How American Jewry Received and Responded to Technology, 1880-1965

Technically American: How American Jewry Received and Responded to Technology, 1880-1965 By Tamar Susan Rabinowitz B.A. in History, May 2007, Barnard College A Dissertation Submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 31, 2016 Dissertation directed by Jenna Weissman Joselit Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of History The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Tamar Susan Rabinowitz has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of October 29, 2015. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation Technically American: How American Jewry Received and Responded to Technology, 1880-1965 Tamar Rabinowitz Dissertation Research Committee: Jenna Weissman Joselit, Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of History, Dissertation Director Tyler Anbinder, Professor of History, Committee Member Suleiman Osman, Associate Professor of American Studies, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2015 by Tamar Rabinowitz All rights reserved iii Dedication To my Bubbe, Esther Deutch, whose boundless curiosity inspires me to never stop learning. I love you. iv Acknowledgements At the first of what would be many meetings with my dissertation advisor, Professor Jenna Weissman Joselit, I pulled out a stack of Jewish Daily Forward articles that I had found while researching a paper a semester earlier on the relationship between immigrant Jews and the telephone. On the top of the pile sat a piece entitled, “They’re Daring Romeos over the Wire, but Hunchbacks when you See Them: Telephonitis, the Modern Disease, That is As Yet Incurable.” Thrilled at the thought of American Jews editorializing about the telephone, Professor Weissman Joselit pointed to the article and said, “there is definitely something here, Tamar.” Weeks later, a short essay had mushroomed into “Technically American,” a dissertation proposal. Professor Jenna Weissman Joselit’s initial enthusiasm and dedication at the beginning of this project has persisted throughout countless edits, conversations, and meetings to inspire my own passion for this dissertation. Not only has she committed her time and energy to reviewing innumerable drafts, discussing central arguments and ideas, and pointing me to critical texts and archival collections, but she has also helped me to craft fellowship proposals, research grants, and cover letters for academic job applications throughout this process. Professor Weissman Joselit’s mentorship has been invaluable to me over the course of my graduate career and it is her commitment to this project that has prepared me for the next steps in my academic career. I also want to thank Professor Tyler Anbinder and Professor Suleiman Osman for all of their help and insightful input during the defense for the proposal of “Technically American,” and their ongoing support as references. Additionally, I want to thank my teachers at the YIVO/New York University Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language and v Culture, the Tel Aviv University- Goldrich/Goldreich Families Beth Shalom Aleichem International Yiddish Summer Program, and Brad Sabin Hill of The George Washington University for training me in Yiddish language proficiency and preparing me to translate many of my sources independently. I also want to extend my gratitude to Professor Alan Kraut and Professor Tom Guglielmo for joining my committee as secondary readers. “Technically American” is the result of extensive archival and library research that has taken me to multiple cities and into myriad collections. Archivists and reference librarians have been enormously helpful in locating sources that, at times, seemed to be needles buried in haystacks. Sharon Horowitz, the reference librarian for the Hebraic Section of the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room at the Library of Congress helped me to locate and pore over decades worth of microfilm from the Jewish Daily Forward, or Forverts. Additionally, she was instrumental in introducing me to the vast collection of Yiddish language cookbooks and periodicals, such as the Jewish Women’s Home Journal, that were available at the Library of Congress. In moving to New York City to complete the research for this dissertation, I was able to take advantage of the various research institutions in the city that offered tremendously useful resources. Zachary Loeb and the staff at the American Jewish Historical Society Archives at the Center for Jewish History welcomed me to the reading room for weeks at a time and assisted me in locating sources in their collections as well as from their partners, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Leo Baeck Institute. The archivists at the Center for Jewish History not only pulled my requested materials from their extensive collections, but also collaborated with me on where to find useful sources for each one of my case studies. Additionally, the New York Public vi Library DOROT Jewish Division offered a broad range of historical New York Jewish Newspapers, secular publications, cookbooks, and rabbinical association proceedings. The university libraries of Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary also provided invaluable archival collections for this research project. The Avery Library Drawings and Archives are unmatched as a resource for materials on the evolution of synagogue architecture in America, particularly the papers of Percival Goodman. At the Jewish Theological Seminary, archivists William Klein and Sarah Diamant assisted me in locating the building records of synagogues and the responsa handed down by the Conservative movement. Both were instrumental in finding materials pertaining to sound in the synagogue sanctuary and images illustrating the American Jewish engagement with technology. Over the course of my research, I had the pleasure of receiving grants from the American Jewish Archives (AJA) in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Hagley Library Museum and Archives in Wilmington, Delaware. I want to thank Gary Zola, Dana Herman, Kevin Proffitt, and Lisa Ho at the AJA as well as Roger Horowitz at the Hagley Library. The staff at the AJA was and remains committed to helping their research fellows succeed in their academic careers. I was thrilled to have the opportunity not only to spend a month in their archives gathering materials on synagogue architecture and acoustics, but also to present my research at the end of my fellowship. The staff at the Hagley library helped me to broaden my research and explore the collections of a library of business and technology, making “Technically American” a creative, interdisciplinary project. My time at the AJA also afforded me the unparalleled joy of spending a month with my bubbe, Esther Deutch, who lives in Cincinnati. I am grateful to the AJA for vii giving me that opportunity. My bubbe has been one of my greatest cheerleaders and I want to thank her for her love, support, and her unmatched enthusiasm for my work. Finally, I want to thank my parents for their unending support and commitment to my graduate school career and throughout the process of completing this dissertation. My very own yiddishe mama, my mother has talked to me on the phone nearly every day, listening to me talk about my life and my research, reassuring me throughout the project, and most importantly, being available to check for misspellings and mistakes in chapter drafts in the final stages of writing. And thank you to my father, whose sense of humor and encouragement has made it a pleasure to hear his comments after he had read a chapter or two. viii Abstract Technically American: How American Jewry Received and Responded to Technology, 1880-1965 “Technically American: How American Jewry Received and Responded to Technology, 1880-1965,” explores the entanglement of American technological culture, Jewish ethnic identity, and religious practice in the twentieth century. Through a series of case studies, it tracks the impact of the telephone, acoustic technologies, kitchen appliances and food sciences, as well as the automobile, on the American Jewish experience over the course of several generations. A chapter on the telephone zeroes in on the vexing issue of foreign accent, while another on acoustics and the microphone looks at the transformation of the sounds of the synagogue and the nature of religious worship. A third chapter on mechanized food production closely considers the kitchen as a contested site of cultural authenticity while a fourth, focusing on transportation, pinpoints the conflict between Jewish ritual and the momentum of modern life. These case studies showcase the ways in which American Jewry consciously and actively grappled with the tools of American modernity. The American Jewish community welcomed these technologies into their daily lives but was also quick to address their costs to community, tradition, and religious observance. For American Jewry, technology was more than a product of scientific advancement; it was integral to the reshaping of modern Jewish life and its major institutions – the home, the synagogue, and notions of community. “Technically American” employs the categories of efficiency, speed, and sound to make sense of American Jewry’s response to technology. By studying the ways in which American Jews adopted the devices that made efficiency, speed, and the ix transmission

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