Straddling continents and legal systems: East European Jewish Marriage in the United States in the Age of Mass Migration

• In Event: East European Jews Navigating Marriage in Migration to the Americas in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

In 1902, the Boston Daily Globe reported on the highly unusual wedding ceremony of a Polish Jewish newcomer by the name of Motke. The newspaper exposed in dramatic details how, during the nuptials, Motke unexpectedly found a man upon removing what he believed to be his betrothed’s bridal gown. Motke had barely any time to express his surprise when a group of guests immediately rushed towards him and, using leather thongs, flogged him 40 times—the standard punishment for offenses in biblical law. As the daily further explained, the physical violence meted out to Motke served as a punishment from his fellow Jewish immigrants in response to his attempt to take a new spouse when he had left a wife behind in his native Eastern Europe. When Motke warned of his intent to bring his case to the police, his attackers countered with the threat of bigamy proceedings, leading the failed bigamist to leave Boston for New York.

Building upon Motke’s story, this paper explores some of the challenges that East European Jewish female migrants to the United States encountered in the marital sphere at the turn of the twentieth century. Second, it discusses the legal and extra-legal strategies that wives and women seeking to marry adopted to protect themselves against bad marriages, runaway spouses, and domestic violence. The phenomenon that the Boston Globe drew attention to—of foreign married men reinventing themselves as single in another country—was only one of the many gendered difficulties that East European Jewish women faced in the age of migration. Yet, as this paper shows, in the United States many among these women resorted to a constellation of resources to shield themselves against gender-based abuse, including religious institutions, the press, and litigation. Thus, despite the bevy of obstacles it engendered, their new legal and social landscape also offered Jewish women from Eastern Europe fresh opportunities and strategies for navigating relationships between men and women anew, and for redefining power dynamics with existing or prospective husbands.

Author

• Geraldine Gudefin