Jewish American Literature & Culture

American Studies Seminar: The Promised Land

Images Clockwise from Upper Left:

1. Belle (Footlik) Berkelhamer.

2. Sara, Pincus, Bert, Iz, and Lou Berkelhamer

3. Berkelhamer Clan

4. Lou, Bert, and Iz Berkelhamer

5. Lou and Bert Berkelhamer

Laura Leibman's Family History Project

Part III: Achievement and Ambivalence, 1945-1973

• Text
• Artifacts
• Family History Menu

Achievement and Ambivalence, 1945-1973

1973 Charles Leibman remarked, "If the Jewish community is to survive, it must become more explicit and conscious about the incompatibility of integration and survival" (The Ambivalent American Jew). For my family, the period after the war was an era of prosperity, and of continued close family ties.It was an era of continuity and innovation.

My mother was born after the war and was name for her lost uncle Rudy. Naming children after lost loved ones is a common Ashkenazic practice (Shephardic Jews tend to name children after living relatives). My mother’s early years were spent in her grandfather Max’s apartment building. This building is located at 1163 & 1165 54th Place in Hyde Park between Woodlawn & University. Three were/are three stories with two apartments per floor. When my mother was young the first floor was MAX and KATE and my grandmother’s sister MOE and her husband. One the second floor were Uncle Louie (Max’s brother and partner) and his wife Rose and my mother’s family. One the third floor were Rose’s sister and a rented apartment. On Sundays in the summertime, MAX, KATE, Louie, and Rose would go to a Jackson Park along the lake near the Museum of Science and Industry and meet with the “Odessa Friendly Club” to play cards. The Odessa Friendly Club consisted of people from their area of Russia. This relationship continued well up through the 1950s, over 40 years after they had immigrated. This was a way to deal with high density life in city. They also spent time on Lake Michigan as seen in the beach photo of MAX and KATE.

In 1956 my grandparents moved to the North Shore of Chicago, and shortly afterwards my great grandparents sold the building. My mother recalls that they moved for two reasons: 1) Originally LOU worked on the West side of Chicago. When his company, Ohmite Manufacturing Company, opened a plant in Skokie the commute was too long, so they moved to Glencoe to be closer. Their new house was designed by a cousin and was the suburban-dream ranch home that is characteristic of the 1950s and 1960s. They lived in this home until they passed away. (2) The second reason the moved northward was that the neighborhood becoming rundown and mainly black. This was an era of white flight during which the University of Chicago considered moving to the west coast and joining with Stanford University. Instead, the university bought up local houses to “maintain” the neighborhood. One of the buildings they bought was my family’s. It became faculty housing, then the home of the University Press, and today my mother thinks it is part of the theological seminary. When it was faculty housing, the widow of nuclear scientist Enrico Fermi lived there. My mother recalls her father saying, however, that they would have stayed in the neighborhood if his company had only not relocated. They would have just “moved to the other side of the tracks.”Today Hyde Park is an expensive, though still mixed, neighborhood. In the 1970s my Uncle Jay (my mother’s brother) and his family and my father and step mother moved back to Hyde Park. We lived there when I was in High School and I briefly attended the University of Chicago Laboratory School.

Although the 1950s was an era during which sociologist Karen Brodkin claims Jews became "white folk," I remember my grandmother telling stories about anti-semitism from this era. When my Uncle bought a cottage in Michiana on Lake Michigan in the 1970s, my grandmother recalled with a certain embarrassment that in the 1950s she had tried to rent a cottage in that neighborhood and everything had been fine until they gave their name (Berkelhamer) and were told by the agent that she couldn't rent to Jews. This is perhaps an instance of what the JALNA refers to as "the tail end of prewar prejudice" (575)

Documents & Artifacts:

• Maternal Family Tree
• Berkelhamer-Footlik Photos 1930s-1950s

Laura's Family History Assignment Homepage

Part 1: The Great Tide Era, 1881-1924

Part 2: From Margin to Mainstream in Difficult Times, 1924-1945

Part 3: Achievement and Ambivalence, 1945-1973

Part 4: Wandering and Return: Since 1973

Maternal Family Tree

Bibliography