Insecure Prosperity: Small-Town Jews in Industrial America, 1890-1940

by Ewa Morawska

This captivating story of the Jewish community in Johnstown, Pennsylvania reveals a pattern of adaptation to American life surprisingly different from that followed by Jewish immigrants to metropolitan areas. Although four-fifths of Jewish immigrants did settle in major cities, another fifth created small-town communities like the one described here by Ewa Morawska. Rather than climbing up the mainstream education and occupational success ladder, the Jewish Johnstowners created in the local economy a tightly knit ethnic entrepreneurial niche and pursued within it their main life achieving a satisfactory standard of living against the recurrent slumps in local mills and coal mines and enjoying the company of their fellow congregants. Rather than secularizing and diversifying their communal life, as did Jewish immigrants to larger cities, they devoted their energies to creating and maintaining an inclusive, multipurpose religious congregation.


Morawska begins with an extensive examination of Jewish life in the Eastern European regions from which most of Johnstown's immigrants came, tracing features of culture and social relations that they brought with them to America. After detailing the process by which migration from Eastern Europe occurred, Morawska takes up the social organization of Johnstown, the place of Jews in that social order, the transformation of Jewish social life in the city, and relations between Jews and non-Jews. The resulting work will appeal simultaneously to students of American history, of American social life, of immigration, and of Jewish experience, as well as to the general reader interested in any of these topics.

440 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 1999

Reviews

[Miriam Borenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insecure Prosperity by Ewa Morawska is a highly detailed historical and sociological study of a specific American Jewish community in the early twentieth century. Morawska examines the Jewish immigrant population in Johnstown, Pennsylvania as an ethnic group—focusing on several aspects of their individual lives and community structures. She employs a number of comparisons to test theories about Americanization, ethnic patterns in migration, and the influence of location on community structures.
As Morawska examines the economic, social, and religious lives of two generations of Jews in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, she portrays a side of Jewish immigration to America quite different from the well-established narrative of Jewish settlement in America’s urban centers. In comparing the Jews of Johnstown with those in urban locations (such as New York City), Morawska shows a stark contrast in the continuation of Old World customs and practices. Remaining outside of industrialized urban centers, the Jews of Johnstown were able to create for themselves an economic and social niche based on previous experience in Europe.
Morawska also contextualizes the story of the Johnstown Jews by including thorough study of their native-born neighbors as well as their fellow immigrants. Comparing the Jewish and non-Jewish Eastern European immigrants in Johnstown highlights the specifically Jewish elements of the former. Similarly, comparisons between European Jews (still in Europe) with Jews in Johnstown show the multiple effects that migration had on the Jewish community settling in rural America.
The limited size and diversity of the Jewish community in Johnstown allowed for remarkable community solidarity and the sustenance of old traditions. This study is a remarkable contribution to the history of Jewish life in America—as well as a prime example of comparative analysis between and within ethnic identities.