Insecure Prosperity

This study of the Jewish community of Johnstown, Pennsylvania reveals a pattern of adaptation to American life surprisingly different from that followed by Jewish immigrants to cities. Although four-fifths of Jewish immigrants did settle in major cities, another fifth created small town communities like the one described here. Rather than climbing up the mainstream education and occupational success ladder, the Jewish Johnstowners created in the local economy a tightly knit ethnic entrepreneurial niche and pursued within it their main life goals: achieving a satisfactory standard of living against the recurrent slumps in local mills and coalmines and enjoying the company of their fellow congregants. The book begins with an examination of the Jewish life in the Eastern European regions from which most of Johnstown's immigrants came, tracing features of culture and social relations that they brought with them to America.
After detailing the process by which migration from Eastern Europe ocurred, the author takes up the social organization of Johnstown, the place of Jews in that social order, the transformation of Jewish social life in the city, and relations between Jews and non-Jews.