JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

family, american jewish
Gordon (1959) observes that “the suburb is helping to produce
marked changes in the basic structures of the Jewish family
and its educational, political, religious, cultural and social life”
(p. 19). Life in suburbia was so different from life in the city
that changes in family life were inevitable.
One important consequence of these changes was the virtual
full acceptance and social integration of the Jewish family
into American society. This development was discussed in
Will Herberg’s classic book Protestant, Catholic, Jew: A Study
in Religious Sociology (1955), one of the most influential works
in the postwar sociology of American religion. Herberg posits
that by the mid-twentieth century, Judaism was no longer
considered marginal to American society. Affiliation with a
major religious faith was important to Americans, and Judaism,
as the seminal creed of America’s Judeo-Christian tradition,
duly qualified. Jews, as individuals, might still encounter
discrimination, but the Jewish tradition, especially as manifest
within the home and family, was seen as consonant with
the highest of American values (Herberg, ibid., and Kramer
and Levantman, p. 153). In Herberg’s typology Jews, who
were three percent of the American population, constituted
one third of its religious experience. Of course, the Judaism
of the suburbs was not the pseudo-Orthodoxy of the immigrant
generation. Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative
Judaism, at least until the 1970s, were the only streams of
Judaism to successfully take root there. The modern and often
lavish temples and synagogues erected in the 1950s and 1960s
conveyed the message that the Jewish family felt self-assured
and at home in America (Sklare and Greenblum, 1967). Some
were designed by prominent architects, Jewish and non-Jewish
– they manifested the sense that Jews had arrived and
were taking root.
Synagogue affiliation was altogether a different experience
in the suburbs. The distances characteristic of suburban
living made regular synagogue participation, for those
so inclined, more difficult. Whereas in the city, the synagogue
was classically a neighborhood institution, in the suburbs
it served a widely dispersed population often accessible
only by car. Thus, synagogue attendance could no longer
be an informal and spontaneous affair. The increased distance
between home and synagogue was but one of the postwar
changes in Jewish family life. The Conservative movement
responded by permitting travel to and from synagogue
by car on the Sabbath. Orthodoxy, which continued to prohibit
travel felt more at home in the city or turned a blind
eye to those who traveled to synagogue. Living within
walking distance of the synagogue was later to be a boon to
the sense of community among Orthodox and traditional
Jews.
The transplanting of Jewish community life from the city
to the suburbs contributed to (1) the long range decline of the
Jewish neighborhood, (2) an increase in formal affiliation as a
means of community attachment, (3) the child-centered family,
(4) the transformation of gender roles, and (5) increased
geographic mobility.
According to Shapiro:
The diffusion of Jewish population into the suburbs and exurbs
diluted Jewish identity. In the compacted Jewish neighborhoods
of the cities, Jewish identity was absorbed through
osmosis. In suburbia, it had to be nurtured. Jewish suburbanites
lived [mostly] in localities where, in contrast to the city, most
of the people were not Jews, the local store did not sell Jewish
[especially Yiddish language] newspapers, there were no kosher
butchers, synagogues were not numerous, and corned beef
sandwiches were not readily available. (p. 147)
In the old neighborhood, grandchildren often lived within
proximity of their grandparents, which naturally facilitated
more frequent contact. This intimacy made it more likely that
family traditions were passed on. Suburban living distanced
these generations. The Yiddish of immigrant grandparents,
which was understood and spoken, albeit typically unused,
by the second generation, seemed foreign and arcane to their
suburban grandchildren. A Sunday visit to bubbie and zaidie
in the city might take in shopping at the Jewish bakery, bookstore,
or kosher butcher. Such casual activities were the most
intensive Jewish cultural encounters some third- and fourthgeneration
children would experience.
While this scenario partly reflects an overall distancing
from tradition, it also points to the diminuition of intense Jewish
family activity in the suburbs. Such activity is a source of
mimetic norms, i.e., knowledge that is “imbibed from parents
and friends, and patterned on conduct regularly observed in
home and street, synagogue and school” (Soloveitchik, 1994).
This form of learning emerges naturally in the traditional Jewish
neighborhood. The Jewish neighborhood, much like the
shtetl of prewar Europe, is an example of gemeinschaft, an informal,
corporate form of community life. In contrast, suburban
Jewish life is likened to gesellschaft, a form of community
organization wherein social interaction is more disparate and
the transmission of culture more formalized. It has become
more common for suburban Jewish families who do not live
near one another to meet and interact only within the context
of formal activities. These scheduled Jewish experiences, such
as attendance at synagogue services, school meetings, youth
group programs, adult learning courses, holiday celebrations
and cultural events, compete for time with a miscellany of
other activities. (See Sklare; Gans; Blau; Gordon; and Kramer
and Leventman, op. cit.)
The suburban synagogue is the central, even if not the
sole, focus of public Jewish life. Synagogue membership entitles
a family, or any one of its members: to celebrate the Jewish
holidays as part of the congregation; to the services of the
rabbi and his assistant; to attend synagogue-run classes and
lectures; to receive Jewish news and information through the
in-house newsletter, and to use the synagogue’s facilities for
the celebration of family life-cycle events. For the newly suburbanized
Jews, this reflected the dependency of the family
on the Jewish skills and knowledge of community professionals.
In many instances for that generation, even such classic
family rites as lighting Hanukkah candles or participating in a
700 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6