Florence Adler Swims Forever

Content Warning: This section references antisemitism and Nazi Germany.

Jewish Americans already had well-established communities by the time of the Great Depression (when Florence Adler Swims Forever takes place). Many arrived in the 19th century during waves of German, Czech, and Polish immigration. By the turn of the century, Jewish Americans were prosperous business people, politicians, landowners, artists, writers, and industrialists, especially in major East Coast cities. The novel represents Jewish success through Joseph, who owns a successful bread factory, as well as secondary characters such as Eli Hirsch.

However, Jewish Americans also faced significant antisemitism, including harassment and sometimes violence. Ivy League schools, for instance, placed quotas on Jewish admission because they feared that too many Jewish people were attending prestigious universities. Similarly, elite circles often excluded Jewish people. Antisemitism especially targeted Eastern Europeans who arrived from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and neighboring countries in the early 20th century. These immigrants were often disparaged as poor and uneducated; they were also the targets of anti-communist sentiments, especially after the Russian Revolution of 1917, though many who arrived were fleeing antisemitic persecution from both the czarist regime and the revolutionaries that succeeded it. When they arrived to the United States, immigrants often received help from US Jewish organizations, but they were also often exploited as cheap garment workers. Isaac’s family background draws on these historical details, as his parents are failed farmers from Eastern Europe.

Despite the persecution that Jewish Americans faced, they often created vibrant communities. These communities were often economically integrated with other American communities but socially insular. They often married other Jewish people, and families sometimes rejected children who married outside of the Jewish faith. In the novel, Esther briefly comments that the family of a friend’s daughter sat shiva—a mourning rite—for her because she had married someone who was not Jewish. Both long-established Jewish communities and those of recent immigrants centered around synagogues and observed Jewish holidays. Many communities also continued to speak Yiddish, a combination of Medieval German and Hebrew. However, despite the insularity of Jewish communities, second- and third-generation American Jewish people often became more secular and integrated more into surrounding communities, as Anna and Stuart’s relationship demonstrates. The characters in Florence Adler Swims Forever therefore offer a representative cross-section of a multi-generational Jewish American family.

When Adolf Hitler came to power in the 1930s, antisemitism was on the rise in many Western countries. In America, the Red Scare of the 1920s contributed to growing anti-Jewish sentiment due to Jewish Americans’ perceived association with the Bolsheviks. Prominent American businessmen such as Henry Ford celebrated Hitler’s ethnonationalism and antisemitism. As persecuted Jewish people tried to flee Germany, many Americans also worried about facing a mass wave of immigration amid the Great Depression’s unemployment and high prices. Though Jewish organizations worked to help Jewish people escape Germany, they were often unable to offer much help in the face of bureaucratic resistance from the United States government. Anna’s family faces these obstacles as she and Joseph try to secure visas for her parents.