Jun 15, 2018 By: yunews
Dr. Jeffrey Gurock, the Libby M.Klaperman Professor of Jewish History, recently published 鈥溾楪etting Along鈥 in Parkchester: A New Era in Jewish鈥揑rish Relations in New York City 1940鈥1970鈥 in , an international, open access peer-reviewed scholarly journal. It is part of a special issue, titled 鈥淭he Jewish Experience in America.鈥
In the article, Gurock tracks the history of conflict between New York City鈥檚 Irish Americans and east European Jews in order to describe what made the planned community of Parkchester, started in 1940 by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Corporation (MLIC), remarkably free of strife and conflict: a shared focus on 鈥渕iddle class families鈥 with the right 鈥渇amily values鈥 combined with the MLIC鈥檚 engineering of individual and social behaviors: 鈥淲hile the MLIC did much to tell its residents how they were supposed to live, even more critically, the company also had a say in how tenants of varying backgrounds might interact with one another through situating them indiscriminately in their large expanse.鈥
Gurock concludes that 鈥渨hat the Parkchester story tells us [is that] commonalities in economic and social class among groups and a mutual feeling that they were all living in a special place worth preserving can trump racial and religious animosities of the past.鈥
