 45–46.
5. Charles S. Bernheimer, The Russian Jew in the United States
(Philadelphia, 1905), p. 10
6. See Jacob Neusner, ‘‘The Role of English Jews in the Development
of American Jewish Life, 1775-1850,’’ Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science,
Vol. 12 (1958–1959), pp. 131–56. Also J. R. Marcus, American Jewry,
188–89.
7. David Einhorn, ‘‘Das Eindringen des englischen Elements in deutsche Reformgemeinden,’’ Sinai, Vol. 4, No. 6 (1859), p. 163.
8. Leopold Kompert, ‘‘‘On to America!’ Second Call to Emigration,’’
Proceedings of the American Jewish Historical Society, Vol. 38 (1948–1949), pp.
203–04, 207.
9. Rudolf Glanz, ‘‘Source Materials on the History of Jewish
Migration to the United States, 1800-1880,’’ Yivo Annual of Jewish Social
Science, Vol. 6 (1951), pp. 104, 108.
10. Ludwig Philippson, ‘‘Die Auswanderung,’’ Allgemeine Zeitung des
Judentums, Vol. 17 (1853), p. 344.
11. Ibid., Vol. 18 (1854), p. 192.
12. S. E. Rosenbaum, A Voyage to America Ninety Years Ago (San
Bernadino, CA, 1995), p. 17.
13. See, for example, the diary of the Bavarian immigrant Abraham
Kohn. An excerpt from the original German text is in Monika Richarz
(ed.), Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland. Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte, 17801871 (Munich, 1876), pp. 466–70; English texts in Abraham Vossen
Goodman, ‘‘A Jewish Peddler’s Diary, 1842-1843,’’ American Jewish
Archives, Vol. 3 (1951), pp. 81–111; and Jacob Rader Marcus (ed.),
Memoirs of American Jews, 1775-1865, Vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1955), pp. 3–20.
14. Cornelia Östreich, ‘‘Des rauhen Winters ungeachtet. . .’’ Die
Auswanderung Posener Juden nach Amerika im 19. Jahrhundert (Hamburg,
1997), pp. 252–53; Stephen Birmingham, ‘‘Our Crowd’’: The Great Jewish
Families of New York (New York, 1967), p. 18.
15. Avraham Barkai does contend that ‘‘quite a few [German Jews]
left the country disillusioned,’’ but he also writes that the original departure was regarded ‘‘as an act of final separation.’’ See his important
Branching Out: German-Jewish Immigration to the United States, 1820-1914
(New York/London, 1994), pp. 141, 155. Ernst Troy made it clear to a
friend who had chosen to return to Germany, disappointed by his
160
Michael A. Meyer
experience in America, that his own migration was conditional. If he
should be unhappy there, he would return to Germany. J. R. Marcus,
Memoirs, Vol. 3, p. 26.
16. Gershon Greenberg, ‘‘The Significance of America in David
Einhorn’s Conception on [sic] History,’’ American Jewish Historical
Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2 (December 1973), pp. 181–84.
17. Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, Vol. 29 (1865), p. 407; Vol. 36
(1872), p. 45.
18. Sinai, Vol. 1 (1856), p. 258; Vol. 2 (1857), pp. 604–06, 641, 679–
80; Vol. 4 (1859), p. 162. Isaac Mayer Wise was convinced that ‘‘we are a
century in advance of Geiger’s, Philippson’s and Wechsler’s practical reforms.’’ American Israelite, January 13, 1871, p. 8.
19. Die Deborah, August 24, 1855, p. 1.
20. Dr. [Max] Lilienthal, ‘‘Gruss an Deutschland,’’ ibid., August 31,
1855, p. 1. See also his poem, ‘‘An Deutschland,’’ ibid., January 20, 1860,
p. 114.
21. S. H. Sonneschein, ‘‘An Deutschland,’’ ibid., February 20, 1880,
p. 2.
22. ‘‘Judentum und Deutschtum in Amerika,’’ ibid., February 13,
1880, p. 3.
23. The exclusion is stressed by Sonja L. Mekel who believes that
where inclusion did occur it was largely opportunistic since German institutions in America required Jewish support. See her ‘‘‘Herren from the
Tribe of Juda’: The Relationship between German and German-Jewish
Immigrants in Milwaukee and Chicago, 1840-1900’’ (PhD Dissertation,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2009), p. 176. J. R. Marcus, Memoirs,
Vol. 2, p. 284, refers to the prejudice as hidden. Yet it is of interest
that when the countrywide ‘‘Tag der Deutschen und des Deutschtums’’
was to be celebrated in Dayton, Ohio in 1890, Isaac Mayer Wise was
invited to be one of the two main speakers and was designated to speak
in German. He took the invitation to mean that ‘‘at least here in the West,
among us Germans, religious differences play no role and that the
German Jew remains a German even in America however much since
1846 [the year of Wise’s immigration to the United States] as speaker
and writer in the English language he [Wise] has attached himself to the
English language in his new fatherland.’’ Die Deborah, September 25, 1890,
p. 5.
