Nostalgia, inspiration, ambivalence: Eastern Europe, immigration, and the construction of collective memory in contemporary American Haredi historiography

Abstract

Viewing itself as the spiritual heir of Eastern European Orthodoxy, contemporary Haredi Orthodoxy in the United States is much invested in its representation of the transition of Jews and Judaism from Eastern Europe to the United States. The story of this transition is contemporary American Haredi Jewry’s “founding myth,” shaped into a narrative that aids the Haredi community to define itself with respect to the American culture in which it is perforce embedded. Contemporary English language Haredi historical writing offers a nostalgic image of Eastern European Jewry, as well as a vision of the destructive effects of immigration to America. It paints an inspirational portrait of a handful of immigrant rabbis who managed to recreate on American shores a (purportedly) ideal Judaism of Eastern Europe, despite American culture’s imputed destructive nature. At the same time, this narrative also conveys a sense that Americanization is not all bad, that it is even a necessary aspect of contemporary Haredi Judaism.