The Jewish Community of Indianapolis, 1849 to the Presence by Judith E. EndelmanReview by: Myron BermanThe American Historical Review, Vol. 90, No. 5 (Dec., 1985), pp. 1270-1271Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1859822 .

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1270 Reviews of Books

East Europeans, the constraints of religious commu- nity had been weakened by the promise of demo- cratic emancipation. In Germany that promise was thwarted by failed revolutions and new disabilities. In the New World liberty could be fulfilled. With their economic and geographic mobility amid un- paralleled expansion, German Jews developed new communities and institutions in the emerging west- ern heartland of America.

Cohen's thematic approach goes beyond ethnic and religious issues, to include lucid analyses of contributions to the economic growth of the United States. Peddling, store-keeping, and pioneering in ready-made clothing offered upward mobility for many, and a few even had exceptional success in banking and finance. Familiar themes are devel- oped here with scholarly perspective, balanced an- ecdotal detail, and full discussion of hardships and humiliations along with progress. Controversy over Sunday blue laws, for example, continued into the twentieth century. By then, the German Jews who had generally adapted to such public constraints, urged their East European brethren to do likewise.

But there was always the minority's self-conscious concern with image, when confronted with charges of social separatism (while also "obtrusiveness") or with double standards in the marketplace. Rabbi Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia cautioned Jewish em- ployers in 1855 that more was expected of them in labor relations, so they should pay the highest wages, "if possible ... a little more than non- Israelites" (p. 1 13). Similar sensitivities would play a role in the great cloakmakers' strike of 1910, which pitted Jewish employers of the established commu- nity against the often "radical" Jewish workers of the new immigration.

Self-criticism and defensiveness concerning "ex- cessive" commercial accomplishment brought pleas for a virtuous agrarianism. Cohen weaves this theme, too, into historic context, describing the varied back-to-the-soil activities of organizations and individuals (such as Adolf Brandeis, father of the first Jewish Supreme Court justice). Nowhere did the lofty prose of German Jewish rhetoric glitter as much as in extolling the virtues of farming. Yet, as the author notes cogently, this prescription for East European Jews crowding the urban ghettos early in the twentieth century was typically humanitarian while also defensive.

Ultimately, the German Jewish community's ge- nius lay in its institutional structure, its shaping of Reform Judaism, philanthropy here and abroad, and a fervent Americanization. In the words of a Charleston rabbi dedicating a house of worship in 1841: "This synagogue is our temple, this city our

Jerusalem, this happy land our Palestine" (p. 170). JOSEPH BRANDES

William Paterson College

JUDITH E. ENDELMAN. The Jewish Community of Indian- apolis, 1849 to the Present. (Modern Jewish Experi- ence.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1984. Pp. ix, 303. $17.50.

The distinctiveness of Indianapolis Jewry emerges in clear perspective from Judith E. Endelman's study. An ethnic community of about eleven thou- sand, approximately 1 percent of the total popula- tion, Indianapolis Jewry constituted the largest sin- gle foreign-born group in the city in the early twentieth century. Although Indiana had an excep- tionally high percentage of white, native-born Prot- estants largely engaged in rural pursuits, Hoosier Jews successfully maintained their distinctive cul- tural and religious traditions through a process of accommodation to their environment. Despite the existence of Silver Shirt headquarters in Noblesville, Indiana, and the resurgence of anti-Semitism, the author notes a lesser degree of virulent anti-Jewish prejudice in Indianapolis than in other midwestern cities.

Indianapolis Jewry was always in the forefront of inter- and intracommunal cooperation. Although the community developed its own Jewish Welfare Fund, it also derived in the early years a significant proportion of its funding from the Community Chest. The program of the Jewish Educational Association represented the merged efforts of dif- ferent religious groups, a pattern found in few Jewish communities.

Demographic analysis of changing communal patterns are a feature of this study. A product of the "new history," the book is replete with statistics concerning institutions and attitudes of this Hoosier community. Oral interviews lend a flavor of authen- ticity to the author's conclusions.

From a scholarly perspective, however, there are lacunae that deserve elaboration. In too many in- stances the author derives conclusions from second- ary sources, which she quotes to excess. Some of her generalizations are questionable. For example, the assertion that "restrictionists, whose ranks were growing in proportion to the increasing numbers of immigrants" (p. 95) can be contradicted by statistics showing that in the 1890s, when immigration de- creased, restrictionism was at a peak. Moreover, the argument that smaller Jewish communities escaped the anti-Semitism found in the major centers of Jewish population cannot be explained solely by the former's high degree of assimilation. The character- istics of the particular American environment that encouraged this integration should also be ex- plored. Some middle-sized Jewish communities such as Atlanta also suffered outbreaks of anti- Semitism.

