Insecure prosperity

This captivating story of the Jewish community in pre-World War II Johnstown, a steel town in western Pennsylvania, reveals a pattern of adaptation to American life quite different from that followed by big-city settlers. Whereas the majority of turn-of-the-century East European Jewish immigrants settled in major cities, no less than one-quarter made their lives in small towns; unlike that of metropolitan residents, the experience of small-town Jews has been investigated very little. Based on fine-grained historical ethnographic research, Ewa Morawska's study shows why and how, rather than climbing up the mainstream educational and occupational success ladder as did metropolitan Jews, their Johnstown fellow ethnics created in the local economy a tightly knit entrepreneurial niche and through the interwar period pursued within it their main life goals: achieving a satisfactory standard of living against the recurrent slumps in local mills and coal mines, and enjoying the company of their fellow congregants. And it reveals why and how, rather than quickly secularizing and diversifying their ethnic group institutions and activities as did big-city Jews, the Johnstowners devoted their energies to creating and maintaining an inclusive, multi-purpose religious congregation in which changes were introduced only slowly and at half-measures.