Stephen Bloom, author of the controversial book “Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America,” will speak tonight at 7:30 at Hillel.
Bloom’s book has made international news in its controversial documentation of the mixture of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish population with a small Iowa farming community.
Bloom is an award-winning journalist and has been a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News and other major newspapers. He is currently a journalism professor at the University of Iowa.
The book recounts the ethnic tension experienced when a group of Lubavitcher Jews, among the most orthodox of Jewish sects, opened a kosher slaughterhouse just outside tiny Postville, Iowa, in 1987.
With the arrival of the Lubavitchers, the town was saved economically. Yet the town’s initial welcome of the Jews soon dissipated and turned to anger and confusion as ethnic and religious differences tore the town apart. Bloom, who is Jewish, spent time in Postville during the height of these cultural conflicts, observing the situation, interviewing individuals on both sides and documenting the events. From this emerged his book, which has remained highly debated.
Critics, including some UW-Madison faculty, of the book cite Bloom’s superficial knowledge of Judaism as one of the reasons why the book is problematic. Questions have also been raised as to whether the book does an adequate job of acknowledging other American Jews who lead meaningful Jewish lives yet participate in mainstream society.
Bloom is the fourth author in a continuing series brought to UW through a collaboration between the University Book Store and Hillel, the Jewish student center on campus. The series is free and open to all students.
“Stephen Bloom just happened to be on tour to promote his new book, and we wanted to take advantage of this to work on building a Jewish presence on campus,” Hillel Program Associate Josh Schwartz said.
According to Schwartz, Bloom’s lecture will focus primarily on his writing of the book and the situation in Postville. The lecture will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience.
“It’s important to stress that no amount of knowledge about the Jewish community is needed in order to enjoy this lecture and learn from it,” Schwartz said.