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Socialization of Jewish people into American community Many different social and ethnic groups have migrated to America to start new lives. Certainly, each of these groups was unique and each group socialized differently. The purpose of this essay is to evaluate the dynamics of socialization of Jewish people that came from different communities all over the world. These people had to learn how to adjust to their new communities in the United States and learn how to socialize. The Jewish people, like other ethnic groups had to struggle to achieve the most out of life. Not only did they come here as aliens to this country, but they also had to endure treacherous living quarters, rise above religious and ethnic prejudice, adapt to unfair social conditions, and customize and take advantage of economic opportunities that make the Jewish race a strong one in todays society.
The Jewish people came to The United States in three separate migrations. The first wave of Jewish immigrants came from Spain and Portugal and other places like Jamaica, Barbados, Curacao, South America, and the West Indies. These are the Sephardic Jews, and spoke Spanish. They arrived in the United States in the 1800 s and since they were the first Jews to come to America they got the name of they American Jews. During this groups migration, Rabbi Lee Levinger states that the number of immigrants varied from 8, 000 in 1820 to 84, 000 in 1840. (Spencer 2000, p. 142) The increase of Jews did not keep up with Americas population.
At this time Jews were a minority in this country. These people were the most enterprising and adventurous of the Jews. They loved this country so much and its idea of liberty that they were willing to make great sacrifices and take huge risks to obtain these goals. Some of these people came to America as peddlers and small shop owners; they made a living from trading from place to place. This group of Jewish immigrants would prove to be much more wealthy than fellow Jews to migrate to this country after them.
The second wave of Jews to come to the United States was from Germany. They arrived here in the middle of the 19 th century. This group mainly consisted of poor or middle class workmen, merchants, with a rarely a professional man among them (Spencer, 2000, p. 175). These Jews came from all over Germany.
The largest group came from Bavaria, because there the anti-Jewish laws were most severe. The Bavarian Jews had to pay heavy taxes, were not allowed to be citizens, had special laws to burden them and control their place of living, their business, and their travelling about. Worst of all they were not allowed to marry when they wished, as only a certain number of Jewish marriages could be held in a certain period of time (Spencer, 2000, p. 177 - 78). The German Jews were different from the Spanish due to the prejudice ideas of the eastern European governments. These people were used to living in ghettos and wearing badges. They mainly came here because their lives could not get much worse in Germany.
The final, third wave of Jews came from Russia, but they also included Jews from Poland, Galicia, Romania, and other surrounding Eastern European countries near Europe. These countries had the largest Jewish population in the world. According to the National Conference on Soviet Jewry says this wave of Jew came over to this country in the 1950 s. Their migration made the United States the third largest Jewish population in the world with one million Jews, following Russia and Austria-Hungary (Golden 4). Their language, Yiddish, and similarities in their customs gave this group a sense of unity, unlike the Spanish and Germans. These Jews migrated to this country because in Russia, the rulers openly announced their program, which was to kill one- third of the Jews, drive one-third out of the country, and convert one-third to the Orthodox Church, thus solving the Jewish problem in Russia by abolishing the Jews (Spencer 2000, p. 181).
This Russian group could be defined as very poor. Most of them worked as tailors, glaziers, and cigar makers. They did not trade like the German Jews. This group of Jews was the one of the largest groups of immigrants to enter the country during this time. Since so many different immigrants were sailing to America, the United States Government had to place quotas on ethnic groups, limiting the number of Jews that could enter this country to 350, 00. Jewish immigrants primarily settled in places where the Sephardic Jews had already established a large number of Jews.
However, due to work situations they were placed in other parts of the United States. New York City was the hub of Jewish life. Since World War I, approximately 70 percent of all Jews that came to this country settled here (Spencer, 2000, p. 182). Survivors of the Holocaust settled where they had friends or relatives already established in America, or wherever Jewish social agencies, mainly the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, that brought them from Europe had found sponsors for them. It was decided that New York would take half of them, a number commensurate with the size of its Jewish population. Competition for jobs and business opportunities would be very keen in the big eastern cities.
Some of the agency representatives pointed out these job options to immigrants who were reluctant to leave New York for Iowa or Michigan. It was explained to them that they would do far better in a smaller town or city. On a whole, the newcomers went willingly enough wherever they were assigned, largely because, with the exception of New York, one place in America was as strange to them as any other. Most of them did not argue about where they would live because they were so grateful to the authorities that had brought them to the United States and arranged for them to have a home and a job. Since the turn of the century, large amounts of Jews have moved to Sunbelt locations in California and Southern Florida.
