The Jewish Story: 1945-55: Shadows on the Golden Decade - part II

blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame Rotana Saanich blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart blessed is the heart was strength to stop its beating for Honor's sake why bless you with strength of heart cuz I'm Rob Mike Feuer and this is the Jewish story episode 10 1945 to 55 part 2 the shadow on the golden decade so it's a driving vision of political Zionism was for the Jews to become a nation like any other then I want to say that the driving spirit of suburban Judaism is the Jews are just like everybody else only more so in last episode we talked a lot about white flight that exodus of the Jews and not just the Jews by the way from the urban enclaves into the suburbs we touched on how this was more than a geographic transition that moved to suburbia with both cause and effect in a shift to the middle class college education greater economic integration and even a large degree of social acceptance it was the whitening of American Jewry if by white one means the cultural mainstream represented by anglo-saxon Protestant America in in the suburbs Jewishness that sense of lived ethnic community the almost tribal way of being that in the previous generation of American Jewry had held together Thomas Marx's capless and everything in between in one social fabric Jewishness was largely replaced by Judaism a religious identity and there's a deep parallel between the rise of religious identity that came together with the mainstreaming of American Jewry and the response of the Jews in Europe that faced the first signs of enlightenment or rather I should say an emancipation back in the 18th century go back to season 2 the episodes on Moses Mendelssohn and the Berlin enlightenment and you'll see that the development of a Judaism as a community of faith was critical to the ability of the Jews to become citizens in the emerging nation states it's not exactly the issue here I mean Jews have been citizens of the United States for as long as the countries existed it what's at stake here is full integration or assimilation into being American and as we saw the bath way at this point in history to become a full-fledged American Jew without abandoning your Jewishness was to be an American of the Jewish faith and thus we have American Judaism in 1955 will her burg Jew and former Marxist intellectual wrote a best-seller entitled Protestant Catholic Jew it was an argument in favor of what we labeled last episode as the three fighting face of democracy his point was really that America had become a triple melting pot and he gave a new monolithic or I guess trilithic definition to what have been formally diverse ethnic and national communities the Irish the Italians the Germans the Jews now they were all communions or faiths and Herbert went so far as to say that this new tripartite scheme of religion was definitive to the National character in his words to be anything else is somehow not to be an American now we'll touch on the Cold War context of that idea perhaps further on but for now just know that the book captured the National imagination and in particularly succeeded in lifting Judaism from its position of a mildly despised religion held by a tiny minority of Americans and placed it on par with the religious mainstream this shift was both cause and result of a much larger change in status the post-war embrace of a new American judeo-christian culture fostered an atmosphere of real curiosity about all things Jewish now we talked a little bit about sociologist Mason glaziers 1957 work American Judaism which went on to become a standard textbook by the way out of sociology religion for almost 40 years so you have to add to that and to her Burke's book the explosion of popular works magazine articles television shows and movies which introduced the Jew to America but these were all sort of everything you ever wanted to know about that Jude type works and they were a drop in the bucket when you compare them to the impact that Jews had on American culture in its own right in the 50s it seemed that everywhere you turn you've met a Jew doing the most American of things Bess Myerson could be Miss America Hank Greenberg could be a great baseball superstar Phil Roth and Saul Bellow or at the same time the most Jewish and most American of authors and we you need to mention Hollywood created largely by the Jews back in the interwar period and by the 50s pumping out American culture at a dizzying pace perhaps the most telling example from the golden decade is actually musical theater because the 40s and 50s were the heyday of musicals in America works which perhaps you like like Oklahoma South Pacific the King and I the sound of music really defined the era and all of those were written and produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein Rodgers was outright Jewish and Hammerstein while he came from mixed marriage was actually New York Jewish culture through and through add to them their predecessors like the great American composers Irving Berlin born Israel Berlin and George and Ira Gershwin and you'll see that the Jews actually wrote the soundtrack for America's post-war prosperity and they added more than a drop of their Jewish perspective to that sound in our history of the Jewish contributions of musical historian Andrea most argues that Rodgers and Hammerstein drew on the themes of Jewish exile down to the biblical themes to depict the evolution of American culture in Oklahoma according to her the message was simple cowboys must settle down and become farmers the frontier must be tamed into a