Despite a proliferation of communal statistics, the author pays little attention to Julian Freeman, an

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United States 1271

outstanding communal leader who became presi- dent of the national Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds. More thorough research into Herbert Ezekiel and Gaston Lichtenstein's Histo?y of theJews of Richmond (1917), The Occident (1867), and Beginnings on Market Street (1976) and the reviewer's Richmond Jewry (1979) would have supplied for the author full documentation about the careers of Julius Wechsler and S. Berman, early religious func- tionaries of the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation. On two occasions, the author uses the term "rahmanot" for piety rather than "rahmanut," per- haps a minor matter but still annoying.

Nevertheless, the author and the editors of the Modern Jewish Experience series are to be com- mended for this recent addition to the growing library of Jewish communal studies. As more indi- vidual communities are investigated, definitive his- tories of the American Jewish community cannot be too far behind.

MYRON BERMAN

Richmond, Virginia

LEONARD J. ARRINGTON. Brigham Young: American Moses. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1985. Pp. xvii, 522. $24.95.

"The most tragic event in Mormon history," writes Leonard A. Arrington, was the famed Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857 (p. 257). The most tragic event about Mormon history Arrington alludes to at the end of the introduction to "Notes and Refer- ences": a few of the documents available to him "have since been closed to researchers, and it will not be possible for readers of this book to check out every source I have used" (p. 433). Elsewhere he refers to papers of John Taylor, Brigham Young's successor, which "are known to have existed in the Church Archives in the 1920s but ... are not there now" (p. 503). Mormons do not lose such things; the official leaders have, however, placed increasing constraints on Saints and "Gentile" historians.

This fine biography forces one to say "more's the pity." Embarassments exist in the records of all ch' rches, and any in the Mormon archives will be sufficiently known from other sources. Suspicion only grows when records are closed. Arrington, however, was a former director of the church's history division and had access to mountains of documents; his register on Young is seventy single- spaced pages long. This made possible perspectives that enable us to sweep the shelf bare of all the bad biographies of this major American religious leader. Mormons, more than any other American religious group, live by story, by history; few bodies have a historical industry or talent pool to match theirs.

Biographies such as this show the wisdom of keep- ing records open.

Biographies such as this ... In what does its suchness consist? One could speak of it as old- fashioned, brisk, eloquent narrative prose. Some- times the reader may wish that Arrington had slowed his pace and played ever so cautiously with psychologically informed history. Although he quotes thousands of lines from diaries and letters, something about Young's inner life eludes us. The problem may be Young's as much as Arrington's, however. Young was a busy man, relatively unlet- tered, intuitive but not spiritually profound. The few paragraphs devoted to what in other religious leaders would be called their theology show how little Mormons needed theology or Young displayed it.

Historians who deal with dull and timid sorts or novelists whose characters have to seem plausible may look in envy on Arrington for his subject. His Young is neither "the Lecher, presiding over the comic opera of his many-wived household; or Brigham the Tyrant, stark" (p. xiii). With astonish- ing success Arrington creates a "plausibility struc- ture" that makes Young's often-incredible decisions and achievements look credible. The non-Mormon reader, more than one might anticipate, suspends disbelief in the system to follow the figure. "We can try to be fair, to seek balance in our understanding, and to exert ... empathy" (p. xvii). Arrington's credo may find a match in the readers who generally trust him with a trust that Arrington has previously earned and here recertifies. - Very few flaws appear in the style, which is free

from cliches and unburdened by flourishes. One could complain that not enough context from the non-Mormon world appears here. Comment on it would have lengthened a necessarily long book, but it would have kept that non-Mormon world more plausible. Overall, this is an impressive achievement. It shows that the Mormons are less a church than a people-Arrington notes that they have their own category in The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups-and that no one, not even founder Joseph Smith, had as much to do with forming this peoplehood as did their paradoxical first first pres- ident. In Arrington, Young has found the biogra- pher he deserves, and he will be available now for a reading public to make of him what it will.

MARTIN E. MARTY

University of Chicago

ROBERT D. HABICH. Transcendentalism and the Western Messenger: A History of the Magazine and Its Contrib- utors, 1835-1841. Cranbury, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. 1985. Pp. 208. $27.50.

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