In 1997 the Los Angeles Population Survey revealed that 21 percent of Jewish Angelenos were foreign-born, and 45 percent are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Reflecting their recent derivation, only 12 percent of Los Angeles Jews had American-born grandparents (Spencer, 2000, p. 184). Even though the Jewish immigrants came from different backgrounds and have had their minor differences. Their religion fused them together as one, and all of them worked to support their common good of the community. Joseph Weibner explains that in the beginning, the Eastern European Jews and the German Jews got into fights over the nature of group identity, religious involvement, and location of their settlement (p. 2). However, the Sephardic and German Jews provided the Eastern European ones with organizations, activities, and jobs.
At the same time, the Eastern Europeans also brought with them a strong tradition of communal organization and extensive involvement with social movements and political activism developed after their emancipation in Eastern Europe. Jews transplanted, modified, and invented a diverse array of associations, clubs, synagogues, and mutual benefit societies, which made up the communal basis of Jewish-American life. The groups they created provided religious and moral guidance, education, political socialization, economic aid, health care, burial services, musical training, dancing lessons, and summer excursions all of which support a social life and entertainment. The social conditions that these immigrants faced were outrageous. From living in a ghetto to prejudice acts against them, they had a great deal to endure. The housing conditions for Jewish immigrants earlier in the century who lived in the Lower East Side of New York and the Jewish ghettos of Chicago and Philadelphia were abysmal.
They had nearly 700 people per acre; the Lower East Side was more crowded than the worst slums of contemporary Bombay, India. Tenement fires were common because of the outhouses, cooking, and industrial activities. The polluted environment was described as the eyesore of New Yorkthe filthiest place in the Western continent (Weibner, 1999, p. 23). Because of these horrible conditions, the Jewish people suffered from a number of health problems such as tuberculosis, venereal disease, mental health problems, and diabetes.
Despite the low quality, their housing was expensive; therefore, thousands of families were evicted because they could not pay their rent. The Jews many problems were due to anti-Semitic acts. Jews living in the South, in places like Atlanta and New Orleans were warned by their friends in the North that the Ku Klux Klan would bomb houses or burn crosses in their front lawns. Other well known anti-Semitic figures of national prominence, such as the 1930 s radio priest, Father Charles Coughlin, and automobile pioneer, Henry Ford. Ford published his Jew- baiting harangues during the 1920 s in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent (Weibner, 1999, p. 36).
Both men engaged in public attacks on the Jews, impugning their character and patriotism. Jews in large cities also faced physical danger. Brutal attacks on young Jews were very common. Another astonishing act of discrimination happened in the 1920 s. Many private colleges and universities, especially those in the Northeast established quotas to limit the number of Jewish students regardless of their qualifications. For example in the 1920 s Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell decried the colleges Jewish problem and limited the fraction of Jews in attendance to 15 percent in order to reduce anti-Semitism and protect Harvard's reputation.
A study made two decades later, in 1949, determined that whatever way you adjust and reassemble the data, applications made by Jews to northeastern colleges are less often accepted than those of the Protestant or Catholic. (Weibner, 1999, p. 41). The admission to colleges and universities was difficult; getting accepted to graduate programs, especially in professional fields was even greater challenge. The proportions of Jews enrolled in law, engineering, medicine, architecture, dentistry, commerce, fine art, and social work dropped substantially between 1935 and 1946, even though the pool of Jewish applicants continued to grow. Also, from 1920 - 1940, the percentage of Jews in Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons fell from 50 percent to less than 7 percent.
In 1940 due to the combination of quotas and the large number of Jewish applications, non-Jews had a 1 in 7 chance of admission to Cornell Medical School, while Jews had only one tenth of that likelihood for admission, 1 in 70 (Weibner, 1999, p. 51). Jews however, were well represented in certain industries such as textiles, sales, entertainment, teaching, and independent professions, but they were excluded from employment in elite firms and leading corporations. In the early 1950 s studies of the job markets in Los Angeles and Chicago found that between 17 and 20 percent of all job openings requested non-Jewish applicants, and the highest rates of exclusion were for white-collar and professional jobs, especially in law, insurance, and accounting. In 1960, 8 percent of the countrys college graduates were Jewish.