useful agricultural resource and young people should marry and bring up new Americans and she also points out that the political liberalism of the Jews shaped the themes of many of these Broadway musical comedies for instance the hugely popular South Pacific even contains a sermon against hatred is a song called you gotta be carefully Todd you gotta be taught to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made and people whose skin is a different shade you've got to be carefully taught you got to be taught before it's too late before you're 6 7 or 8 to hate all the people your relatives hate you've got to be carefully taught now that's a message from Jewish culture if there ever was one and it's also the perfect segue to our next section because despite suburban appearances and the best of cultural efforts the Jews were not actually like everybody else in the shine of the golden decorator of 1945 to 55 was really dimmed by two things each of which in its own way created a subtle inner difference amongst the Jews one which often held them apart from their Jewish neighbors while the same time they serve to draw that tribe a little bit tighter together in their own collective identity in the first was the shadow of the Holocaust no one morning I was sitting with my great-aunt Helene in Bern now she wasn't born Helene where she was born a lean foyer burger in the small Romanian town of prescient in 1927 but here we are sitting in her beautiful suburban house in pepper pike Ohio on the east side of Cleveland quite a nice place frankly bigger than the house I grew up in and as were chatting there's a ring at the door and a moment later a young couple Winona and their 20s walk in and she looks at me with a look of absolute fear and says Michael it's good that you're here in her thick Eastern European accent I said why aunt Lillian she says they're polish I don't trust them can you imagine such a thing in the 90s if you think there's a shadow on our lives even now what happened in the Holocaust just imagine what it was like for all of American Jewry in the late 40s and 50s not to speak of the survivors in the first way in which American Jewry really began to confront the reality of the wholesale slaughter of European jury was actually financial because the urgent need to resettle and rehabilitate the one third are their brothers and sisters that had survived demanded massive funds and for reasons that we discussed at the end of season two that task of fundraising and resettling merged almost immediately with the struggle for Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel now together those two needs evoked an unparalleled rise in giving amongst American Jews the records show that Federation communal campaigns which happened on an annual basis show a jump from fifty 7.3 million in 1945 to 130 1.7 million in 1946 all the way to two hundred and five million in 1948 a year in which 80% of those monies raised went for settling immigrants in Israel and this is the inflection point of what we called campaign Judaism last episode and it's still a critical part of American Jewish life but this was about more than money because together was the financial support there a real change of heart amongst many if not the majority of American Jews we spoke at the beginning of this season about the post-war evolution of Americans I anism in part three of this series on the golden decade will take us to its next stage but for now just know that that crying need of the refugees coming as it did together with the recognition that their only real hope was the establishment of a Jewish state spiced where the healthy dose of guilt that perhaps while the war raged on in Europe American Jewry hadn't done enough push the many American Jews over the threshold of an unquestioning support for the new State of Israel and not just monetary and institutional support perhaps the biggest impact came because the push to save the remnant fused into the culture and the collective memory of perhaps two generations of American Jews the idea that Israel's survival and the destruction of European Jewry are inextricably linked and that's gonna have a lot of consequences going forward read the news today as the visceral experience of both Israel's survival and the destruction of Jewry start to fade you can see that the two have become almost completely uncoupled anyway as I said the American Jewish response to the reality the show went well beyond money between 1945 and 1951 approximately 92 thousand survivors arrives on the shores in the United States among them of course my relatives and their friends initially the goal of the Jewish leadership was to have these survivors assimilate into society their first concern was to prevent their ghettoization so to speak right they all wanted to live together because they shared a certain aspect of life let's just say which wasn't available to other people but in efforts to speed the process of Americanization and perhaps even to dilute the shame and discomfort that their presence often evoked many of the American Jewish institutions took a fairly heavy hand in dispersing them around the country and reactions to the survivors range from empathy horror guilt to fascination every communal resource was Marshall to help but we have to say credit where credit is due but by this point in history the search has pretty much shown that there was no possible way the Jews of America could have comprehended the actual physical psychological and emotional needs of these survivors so do the best that they could it wasn't necessarily going to be enough now if you look at the early literature