To Count a People

This book will prove an invaluable reference and necessary tool for the historian of United States Jewry. Here are head-count data on hundreds of American Jewish communities. The figures presented will confront historians or sociologists with questions and incite them to demand answers. The data not only record the rise of villages and towns on rivers, canals, and railroads, but frequently document their fall. Dozens of Jewish towns have disappeared or declined catastrophically. What happened? The statistics alert the historian and compel him to assess the impact of the canal boat, the river steamer, the railroad, the good roads, the auto. The rise of suburbs on the edge of every metropolis is intimated here through numbers. The flight to better living quarters, the fall of the slum-ghettos are pictured here in convincing figures. If properly interpreted the statistics in this book are mutely eloquent. Co-published with the American Jewish Archives.