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 Jewish
Life in the American West: Perspectives on Migration, Settlement,
and Community
Ava F. Kahn, editor
In American popular culture and scholarship, American Jewry has
been viewed from the perspective of the New York Jewish immigrant
experience. But for those Jews who settled in western cities and
towns, this epic played only a minor role. To the land between the
Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean came a steady stream of
Jewish men and women. Between 1850 and the 1920s the Jewish population
of the western United States grew from a number too small to count
to an estimated 300,000 people. This book explores the birth of
an American Jewish culture that had only tenuous roots in the East.
By examining the life experiences of Jewish men and women who migrated
to the West overland and by sea, by covered wagon, ship, and train,
who settled in cities and on farms, and who became leaders in the
Jewish and larger secular community, this book reveals the contrast
between the American image of Jews as eastern urbanites and the
reality of the diversity of American Jewish life. The contributors
to this volume focus on Jewish settlement in the American West during
the era of the Great Migration from the 1840s to the 1920s.
144 pages, 70 illustrations, 10 in color, bibliography, index, 8.5
x 11"
$22.50 ISBN 0-295-98275-6
Contents
Foreword, James H. Nottage
"Introduction: Looking at America from the West to the East,
1850-1920s," Ava F. Kahn
"American West, New York Jewish," Hasia R. Diner
"To Journey West: Jewish Women and Their Pioneer Stories,"
Ava F. Kahn
"The Jewish Merchant and Civic Order in the Urban West,"
William Toll
"From Cooperative Farming to Urban Leadership," Ellen
Eisenberg
"Afterword," Moses Rischin
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