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as perpetual "others," regardless of degree of assimilation to the dominant culture
or the number of generations in residency. Hence, themes of cultural resistance in
Jewish culture, brought from Europe, were reinforced by experience in the U.S.
The unique character of the Baltimore Jewish community was, however,
more complex than this. Despite the greater ethnic subjugation they faced, Jewish-
Americans were not exceptions to the geographic and occupational mobility
exhibited by European ethnic groups. Jews in Baltimore were probably among the
most mobile of these groups, and even many recent Jewish immigrants lived under
relatively good social conditions — bad as these sometimes were - compared to
other newer immigrant groupings. Furthermore, far from being among the most
unified of immigrant nationalities in terms of class and ethnicity, Baltimore Jews
were among the most divided, for Jews in the United States formed communities
constructed from Jewish minorities with origins in a number of European
countries.
The central ethnic contradiction in this process of community construction
was between German Jews, on the one hand, and Eastern European Jews, on the
other hand. This contradiction was particularly profound, it appears, in Baltimore.
The German Jewish community was founded during the old immigration in the
middle nineteenth century and by the 1920s was well established. In fact, because
of their ethnic similarities with Christian Germans and the prominence of the latter
grouping in Baltimore, German Jews may have attained greater status in this region
than elsewhere. Eastern European Jews were largely part of the newer
immigration starting in the late 1800s and, as a group, were relatively recent
arrivals. Linguistically, German Jews initially spoke German and by the end of the
1920s largely spoke English; Eastern European Jews spoke Yiddish. In religious
culture, German Jews tended toward Reform Judaism, Eastern Europeans were
Orthodox. In social status, German Jews tended to be middle or upper class and
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