Shari Rabin. Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: New York University Press, 2017. 208 pp.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America by Shari Rabin Jeanne Abrams Shari Rabin. Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: New York University Press, 2017. 208 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000242 In Jews on the Frontier, Shari Rabin closely examines the development of American Judaism in the nineteenth century as Jews migrated across the nation. Directing her lens away from the usual study of organized religious and communal institutions, such as synagogues and charitable organizations, she focuses primarily on the pivotal role Jewish mobility played in creating diverse patterns of Jewish life. Indeed, Rabin argues that the unprecedented mobility in the United States during the era was central to the unfolding of not only Jewish life but also American religion in general. Although many historians have noted the impact of American mobility for Jews, Rabin places the phenomenon at the very center of her study. According to Rabin, leaving the more developed urban centers of the East Coast and taking to the road provided Jews who moved to the South and the [End Page 228] American West with both new and unprecedented economic and social opportunities, as well as challenges centering on maintaining Jewish life and Jewish identity. Without the more robust Jewish communal life connected to congregations and charitable institutions that had been created in the East, Jews on the frontier frequently had to be creative in establishing new modes of Jewish life. Since Americans generally viewed Jews as white, as opposed to their experiences in Europe, Jews in the United States "enjoyed unfettered movement" (25), and were generally welcomed to new settlements as contributors to the economic and political life of burgeoning towns. Rabin maintains, "On the road, criteria for determining authentic Jewish practice and thought expanded well beyond the received canon of Jewish law and theology, resulting in the creation of new Jewish ideologies" (80). New congregations, Jewish fraternal orders, and charitable groups organized on the frontier were instrumental in creating the needed resources for Jewish life, but at the same time, mobility often brought contradictions and lack of Jewish religious unity into stark relief. Synagogues often took a backseat to more informal structures and social ties that seemed more suited to Jews on the move. Far from parents and established Jewish centers, according to Rabin, Jews on the frontier often made pragmatic adaptations in their Jewish affiliations and practice, many relying on state jurisdictions to oversee marriage, divorce, and education of children. She observes that "in the United States both Jews' freedom and the threat of Judaism's destruction were rooted in the ability to move ceaselessly and settle indiscriminately throughout a vast piece of physical space" (139). After many centuries of Jewish life in Europe, Jewish mobility in the United States offered the exciting novelty of bringing Judaism to new places. The fundamental challenge would be how to reorganize and reorder successfully in America. The strength of Rabin's book and her greatest contribution to the study of American Judaism is her emphasis on the ease of mobility that nineteenth-century American Jewish immigrants found in the United States, a phenomenon that has often been overlooked or minimized by historians. Indeed, the Jews who migrated to the American South and West were genuinely surprised and even astounded by the fact that, unlike in European states, they needed no passports or other official papers to move freely across the country. That particular aspect of American culture encouraged a significant Jewish migration to the hinterlands. Rabin's discussion of major changes in Jewish observance in the developing regions of the country is less convincing. While it is true, as Rabin points out, that "American life would allow Jews to deviate considerably from [the traditional] halakhic model" (58), not all nineteenth-century frontier Jewish became Reform Jews. Historians in general have given inadequate attention to those Orthodox Jews who lived in far-flung sites across the United States before the arrival of the major wave of eastern European Jews in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although it is true that, largely motivated by a sense of pragmatism and practicality, many Jews on the...