A time for building

by Gerald Sorin

"In this volume, [the author] focuses on how the eastern European Jewish migration, which set the tone for American Jewry in the final decades of the nineteenth century, confronted the issue of accommodation and group survival. A distinctive political and general culture, which amalgamated traditional Jewish and new American values, was established by the immigrant generation. That Yiddish-speaking transitional culture, which prevailed in the ethnic enclaves of the cities, was considerably modified once Jews left these core communities and after World War I, the cultural energy of the immigrant generation waned"--Series editor's foreword.