Mary Antin Quotes
There is never a Jewish community without its scholars, but where Jews may not be both intellectuals and Jews, they prefer to remain Jews.
Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912, p. 32.
He and almost all of the Jews in Germany were expected to act like Germans. There was no room for maintaining and developing their own ethnic customs and traditions. When he arrived at New York, he was treated as a great celebrity by Mayor La Guardia, who was fluent in Yiddish, and other dignitaries some of whom were Jews and even met President Warren G. Harding. He lectured at City College and for the first time in his life saw Jews who had any distinguishing culture and customs—and the informality, egalitarianism, gregarious, free speaking, fun loving was just the opposite of the norms that he had grown up with in Germany which he did not like. See {640911}. He would later become a part of that culture and be seen as a leader, even being offered the Presidency of the new state of Israel in 1949.
Mary Antin was an American author and immigration rights activist. She is best known for her 1912 autobiography The Promised Land, an account of her emigration and subsequent Americanization.
