Postville
Subtitle: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America
Publisher: Harcourt
Published: October 2, 2000
Language: eng
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780151006526
First sentence: The only time I had ever been in Iowa was when I was a fourteen-year-old Boy Scout on the way to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, and our horny troop spent the night in a dormitory at Iowa State University on the lookout all evening for sex-crazed college coeds we never found.
Description: "In 1987, a group of Lubavitchers, one of the most orthodox and zealous of Jewish sects, opened a kosher slaughterhouse just outside tiny Postville, Iowa (pop. 1,465). When the business became a worldwide success, Postville found itself both revived and divided. The town's initial welcome of the Jews turned into confusion, dismay, and even disgust. By 1997, the town had engineered a vote on what everyone agreed was actually a referendum: whether or not these Jews should stay.".

"Stephen G. Bloom found himself with a bird's-eye view of this battle and gained a new perspective on questions that haunt America nationwide. What makes a community? How does one accept new and powerfully different traditions? Is money more important than history? In the dramatic and often poignant stories of the people of Postville - Jew and gentile, puzzled and puzzling, unyielding and unstoppable - lies a great swath of America today."--BOOK JACKET.