Book Review

This study of Orthodox Jews in suburbia, specifically in metropolitan Toronto, claims that traditional, as well as reform, Jews adopt the consumerist, upwardly mobile, middle-class suburban lifestyle. Etan Diamond argues against the stereotype that Orthodox Jews are impecunious, provincial inner-city dwellers and asserts that the migration of the faithful erodes neither their observance of Judaic law, ritual, and education nor their family, community, or denominational solidarity.

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Occupational frequency distributions, demographic tables, and maps showing concentrations of Jewish neighborhoods, schools, synagogues, and kosher facilities and other conventions of community studies and social history offer evidence of Orthodox suburban settlement, adjustment to modern times, and retention of traditional ties. And I Will Dwell in Their Midst thus exemplifies the third generation of Jewish history. The pioneers, starting in the late nineteenth century, praised contributions of Jews as individuals or as a group or, more concretely, as soldiers, scientists, athletes, etc. Those hagiographers were followed, some fifty years later, by historians who unearthed and described Jewish life in the United States and elsewhere. Diamond, a representative of the current approach, now about twenty or thirty years old, focuses on analysis and interpretation.

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