24. Rudolf Glanz, Jews in Relation to the Cultural Milieu of the Germans
in America up to the Eighteen Eighties (New York, 1947), pp. 8, 25, 29–30,
33; Stanley Nadel, Little Germany: Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in New York
City, 1845-80 (Urbana and Chicago, 1990), p. 102.
25. Cf. Isaac Mayer Wise, Reminiscences (Cincinnati, 1901), pp. 83–84.
26. Hasia Diner, A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration, 1820-1880
(Baltimore, 1992), pp.165–66.
27. Cornelia Wilhelm, The Independent Orders of B’nai B’rith and True
Sisters: Pioneers of a New Jewish Identity, 1843-1914 (Detroit, 2011).
Looking Back
161
28. Jacob Rader Marcus, United States Jewry, 1776-1985 (Detroit, 1993),
p. 559; Michael A. Meyer, ‘‘German-Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century
America,’’ in Judaism within Modernity: Essays on Jewish History and Religion
(Detroit, 2001), pp. 323–44. However, Abraham Geiger refused at least
two invitations to accept American pulpits. See Bertram Wallace Korn,
‘‘German-Jewish Intellectual Influences on American Jewish Life, 18241972’’ (B. G. Rudolph Lectures in Judaic Studies, April 1972), p. 18.
29. Cited in A. Barkai, Branching Out, p. 170.
30. ‘‘Der Jargon,’’ Die Deborah, June 4, 1869, p. 190.
31. Mary Antin, The Promised Land (Boston and New York, 1912),
p. 1.
32. Neil M. Cowan and Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Our Parents’ Lives: The
Americanization of Eastern European Jews (New York, 1989), pp. 34–35.
33. The account of Benjamin L. Gordon in Abraham J. Karp, Golden
Door to America: The Jewish Immigrant Experience (New York, 1977), p. 73.
34. Simon Finkelstein in Azriel Eisenberg (ed.), The Golden Land: A
Literary Portrait of American Jewry, 1654 to the Present (New York, 1964),
p. 437.
35. Max Raisin, ‘‘Erinerungen’’ [Yiddish], in Suvenir shurnal fun progresiv broders of nezvich (New York, 1930), pp. 36–39.
36. ‘‘Polish Jews, Remigrants from America’’ [Yiddish], Yivo Bleter,
Vol. 20 (1942), pp. 125–27; Jonathan D. Sarna, ‘‘The Myth of No
Return: Jewish Return Migration to Eastern Europe, 1881-1914,’’
American Jewish History, Vol. 71, No. 2 (December 1981), pp. 256–68.
37. Cited in Irving Howe, World of our Fathers (New York, 1976),
p. 72.
38. People Walk on their Heads: Moses Weinberger’s Jews and Judaism in
New York, trans. and edited by Jonathan D. Sarna (New York, 1982), p. 59.
39. Milton Meltzer, Taking Root: Jewish Immigrants in America (New
York, 1976), p. 15.
40. Cited in ibid., p. 132.
41. M. Antin, The Promised Land, p. xiv.
42. The Education of Abraham Cahan, trans. Leon Stein and others
(Philadelphia, 1969), p. 244.
43. ‘‘Abraham Denebeim, Memoir of his Life from Lubova and his
Emigration to the United States and Subsequent Life There as a
Merchant, 1927,’’ Small Collections SC-14807, American Jewish Archives,
Cincinnati. N. Cowan and R. Cowan, Our Parents’ Lives, p. 13.
44. I. Howe, World of Our Fathers, pp. 72, 75, 116.
45. Sydney Stahl Weinberg, The World of our Mothers: The Lives of
Jewish Immigrant Women (Chapel Hill, 1988), pp. 67, 88–89, 96–99.
46. The Education of Abraham Cahan, pp. 241–42.
47. Israel Kasovich, The Days of Our Years: Personal and General
Reminiscence (1859-1929) (New York, 1929), p. 178.
48. Ibid., p. 180.
49. Tony Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York
(Cambridge, MA, 2005), pp. 37, 39, 41.
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Michael A. Meyer
50. Gerald Sorin, A Time for Building: The Third Migration, 1880-1920
(Baltimore, 1992), p. 97.
51. S. Weinberg, World of our Mothers, p. 112; M. Weinberger, People
Walk on their Heads, p. 51.
