Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 384 pages
• Published by: Harvest Books September 10, 2001
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0156013363
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0156013369
• Book Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Weighs: 14.4 ounces

Product Review
Postville, Iowa (population 1,478), seems an unlikely place to find a sizable Jewish population, let alone an ultra-Orthodox Lubavitcher population. It is, after all, in the heart of pork country, and the world headquarters of the Lubavitchers is far away in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. But when the Hygrade meat processing plant, just outside Postville, went belly-up, threatening the town with decline, Sholom Rubashkin bought it and turned it into a glatt kosher processing plant, complete with shochtim and a rabbinical inspectorate. By the late 1980s, "Postville had more rabbis per capita than any other city in the United States, perhaps the world."

The enterprise was a huge international success, with its kosher meats exported even to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Jewish population grew to 150, and they were rich. The town was saved, and the people were grateful. All's well that ends well? Not quite. The Hasidim kept to themselves, did things their own way, and basically had no interest in integrating into Postville. And why would they? Their laws are strict, their mission clear, their community defined by race and religion. They are not interested in watermelon socials or coffee klatches at the diner. Their little boys do not swim with their little girls, are not educated together, and do not go on play dates with goyim. Small-town Iowans, on the other hand, are very friendly. They know each other's news, they support each other's businesses, they wish each other Merry Christmas, they want you to feel at home. They don't like that the new townspeople stomp up the street hunched over, talking in a foreign language and looking straight through them when greeted. They really don't like it when one of the newcomers drives around town with a 10-foot candelabra strapped to his car playing music at full volume for eight consecutive winter nights. They don't actually know about menorahs or Hanukkah.

Into this comes secular Jew Stephen Bloom, a professor at the University of Iowa. By the time he arrived in Postville, the town was riven along religious lines. One of the townspeople was running for mayor on the sole platform of annexation of the land on which the plant stood. Rubashkin was threatening that he'd shut the plant and leave if that came to pass. Bloom closely considers both sides, and the result is a wonderful book. It is a fascinating tale of culture clash in the American heartland: the John Deere cap meets the black fur hat. It is a book about identity and community and what it means to be American. It covers all the things you aren't supposed to talk about at the dinner table--religion, politics, and even sex. It is full of suspense: Will the plant be annexed? Will the Jews leave? And it is also Bloom's exploration of his own sense of belonging. --J. Riches --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Bloom's account of a vicious clash between the residents of a small, intensely Christian town and the group of Lubavitcher Jews who open a highly successful kosher slaughterhouse there is a model of sociological reportage and personal journalism. In 1987, after a Hasidic butcher from Brooklyn bought a slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, and began to relocate Jewish and immigrant workers to the area, the town began to change. While some residents were suspicious and anti-Semitic, most were happy to see the town rise above its previous financial destitution. But the Lubavitchers, who traditionally live and work within their own closely knit communities, were not interested in fitting into Postville, and many were dismissive of, or overtly hostile to, its original citizens. After the Lubavitchers started buying real estate and exerting greater influence on the town's finances, longtime Postville residents began to feel marginalized, yet their reactions caused the Jews to become more isolationist. The slaughterhouse also caused problems: workers were paid below minimum wage and were uninsured, women workers were sexually harassed and fighting among the (often illegal) immigrant workers escalated. Finally, the town took legal action to gain more control over the slaughterhouse. Bloom, a professor at the University of Iowa, writes cleanly and with great insight and temperance about these events. As a secular Jew, he also weaves in his own story as he tries to find some common ground with the Lubavitchers. His book proves an illuminating meditation on contemporary U.S. culture and what it means to be an American. Agents, David Black and Gary Morris. BOMC and QPB selection; 8-city tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (Hardcover) I had very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it's an interesting tale about what happens when two equally insular -- but very, very different -- cultures clash with each other. On the other hand, it would have been better if Professor Bloom had not allowed his own secular hostility toward the Hasidim to obscure his objectivity. Bloom came to this project ill-prepared on the Jewish end, in that he knew nothing about Hasidism before he went to Postville. Like many secular Jews, he had an overly-idealized expectation of all Hasidim as perfect saints and sages. The disillusionment set in with his very first contact, the bombastic personality of Sholom Rubashkin (manager of the kosher slaughterhouse). Bloom takes an immediate dislike to Rubashkin because, as he later admits, "Bits of Sholom reminded me of my own father" (p. 159). This personality conflict then colors Bloom's entire view of Hasidic culture for the rest of the book. A journalism professor he may be, but an objective sociologist he is not! Bloom paints the entire Hasidic community as a bunch of loud, boorish, backward bigots. While it is true that there are prejudices among some of the Hasidim he interviews, there are equally bigoted attitudes among the gentiles. But Bloom doesn't handle this with much balance. He is able to see both good and bad in the Postville farmers, but, when it comes to the Hasidim, he reports mostly negative incidents, and repeatedly uses buzzwords like "atrocious," "primitive," and "stifling" to put down the entire Hasidic culture as bad. With the bigotry of the Iowans, however, he doesn't make such blanket value judgements. In fact, he seems to want to like them IN SPITE OF the sometimes blatant prejudices that many of them have against Jews. When asked by Postville farmers if he is Jewish, Bloom reluctantly says yes, but is very quick to distance himself from the Hasidim, lest they think he is one of "them." Is it any wonder that the Hasidim, in turn, grow to distrust him? Bloom's research was lopsided in other ways, too. While he seems to have interviewed just about every gentile in town, he only visited a small number of Hasidic families, then extrapolated from that limited experience onto the entire community. In those few Hasidic homes he did visit (and then only briefly), he went in with a defensive attitude about his own secularism that got in the way of ever understanding the culture from its own POV. As a result, some of his statements are just plain wrong. A "Shabbos goy" is not a non-observant Jew, the chant "aye-aye-aye!" in Hasidic songs is not a mystical name of God, nor is it bad luck to name a child after a deceased relative. These and other glaring bloopers only serve to underscore that fact that Professor Bloom often does not know what he is talking about, and only succeeds in perpetuating further misunderstandings. In the end, he comes down on the side of the locals in a political dispute, because, in his words, "It was finally time for the pleasant, accepting Iowans to stand up to the Hasidim" (p. 320). But many of the Iowans described in this book were not very pleasant or accepting at all. The old-timer Postville society was just as closed to outsiders as the Hasidim were, only in different ways. Just because the locals are more soft-spoken and polite to your face doesn't mean they are any less prejudiced behind your back. (Interestingly, Bloom likes Sholom Rubashkin's father Aaron, who talks more softly than his son. Low voice volume seems to be a big priority with the professor.) Bloom severely criticizes the Hasidim for not mixing socially with the Iowans. But he seems to miss the double standards of the Iowans themselves, who complain that the Jews don't shop locally, while, at the same time, shunning and harrassing the locals who sell to Jews by shouting "Jew lover" at them on the streets. That's "atrocious" behavior, too, if you ask me. My conclusion: If you want a book which explores the nature of prejudice (including that of its author) and how it can divide a town against itself, then this is an interesting read. Just don't rely on it for the details and meanings of Hasidic customs or beliefs, because in that area, it misses the mark.