Between Gemeinschaft and Gesselschaft: Jewish-American identity from the 1880s to the 1980s

The purpose of this project was to call into question a commonly held belief in mainstream academia regarding the state of Jewish identity in the United States. Whereas contemporary scholars tend to concur in their assertion that American Judaism is in decline, as it succumbs to complete assimilation, or amalgamation, an alternative view holds that this is not the case. In fact, this project concludes that dynamic expressions of Jewish identity, changing from one generation to the next, have continued to sustain Jewish America. While these expressions have remained unrecognizable to those who refuse to measure Jewish identity beyond its most dogmatic expressions, such as formal membership to a place of worship, they are clearly evident to those willing to regard its pragmatic and evolving nature. In support of such a view, this project began with research regarding the exodus of over two million Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe to the United States between 1882 and 1924. Even during that time, as this project found, when Jewish Americans were bound together by poverty and common language in the Lower-East Side and East Baltimore Ghetto, the community scholars were already heralding the end of American Judaism. Furthermore, this study has found that, beginning with the Eastern European migration, scholars from each of the generations since that time have been predicting the demise of Jewish America by the end of the "next generation," with assimilation being the perceived culprit in each case. Yet Jewish America has continued to exist. Having placed the current state of the "American Jewish Crisis" in this context, the alternative view regarding evolving expressions of Jewish identity has been defended. The three generations identified for this study were: 1) the 1880s to the 1920s, 2) the 1920s to the 1960s, and 3) the 1960s to the 1980s. This project has been realized through two media: the written project that follows, and an exhibit that communicates Jewish identity in the United States, as it has struggled between its own ethnic community---the gemeinschaft---and the larger American society---the gesselschaft.