52. M. Meltzer, Taking Root, p. 182.
53. The number comes from Atina Grossmann, ‘‘German Jews as
Provincial Cosmopolitans: Reflections from the Upper West Side,’’ Leo
Baeck Institute Year Book, Vol. 53 (2008), p. 163. For a broad treatment
of the German-Jewish refugees’ situation in America and their relation to
Germany, see Anne Clara Schenderlein, ‘‘‘Germany on Their Minds’?
German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Relationships to
Germany, 1938-1988,’’ (PhD Dissertation, University of California, San
Diego, 2014).
54. Marta Appel, ‘‘Memoirs,’’ in Monika Richarz (ed.), Jüdisches Leben
in Deutschland. Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte, 1918-1945 (Stuttgart,
1982), p. 237. However, it seems likely that, in addition to the gender
factor, the older Jews were more reluctant to leave than the younger ones.
55. The expression is cited in Steven M. Lowenstein, Frankfurt on the
Hudson: The German-Jewish Community of Washington Heights, 1933-1983, Its
Structure and Culture (Detroit, 1989), p. 54.
56. M. Appel, ‘‘Memoirs,’’ p. 237.
57. Henry L. Feingold, A Time for Searching: Entering the Mainstream,
1920-1945 (Baltimore, 1992), p. 253.
58. ‘‘Ein Warnungsruf,’’ Aufbau, June 1, 1935, p. 1. The influx of
German Jews was regarded as a factor increasing American antisemitism,
especially in cities with large German populations. See Maurice R. Davie,
Refugees in America: Report of the Committee for the Study of Recent Immigration
from Europe (New York, 1947), p. 388.
59. Anson Rabinbach and Jack Zipes (eds.), Germans and Jews since the
Holocaust: The Changing Situation in West Germany (New York, 1986), p. 98;
Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (New York, 1955), p. 105; Lars Rensmann,
‘‘Returning from Forced Exile: Some Observations on Theodor W.
Adorno’s and Hannah Arendt’s Experience of Postwar Germany and
Their Political Theories of Totalitarianism,’’ Leo Baeck Institute Year Book,
Vol. 49 (2004), p. 191.
60. Miriam Rürup, Ehrensache. Jüdische Studentenverbindungen an
deutschen Universitäten 1886-1937 (Göttingen, 2008), p. 11; M. R. Davie,
Refugees in America, pp. 176–77.
61. S. M. Lowenstein, Frankfurt on the Hudson, p. 202.
62. Hertha Nathorff, cited in Will Scheber (ed.), Zeitzeuge Aufbau.
Texte aus sechs Jahrzehnten (Gerlingen, 1994), p. 30. On the Aufbau, see
also Tekla Szymanski, ‘‘Der Aufbau–‘Unser aller Tagebuch’,’’ Jüdischer
Almanach des Leo Baeck Instituts: Die Jeckes (Frankfurt a.M., 2005), pp.
108–18.
63. Aufbau, April 1, 1938, p. 8. But for some, German had become a
tainted language that carried painful reminders of the recent past. See
Monika S. Schmid, ‘‘‘I Always Thought I Was a German–It Was Hitler
Looking Back
163
Who Taught Me I Was a Jew’: National-Socialist Persecution, Identity, and
the German Language,’’ in Christof Mauch and Joseph Salmons (eds.),
German-Jewish Identities in America (Madison, WI, 2003), p. 151.
64. Aufbau, January 1, 1935, p. 8.
65. Wolfgang Holdheim, ‘‘The Less Than Total Break,’’ American
Jewish Archives, Vol. 40, No. 2 (November 1988), pp. 264–65; S. M.
Lowenstein, Frankfurt on the Hudson, pp. 190–91.
66. ‘‘Emigrantentum–geistige Neuorientierung,’’ Aufbau, December 1,
1936, p. 1.
67. Ibid., December 1938, p. 7.
68. For an analysis of the phenomenon of exile, see Edward W. Said,
Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA, 1984), pp. 173–86.
69. Lewis A. Coser, Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and Their
Experiences (New Haven, 1984), pp. 3–4, 8.
70. Guy Stern, ‘‘Ob und wie sie sich anpaßten: Deutsche Schriftsteller
im Exilland USA,’’ in Literatur im Exil. Gesammelte Aufsätze 1959-1989
(Ismaning, 1989), pp. 63–73; Jarrell C. Jackman, ‘‘German Émigrés in
Southern California,’’ in J. C. Jackman and Carla M. Borden (eds.), The
Muses Flee Hitler: Cultural Transfer and Adaptation, 1930-1945 (Washington,
DC, 1983), p. 102.
