Author Description

From the dust jacket inside flaps: A century ago, masses of East European Jews began flocking to these shores. Before immigration was severely limited by restrictive legislation, some two and a half men, women and children had found refuge in the United States. The struggles, hopes, despair and achievements of these newcomers are reflected in A Cntury of Memories 1882-1982: The East European Jewish Experience in America. Most Jews now share the best of both worlds, the American and the Jewish. But to the Est European Jews who landed here a century ago, the challenge of becoming an American was a frightening prospect. What would the future bring? In this original contribution to American immigration history, Uri D. Herscher introduces the reader to different individuals and stories reflecting the East European Jewish experience in America. Along the way, he debunks a number of myths associated with this experience and demonstrates that not all immigrant Jews from east of the Oder settled in New York City; not all "German" Jews feared or ingored the "Russian" Jews who came to America at the end of the nineteenth century; the Lower East Side was not the joyful place of Jewish life which the passage of time and nostalgia have made it seem. Finally, this volume is a salute to America's pluralistic society. It testifies to the ongoing efforts of East European Jewry to shape for itself a distinctly American Jewish identity. As Dr. Herscher writes in the Introduction to this volume, these Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe "would create an amalgam of American and East European Jewish values...it was, it continues to be, an amalgam, for they did not melt away into America; instead...they let America melt into them."