Their Message

HOW WE LIVED:

A Documentary History of Immigrant Jews in America, 1880-1930 by Irving Howe and Kenneth Libo '59 Merek. 1979. 360 pp. $22.50.

Jewish history has been full of change and upheaval. Indeed, ever since Abraham set out for "the land which I will show thee," virtually every important chapter of Israel's odyssey has been marked by a large-scale migration. No transformation has been greater than that initiated by the mass movement of Jews from Eastern Europe and the Russian Pale of Settlement to the United States in the five decades beginning in 1880.

This is the dramatic story that is conveyed here in carefully chosen pictures and original documents. Howe and Libo re-use some of the material from their earlier collaborative effort, World of Our Fathers. In the present work, however, the message is carried by the words of the immigrants themselves, their children, and eyewitnesses to the life of New York's Lower East Side and other immigrant communities.

What is the message? What emerges from this portrait of a generation of struggle, linked powerfully to the Old World but pulled inexorably into the New? In a context of poverty, exploitation, and wrenching change there were genuine heroes and heroines some public and some very private. There were, of course, cowards and cads as well, and many victims. But there is a profound strength attested here, rooted in values of learning and camaraderie and faith in the eventual triumph of justice.

For- the grandchildren of these pioneers, separated from the immigrant generation by a short span of time but worlds of experience, the issue of how deeply rooted these values remain is a real one. Howe and Libo have given us a rich gift, and not just of nostalgia: For anyone who has taken part in the American experience, How We Lived ought to raise questions of values, priorities, conscience. What have we given up to get where we are? What are we giving up now to get wherever it is that we are going?

Rabbi Edwards is associate chaplain and director of Dartmouth Hillel.