71. Julian Morgenstern, ‘‘The American Way and the Jewish Way,’’
Aufbau, December 22, 1944, p. 13; M. Davie, Refugees in America, pp. 69–
73; Irmela von der Lühe, Axel Schildt, and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum,
‘‘Auch in Deutschland waren wir nicht wirklich zu Hause. Jüdische Remigration
nach 1945’’ (Göttingen, 2008), pp. 9–13.
72. Maurice R. Davie and Samuel Koenig, The Refugees are Now
Americans (N.P.: The Public Affairs Committee, Incorporated, 1945),
p.18; Marita Krauss, Heimkehr in ein fremdes Land. Geschichte der
Remigration nach 1945 (Munich, 2001). When Fritz Kortner decided to
return he quickly got into a dispute with several of the ‘‘irreconcilable
haters.’’ See his Aller Tage Abend (Munich, 1959), p. 550.
73. Atina Grossmann and Tamar Lewinsky, ‘‘Zwischenstation,’’ in
Michael Brenner (ed.), Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland von 1945 bis
zur Gegenwart (Munich, 2012), pp. 136–37.
74. Steven J. Gold, Refugee Communities: A Comparative Field Study
(Newbury Park, CA, 1992), p. 45.
75. Annelise Orleck, The Soviet Jewish Americans (Westport, CT, 1999),
p. 4.
76. Burton S. Rubin, ‘‘The Soviet Refugee: Challenge to the
American Jewish Community Resettlement System,’’ Journal of Jewish
Communal Service, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Winter 1975), pp. 196–99.
77. A. Orleck, The Soviet Jewish Americans, pp. 176–77.
78. Gaynor I. Jacobson, ‘‘Spotlight on Soviet Jewry: Absorption in the
USA–Challenge and Prospect,’’ Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Vol. 52,
No. 2 (Winter 1975), p. 193. Anna Halberstadt, ‘‘A Model Assessment of
an Emigre Family from the Former Soviet Union,’’ Journal of Jewish
Communal Service, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Summer 1996), p. 299.
164
Michael A. Meyer
79. Cited in Zvi Gitelman, ‘‘Soviet Immigrant Resettlement in the
United States,’’ Soviet Jewish Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1982), p. 14.
80. Cited in S. Gold, Refugee Communities, p. 31.
81. Steven J. Gold, ‘‘Russian-Speaking Jews and Israeli Emigrants in
the United States: A Comparison of Migrant Populations,’’ in Zvi
Gitelman (ed.), The New Jewish Diaspora: Russian-Speaking Immigrants in
the United States, Israel, and Germany (New Brunswick, NJ, 2016), p. 117.
82. A. Halberstadt, ‘‘A Model Assessment,’’ p. 307.
83. Ibid., p. 11
84. G. I. Jacobson, ‘‘Spotlight on Soviet Jewry,’’ p. 191.
85. Rita J. Simon, In the Golden Land: A Century of Russian and Soviet
Jewish Immigration in America (Westport, CT, 1997), p. 66.
86. G. I. Jacobson, ‘‘Spotlight on Soviet Jewry,’’ p. 194.
87. A. Orleck, The Soviet Jewish Americans, pp. 155–56.
88. Ibid., p. 164. Adele Nikolsky has written of the Soviet Jews’ ‘‘negative Jewish identity,’’ born of the hindrances that their Jewishness had
placed in their path. Where the negative was strong, it was difficult to turn
it into a positive. See A. Nikolsky, ‘‘An Adaptation Group for Middle-Aged
Clients from the Former Soviet Union,’’ Journal of Jewish Communal Service,
Vol. 72, No. 4 (Summer 1996), p. 322.
89. Judy Blumenthal-Assuleen, ‘‘Israelis in the United States,’’ The
Jewish Social Work Forum, Vol. 16 (Spring 1980), p. 48.
90. Zvi Sobel, Migrants from the Promised Land (New Brunswick, NJ,
1986), pp. 209, 211, 217–18.
91. Cited in Steven J. Gold and Bruce A. Phillips, ‘‘Israelis in the
United States,’’ American Jewish Yearbook, Vol. 9 (1996), p. 80.
92. Currently there are at least twenty groups of Tzofim in the United
States. See https://israeliamerican.org/national/supported-organizations/
israeli-scouts-tzofim (accessed 23 August 2016).
93. Ibid., p. 86.
94. Steven J. Gold, The Israeli Diaspora (Seattle, 2002), p. 120.
95. Zvi Eisenbach, ‘‘Jewish Emigrants from Israel in the United
States,’’ Papers in Jewish Demography 1985 (Jerusalem, 1989), p. 262.
96. Anna Shternshis, ‘‘Virtual Village in a Real World: The Russian
Jewish Diaspora Online,’’ in Z. Gitelman, The New Jewish Diaspora, p. 229.
97. S. J. Gold and B. A. Phillips, ‘‘Israelis in the United States,’’ p. 98.