By Edward J. Bristow
ISBN 10: 0805238662 / 0-8052-3866-2
ISBN 13: 9780805238662
Publisher: Schocken Books
Publication Date: 1983
ISBN 13: 9780805238662
Publisher: Schocken Books
Publication Date: 1983
ONE REVIEW:
“What if being a librarian was the most dangerous job
Not
exactly what the title or the subtitle says--but rather, with integrity
and even a certain elegance: Jewish prostitution and the Jewish fight
against it. Until the late 1800s, historian Bristow (Vice and Vigilance)
explains, strict religious prohibitions deterred prostitution and
procuring among Jews (though there were exceptions: Dickens modeled
Fagin after an actual brothelkeeper). The vice began to flourish after
1870, when the shtetl and the closely-knit Jewish family were disrupted
by pogroms, wars, rapid urbanization, and secularization, and when
immigration created an oversupply of single males in North and South
America and South Africa. A Jewish underworld--often organized along
family lines--materialized to supply women from Eastern Europe to every
other continent. The subculture of that demimonde, as Bristow
intriguingly describes it, was remarkably faithful to religious
traditions: brothel owners founded synagogues and cemeteries; pimps
ordered kosher meat; and girls in Butte, Montana refused to work on holy
days. Statistically, he demonstrates, Jews were no more involved in
prostitution than the French, Greeks, Poles, Chinese, or most other
groups; but anti-Semites inevitably exploited the issue, conjuring up
visions of an international conspiracy to abduct Christian girls and
spirit them off to the bordellos of Buenos Aires. (The majority of
prostitutes, in fact, were volunteers; and Jewish traffickers dealt
mostly with Jewish women.) To counter the bigotry and erase ""this
horrible blot on the reputation of our race,"" a coalition of Jewish
socialists, Zionists, social reformers, religious organizations,
feminists, and (more reluctantly) the orthodox community mounted an
anti-prostitution campaign, led and funded by Rothschilds, Montefiores,
and Bertha Pappenheim (Freud's ""Anna O.""). They resorted to ostracism,
vigilante action, police investigation, social work, travelers' aid,
muckraking journalism, problem plays on the Yiddish stage, and the
League of Nations: all with limited success. In America, Jewish
prostitution ended only when Jewish family life stabilized and economic
opportunities opened up after 1914; in Europe, the resolution was
provided by Hitler (who had heard about Jewish white-slavers). A deft,
scholarly excursion into the sociology of prostitution and the byways of
Jewish history.
No comments:
Post a Comment