The official title: Postville: A Class of Cultures in Heartland America. Or it might be worded: A Clash of Religious Cultures. A Clash of German Lutheran and Hasidic Jew cultures.
Some nuggets from Postville:
In a dialogue with his seven-year old son, Mickey:
"Daddy, who are the good guys and the bad guys? Well, I don't think either side is good or bad. They're just different." I disagree; both the Lutherans and the Jews are bad guys because they both failed to practice love and justice.
"Going deeper and deeper into the story, was like piecing together a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Just when you thought you were finished, you'd look in the corner of the box and discover yet another piece. And when you finished connecting that piece to the puzzle, another piece would magically appear." A complex story with many pieces; not simply an either-or story.
"In many ways, the [white] people of Postville are close-minded, obtuse, thickheaded, stubborn, unwilling to bend." They don't know it but they are much like the Hasidic Jews many despise.
"Initially, I had gone to Postville to learn from the Hasidim, to share with them some sense of identity and belonging. Instead, what the Postville Hasidim ultimately offered me was a glimpse at the dark side of my own faith. . . . I did not want to participate in Hasidim's vision that called on Jews to unite against the goyim [Gentiles] and assimilation."
From the Afterword, about the Hasidic Jews:
"deeply religious. . . . but do they practice faith?"
"To me, Doc Wolf [ a Jew, but not Hasidic] remains an example of someone who didn't practice religion, but by God, he was a man full of faith. . . . Doc epitomized someone called in Hebrew tikkun olam which translates to healing or repairing the world---the entire world, not just the world that belongs to any one faith, race, or religion." Bloom did not see this religious practice among either the German Lutherans nor the Hasidic Jews, only among Doc Wolf.
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