basically through the 60s so it's really relevant to our decade it's filled with references to what's called concentration camp syndrome characterized by severe psychological and social impairment and what they call the survivor's guilt which they claim was brought on by the fact that those they were facing it survived the Shoah all relatives and friends had not and there was almost a universal agreement you can see amongst the professionals that the survivors would suffer lasting physical psychological and social damage they would not go and actually quote many of their patients that effect here's a choice of statement from one survivor we've all been damaged doctor and I think we are all a bunch of rotten apples we may look okay on the outside but when you get to know us you will see that we're different and sick inside and no matter what happens our lives will never be normal again now it's worth noting that this first wave of studies has been almost entirely overturned by empirical research of the later generation by and large the survivors and their american-born children functioned just as well within suburban American society as any other Jew and I can testify from my own experience that they were part of the normal fabric of life but the perception that there was a damaged class of Jews was actually set in those first decade and it contributed the kid gloves with which the Holocaust in general was treated at first this isn't the time to plumb the depths of the sociology and social psychology around the impact of the survivors on the fabric of American Jewish life in its self conception but I would encourage you to note the ongoing battles in America right now those battles around who owns the horror of the Holocaust and who gets to defying the application of its message never again before the human remnants of European Jewry ever arrived on the American Shore the photographs and newsreels those horrible pictures of living human skeletons mountains of dead bodies bulldozers pushing corpses into mass graves already arrived in the American Jewish consciousness Jewish American writer activist philosopher Susan Sontag called it a negative epiphany she was only 12 when she first came across the photographs of the death camps she says in July of 1945 she later wrote nothing I have seen in photographs or in real life ever cut me as sharply deeply instantaneously despite attempts by people that we've spoken about like Hillel kook and Yann Karski go back by the way to season 2 episodes 34 and 35 for their stories but slightly their efforts to awaken the world to the horror unfolding Wally was still in the midst of the war it wasn't really until that most Americans really opened their eyes and it was the presence of nearly a hundred thousand survivors in their midst who made them begin to face what they now knew and in the coming decades right down to our day American Jews shaped what we call a culture of commemoration a plethora of ways to try and honor and remember the six million it was driven by many thing the need to at least try and give a place to be incomprehensible if it couldn't be understood a basic sense of Jewish history that if it wasn't part of the liturgy and our calendar it didn't really belong well by the time I experienced this culture of commemoration it was also the product of a desire to listen and give honor to the survivors as they struggled to articulate the unspeakable something which I don't think was really possible in that first decade this is what became the shadow over the golden decade and it provoked a deep confusion over what it really meant to be a Jew I mean here we are 1950 living in suburbia arguably the safest environment the Jews or humanity for that matter have ever known but we're grappling with the reality of the darkest evil humanity has ever known as well I'll put it this way if you ever seen someone mowing the lawn with a number tattooed on their arm I have it's downright surreal and if you're an American Jew particularly from the non-orthodox world then you know about the experiments with rituals and liturgy when I was growing up our Passover Haggadah may have been about the exodus from Egypt but its pathos revolved around the Shoah and there were multiple survivors of Auschwitz at the table add to this camp traumas after-school educational programs Holocaust day poems songs ask a survivor homework 6 million paper clip projects I could go on it's no wonder that many of my generation insists that their whole suburban Jewish education was a mix between trauma and tribalism 6 million people died you have to marry a Jew my parents and grandparents generations held on to their hate as well in in subtle ways boycotting Germany refusing to purchase products or even visit and we're gonna have to have an episode on the whole war reparations struggle with in Israel and in general in Israel's response to post-war Germany you know one thing I will say is that Israeli and American responses well let's just say widely divergent and perhaps the best way to illustrate that and get to our point about the golden decade is by contrasting Hannah Senesh who I quoted in the introduction in and Frank Hannes Anna if you don't know her story was one of 37 Jewish underground fighters who under the command of the British parachuted into Yugoslavia in World War 2 their official mission was to assist anti-nazi forces in Yugoslavia but all were also committed to the rescue of Hungarian Jews who are about to be deported to Auschwitz and Saanich was arrested at the Hungarian border and imprisoned even under extreme torture she refused to reveal the details of her mission she