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Reviewed by Jack Glazier | Book Review | The Indiana Magazine of History, 104.3 | The History Cooperative
104.3  
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September, 2008
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Jewish Communities on the Ohio River
A History

By Amy Hill Shevitz
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007. Pp. xi, 266. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $50.00.)

Amy Hill Shevitz takes as her subject Jewish life in twenty-four towns lying along the Ohio River between Pittsburgh and Cairo, Illinois, including Madison, Evansville, and Mount Vernon in Indiana. Quintessentially urban people, Jewish immigrants and their descendants tended to make their new American homes in large cities. Accordingly, both scholarly and popular interpretations of the Jewish experience are conditioned by its predominantly urban character. Until recently, Jewish communities outside of large population centers attracted little scholarly concern. Except for Cincinnati, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Evansville, and Wheeling, the communities in Shevitz's study were small to midsized towns that presented unique challenges to their Jewish citizenry. Lee Shai Weisbach addressed these issues in his definitive Jewish Life in Small-Town America (2005), published shortly before Shevitz completed her manuscript. Shevitz's book thus plows through some freshly cultivated territory. Still, the reader interested particularly in Jewish life in any of these twenty-four Ohio River communities will find informative accounts of local history, lay and religious personalities, economic strategies, religious observance, communal organizations, anti-Semitism, and the social and economic linkages between the communities. . . .
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