|
|
See Larger Image
|
List Price: $15.00Amazon.com's Price: $10.20 You Save: $4.80 (32%)Prices subject to change.
|
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
|
| Product Details:
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 977.733
EAN: 9780156013369
ISBN: 0156013363
Label: Harvest Books
Languages: EnglishOriginal LanguageEnglishUnknownEnglishPublished
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: September 10, 2001
Publisher: Harvest Books
Studio: Harvest Books
|
|
Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category:
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In 1987, a group of Lubavitchers, one of the most orthodox and zealous of the Jewish sects, opened a kosher slaughterhouse just outside tiny Postville, Iowa (pop. 1,465). When the business became a worldwide success, Postville found itself both revived and divided. The town's initial welcome of the Jews turned into confusion, dismay, and even disgust. By 1997, the town had engineered a vote on what everyone agreed was actually a referendum: whether or not these Jews should stay.The quiet, restrained Iowans were astonished at these brash, assertive Hasidic Jews, who ignored the unwritten laws of Iowa behavior in almost every respect. The Lubavitchers, on the other hand, could not compromise with the world of Postville; their religion and their tradition quite literally forbade it. Were the Iowans prejudiced, or were the Lubavitchers simply unbearable? Award-winning journalist Stephen G. Bloom found himself with a bird's-eye view of this battle and gained a new perspective on questions that haunt America nationwide. What makes a community? How does one accept new and powerfully different traditions? Is money more important than history? In the dramatic and often poignant stories of the people of Postville - Jew and gentile, puzzled and puzzling, unyielding and unstoppable - lies a great swath of America today.
Amazon.com 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
Average Rating: 
Rating: -
The basic story of this book is: a few Lubavitch Hasidim, led by Sholom Rubashkin, come to a small, VERY Christian Iowa town to start a very large kosher meat plant. The Hasidim antagonize some of the locals through low-level obnoxious conduct (mostly things like trying to negotiate with retailers over everything, occasional nonpayment of bills, etc - but with one or two more serious incidents as well). Some of the locals are flat-out anti-Semites, others are just baffled by the Hasidim's petty ... Read More
Rating:  -
Kosher slaughter DVD video put out by Revisionist
Mike Hoffman, II. It's more than a clash of cul-
tures at work here. Though Hoffman mispronounces
many words (i.e., it's Ju-Day-Ah-Ism, not "Judee-
Ism"), the video shows how cruel Talmudic slaugh-
ter really is. Where is the much vaunted/vaulted
PETA (not 'pet-ah', Mike) when you need them for a
change? They took many videos inside the kosher
slaughter houses but where is the continued outrage?!
Read More
Rating: -
Orthodox Jews running a kosher prosessing plant on the outskirts of a small Iowa town, each group totally alien to the other as though from distant planets. A clash of cultures, of values, between the two groups, and a clash even withing the residents of tiny Postville, some of whom favor their new neighbors, some of whom resent those new arrivals. And there are more subcurrents and eddies in this classic work, written by a secular Jew, who is neither fish nor fowl to the two groups. I believe it took ... Read More
Rating: -
Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America
This book describes the author's family move from the sophistication of life in San Francisco to Iowa in 1993. The author's acceptance of a position as professor of journalism at the University of Iowa necessitated not only a change of location, but also of world view and life style, as witnessed by his shock in reading a newspaper review of the better sea food retaurants in the Cedar Rapids area and finding Red Lobster and Long John Silver listed. ... Read More
Rating:  -
This book should be read as a book that does not reflect the people it is written about but instead reflects the politics and outlook of the academic who wrote it and his secular world view. For him he is the anthropologist discovering this world of Hasidim and Iowans and as a good secular person he must judge who is 'right' and who is 'wrong'. SO he decides that the nasty Hasidim are evil because they do not intermarry, they do not mix and they, gasp, do not celebrate Christmass. One wonders why it is they, ... Read More
|
View Cart or Checkout
