CSJO-CU8.6

=CSJO-Grade 8 Lesson 8.6 (CSJO-Template)=

Independently, students will write their own advice to the question. Answers can be anonymously shared with the class. 10. **Vocabulary:**
 * TITLE: New Life in America: Poverty and Community**
 * GOALS:** To explore what life was like for the then recent Eastern European Jewish immigrants in America around the turn of 20th Century focusing on the very poor conditions they lived in and the cultural/community organizations they formed/joined. To explore some of the social services developed and provided to the immigrants to ameliorate their conditions.
 * MATERIALS:** white poster board, markers, computer, youtube video, lined paper, pencils, Brief prompts, several sets of "resource cards".
 * LESSON:**
 * 1. Gain the attention of the learner:** Students will form pairs to answer the questions: "If you could move anywhere outside of the U.S, where would you move? What problems would you come across living there? What adjustments would you have to make? Suppose you went there with only $100?" (Note for teacher: Will the students be able to relate to this amount? Will they think they can use credit cards? For comparison, Pennsylvania food stamps is about $4 per day per person)
 * 2. Relevant past learning:** Last week we talked about conditions in Europe that caused over 2 million Jews to migrate to the United States. This week, we will look at what life was like for the immigrants to live in often deplorable conditions. In a later lesson we will look how they engaged in social action to make their lives better.
 * 3. Introduce new material:**
 * Cultural
 * Large culture shock - experienced by initial waves of immigrants, 1881 - 1900, some never recovered (Howe, p 115- 117).
 * "Physical uprooting from . . . small town life in eastern Europe to the wastes and possibilities of a [crowded] urban America."
 * "Severe rupture from . . . moral values and cultural supports of the Jewish tradition."
 * "Radical shift in class composition . . . mostly as enforced proletariatization" - newcomers invariably became impoverished workers of one sort or another.
 * "The rabbis, the learned institutions, the political leaders, the burial societies, the intellectuals, the wealthy: almost all the figures of moral authority remained in the old country."
 * Tenement Houses (go to the web site to get a good idea of what it was like--> Tenement Museum)
 * Very crowded - 650 - 700+ people per acre (43560 sq feet,~200' x 200')
 * Poor hygiene
 * In-house factories/ piece work
 * Still could save/send money home
 * Entertainment (Need more elaboration)
 * Lectures
 * Desertion by men of wives & children - 15% of relief funds went to families abandoned by the husband/father . This was a major problem creating destitute single parent families.
 * In 1902, United Hebrew Charities established a National Desertion Bureau to deal with the problem
 * //The Forward// (a daily Yiddish newspaper) published a weekly gallery of missing men
 * Bintel Brief, literally, "A Bundle of Letters" (you may also want to have them read some examples of the bintel brief letters published in published in //The Forward//).
 * Social services
 * Landsmanshaften: (see excerpt below) mutual benefit societies - many, membership based on a particular town or region of origin.
 * Lillian Wald - @http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Wald Settlement house.
 * Wealthy German Jews modeled themselves after Protestant philanthropists and began to give copiously to help Jews (Sachar 3240).
 * Education
 * Parents sent their kids to public schools - according to Sachar (3438-3441), in Europe exposure to socialism, humanism and Zionism made them willing to send them to public rather than parochial schools
 * "[F]ree public education was the key to [. . .] modernism." Sachar (3442-3443)
 * Julia Richman: (Sachar - see excerpt below) promoted discipline, Americanization, hygiene and moral education in the New York City public schools.
 * Many Jews readily abandoned the passivity and piety of traditional Judaism having been radicalized before they immigrated.
 * Economic
 * Jews as semi-urban people in Europe, had experience with commerce, corrupt officials, trading and traveling (unlike Italians who were mostly from the farms) (Sachar 3095 ff).
 * Employment - almost all Jews became impoverished workers in factories - regardless of their class in Europe, they were reduced to the proletariat in the United States.
 * 4. Provide guided practice**:
 * After explaining the conditions of the tenement house, students will be split up onto "families" and given a blueprint for a typical apartment. Then, as a family, they will design the apartment and put in the most crucial things they need/want for their home. Blueprints will be shared with the class.
 * Students will reflect on the poor living conditions and discuss what things the immigrants need to ameliorate their conditions. [health care, sanitation & education should come up.]
 * Ask, if you were a Jewish immigrant, what resources would you need to make your situation better?
 * Create pairs of students and give each pair resource cards: education, health care, English language, friends, etc. Each pair will order the resources by level of importance. Each pair then meet with another pair to share and discuss the order resources.
 * Introduce Lillian Wald via: @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFPOO82AS9Q
 * Students will brainstorm what makes a good teacher on a piece of paper (or the white board) and what makes a bad teacher on another.
 * Introduce Julia Richman and discuss her education philosophies. Ask students to circle Richman's teaching methods from the good/bad teacher brainstorm. Ask, would you want Julie Richman to be your teacher? Explain. Why were her harsh methods effective at getting Jews to assimilate? Were they necessary?
 * 5. Provide independent practice**: After explaining Bintel Brief to students, read a question from the Bintel Brief book to students.
 * 6. Close the lesson**: What is one thing you learned today that you could share with your parents?
 * 7. References**:
 * Sachar, Howard M. (2013-07-24). A History of the Jews in America (Vintage). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
 * Tenement Museum website: Tenement Museum
 * Lillian Wald Wiki: @http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Wald
 * Lillian Wald YouTube: @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXSberZWRcw
 * Landsmanshaft Wiki: @http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsmanshaft
 * Howe, Irving (1976). World of Our Fathers, Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, New York and London
 * Landsman

