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Creating a Jewish American Identity in Indianapolis: The Jewish Welfare Federation and the Regulation of Leisure, 1920–1934
RICHARD MOSS
| In March 1925, leaders of the Jewish Welfare Federation of Indianapolis (JWF) issued a report that wrestled with what had for two decades been a confusing, ambiguous, and downright thorny problem: articulating a prescription for Jewish life that successfully combined Jewish tradition with American culture in a way that was not too closely wedded to either. "We are different, and we might as well recognize it, frankly," it tentatively stated. This acknowledgment of community distinctiveness, however, masked a call for conformity. "Though civilization is becoming increasingly complex, and our differences exaggerated," it continued, "we must hold together. We must maintain our culture and demonstrate our best values for their incorporation into American life."1 |
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The dilemma faced by these thoroughly Americanized yet heritage-conscious leaders was embodied in the thousands of East European Jewish immigrants and their children on the city's South Side. Desiring to see these Jews shed the old-country ways and religious orthodoxy that the JWF feared made them so out of place, leaders also understood the perils of unregulated Americanization. The transition to American society was too fragile a process to be handed over to the vaudeville houses, nickelodeons, and other temptations that characterized the American city; in order to balance what one Indianapolis Jew in 1923 called "refined and cultured" Americanism with culturally aware Jewishness, communal and charitable institutions would have to take on the burden of overseeing the transition of immigrants and their families. Beginning in 1920, the JWF did just that, offering a series of carefully managed recreational and educational activities that emphasized proper public behavior and self-reliance and attempted to ease the city's most recent Jewish immigrants into the urban culture of Indianapolis. Fearing that the isolation they faced in the shtetls of Europe left them unable to make "correct" choices about leisure, religion, and behavior, the Federation made its South Side Communal Building the base for a tightly controlled program of activities designed to engage participants in pursuits that would reflect positively on the Jewish community at large. Athletic activities, scouting, dramatic performances, and elaborately staged dances were offered as alternatives to what community leaders saw as the more rough-edged—even licentious—commercial offerings in and around the immigrant neighborhood. By the 1930s, the energy that drove these programs had faded with the breakup of the South Side enclave, and the Communal Building fell into increasing disuse. This rise and fall—of the building and the spirit it represented—provides a window into the struggles over ethnic identity and what it meant to be a successfully assimilated American Jew in a relatively homogenous early twentieth-century Midwestern city.2 |
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