Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II

Abstract

How did New York's Lower East Side become the “Plymouth Rock” of America's Jews? In 1997, the social historian Hasia R. Diner composed a set of community lectures on the question, and she has now revised them into a highly readable book. In three long chapters, she reconstructs the process by which this small, L-shaped swath of lower Manhattan became the “sacred icon” of the American Jewish immigrant experience. The timing of the publication could not have been more apt. On April 19, 2001, the Lower East Side was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Diner begins her analysis by exploring how American Jews have represented the Lower East Side in literature and music, in recent museum exhibits, and on film. She observes that in most of these representations the district functions more as trope than as reality. More multiethnic than Jewish, the district acted like a “sieve,” with unclear boundaries and more residents leaving than staying. In the imagination of American Jews, however, its intellectual, cultural, and commercial life established their communal identity.

Keywords

Affiliated Institutions

• École Normale Supérieure - PSL FR

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