Jews Without Money

In this reflection paper I will be reflecting on the Jewish Americans making America their home and Americans response to the Holocaust. I will first address how the Jewish Americans emigrated from other nations into the United States. Once they got here what they had to do to become Americans but also keeping their Jewish identity visible. I will then talk about the Americans Response to the Holocaust and supply information about Jews in the Holocaust also including my thoughts on the Holocaust by ending in my conclusion. The reason for immigrating to America is the endless opportunities and immense freedom.

As Jewish immigrants settled in New York, some adopted American values. As a result, they assimilated into the mainstream of American culture. This is

“You have all these human rights no matter what your race, skin colour, sax, language, religion, opinion, family background, social or economic status, birth or nationality(2). In page 20-paragraph 9, it demonstrates low tolerance, and discrimination towards the Jews. “When three days were, there was a decree: every Jew must wear the yellow star.” This was a wristband that classified the Jews as a lower class. “But already they were issuing new decrees. We were no longer allowed to go in restaurants or cafes, to travel on the railway, to attend the synagogue, or to go into the street after six o’clock.”, page 21, paragraph 6, The Jews were forcibly taken away.

These “newcomers” did not deserve to come here and steal their jobs. Mike Trudic’s account from his childhood referred to his father’s hunt in America to desperately find work, “At the end of a week he was taken ill and died. It said he died of a broken heart”(Mike, 188). There were just too many workers and not enough jobs to be filled. Another first hand source provided by Rose Cohen, called Out of the Shadow, depicts the story of a jewish girl in New York and the experiences her family goes through in order to reach a sustainable lifestyle. The struggles included descriptions of harsh working conditions and anti-semitism, which created difficulty for immigrants who were trying to assimilate into the American culture.

Regardless of the growing frequency of Jewish migrating to the United States, the community continues to confront the many issues as part of their assimilation. Through this process of assimilating,

“The experience of the Jewish families in the United States over the last century has been one of acculturation and accommodation to the norms and the values of the American society.” (“Jewish American Family” 2). At the same time, Anti-Semitism in America reached its peak during the interwar period between the 1940s and 1960s. The self-hating Jew appeared as a phenomenon of the Depression and the 1940s. At that time, almost all of the Jewish American writers simply presented realistic portrayals of their fellow immigrants or their parents’ generation. Later, some other Americans, partial to Anti-Semitism, found confirmation of negative stereotypes in the new Jewish American Literature. Indeed, some parent-hating or self-hating Jewish American writers of the second or the third generation consciously reinforced negative stereotypes with satire and a selective realism. Philip Roth, whose portrayal of the tensions between these figures borders on self-hatred and an almost Anti-Semitic view of the Jewish family in America, is a great example of this phenomenon. In his book, Portnoy’s Complaint, Roth touched on the assimilation experiences of American Jews, their relationship to Israeli Jews, and his experience as inherent in being the son of a Jewish family which led him to be self-hating Jew to escape from the harsh reality.

Rebecca Samuel’s letters provide interesting insight into what is was like to be a Jewish American woman in the emerging United States. Her letters provide some evidence to struggles many Jews faced trying to observe their religion, as well as the tension of merging American practices with Jewish identity.

In the essay “Judaism and Economic Reform”, Norman Solomon, a Jewish-American journalist, presents a compelling argument on the basis of the need for economic reform while providing simple religious base solutions. While discussing two major economic problems that plague the world’s current economy, Solomon introduces the Jewish view of the global economy and their general view on economics as a whole. With this introduction to the Jewish worldview of economics we as readers are able to transition into understanding Solomon’s solutions of education & using Jewish law to improve the current state of the global economy. Although Solomon’s ideas of education and relying on Jewish law to improve the global economy seem logical, Sallie McFague,

To become an effective counselor to Jewish Americans or any race or diverse population is to be aware of one’s thoughts and opinions concerning racism and racial advantage, as well increase knowledge of culture’s different from oneself (Hays & Erford, 2014). Jewish Americans are referred to those Caucasian individuals who have immigrated to the United States from another country, such as Eastern Europe (Hays and Erford, 2014). In this paper, I will identify and provide a description of the Jewish population and how they differ from myself in a variety of ways. Additionally, I will provide a reflection of my immersion into the Jewish culture via my observations and highlight what I have learned

In Number Our Days, Myerhoff illustrates how older Jewish individuals come together to make a community in a place called The Center in California, that is practically a second home to these individuals. In Myerhoff’s study, the older, Jewish individuals in The Center band together to keep their beliefs alive. These individuals are banded together from shared experiences of “the old country” and from their shared trauma of the horrors of the Holocaust (Myerhoff, 1978: 23). “The Center people were survivors twice over, once due to their escape by emigration from the unnatural ravages of the Holocaust, and again later by living into extreme old age, surviving their peers, family, and often children,” (Myerhoff, 1978: 23). This lead to the community

In New York, United States a new wave of Jewish refugees is going to create a new American identity among society. To the skepticism of the grand percent of the Jewish community, America was indeed the gateway from dictatorship, prejudice, persecution, and death to Jews. An impressive 85% of Jews have experienced or witnessed anti-Semitic remarks at some point in their lives, according to a poll by the World Zionist Organization’s International Center for Countering Anti-Semitism. During the early 20th century, Jews are going to experience hardships in their daily life that will force them to evacuate or adapt to new rules. Peter Knight expresses in his book that during the nineteenth century American Jews “rarely [experienced]

The Jewish economist whose father lived through the Holocaust or the Italian who wonders at America's skill to assimilate workers from around the world, America’s ability to synthetize new parts into a dazzling new unit; this is a secret of its own power. People are already at a disadvantage by new trends as globalization, the decline of unions and the computer. The economist can only project and create a subset of important issues. The first thing they can remind us is that the legislated goal of U.S. policy is oddly detached from economics. Truly, illegal immigration is the market's sign that the actual legal limits are too low. Economy is boosted by immigrants; they are fuel for growth cities similar to Las Vegas and a balsam to older cities that have suffered desertion by natives. Borjas's research strongly suggests that “native unskilled workers pay a price: in wages, in their ability to find inviting areas to migrate to and perhaps in employment. But the price is probably a small one” (Lowenstein, R.

By analyzing Rose Cohen’s autobiography, “Out of the Shadow”, it uncovers the various social and economical hardships that Russian-Jews faced living in America. Even though adapting to a new life in America came with many obstacles for Jews, Rose’s story shows that many of them made it through their hardships and ultimately overcame their adversities. Rose Cohen’s autobiography serves as a great resource as to what Jewish life was in everyday America during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.

Arthur Miller’s Focus (1945) is a revolutionary work that highlights racism, especially anti-Semitism, in America. Written during the last year of the Second World War, Focus is a groundbreaking work in every sense of the word inasmuch as it is the first literary work that deals directly with anti-Semitism in the United States. Statistically speaking, there were two main waves of Jewish immigrants to the United States between 1820 and 1920. According to Susan Haberle, “the first group of Jewish people came from Germany, Austria, and Hungary. These immigrant left to seek a better life” (Haberle 6). The second group was the biggest wave; they came between 1880 and 1920: “these immigrants came from Poland, Romania, Russia, and other eastern