Culture and Politics in Cleveland's Hebrew Cultural Garden

Abstract

Culture and Politics in Cleveland's Hebrew Cultural Garden Sean Martin (bio) A bust of the Rusin priest and poet Alexander B. Duchnovich stands as the sole monument in the Rusin Cultural Garden in Cleveland's Rockefeller Park. Inscribed at its base is a line from one of the author's poems: "I was, am, and always will be a Rusin." This statement, declarative and defiant, represents what the immigrant groups who established garden sites in the Cleveland Cultural Gardens in the early twentieth century wanted visitors to know—though they were living here in the United States of America, they also belonged to another culture that had always been, and would always be, part of who they were. The stateless Rusins, an eastern Slavic ethnic group from the Carpathian Mountains in East Central Europe, proclaim their unique heritage alongside much larger, better-known groups, reminding us of their attachment to their culture.1 Cleveland's Jewish community helped make this expression of Rusin identity possible. The Hebrew Cultural Garden was the first themed nationality garden in the chain that came to be known as the Cleveland Cultural Gardens. Bordering a major thoroughfare, the Gardens present the cultures of the region's immigrant groups through sculpture, design, and landscape. Established in 1916 and formally dedicated in 1939, the Cleveland Cultural Gardens reflected the newly arrived immigrants' desire to maintain a separate ethnic identity while asserting their commitment to ideals of "universal brotherhood."2 The local gardens movement was a reaction to the nativism of the day and the quotas imposed on immigration by the Immigration Act of 1924. The driving force behind the Gardens was Leo Weidenthal, editor of The Jewish Independent and member of a prominent Jewish family of newspaper publishers.3 His compatriots included Jennie K. Zwick, a longtime Jewish leader and activist, and Charles Wolfram, a leader [End Page 45] of the German community. These community leaders explicitly rejected the notion of Israel Zangwill's melting pot and embraced ideas quite similar to Horace Kallen's articulation of cultural pluralism.4 That two of the three founders of the Gardens movement were Jewish perhaps explains why the first garden dedicated to a specific ethnic culture, in 1926, was the Hebrew Cultural Garden. Thanks in no small part to federal assistance, the Gardens literally blossomed in the midst of the Great Depression. The Hebrew garden was soon followed by the German, Italian, Yugoslav, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, American, Czech, Lithuanian, Irish, and Rusin gardens. It is perhaps no coincidence that this verdant testament to cultural pluralism is located in the Midwest. Michael C. Steiner's recent study of Horace Kallen's years in Wisconsin argues that the philosopher's theory owes much to the distinctive regionalism he encountered there from 1911 to 1918.5 Indeed, the history of the Cultural Gardens might even be read as an enactment of the theory of cultural pluralism, a concrete example of "cooperative interaction among evolving groups" occurring even as Kallen developed his philosophy.6 Unfortunately, I have not found any direct evidence of a connection between the work of Kallen and the inspiration for the Cultural Gardens. Nor can I compare the development of the theory of cultural pluralism to the growth of the Gardens in this short study. But the similarity of the ideals espoused by Kallen and those acted upon by leaders in Cleveland is striking. Similar, too, were the challenges posed by diversity. The leaders of the Cultural Gardens believed in "the idea that it was perfectly possible to identify as both American and something else."7 But it was not long after they began their work emphasizing distinct ethnic identities in the 1920s that some in the community advocated successfully for an American Garden. The presence of the American Garden, formed by the Parent Teachers Association Council in 1935, raises many questions about ethnicity, nation, and culture. Other garden sponsors continued to maintain their emphasis on unique identities in an American context. World War II made plain the tensions among many of these groups worldwide, but the Gardens recovered in the postwar period and continued their emphasis on cultural unity and American identity. This unity, however, was illusory...