However, they accounted for less than one half of 1 percent of the executive personnel at the leading American industrial companies (Weibner, 1999, p. 52). At the turn of the century, after the quotas were lifted, Jews still only had moderate educational credentials, but were still able to find jobs in a rapidly growing economy. The presence of families offered stability and resource-yielding networks. Their strong ties with friends and family reduced the cost and effort involved in emigrating to and getting established in this country. Their access to kin-based resources can be seen in that 62 percent of Jewish immigrants who arrived between 1908 and 1914 had their passage paid for by relatives. In contrast, non-Jews had less than half that number that received such aid (Weibner, 1999, 54).
In 1870, the German Jews provided the European immigrants with many jobs. German Jews owned virtually the entire New York clothing industry, both retail and wholesale. About 50 percent of Eastern European Jews had worked in this industry prior to migration. While 67 percent of all Jewish immigrants had worked in skilled trades prior to their immigration, this is why employers hired them with little on-the-job training. Jews all but monopolized garment jobs, driving out natives and other immigrant groups until they abandoned those jobs for more desirable positions. During the 15 -year period from 1899 to 1914, the garment industry absorbed 400, 000 workers (Weibner, 1999, p. 62).
Immigrant Jews, when they first came here preferred to enter the garment industry since it was primarily a Jewish workplace. They thought likelihood of facing anti-Semitism was very slim. Much of the actual garment assembly was done in apartment-based sweatshops, since the cost of setting up ones own business was extremely low. The low cost led many employees to save up enough money to start up their own businesses. This allowed for more workers and more jobs for friends and family members to have job openings for more Jewish immigrants to come to America. Another low-investment business occupation favored by the Jewish people was pushcart peddling.
Out of 5, 000 pushcart peddlers in Manhattan at the turn of the century, 60 percent were Jews. In turn, peddlers bought their merchandise from wholesalers and retailers, which provided more jobs for Jews (Weibner, 1999, p. 64). Their social characteristics such as hard work ethic and religious beliefs distinguished Jews from other immigrants of the same era and allowed them to make more money and live more stable lives. These advantages helped their childrens educational achievements.
The children of immigrants moved into middle class and out to more fashionable neighborhoods, creating new institutions, synagogue-centers, and progressive Hebrew schools. History had proved that that Eastern European Jews would Americanize with a vengeance. The question now was whether, as Americans, they would still remain Jews. Jews that immigrated to the United States in the late 1980 s and today are much different than their ancestors. They are highly educated and skilled, and have access to co ethnic networks and American Jewish communal services. Despite adversity, they tend to prosper.
Like the native- born Jewish population, they are active in professions and entrepreneurship According to the 1990 census, over 50 percent of both Russian and Israel-born persons in New York and Los Angeles, age 24 - 65, had one or more years of college, and over 30 percent of both nationality groups were college graduates Thus Jewish migrants are much better educated than the United States population at large, which has a 20 percent rate of college graduation. Reflecting their high levels of education recent Jewish immigrants experience rapid economic mobility. According to the 1990 census, established that Jews residing in New York City and Los Angeles were making more than $ 32, 000 annually in 1990. For purpose of comparison, the average earnings for employed white men in the United States was just under $ 31, 000 in 1990. Jewish women were more than $ 21, 000 annually in 1990 and the average income for a white woman was about $ 21, 000 in 1990 (Weibner, 1999, pp. 69 - 72).
The census also showed that recently arrived Jews, especially refugees from the former USSR made much less in 1990 than those immigrants with longer tenure in the United States. The Jewish race through hard work and togetherness rose above all negative barriers that tried to defeat them. They molded themselves into a solid productive group of people that are now, for the most part, successful and happy. Bibliography: Epstein, Melech.
Jewish Labor in U. S. A. : 1914 - 1952. New York: Trade Union Sponsoring Committee, 1953. Green, Nancy L. , ed.
Jewish Workers in the Modern Diaspora. Berkeley: U. of California, 1997. Shapiro, Judah J. 1970. The Friendly Society: A History of the Workmen's Circle. New York: Media Judaica Spencer, Michael.
Contemporary Analysis of Immigration Waves. Boston, 2000. Weibner, Joseph. Jewish Diaspora in the United States of America. New York: Random House Inc. , 1999.
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Research essay sample on Socialization Of Jewish People Into American Community
