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Next Year In Paterson

What became of a vanished community? Everything.

In the years following World War II and peaking in the 1960s, the industrial city of Paterson, New Jersey, fifteen miles northwest of Manhattan, was home to over 30,000 Jews out of a population of 140,000; perhaps America’s most Jewish city.  By the turn of the new century, this entire urban community had vanished, almost without a trace.

These "tales of the great assimilations" contemplate the arrivals and departures of this lost world. I hope you enjoy them.

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Backstory

Immigrants and emigrants

Paterson, New Jersey

Cradle of American Industry

Paterson was America’s first planned industrial center, founded by Alexander Hamilton to provide the “useful manufactures” needed by a modern, independent nation. The city and its Great Falls powered the American ascent for a century and a half; everything from the gun that won the west to the engine that launched the age of air travel.

The first Jewish settlers of Paterson arrived in the 1840s as merchants and tailors from Germany, Bohemia and Hungary. As the old empires of Europe decayed and collapsed toward the end of the 19th century, Jews from Lithuania, Russia and Poland began to arrive in numbers.

Making the Silk City

Immigrants Transform the City

Silk was once the fabric of choice for fine apparel, and women at all economic levels wanted their "best dresses" to be silk. In the old world, Polish Jews had already made the cities of Lodz and Bialystok famous for the silk trade. These immigrants brought uniquely specialized skills to a manufacturing center blessed with abundant hydropower and close proximity to the New York fashion markets.

By the 1880s, Paterson was producing almost half of the silk manufactured in the United States and had earned a nationwide reputation as "Silk City."

Photo: Jewish Historical Society of North Jersey

The Golden Age

A Community at its Apex

Over the course of a few decades, Paterson became perhaps America's most Jewish city; more Jewish by percentage than Newark, Miami, Los Angeles or even New York. The immigrants and their descendants built schools, hospitals and nursing homes; theaters and department stores, libraries and a museum.

To reflect the community's rising fortunes, the movie theater impresario Jacob Fabian  commissioned a magnificent Art Deco building for Temple Emmanuel. The opulent synagogue was for many years the community's foremost symbol of pride and American assimilation. Today, the building stands empty.
Photo: Jewish Historical Society of North Jersey

Exodus

Deindustrialization Strikes

By the 1970s, manufacturing in the U.S. had already been in decline, but textiles - cheap and simple to make abroad - were the among first casualties of deindustrialization. As Paterson's economic base eroded, the city lost much of its prosperity and many of its residents.

The Jewish community migrated into the suburbs and beyond, leaving behind only traces of the urban shtetl they had created in the new world. For the living and descendants of this vanished community - perched deftly between the worlds of Irving Howe and Philip Roth, of Allen Ginsberg, David Chase and Jim Jarmusch - "the old country" has a more contemporary geography.

Stories of Transformation

Jews at the cusp of change: 1960-70

Never Forget

Neuroscience has given us a dawning awareness of how trauma may pass from mother to child on a molecular level. Trauma stimulates the production of memory-enhancing genes in the mother, which are handed down epigenetically as fear memories. In this context, the phrase “never forget” becomes even more fraught, especially when fear is once again at hand.

Miss Turner's First Day

In the late 1940s, a book called “The Amboy Dukes” by Irving Shulman sold some five million copies. It described the rough, often lawless juveniles of the Jewish ghetto of Brownsville, Brooklyn. By the 1960s, Brownsville had become a majority Black district, but its school system was still deeply Jewish. The conflict to come would not be limited to Brooklyn.

The Golem of 29th Street

There are many tales of the golem – an inanimate being brought to life by a spell. The most famous dates to 16th century Prague, where a mystic rabbi conjured such a being to act as a defender of the Jews. As these legends are as old as the Bible itself, there’s no reason to suppose that whatever truth they do possess isn’t still with us today, perhaps protecting us still.

Sink or Swim

The Borscht Belt was the affectionate nickname given to the hundreds of hotels and bungalow colonies of regional New York state. These resorts spelled happy summer vacations for countless Jewish families, from all walks of life. In these carefree settings, it was easy to forget the axiom that you may not be interested in the past, but the past is interested in you.

Yerida

Modern Judaism celebrates the idea of aliyah - the immigration of diaspora Jews to Israel. Markedly less celebrated are the yordim; Israelis who emigrate from the holy land in an act of yerida. In the early 1960s, Israel was a young, undeveloped nation, a land of limited opportunities. On the other side of the world, there was a land of unimagined opportunities.

Vengeance Is Mine

The quest for purpose comes at an early age for many of us, perhaps too early. A single youthful experience can sometimes plot a lifetime's course, but in the absence of such meaningful experiences, these are often borrowed or manufactured, for better or worse. Other people's experiences, felt from a distance, can be a powerful and unpredictable leader.

Helga's Way

Which is most real for us, the past, present or future? Perhaps no one has a better perspective than someone of advanced years with a lifetime of museum-quality experiences to reflect on. One might guess that such a person, approaching their own mortality, would have come to their conclusions long ago. Unsurprisngly, life rarely runs out of surprises.

Falling Up

Thanks to its large Jewish community, Paterson was a natural landing spot for numerous Holocaust survivors. Many had never known life outside their segregated villages or neighborhoods. As their second generation children strove to find themselves and bridge the old world to the new, they sometimes discovered that the old might really be the new, and vice versa.

Next Year In Paterson

Home is where the heart is, of course, and for millenia, Jewish hearts yearned for a homeland that did not exist, but once existed, and would one day exist again. For the many survivors uprooted in the years before, during and after the Shoah, home was often an abstraction, a location rooted in time more than space. Perhaps home really is where the mind is.

The Persistence of Memory

The kabbalist rabbis speak of divine sparks; the fragments of light that burst from their vessels and were scattered at the creation of the world. Who is to say whether these sparks are passively waiting to be collected by the faithful, or whether they have divine purpose of their own?
Praise for Next Year In Paterson
From readers and critics

"...a stunning gem of a book, beautifully written and a joy to immerse oneself in. "

"...a fascinating and emotional read that took me back decades."

"...vivid stories of great insight and sensitivity..."

"It’s been a while since I found such a compelling read."

"...all I know is that I couldn’t put the book down."

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"This book punches well above its weight. It deserves a place on your must-read list."

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