The End of the Old Ethnic City
In 1954 a rabbi at the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens told his congregation on the Rosh Hashanah holiday that “the refusal to be comforted has been the secret passion of our people’s history. . . . We created special institutions to keep us maladjusted, to remind us of our troubles, to perpetuate our grief.” He added that “Judaism does not only teach us to accept, but also to resist. When Abraham was told by God that He is about to destroy Sodom, he did not bow his head in humble submission. He protested. He challenged God to justify His actions.”
Writing of his years as a student at St. Philip Neri Elementary School in the 1950s, the novelist Michael Pearson recalled learning the same biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. A poor liar, Pearson had failed to convince Mother Concepta, his first-grade teacher, that he was not the chief culprit in a pencil fight that had erupted while she was out of the room. Making an example of Pearson, Mother Concepta reminded the class that “Lot’s wife turned around. She looked back. She disobeyed, boys and girls. And God turned her into a pillar of salt. Remember Lot’s wife, children. Remember her.”
In postwar New York, Catholics and Jews often encountered the same biblical passages but extracted opposite lessons from them. That is one of the central findings of my new book, White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Postwar Politics
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The End of the Old Ethnic City
AmericanHeritage.com
