Synopsis
Across the country, white ethnics have fled cities for suburbs. But many stayed in their old neighbourhoods. When the busing crisis erupted in Boston in the 1970s, Catholics were in the forefront of resistance. Jews, 70,000 of whom has lived in Roxbury and Dorchester in the early 1950s, were invisible during the crisis. They were silent because they departed the city more quickly and more thoroughly than Boston's Catholics. Only scattered Jews remained in Dorchester and Roxbury by the mid-1970s. In telling the story of why the Jews left and the Catholics stayed in 1970s Boston, Gerald Gamm places neighbourhood institutions - churches, synagogues, community centres, schools - at its centre. He challenges the assumption that bankers an real estate agents were responsible for the rapid Jewish exodus. Rather, basic institutional rules explain the strength of Catholic attachments to neighbourhood and the weakness of Jewish attachments. Gamm argues that the transformation of urban neighbourhoods began not in the 1950s or 1960s but in the 1920s.
Review
"Urban Exodus is more than a pioneering work in comparative sociology. It is also a thoughtful and challenging contribution to American Jewish history, and tells a story that occurred in Detroit, Washington, Newark, Cleveland, Minneapolis, New York, and elsewhere...According to Gamm...the difference between the demographic mobility of Jews and Roman Catholics stemmed from the different institutional structures of the two groups. As a result of a close examination of church and synagogue records, census data, newspaper accounts, Boston government records, and other primary source material, Gamm argues that "what primarily distinguishes Jews from Catholics is not a different capacity for racist behavior but a different attachment to territory. Catholics have a strong sense of turf, regarding their neighborhoods as defended geographical communities. Through vivid stories and carefully presented evidence, Gamm shows that religious institutions shape neighborhoods and affect patterns of urban change. He does this by telling the fascinating story of upheaval and change in Boston's twentieth-century Jewish and Catholic neighborhoods, with lessons for Sharon [Massachusetts] in the twenty-first century. Urban Exodus is more than a pioneering work in comparative sociology. It is also a thoughtful and challenging contribution to American Jewish history, and tells a story that occurred in Detroit, Washington, Newark, Cleveland, Minneapolis, New York, and elsewhere...According to Gamm...the difference between the demographic mobility of Jews and Roman Catholics stemmed from the different institutional structures of the two groups. As a result of a close examination of church and synagogue records, census data, newspaper accounts, Boston government records, and other primary source material, Gamm argues that "what primarily distinguishes Jews from Catholics is not a different capacity for racist behavior but a different attachment to territory. Catholics have a strong sense of turf, regarding their neighborhoods as defended geographical communities. This thoroughly reported and elegantly written book surely is the best interpretation of Boston politics since J. Anthony Lukas's "Common Ground" in 1985.--David Warsh "Boston Globe " Focusing on Boston's Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods from 1870 to the 1970s, Gamm argues that Jewish and Roman Catholic institutions and their white congregants responded differently to the changing urban environment. Correctly tracing the origins of the urban crisis to 1920s suburbanization, he concludes that Catholic and Jewish institutions' different rules, including those of membership, rootedness, and authority, accounted for these different responses..."Urban Exodus" is an interesting and challenging study.--J. Borchert "Choice " Synagogues and parishes, Gamm contends, essentially dictated who stayed in Boston's neighborhoods, who left for the suburbs, when, and why. It's an intriguing argument, one almost provocative in its simplicity..."Urban Exodus" takes its place in an increasingly impressive collection of books on urban conflict from Los Angeles to Yonkers, which seriously consider the intricacies of geography (not to mention religion). To paraphrase that eminent Bostonian, Tip O'Neil, we're finally learning that a good deal of American history is local.--Tom Deignan "Commonweal " "Urban Exodus" is more than a pioneering work in comparative sociology. It is also a thoughtful and challenging contribution to American Jewish history, and tells a story that occurred in Detroit, Washington, Newark, Cleveland, Minneapolis, New York, and elsewhere...According to Gamm...the difference between the demographic mobility of Jews and Roman Catholics stemmed from the different institutional structures of the two groups. As a result of a close examination of church and synagogue records, census data, newspaper accounts, Boston government records, and other primary source material, Gamm argues that "what primarily distinguishes Jews from Catholics is not a different capacity for racist behavior but a different attachment to territory. Catholics have a strong sense of turf, regarding their neighborhoods as defended geographical communities.--Edward S. Shapiro"American Jewish History" (03/01/2001) Throughout the book, Gamm follows the lives of two Dorchester institutions - St. Peter's, the largest preeminent Catholic parish, and Mishka Tefilan, Boston's oldest conservative congregation. Statistically and anecdotally, Gamm thoroughly demonstrates how divergent modes of governance affected Jews and Catholics as well.--Paula M. Kane "Church History " This carefully written, impressively researched book begins with the puzzle suggested in its subtitle: Why did almost all of Boston's 70,000 Jews leave the neighborhoods of Dorchester and Roxbury for suburban destinations during the 1950s and 1960s...In its broad contours "Urban Exodus" persuades, and Gamm's achievement is noteworthy. He traces the life history of over one hundred Boston churches and synagogues, itself an accomplishment, and weaves them into a story of considerable power.--John T. McGreevy "Reviews in American History " The great merit of Gerald Gamm's study of the Catholic and Jewish neighborhoods of modern Boston is that it carefully balances the forces, visible and invisible, which caused those groups to behave as they did.--James M. O'Toole "Catholic Historical Review "
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
