And I Will Dwell in Their Midst: Orthodox Jews in Suburbia

Diamond, an American social historian who is a senior research associate at The Polis Center in Indiana, notes that although ""one does not typically associate Orthodox Jews with postwar suburbia,"" such Jews flocked to the suburbs of almost every major city in North America after WWII. To demonstrate, Diamond offers a persuasive case study of suburban Toronto's Orthodox Jews, whose experience was in certain ways quite different from the typical suburban life. While suburbs are thought to be atomizing, not at all conducive to the pop-in-and-chat familiarity of urban apartment buildings, Diamond counters that religion fosters built-in community. He shows that Orthodox Jewish suburbia has differed from regular suburbia spatially; since observant Jews can't drive on the Sabbath, they must all live within walking distance of their synagogue. Diamond also finds fascinating historical change over time. When Orthodox Jews first moved to the suburbs, they introduced some fashionable practices into their new synagogues, like doing away with the women's balcony and allowing women to sit, still sex-segregated, on the same level as men. In the 1980s, as they were more comfortably entrenched in their surroundings, Orthodox Jews eschewed these innovations in favor of more traditional worship services. This book raises the bar for Jewish North American history; Diamond accomplishes for postwar Jews what Jenna Weissman Joselit (The Wonders of America) did for fin de si cle immigrant Jews. Yasher koach! (Oct.)