Summary
Title: Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America
Author: Stephen G. Bloom
Publisher: Harcourt
ISBN: 0156013363
Pro:
• Explores both sides of the conflict, Christian and Jewish
• Often lets people present their perspective in their own words
Con:
• Some overlap between journalism and personal journey
Description:
• Account of culture-clash between mid-Western Lutherans and Eastern Hasidic Jews
• Questions the limits of multicultural tolerance when groups aren't interested in living together
• Also a story of author's spiritual journey as a liberal Jew
Book Review
A small agricultural community in Iowa, Postville had become economically stagnant when, in 1987, a Brooklyn butcher purchased the abandoned slaughterhouse just outside town limits. Born in Russia, Aaron Rubashkin was a Lubavitcher, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic sect based in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights.
By 1996, the slaughterhouse had become the largest owned and operated by Lubavitchers in the world. It processes 1,300 cattle, 225,000 chickens, 700 lambs, and 4,000 turkeys a week, shipping kosher meat all over the country and even to Jerusalem. Postville, which hardly ever had any Jews, now more rabbis per capita than any other city in the United States.
It also had developed a large problem. Despite the fact that the slaughterhouse had reinvigorated the local economy, the locals and Lubavitchers had formed two distinct groups which were not living entirely at peace with each other. This was true multiculturalism, and it wasn't working out too well - but it drew Stephen G. Bloom, a journalism professor at the University of Iowa and a Jew who had only recently moved to that state from California. At that time, Bloom was experiencing his own crisis of cultural and religious identity:
- "The journalist in me had come out in full force. ... I had barely scratched the surface, but clearly there was a culture clash of the strongest magnitude between two groups, both born-and-bred Americans, who rarely had the opportunity to clash. Here was a kind of experiment in the limits of diversity and community, the nature of community, the meaning of prejudice, even what it means to be an American. Postville seemed like a social laboratory, perhaps a metaphor for America."
Perhaps he did find that metaphor, but it isn't a very pleasant one. Each group was very insular in nature, neither immediately open to welcoming newcomers and both suspicious of strangers. Despite this, the local Iowans did appear to be more open and friendly. They knew that the ultra-Orthodox Jews had saved their town financially, and although there were a few genuine bigots among them, many seemed willing to open their community.