was eventually executed by firing squad now many Americans don't know her story but I'm willing to bet a lot of you are familiar with one of her more famous poems Ailee Ailee oh my god I pray that these things never end yeah ring a bell so though konna sentence remains an Israeli national heroine to this day her brand of militant heroism belongs to a Jewish ethnic state not suburbia American Jewry found Holocaust heroine with the publication in 1952 of the Diary of a young girl also known as the Diary of Anne Frank and this window into the life of precocious and introspective dutch preteen captured the American Jewish imagination in a way that the underground fighting martyr never could because these American Jews could look out the window at the world around them and weep for her lost innocence without feeling guilty about their safe and comfortable lives in 1955 a dramatization of the diary premiered on Broadway eventually winning the Pulitzer Prize and four years later it became a Hollywood film through the play in the film Anne Frank became an American inheritance much as through plays and films certain aspects of Jewish culture became an American inheritance and her story was presented as an example of triumphant humanity she universalized her experiences of suffering rather than dwelling on her particular Jewish identity now of course anybody who knew the story knew they were Jews but there was no need to talk about it sound familiar and now Americans of all backgrounds could identify with her adolescent dreams her endurance and therefore found it easier to frame in a my opinion reduce the horror of what led to her death the play ends with Anne's famous affirmation in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart and has her father applying she puts me to shame that doesn't get more American than that but I'm not so sure that it's Jewish the universalizing of the Jewish experience in the Holocaust is not without its own consequences I'll let you read the news and contemplate within yourself to decide what they are for now we'll have to come back to it even today as the generation of survivors dwindles we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of our real responsibility to this shadow how do we transform its darkness how do you take a period of such suffering and make it into a source of positive identity which I see to be the primary call of our history from the Torah on down but in the golden decade we hadn't really come to that consciousness the suffering was ever but a poorly understood shadow does recall that quote I gave you last episode from Melanie cake had Jewett's it was like a family secret hovering controlling but barely mentioned accepting code or casual reference I'm wonderful that strikes a nerve with anybody out there now I'm gonna keep speaking personally about the need to heal and transform that shadow until the day I die but the for the purposes of our present story just let it tarnish that shine of Jewish suburbia just a little bit and we'll wrap up this section with this shadow over the golden decade with what philosopher survivor and reformed rabbi Emil fakon Heim saw to be the call of the hour now I say call the hour but even he was unable to articulate it until 1967 a date which is going to be significant in dealing with the Holocaust he made this call in the face of what he saw to be the Jewish suburban desire to assimilate to let go of religion altogether driven in no small part by the desire to leave that trauma behind as if that's possible and Fakkan Hine called it the 614 commandment if you're not familiar there are 613 commandments in the Torah if he said the following we are first commanded survive as Jews less the Jewish people perish we are commanded secondly to remember in our very guts and bones the martyrs of the Holocaust lest their memory perish we are forbidden thirdly to deny or despair of however much we may have to contend with him or belief in him lest Judaism perish we are forbidden finally to despair of the world as the place which is to become the kingdom of God lest we help make it a meaningless place in which God is dead or irrelevant and everything is permitted to abandon any of these imperatives in response to Hitler's victory at Auschwitz would be to hand him yet another posthumous victory you know if you recall from our previous episodes the Jewish immigrants who poured into America in the late 19th and early 20th century flowed more or less straight into the working-class we've been speaking of it off and on the whole season this is the Jewish proletariat those people who not only made up the labor force of certain economic fields like the garment industry but had a disproportionate representation in the trade union movements socialist and communist agitation of the time and if you know anything about the history of early twentieth century you know it was a messy messy time big bosses Union Pinkertons pickets scabs strike breakers whatever you want and the Jews were so much in the middle of that struggle that Jew and socialists became synonymous in many people's minds and not just the anti-semites even Jewish bosses in capitalist of era and there were plenty felt that the vision of a better world the values of social solidarity which drove so many socialists and communists were intrinsically Jewish notions and now that worldview was rooted both in the mind and in reality in the Lower East Side New York Jewish culture and thus it became another victim of the rise of suburban jury although not entirely in fact we could say that with the mainstreaming of American jury the Messianic energies of train unionism in