If we accept the truism that World War II was a watershed for American Jews, it behooves us to look more closely at Jewish experience on the home front and in military service during the war years. Even a cursory appraisal should prove illuminating, though it neglects such important topics as Jewish women's work in war industries and the attitudes of immigrant or even second-generation parents toward their children's decision to enlist.

	Jewish life- Celebrating the Jewish New Year on the East Side of New York City.
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, George Grantham Bain Collection

Most American Jews and their fellow citizens did not see active military service; rather, they experienced the war on the home front. Thus the home front should serve as our starting point. The vast majority of American Jews made their homes in the nation's largest cities. In fact, Jews living in New York and Chicago accounted for over half the American Jewish population. Contemporaries often saw it differently. As historian Salo Baron observed in an address on what war had meant to American Jewish community life, for decades "observers of American Jewish life have deplored the ... agglomeration of nearly two-thirds of American Jewry within a radius of two hundred miles from Times Square." No matter where one put the emphasis, urban America was the Jewish home front.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection

Jewish market on the East Side, New York, NY, circa 1890-1901.

In the beginning of A Democracy at War, William O'Neill's history of America's fight at home and abroad during World War II, he notes, "America has changed so much that those who grew up in the interwar years remember a nation that, to a significant degree, no longer exists." He then points out that "to modern eyes the most striking feature of American cities in 1941 was the absence of people of color." Yet, "what most impressed foreign visitors was the remarkably varied ethnic backgrounds of white Americans." Irrespective of size, the cities Jews called home shared common characteristics. Ethnicity animated their neighborhoods, influenced occupational distribution and dominated politics. Here Jews were one ethnic group among many. Jewish religion, culture, politics and occupations stemmed from immigrant origins. Divisions among Jews--of class, birth, background, ideology and religion--ultimately paled before the differences separating Jews from other immigrants, mostly Catholics, many from peasant cultures. Their interaction with each other, and with the local, often Protestant, elites, shaped each city's character.

In every city except New York, Jews were simply one struggling minority among others. Jews in New York City enjoyed the luxury of numbers and diversity. Almost 2 million strong and roughly 30 percent of the population, they were the city's largest single ethnic group. Because of their critical mass, their internal differences did count. New York Jews could separate themselves from their fellow Jews on the grounds of ideology or religion, class or politics, and still find enough other similar Jews to fill an apartment house, an organization or even a neighborhood. Gerson Cohen, the future chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, grew up speaking Hebrew in an immigrant household, an unusual pattern of Jewish family culture. When he was a teenager he met a Polish boy who had studied "within the Hebrew secular system of Poland. He and I played ball together, talking away in Hebrew, from which I drew the following inference: New York City was a place where people, however isolated they were from the mainstream, did not need to be alone."

Courtesy of Kenny Dimin

Kenny Dimin.

The diversity and numbers of New York Jews allowed them to settle large sections of the city and to endow those areas with a Jewish ambiance. Growing up in East Flatbush, Victor Gotbaum remembered that section of Brooklyn as "really insulated, wrapped in a false sense of security, what with Jews to the left of you and to the right of you and across the street from you." Although they shared the streets with other ethnics, New York Jews often were remarkably provincial. "Much later," the labor leader continues, "I was impressed when my Chicago friends told me that right across the street there might be a Polish family and a Polish gang ready to get you. I never had that problem. Neither did most Jews raised in Brooklyn. When you went to school the minority would be two or three non-Jews per class. Writer Grace Paley "grew up being very sorry for Christians. My idea was that there were very few of them in the world." Kate Simon knew that Italian immigrants lived on the east side of LaFontaine Street, but she considered them "just Jews who didn't talk Yiddish. They didn't go to synagogues, either, but a lot of Jews didn't." Comfortable in their own world, New York Jews rarely ventured outside of it. The Jewish immigrant world branded upon its sons and daughters marks of separateness even while encouraging them to dreams of universalism.

	Ready Reference
	Jews Judaism Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Associations Reproduced with permission from The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Copyright © 2000 Columbia University Press. All Rights Reserved.

The organized Jewish community in Northeastern and Midwestern cities presented a picture of institutional completeness. Schools of all types--religious, congregational, communal, Zionist, Yiddishist, socialist, communist--and of all levels--elementary, secondary, vocational, college, teacher training, graduate--flourished or expected to flourish. Jews established hospitals, orphanages, old age homes, homes for delinquents and unwed mothers, community centers, settlement houses, and young men's and women's Hebrew associations. Gender provided a fulcrum for organization, and women's organizations represented a wide political and religious spectrum. Even occupational groups reflected ethnic background. There were organizations of Jewish public school teachers and policemen, unions of Jewish garment workers and bakers, of Yiddish writers and social workers. Most numerous were the small societies of Jews from the same hometowns in the old country, Iandsmanshaftn. These groups directly linked Jews with their European cousins. Religious activities increasingly fractured along denominational lines with growing distinctions among Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. Finally, national Jewish organizations, from fraternal orders to Zionist groups, participated through their branches in local city life.

	Discussion
	Between 1880 and 1929, a mass migration of Jews from Eastern Europe to the United States resulted in the rise of distinctly Jewish immigrant city neighborhoods, such as the Lower East Side of New York. Discuss the threats to Jewish identity faced by Jewish immigrants (e.g., rise of secularism, enrollment in American public schools, language barriers, mixed ethnic neighborhoods). How did these immigrants attempt to maintain their ethnic and religious identities?

Although few Jews growing up in the big cities in the 1930s were aware of the extent and diversity of Jewish organizational activity, most participated in public expressions of Jewishness, and many engaged in activities under Jewish auspices. Urban Jews knew about synagogues, even if they did not attend them, as most did not; indeed, they were as likely to walk by them on the streets as they were to pass a church. Similarly, Jews were conscious of the Yiddish dailies, which shared newsstands with English-language papers, and they experienced the rhythm of the Jewish calendar because they refrained from school or work or shopping like others in their neighborhood. In the metropolitan milieu, even the secular worlds of work, commerce and recreation reflected Jewish associations. Special sales in local stores coincided with Jewish holidays like Rosh Hashanah or Passover, promoting patterns of consumption linked to Judaism. Strikes in Jewish industries, especially the garment trades, resonated throughout the streets of Jewish neighborhoods. Young Jews played basketball and attended dances at the local Jewish community center; the lucky ones would spend summer vacations at Jewish country resorts, cottages or camps; and all had some friends who became bar mitzvah at the age of thirteen.