In the Land of Milk and Honey? Non-Urban Jewish Spaces in Late Nineteenth Century Staunton, Virginia.

Author(s): Tatiana Niculescu

Year: 2017

Summary

American Jewish history tends to focus on the often insular urban communities of the Northeast. Individuals and families arrived to the United States and settled in places like New York’s Lower East Side, seemingly self-contained enclaves of Jewish economic and social life. This story has become a trope.  However, many other Jewish immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries did not follow this pattern.  Instead these individuals ended up in small towns, establishing their own communities and patterns of life that differed significantly from those of their urban counterparts. This paper focuses on one such community, Staunton, Virginia, examining how settlement patterns here differed from or were similar to those in bigger cities. This work will additionally examine the complex interplay between spatial organization and social organization and what these relationships say about small town Jewish life at the turn of the last century. 

Cite this Record

In the Land of Milk and Honey? Non-Urban Jewish Spaces in Late Nineteenth Century Staunton, Virginia.. Tatiana Niculescu. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Fort Worth, TX. 2017 ( tDAR id: 435380)

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Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 173