This book challenges the idea that culture, agency, and identity are primary factors in explaining immigrant experiences in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America. Focusing on Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe, the author argues instead that the existing economic structure into which the immigrants entered is the most significant factor in understanding and explaining the development of Jewish-American culture and ethnicity. This is a clear challenge to the “cultural studies” approach that has come to dominate the field of immigration and ethnic studies but it is neither polemical nor Marxian (the two forms criticism of cultural studies have typically taken). Rather, it is a serious, nuanced attempt to understand the particularity of the Jewish-American experience without reducing it to cultural essentialism.

In contrast to work that emphasizes the strength of Old World cultural traditions, Lederhendler reminds us of how culturally and materially bereft the Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia actually were, which of course was why they were emigrating in the first place. What cultural strength they had once had was weakened by decades of economic deprivation, chronic unemployment, pogroms, and internal conflicts within the Jewish communities. They were a destitute people with no social or class standing, that is, a caste. There was nothing from the Old World that would help them adapt and prosper in the new. They arrived in America with no skills, no class, and no culture. In America, they took advantage of new economic opportunities and acquired new skills, a new class (working), and a whole new culture. It was their work—peddling, sewing, clerking, odd jobs—that both defined who they were and gave them the material wherewithal to build the networks and social capital that would make them a successful ethnic group. Whereas social scientists have typically seen ethnic ties as a preexisting source of social capital for immigrant groups, Lederhendler writes, “Social capital built up within the ethnic network was not the cause but the result of successful economic adaptation on the part of individuals (p. 102). The famous Jewish-American commitment to middle-class values of work and success was not carried over from Russia but made in the United States as Jewish immigrants struggled to find a place in the new social structure. Similarly, Jewish-Americans' embrace of the labor movement was born not in Europe but in the economic struggles wrought by American capitalism between 1880 and 1920.

My summary of the argument is necessarily simplified in the interests of space; the author himself is careful to draw distinctions, qualify claims, and engage the existing literature. Along the way, he provides thoughtful and detailed discussions of the Jewish immigrant economy, the labor movement, the controversy between established German Jews and the new immigrants, assimilation, immigration restriction, and a number of important scholarly debates. This is a very smart book and a much-needed reminder that cultural values are not always the primary shapers of group identity.