Class

This discussion raises questions about “class” and the Jews living in the United States: In what ways have historians of the Jewish experience been sensitive to the socioeconomic relationships between Jews and other Americans? How have economic class differences played a role in the development of Jewish religious and communal agendas? Why is the history of U.S. Jews, from a socioeconomic standpoint, invariably viewed as wedded to a middle-class paradigm? The chapter argues that “class” matters to social and ethnic historians in ways that go far beyond the subject of employment, self-employment, and occupational mobility. In the literature on American Jewry, one finds two regnant modes of engagement with Jews’ socioeconomic status: scholarship in which Jews’ status is viewed as a function of how well integrated Jews have been able to become, and scholarship in which Jews’ status is viewed as an opportunity to discuss where Jews have diverged or dissented from “middle-class” modes of American life.