socialism and communism which were ultimately anti-establishment they were looking to overturn the world were diverted into a passionate liberalism that was looking to reform the system now the groundwork for that transition had already been laid by of course Jewish liberals people like justice Lew Brandeis who early in the century helped wean America in general away from its absolute faith on lazy fare economics through legal briefs that documented the actual consequences of unchecked capitalism but he was no communist agitator he of course was a Supreme Court justice you don't get more establishment than that so add to that groundwork and there's more of it you can take my word for it a newfound post-war power within Jewish communal organizations now many of these organizations have been built particularly the ones that were focused outside the community to fight discrimination against Jews but thank God anti-semitism was out of style after the Holocaust I'm not saying that it disappeared by any means but it was progressively pushed into the shadows and underground through combination of shame at where it gone in Europe right the horror of the Holocaust had a real impact on American culture also the general mainstreaming of Jews they were no longer some foreign poorly understood entity there was even a rise what many scholars call Philo semitism a real love of the Jews at this era and even though the fight against anti-semitism still drove many of these organizations to some degree the very nature of the show of the Holocaust pushed them also toward universalism because as they began to contemplate many Jews and in particularly institutional Judaism saw that the older ideas about the causes of Jew hatred seemed inadequate to explain what had just happened in the Holocaust and in seeking alternatives some turned inwards some toward toward religions but many of the Jewish organizations with an American jury adopted what they began to call a theory of the unitary character of prejudice meaning once he let hate in it has no boundaries after the war the American Jewish Committee grandfather of all Jewish committees Commission to German Jewish Marxist theorists of the Frankfurt School which we've discussed before Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno to research what they felt to be the causes of anti-semitism and the result was a book called the authoritarian personality it emphasizes the psychological forces behind racism rather than the socio-economic ones which had been the primary explanation for the rise of political anti-semitism within Europe and now this meant that anti-semitism became inseparable from racism as a whole and because of that quickly the Jews came to see that any form of discrimination was a problem for the Jews even if it didn't single them out and conversely Jews could and should fight anti-semitism by fighting racism in any form and now the stage set to combine that tribal survival energy of post-holocaust brewery which had quite a charge with the Universalist secular Redemption energy of socialists jury which was seeking a legitimate outlet and we get the realm of social action in its broadest sense the power of Jewish organization began to be applied toward social action legislation against racial discrimination in favor of social welfare programs in favor of a foreign policy of internationalism in 1945 the American Jewish Congress created its Commission on law and social action committed itself to working for a better world whether or not the individual issues touched directly upon so-called Jewish interests that's a revolution for an organization that originally saw itself as representing the neglected Jewish interests now soon after the AJC moved beyond its original purpose which was expressed in its started to quote prevent the infringement of the civil and religious rights of Jews and to alleviate the consequence of persecution it declared its intent to join with groups in the protection of the civil rights of the members of all groups irrespective of race religion color or national origin and the AJC wasn't alone beginning in the mid 40s the reform and conservative movements began to place specific domestic issues and even international policy matters on their lay agendas now add to this the fact that Jews in general voted in higher percentages than the public as a whole the Jewish contributors at this point began to rise to prominence as financial backers for political candidates and even and increase the number of Jewish elected officials in the public eye all this means that this is an era when what it meant to be Jewish shifted from a socialist or communist who stood outside of society and attempted to undermine it to a member of the Democratic Party in particular and that was a critical piece of the process of mainstreaming of American jury because no matter what your political position was I mean they definitely differed from many of their suburban neighbors you know voting against what was perceived to be their immediate economic interests in favor of how they held their values but no matter what everything I just described to you is as American as apple pie but there was a slight problem because nineteen forty-five to fifty-five wasn't just the golden decade for the Jews it was also the era of the Red Scare on March 21st 1947 president harry s truman issued executive order nine eight three five known as the loyalty order it was an executive order that mandated all federal employees be analyzed to determine whether they were sufficiently loyal to the american government that may make your flesh crawl and in fact it was a pretty startling