Our Parents' Lives

Oral histories recount the transition from an Eastern European society ruled by Talmudic laws to a less strictly regulated American society

This dramatic collective memoir of East European Jewish immigrants from 1895 to 1915, related in accounts of their daily lives and hardships in Europe and during resettlement in the U.S., is less a sociological study than a tribute to the parents of the husband-and-wife authors. The focus is on the special difficulties in assimilation into a largely secular Christian culture as opposed to the pervasive dictates of their own religion that governed every aspect of these immigrants' lives. The resulting conflict eventually gave way to a new Jewish-American culture, stress the authors. Strongly influenced by American secular schooling for both sexes, they participated with their Gentile contemporaries in the sexual revolution, including birth control, and joined in reforms of medical care and child-rearing. The spirit of enterprise along with disciplines of Yiddishkeit which enabled Jews to survive abroad, according to the authors, largely accounted for their success in America without the loss of their "Jewishness." Neil Cowan is a public-affairs consultant in New York City; Ruth Schwartz Cowan is professor of history at the State University of New York. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This breezy, readable book highlights aspects of the Eastern European Jewish immigrant experience in America of those born between 1895 and 1915. The authors interviewed their parents, relatives, and family friends, and then, to preserve anonymity, merged individual voices into representative prototypes of "ordinary" immigrants. The authors' historical narrative is interspersed with citations of standard secondary literature and the oral testimonies. The work manages to evoke some of the moods and sentiments of Eastern European Jews, even if, on the whole, it breaks no new historical ground. The authors insightfully stress the continuities of Old World patterns. An informative and appealing oral history.
- Benny Kraut, Univ . of Cincinnati
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.