Rating: 
Summary: Clash of Cultures and Self-Examination
Review: This is a powerful book for several reasons. First, through the eyes of its highly assimilated Jewish author, we see intensely the intra-cultural biases, prejudices and misconceptions amongst American Jews. There are several good books on the market that take a look at this (see Jew v. Jew, for example) in a scholarly way, but few that use the approach of personal discovery as Mr. Bloom has done. Secondly, we take a step outside the intracultural struggle of Mr. Bloom to the resistance of a small Iowa town to the injection of a substantial, and relatively wealthy group of Chasidic Jews. What happens to the reader is a tumbling of allegiances. There are no good guys and bad guys. I found myself irritated with Bloom's white-bread Judaism, but then doubly frustrated by the intransigence and rigidity of some of the Chasids. The Iowans at first glance are easy to dismiss as simple WASPS who venture not far from a church basement, but we are not allowed to let them remain caricatures. The real estate agent whose pocket has filled finds acceptance in his heart in the way that the local merchants who have been shunned cannot. The economic drivers of prejudice and tolerance are stripped naked, making even the characters displaying a capacity to change and grow seem more complicated and less progressive than strategic. This is not a book of moral simplicity. This is a complex story of a town facing difficult change and evoking normal human resistance to change. I like Bloom as a narrator because he struggles with the harsh reality of bigotry and prejudice -- that we all have it, and not necessarily in ways that are simple, convenient, or consistent with our view of ourselves.
Rating: 
Summary: Book cover was fabricated. Most of content was, too.
Review: When writing a book of this type, it would behoove a journalist of Mr. Blooms caliber to keep it as factual as possible. Yet, the photo on the front cover of the book -- which implies local townsfolk "enjoying" the sight of a bearded Jew, shtreimel (fur hat), bekitcher (silk coat) and all -- was digitally "rendered".
In an article published by The Jewish Week on 10/27/2000 titled Little Clash On The Prairie, the author says, "I ardently believe that I'm as Jewish as the Chasidim in Postville." Unlike them, he says, he doesn't see the world as Jew vs. gentile.
It is interesting then that he should portray exactly that on the cover. Why not have the Lubavitcher chassidim in their traditional garb of long jacket (frock) and black hat, rather than a more pronounced European Hassid with a shtreimel? Frankly I feel it is an insult to my inteligence.
The article continues to say that "...The book was launched in Postville when Bloom spoke at the local community center. He says the response was very positive. Two hundred fifty people showed up - a huge turnout for the town. None of the chasidim came, and he says he hasn't heard from any of them since the book has been published..."
No wonder. He has not written about them at all, electing to write much of what can be attributed to an active imagination. I wonder how any of the reviewers hailing the work as an eye-opener and a "clarifier" of history can justly do so, seeing that his actual impetus was to deepen and enhance this so-called "clash of cultures", not portray it in a true sense.
This brings me to where I started, and also the close of said article:
...The book jacket shows a group of farmers, one in overalls, all wearing work shoes and hats, sitting on a bench on the sidewalk. Walking in front of them, his eyes focused on a small prayer book in his hand, is a chasid, dressed in a satin kapoteh and fur hat, or streimel. But the photo is a montage, the scene an illusion: The photo of the farmers was taken in Iowa (although not Postville), and the image of the chasid - likely a non-Lubavitcher, for the Lubavitchers don't wear streimels - was superimposed.
So, my fellow readers, seekers of "truth is stranger than fiction", If you want the real story I suggest you do what the author was supposed to do: Fly on down there and get a first hand look -- or buy a different book.
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