Assimilation pressure on American Jews

Assimilation pressure on American Jews in The Plot Against America takes the form of a double promise: Jews are told they can participate fully in the national life of the United States, while government programs mark them out for special intervention. Under Charles A. Lindbergh, the invitation to belong is tied to pressure on Jewish boys, workers, and neighborhoods to change their habits and circumstances. The tension between genuine American belonging and state-directed assimilation becomes a test of how much security inclusion can offer when officials decide what it should mean.

A community already at home

The pressure lands on a community whose American life is not new or provisional. The Roth family lives in Weequahic, in Newark, among Jewish neighbors who work in shops, trades, professional offices, and sales. The neighborhood’s streets, schools, and everyday routines form an established local world. The family’s home on Summit Avenue is part of a recognizable American urban landscape, and the children attend Chancellor Avenue School. When the family visits Washington, their first view of the United States Capitol makes American history feel like a source of protection: the country’s institutions and ideals seem capable of defending them against Lindbergh’s rise.

In Philip Roth’s childhood account, Jewish identity is also distinct from the visible markers outsiders might expect. Most neighbors do not wear traditional religious clothing or speak with accents, and Jewish children and parents use ordinary American English. Hebrew appears on the butcher shop and synagogue, while the local newsstand sells many more copies of the Racing Form than of the Yiddish daily. These details complicate any claim that Jewish Americans must be remade before they can belong. The community is already culturally and linguistically American; the question is whether that belonging will be recognized without requiring political compliance or the weakening of its local ties.

Inclusion as an official program

The Office of American Absorption gives assimilation a government structure. Its stated purpose is to encourage religious and national minorities to become more incorporated into the larger society, but the narrative observes that by spring 1941 its most conspicuous attention is directed at Jews. Under its Just Folks program, Jewish boys aged twelve to eighteen are sent from cities to work for eight weeks as field hands and day laborers with farm families hundreds of miles from home. The program is described as voluntary, yet its scale and specific focus make the initiative feel less like a neutral exchange than a policy aimed at a particular community.

Sandy Roth’s participation makes the program’s appeal and its consequences visible at once. After a representative speaks to eligible boys at school, Sandy brings home an application requiring a parent’s signature. His parents fear the separation and the political meaning of sending Jewish children away from their families. Evelyn Finkel, working as executive assistant to Lionel Bengelsdorf, supports Sandy’s application. He leaves for a Kentucky tobacco farm at the end of June 1941, despite his father’s objections, and later becomes a New Jersey recruiting officer who speaks to other boys and families about the program.

Bengelsdorf presents Sandy’s experience as evidence that Jews can enter the broader society without being treated as a separate, excluded population. He argues that Jewish Americans have an unusual opportunity to participate fully in national life, and identifies Sandy’s journey into the unfamiliar as a model for adults as well as children. But that account turns one boy’s experience into an endorsement of a state program. Sandy’s growing public role—speaking to Jewish adults and attracting younger boys who want to follow him—shows how assimilation can be advanced not only by official orders but by rewarding participants with attention, status, and access.

The competing meaning of assimilation

At the Roth family dinner table, Bengelsdorf argues that Charles A. Lindbergh has changed his views after private conversations with the rabbi. He says Lindbergh has accepted that his earlier public statements relied on anti-Semitic cliches and now wants to remove barriers between Christians and Jews. He also defends the administration as democratically elected and contrasts its programs with the Nuremberg Laws: in his account, those laws stripped Jews of civil rights and excluded them from national membership, whereas Lindbergh’s policies invite Jews further into American life.

The contrast does not reassure Herman Roth. He answers that Bengelsdorf’s explanation alarms him more, not less. The disagreement is not simply over whether assimilation is desirable. It is over who defines it, whether an invitation backed by government power can be trusted, and whether participation requires Jews to accept the administration’s own account of its intentions. Sandy’s return from Kentucky and his subsequent advocacy deepen the family’s conflict: his father sees a program designed to separate boys from their families, while Sandy’s new prominence suggests that the program can make participation personally rewarding. The same experience thus signifies opportunity to one person and political danger to another.

Relocation, work, and administrative pressure

Homestead 42 extends the pressure from children to whole households. On May 22, 1942, Metropolitan Life informs Herman that, at the request of Homestead 42 and the Office of American Absorption, the company is offering relocation opportunities to selected senior employees. The notice frames relocation as a chance for families to expand their horizons, settle in a region previously inaccessible to them, and strengthen their Americanness. It invokes the Homestead Act of 1862 and the tradition of western settlement, translating a state-directed transfer into a story of national opportunity.

The practical machinery behind that language is made visible when Philip asks Evelyn whether the Wishnow family could move instead of his own. Evelyn points to maps of New Jersey and the country, where pins mark families selected for relocation and their assigned destinations. She explains that the assignments involve the OAA, its Washington headquarters, receiving states, and major corporations. No single person, she insists, makes the decision. The maps make the process legible and orderly, but they also show how families become locations and assignments within a nationwide administrative plan. Her refusal to intervene is accompanied by the claim that Philip will benefit from becoming less fearful of leaving the ghetto—a familiar promise of personal growth attached to a decision made on his family’s behalf.

The Good Neighbor Project applies a related logic to the neighborhood itself. In October 1942, two vacated Summit Avenue flats are occupied by Italian families from the First Ward. Their rent is discounted by fifteen percent, with the government paying the difference to landlords under the arrangement. The stated aim is to bring more non-Jewish residents into predominantly Jewish neighborhoods and thereby enrich everyone’s Americanness. At home, and sometimes at school, the Roths hear a more troubling interpretation: that the policy could weaken Jewish social solidarity and electoral strength. The narrative presents this fear as the community’s understanding of the plan, not as proof that every neighbor or official shares a single motive. Even so, the combination of relocation, subsidized tenancy, and population planning makes assimilation an alteration of the places where Jewish life is sustained.

Refusal and the cost of belonging

Herman’s response to Homestead 42 is refusal, but refusing does not leave the family untouched. He quits his position after twelve years with Metropolitan Life rather than participate in the transfer. His decision costs him the security of his established work: he begins working nights at a produce market, returning home in the morning and relying on meals and coffee prepared for his long shifts. Bess also leaves her job at Hahne’s. The money she has accumulated in a Montreal savings account is intended to help the family cross into Canada if they need to flee. Their household remains on Summit Avenue, but its members sacrifice income and stability to resist the government’s plan and prepare for the possibility that remaining may become unsafe.

The pressure also reaches Herman through surveillance. An FBI agent who has questioned members of the family begins asking at the market what Herman says about the country and its president. Word reaches the family that he is being discussed as a man who housed Alvin, a volunteer in a foreign army, and then left a good job rather than take part in a government program. The inquiry links private political dissent, family decisions, employment, and the administration’s account of national unity. Assimilation is therefore more than a cultural ideal in the story: it is administered through schools, corporations, housing policy, and scrutiny of those who refuse.

These episodes distinguish inclusion from the power to define its terms. Just Folks offers Sandy recognition while removing him from home; Homestead 42 calls relocation an opportunity while assigning families destinations; the Good Neighbor Project describes demographic change as enrichment while unsettling neighborhood ties. Against these promises, Herman’s costly refusal insists that American belonging cannot be measured by obedience to a program or by dispersal from a Jewish community. The pressure of assimilation is most revealing where its language is warmest: it asks Jews to enter the national life, yet reserves for the state the authority to decide how they should get there.