ABSTRACT
This text offers an illustration of how middle-class American Jews romanticized Jewish poverty during the postwar years. In the decades after World War II, American Jews with roots in eastern Europe experienced unprecedented levels of financial mobility. Over half a century, they had gone from being one of the most impoverished ethnic groups in the United States to one of the most solidly middle class. Although some postwar American Jews certainly celebrated the blessing of newfound prosperity, many of their leaders also expressed a great deal of ambivalence over their new economic position. Long accustomed to thinking about marginalization and poverty as core components of an authentic Jewish identity, these leaders distrusted the emergent middle class, Jewish culture that reflected Jewish prosperity and social acceptance.
