The Enduring Community: The Jews of Newark and MetroWest

From its founding in the late seventeenth century, Newark, New Jersey, was a vibrant & representative center of Jewish life in America. Geographically & culturally situated between New York City & its outlying suburbs, Newark afforded Jewish residents the advantages of a close-knit community along with the cultural abundance & social dynamism of urban life. In Newark all of the representative stages of modern Jewish experience were enacted, from immigration & acculturation to upward mobility & community building. The Enduring Community is a lively & evocative social history of the Jewish presence in Newark as well as an examination of what Newark tells us about social assimilation, conflict, & change. Grounded in documentary research, the volume also make extensive use of interviews & oral histories. The author traces the growth of the Jewish population in the pre-Revolutionary period to its consolidation as a recognizable community in the nineteenth century, with large-scale settlement of German Jews in the 1840s & Eastern European Jews in the 1880s. The author delineates areas of contention & cooperation between these groups & relates how an American identity was eventually forged within the larger ethnic mix of the city. Jewish participation in politics, the establishment of Jewish schools, synagogues, labor unions, charities, & community groups are described together with cultural & recreational life. Despite the formal & emotional bonds that formed over a century, Jewish neighborhoods in Newark did not survive the postwar era. The trek to the suburbs, the erosion of Newark's tax base, & deteriorating services accelerated a movement outward that mirrored the demographic patterns of cities across America. By the time of the Newark riots in 1967, the Jewish presence was largely absent. This volume reclaims a lost history & gives personalized voice to the dreams, aspirations, & memories of a dispersed community. It demonstrates how former Newarkers built new Jewish communities in the surrounding suburbs; an area dubbed "MetroWest" by Jewish leaders. The Enduring Community is must reading for students of Jewish social history, sociologists, urban studies specialists, & readers interested in the history of New Jersey. The book includes archival photographs from the periods discussed.

William B. Helmreich is professor of sociology and Judaic studies at CUNY Graduate Center and City College of New York. The author of ten books, his work Against All Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in America won the 1993 National Jewish Book Award. William B. Helmreich is professor of sociology and Judaic studies at CUNY Graduate Center and City College of New York