I finished Stephen G. Bloom's Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America within a few hours of Barack Obama's convincing victory in Iowa last night. The two stories are actually pretty similar, given that in both cases we see how Iowans react to people who don't look like their own. In Bloom's book, a suprisingly negative portrait is painted of a group of Hasidic Jews who move to smalltown Iowa from Brooklyn, NY to open a Kosher slaughterhouse. Bloom himself is a non-practicing, assimilated Jew who leaves San Francisco to take a teaching position at the University of Iowa. As an Iowan myself, I cringed to read his welcoming in the Hawkeye state: stares in the supermarket, Christians asking to pray for his family, and no one turning up to his family's Watermelon social. A shock to me considering Iowa City's long tradition of liberalism and diversity (relatively speaking). Eventually, Bloom questions his identity and seeks out his Jewish roots by commuting to Postville, IA, where in 1987 the town underwent its seismic Semitic shift.
The Hasidim want nothing to do with the goyim (non-Jews) and do everything in their power to ignore these white, Christian locals. Bloom relates stories from the Postville natives wanting to reach out but being continuosly rejected. Throughout the book we hear alarming stories of the Jewish contingent stealing money, attempting murder and showing no remorse, and being staunch racists to boot. Yet the slaughterhouse has revived a dying farming community: hundreds of jobs have been created and real estate in town has boomed. All of this coincides with an impending annexation vote which could do serious damage to the slaughterhouse. Bloom hit the journalistic jackpot by having this as his backstory.
The thing that shocked me most about this book was Bloom's calm and clear conclusion that he's just not a big fan of his people, or atleast its most orthodox sect: "Lazar and I may have come from same parents thousands of years ago, but now all we shared were some common prayers, a smattering of Yiddish words, an affection for the same food, and a profound love of our families." ....and "It was finally time for the pleasant, accepting Iowans to stand up to the Hasidim. I hoped they would get some cojones, neither an Iowa word or concept. The locals had to know they had been abused and ridiculed." The reader can only come out of this book with some severe biases, and that's a seriously disturbing revelation. I hate to say this, but I hope this book doesn't fall into the wrong hands. If anyone's read this, I'd be curious to hear how it settled with them.
