Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

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How did Jews respond to changes in their neighborhoods? It appears that they
moved out when they did not feel comfortable, although without closer research
it is not possible to pinpoint the factors cited in the 1924 Jewish Welfare Board
report. Would Jews have moved out of these neighborhoods anyhow even if the
racial makeup of the neighborhood had not changed. Generally studies of Jewish
residential patterns in the United States have historically shown that groups
always moved in response to improved circumstances. 36 The exodus of Jewish
institutions also played a role in this centrifugal phenomenon. Once synagogues
and Hebrew schools moved out, members either had to found new institutions or
follow their houses of worship and study. Consumers of kosher meat and other
foods followed departing butchers and bakers, their only access to ritually acceptable
food. 37
By and large Jews did not respond violently to the increasing Black presence
in their neighborhoods. 38 Contemporary observers and subsequent historians have
shown that when Irish, Polish, and other whites of various backgrounds considered
their neighborhoods "threatened" by Blacks seeking homes, they responded
with physical force—"defending" their neighborhoods. Jews did not meet their
Black neighbors with firebombs, guns, or clenched fists because their rapid rate
of economic success allowed them to move. The "wandering Jews" had a centuries-long
historic experience with picking up and settling themselves elsewhere,
and perhaps Jews of the time felt they carried with them little in the way
of a romantic commitment to a physical place. Thomas Kessner's important study
comparing Jewish and Italian adjustment to New York City showed that Jews,
despite greater economic mobility, had lower rates of home ownership and high
rates of small business investment. Italians, on the other hand, viewed home ownership
the highest of achievements at that point in their history in America. Jews
may have had less stake in the maintenance of their turf. 39 Finally, Jews had close
to no experience or taste for armed self-defense or preemptive aggression against
others.
Nevertheless, the shifts in population from Jewish to Black did not take place
without any controversy. Reports of friction between Jewish homeowners and the
increasingly large pool of Black renters in Harlem showed up in the Black press
as early as 1908. Meyer Jarmulowsky, a Jewish homeowner, indeed a major real
estate developer, a member of the Property Owners' Improvement Association,
and a key player in the immigrant eastern European Orthodox community,
addressed a group, presumably Black, at Harlem's St. Philip's Church, on "The
Housing Problem From the Owner's Point of View." The problem, as
Jarmulowsky saw it, at least as described in the New York Age, amounted to a difference
in one's economic perspective: the lessee and lessor had opposite interests
in the development of the neighborhood. Jarmulowsky suggested then that a
joint meeting be called to directly confront the problem. He clearly wanted to
convince Blacks to cease any further forays into the neighborhood. 40 Evidence of
Jewish participation in efforts to block further Black movement into Harlem in