development in its time I mean America has always been a country that prized at least the ideals of personal liberty and freedom of political organization but this was an act driven by raw fear in 1948 Whittaker Chambers former Soviet spy now turned anti-communist zealot testified before the house on American Activities committees and he described the Communist Party as a many-headed monster dedicated unflagging Lee to infiltration and overthrow of the US government now that may sound like fantasy but only a year later in 1949 the Soviet Union successfully tested its own nuclear bomb news of the test sparked fears of nuclear war throughout the country the LA Times declared that the Soviets development of the bomb plays quote the very existence of the Western world at stake soon communist forces under Mao Zedong were overrunning China following year America entered the Korean War with tens of thousands of troops and many Americans became convinced that the Reds were on the verge of taking over their country hysteria began to creep into the political and legal system you know this is the era when Senator Joe McCarthy from Wisconsin and FBI director J Edgar Hoover were fanning the flames by seeing communists everywhere people began to prepare black lists to suppose to bar suspected radicals not just from the government but employment altogether in certain parts of America there was a downright inquisitorial atmosphere and now here we see yet another snake in American juries paradise of cultural acceptance because what all Jews had made the jump from radical to liberal there was still a small but very vocal hard laugh voice even within the organized Jewish community and they were disproportionately represented amongst those accused of disloyalty and even espionage now the mainstream community professes loyalty in as loud a voice as possible the AJC declared its intention of protecting quote the American Way of life from the encroachment of totalitarianism of both the right and the left it defined communists not only as unamerican but also as on Jewish attacking what had been actually the secular faith of many Jews throughout World War two and as we mentioned seemed as Jewish Liso but not everyone was pleased with this kowtow to intimidation and so a bitter fight began to unfold within the Jewish community over aiding victims of the anti-communist crusade or jumping on the bandwagon and persecuting him that fight continued right up until the 1950s of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for handing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union I consider your crime worse than murder said judge Irving Kaufman to the Rosenbergs your conduct and putting into the hands of the Russians the a-bomb has already caused in my opinion the communist aggression in Korea with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows what millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason the sentence of the court upon Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is for the crime for which you have committed you are hereby sentenced to the punishment of death Julius Rosenberg was born in 1918 into a poor family of Eastern European Jewish immigrants living on New York City's Lower East Side what we have here is a classic red diaper baby meaning he absorbed the vision of the Communist Party in its ideal world with his mother's milk later in life while attending the City College of New York he organized the school's chapter of the young Communist League and after graduating with a degree in electrical engineering in 1939 according to the FBI he also joined the Communist Party a and he married his wife Ethel Greenglass it was soon after in 1941 in the midst of the war that Jewish became a spy that the Soviets codenamed antennae he was a head of a cell of four and their focus was primarily on obtaining classified information regarding radio engineering and aviation even though the Soviet Union America were allies at the time but it wasn't until 1944 that he shifted his focus to the American atomic bomb project at Los Alamos New Mexico in less than two years later Rosenberg was arrested on suspicion of espionage in 1950 together with his wife Ethel two months later they've been turned in by David Greenglass Ethel's younger brother and a former Army sergeant working as a machinist at Los Alamos Greenglass had confessed under pressure to providing nuclear secrets to the Soviets and according to many was seeking clemency by turning in his companions I'm not going to drag you through the details of the trial cuz frankly even today it's still a source of quite a bit of controversy in 1951 at the end of their trial the Rosenbergs you just heard were convicted not only of conspiring to pass us atomic secrets to the Soviets but condemned to die they refused to admit any wrongdoing proclaiming their innocence right up until their execution and the Jewish community the country even the international press were split to say at least over the matter in the eyes of those gripped by the Red Scare the defendants were clearly symbols of the threat of subversion which was everywhere for those on the left many of whom of course have participated in radical political labor movements in the 30s and 40s the Rosenbergs are an example of government persecution intellectuals artists writers all protest the death sentence in particular and they urge clemency based on belief that the Rosenbergs were innocent they were victims of anti-communist hysteria the same time there were members of Congress that denounced them as traitors from the House floor and called for the death penalty one even