12 - Women's Role in the German-Jewish Immigrant Community

Summary

There is a strong contrast between the impression one gets looking at the role of women in the organized German-Jewish community and the picture that emerges of German-Jewish women's changing position in the immigrant family and the world of work. Studies of German-Jewish immigrant women at work and in the family generally stress the success of women's adjustment and their enhanced position in the family. However, a look at women in public communal life shows a continuation of traditional patriarchal patterns. Women's roles in the synagogues, social clubs, and immigrant organizations that grew up in New York and other large American cities tended to be traditional and behind the scenes. With some notable exceptions, German-Jewish organizations did not break with conservative patterns concerning the place of women.

By their very nature, immigrant organizations tended to have a traditional and conservative cast. In contrast, those immigrants interested in leaving their past ways behind tended to avoid the organized immigrant community and to affiliate with American groups or ideological movements. It follows, then, that the very desire to associate with fellow immigrants and to preserve the customs, language, and belief patterns brought over from Europe was a profoundly conservative act. It was intended to keep the familiar and to ease the transition to the New World rather than to break new ground. For these reasons, the traditional role for women described here will not be typical of the whole German-Jewish immigrant group because it concentrates on the more tradition-minded who joined immigrant organizations.