As many as 40,000 Jews returned home because of the bad conditions for immigrants in the US: Unremarked at the time, too, not a few of them would return. After a few years “shuffling about as if in a world of desolation,” wrote Rabbi Moses Weinberger, “[they] gave up and returned shamefacedly to their homeland.” “Be cursed, emigration!” wrote Abraham Cahan, in his first newspaper dispatch to Russia in late 1882. “Cursed be those conditions which brought you into being! How many lives you have broken, how many courageous and mighty souls you have shattered!… What did [Columbus] have to bring people here for, and promise them all sorts of fortunes?… ” In later years, George Price reported to Voskhod on “the tremendous number of those returning to Russia.” Price mentioned the figure of seventy-five hundred between 1882 and 1890. Census figures suggest a number closer to forty thousand, including American-born children of returnees. A principal cause of the re-emigration was an absence of meaningful employment. Indeed, newcomers were shocked at the lack of work and the extent of raw poverty in “golden America .” Among the minority of better-educated immigrants, many were unprepared to perform such menial labor as hod carrier or dishwasher. Some were desperately homesick. Others returned ostensibly for religious reasons, thereby avoiding the need to admit that they had failed to secure employment. And still others, religious or not, re-emigrated simply for reasons of anomie and culture shock.
 * Sachar, Howard M. (2013-07-24). A History of the Jews in America (Vintage) (Kindle Locations 2833-2843). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.**

Julia Richman: The daughter of comfortable uptown German Jews, [...] In 1894, at age twenty-nine, she was appointed the first Jewish principal [...] in the city of New York. Nine years later, she was appointed district superintendent for the Lower East Side, [...] Richman hurled herself full-heartedly into Jewish slum education. Indeed, her goals were those of progressives and Reform Jews alike: **discipline, Americanization, hygiene, “moral education.”** Rigorously unsentimental, Richman made no pretense of toleration for East European mores and mannerisms. The newcomers’ lack of decorum and cleanliness offended her. [...] Such Old World anachronisms as **the cheder**—the parochial elementary school— and **the Yiddish language were “monstrosities.”** In Richman’s school district, children lapsing into Yiddish had their mouths washed out with soap. Beyond all else, Richman was concerned for the immigrants’ moral values. Throughout her career [...], she preached Judaism’s ethical precepts. [...]the practical, educational results of her driving energy and imagination were enduring. It was she who pioneered the Americanization classes that Superintendent Maxwell later applied to the entire New York school system. The evening and summer courses, the recreational programs that Richman introduced as a board member of the Educational Alliance and the Clara de Hirsch school, were incorporated now into the public schools. [...]Her progressive-Reform views [emphasized] the need for Jewish “moral uplift,” that is, the ethical rehabilitation of immigrants, Richman made a point of defining Judaism simply as an extension of the American-Jewish home.
 * Sachar, Howard M. (2013-07-24). A History of the Jews in America (Vintage) (Kindle Locations 3473-3496). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.**

Role of Landsmanshaftn
These organizations aided immigrants' transition from Europe to America by providing social structure and support to immigrants who arrived in the United States without the family networks and practical skills that had sustained them in Europe. In the early years, they provided help learning English, finding a place to live and work, locating family and friends, and an introduction to participating in a [|democracy], through procedures such as voting on officers, holding debates on community issues, and paying dues to support the society ([|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsmanshaft#cite_note-1]). In the later years, these functions faded into the background, but the organizations continued as a way of maintaining ties to life in Europe as well as providing a form of life insurance, disability and unemployment insurance, and subsidized burial. Members would pay dues on a monthly basis, and if they lost their jobs, grew too sick to work, or passed away, the society would pay the family a benefit to keep them afloat during that time. When the funds were not needed to support members, landsmanshaftn would invest the money in funds that frequently supported the Jewish community in others ways (such as Israel Bonds) ([|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsmanshaft#cite_note-2]). Most of these organizations were based in New York city, where conditions were conducive to sustaining these types of organizations, though they sometimes relocated as the membership migrated to the suburbs.
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