sought to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O Douglas after he granted the Rosenbergs a stay of execution to make sure that their trial was fair I should say today the evidence has been made public after the fall of the Soviet Union which is proven that the Rosenbergs indeed spied for the Soviets but it's also made it unclear how crucial the information they passed really was let's not forget these were the first and I believe only US citizens to be convicted and executed for spying during peacetime we're not gonna go there right now for our story the Rosenbergs and their trial represent the end of an era for the American Jewish story it's the last lap on the transition from radical to liberal because not only were the Rosenbergs Jewish as of course was their betrayer David Greenglass the trial judge Irving Coffman staunch anti-communist the US attorney and assistant attorney who handled the prosecution and would go on to political careers of their own and of course the lawyers for the defense even the appeals court judge for the Second Circuit who affirmed the conviction were all Jews and when on June 19th 1953 8:00 p.m. air of Shabbat the Rosenbergs were strapped into the electric chair with died along with them was mainstreamed juries romanticization of its radical pass liberalism was now the uncontested vital center though it is interesting how that radical past is being a bit resurrected today truth be told beyond the shadow of the Holocaust and the fear of red hysteria there is a critical third specter that casts its shadow on the golden decade that question of whether suburbia was really actually good for the Jews when he wrote of the shift to suburban life in the pages of the American Jewish Committee's magazine commentary Arthur Saul Bellow said the following - what can we compare this change nothing like it has ever hit the world nothing in history has so quickly and radically transformed any group of Jews you went on to say my mother used to say if people who had a lucky break in the old D - metaphor they followed into a small scrub a pit of fat that's not all good because Bella worried that the values that he knew his Jewish love Duty principal thought significance we're all be quote sucked into a fatty and nervous state of well-being a blissful ignorance characterized by overstuffed well being you know a significant glazier said in American Judaism most American Jews are incapable of giving a coherent statement of the main beliefs of the Jewish religion and tend to call Judaism whatever views they happen to hold today that may sound a bit familiar and the atomized nature of suburban life didn't foster what Glaser called the quote complete pattern of life that really was the hallmark of Judaism down through time daily prayers rituals Shabbat holidays and he labeled this as true Judaism even though he saw religion as a secondary product and what we would call an ethnic culture to be its primary in Glazers assessment the move to the suburbs was quote a more serious break in the continuity of Jewish history than the murder of six million Jews he argued that Jewish history has known and been prepared for massacre what Jewish history hasn't known nor is prepared for is the abandonment of the law and like I said this is despite the fact that he saw religion in general as a sociologist is a thing of the past now maybe he was just mourning Judaism as he saw it receding in the rear view mirror of history but maybe just maybe he was onto something because when I was growing up we used to joke that after school Hebrew school accomplished in two generations what a thousand years of Christian persecution couldn't achieve that we'd lost our faith and not only that when I went to Camp Ramah the flagship summer camp of the conservative movement the grunning joke amongst the staff was what do you call a successful conservative Jew Orthodox because deeply implanted in the American mind was still the notion that the keeping of the law was the definition of what it meant to be a Jew now we didn't break down in our faith I think we just misplaced it we put it down in our suburban life thinking it was no longer really important and haven't yet managed to pick it up in a way that makes it relevant for our time that's a discussion we're gonna keep having going forward but for now I'll just say this next episode we're gonna see if Americans I anism can breathe life into American Judaism in the golden decade so I just want to thank a few people here at the end I want to thank everybody gives their hard-earned money helped make this show possible to keep it free widely distributed and I want to invite you to join them you can do that in one of two ways one you can go right now to my website Jewish story dot Co and you up in the right hand corner there you'll see a button that says be a patron you can click on through there for a little bit of per podcast support if that's too complex or overwhelming you can also send me an email Rob Mike foyer at gmail.com or you can send me a message on Facebook that's Rob Mike boy at Facebook if you want to sponsor a show I'm happy to do it in the memory of a lost loved one or in the honor of a person or a place or a time or a event in today so just send me an email will work with details out I also want to thank the Land of Israel Network that's the Land of Israel dot come you're creating a platform that allows me to reach so many amazing people I want to thank our dates Institute PA our des dot org dot IL for building an educational institute it allows me to touch the hearts and minds of so many wonderful Jews and I want to thank you for listening