American vs. European Jews

World War II displaced the Jewish people more so then any other war in modern history. The rift it caused between Jewish people that experienced it and Jewish people who didn’t was enormous. European Jewish had kept to their strict code of religious order and they were persecuted for their practices throughout Europe. Jews that had left Europe and were now living in America had lost their contact with the world they once knew and many of the “old” ways and practices were left behind. The tension between American Jews and European Jews is shown in this reading when Tzuref doesn’t understand why zoning laws and what a man wears is so important to Eli and the community. Tzuref and his following had been through a lot during the war and don’t understand why people can’t sympathize with what they had gone through and let them be. Tzuref starts to lecture Eli about the things that he lost in the war and Eli doesn’t understand what he is talking about. So Tzuref responds, “No news reached Woodenton (264).” Tzuref is surprised about how little the Woodenton people knew about what happened to the Jewish people during the war. Tzuref is challenging the town Woodenton’s compassion and understanding of events outside of their boundaries. Woodenton is a small Jewish and Protestant community that has isolated itself from the true problems of the world and taught itself to focus on minor things like zoning laws and what a man wears. While many American Jews are only first or second generation, they have assimilated into the American culture and taken on their set of values. They can no longer relate to the Jews from Europe and don’t even think the newly arrived Jewish people could even assimilate if they were given the chance. They forget that it was their grandparents that were in the same position when they immigrated to America. The struggle here is how to European and American Jews find happy median. Eli went way over board and was found crazy, they towns people wanted the radical European Jews out, and Tzuref just wanted to be left alone to raise his children the only way he knew. The story doesn’t come up with and answer to this question. One would just have to imagine that conflict would still arise between the different groups until the foreign group eventually assimilated, but that just doesn’t happen over night.