“Space was the stuff of desire; a room to oneself, a luxury beyond reach.“- Irving Howe, scholar

Some key highlights for the new residence patterns are:

• Lower East Side tenements
• Traditional faith continues to be foundational
• A dislocation of community and family

Source: World of Our Fathers

An average apartment consisted of three rooms: a kitchen, a parlor, and a doorless and windowless bedroom between. The parlor became sleeping room at night. So did the kitchen when families were large.

Only in the kitchen could the retain a semblance of the community they had previously enjoyed.

When Jews moved from Eastern Europe to America there was a dislocation of the family ; patterns of the family had been firmly set in the old country and had remained rigid for very long due to the control of the children’s activities and movement that came with having a defined living space and community; now youths moved around in Gentile neighborhoods.

Source: World of Our Fathers

The moral authority of the father, the formal submission of the wife together with her frequent dominance in practical affairs and business, the obedience of the children defined familial relations.

Mother remained emotional center of the family, a balancing act since they were able to adapt better both economically and emotionally. There seemed to have been a place for them, if now not at the shtetl marketplace, at least on Orchard street selling herring or clothing goods:

Source: How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York

The father became a piece of history, “he represented an ancient civilization,” and thus it was the mother to whom everyone turned for practical guidance and advice. Her authority increases and becomes more multi-faceted as almost an equal breadwinner.

Traditional family patterns could not survive long. A disarranged family structure endowed her with powers she had never known before. Of course with it disturbance brought desertion of family by immigrant husbands. This new residence in the city really became what broke down many families. Men without spiritual roots were defenseless against American life. They often left their young families because of the lure of money and gay girls just outside.

But did any of this have a deeper meaning for Jewish life and culture?