The accidents of history have in our time produced another of those fateful confrontations of Jews and Arabs in the Middle East which have occurred at several junctures during the last millennium and a half. But today, for the first time, they confront one another outside the Middle East as well: thus in the United States there are more than five million Jews and about 450,000 people of Arabic-speaking origin or descent—whom, following their own practice, we shall call “Syrians,” even though most of them are native Americans and many others came from countries outside the area that is now Syria.

Despite vast differences in numbers as well as other respects, the Jewish and Arab communities in America are similar in several ways. Both are largely middle class, have a common family pattern, are concentrated in big cities, and, since the rise of independent Arab states and the emergence of Israel, have an inescapable (if unclear and disputed) relation to their co-religionists and co-nationals in other lands. As the Arab or “Syrian” community in this country grows and prospers, it may become even more like the Jewish community in social and economic character (except for those Syrian Christians who, isolated from others, will merge into the general population), and this similarity will undoubtedly lead to more frequent contacts between the two groups in business, education, and community relations.

The first Syrian immigrants came to America in the middle of the 19th century, as a result of the religious persecution of Christians in certain parts of the Ottoman Empire, mainly Syria and what is now Lebanon. Oppression apart, the prevailing poverty and unrest were enough to drive people to migration, particularly the Christians, who found it easier to adapt to Western ways. At first only a few hundred came each year, but during the last decade of the 19th century several thousand entered annually. From the turn of the century to 1912 the influx rose sharply, reaching a peak of 9,000 for 1913 and 1914. World War I saw a decline to a few hundred each year. In the brief postwar resurgence, 3,000 Syrians entered annually, until the quota legislation in 1924 restricted the inflow. According to Dr. Afif Tannous, an American sociologist born in Lebanon, “By 1925 practically every household in every village of the Lebanese mountains had one or more of its members as permanent emigrants in the American countries” (American Sociological Review, June 1943).

From 1925 onward only a few hundred were admitted each year to the United States. By 1940, the Syrian-Lebanese community most likely numbered about 350,000, most of them already born in this country. Like other groups of recent foreign origin, they were concentrated in the urban areas of the Northeast, where nearly three-quarters of them lived. Well over half lived in five states: New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio. About a fifth lived in three cities: New York, Boston, and Detroit. Detroit, incidentally, has a large number of Christian Arabs from Iraq as well as from Syria and Lebanon. Most of these Iraqis come from a Christian village just north of Baghdad called Tel Kayf, of whose inhabitants two visiting Englishmen recently wrote: “They all aspire to speaking American, however badly; their promised land is Detroit, a section of which is now called Now called Tel Kayf. Not a boy scrubbing . . . a floor, not a barman . . . mixing drinks, but has a dozen American relations, each of them, according to report, owning a Cadillac or at least a Buick” (The New Babylon, by Desmond Stewart and John Haylock, Collins, London, 1956).

We have no census data after 1940, but Syrian church and community leaders estimate that, except for some spread to the suburbs and to the West Coast, the proportions are substantially the same today as they were in that census year, although the number has increased to about 450,000.

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Who were these Arabic-speaking immigrants from the Levant? The meager sources reveal that the first big wave during the decades around the turn of the century were Christians from what are now Syria and Lebanon. A very small proportion had been professionals in the old country, and about a fifth were skilled workers, while the bulk came from farms and villages—small owners, laborers, and tenants, or small tradesmen. Many became peddlers and storekeepers in the industrial centers of the East and Midwest. According to the Institute of Arab American Affairs, they did not take to factory or construction work—the refuge of the unskilled immigrant from other lands—because of the general Middle Eastern disdain for manual labor. “Some kindly souls,” the Institute’s pamphlet, Arabic-Speaking Americans, reports, “probably Jewish wholesale merchants, showed them how to keep the wolf from the door by peddling trinkets and household necessities.”

Peddling, which required no special training or permanent settlement in town or on a farm, was attractive to the Syrian immigrants, most of whom did not intend to remain in America permanently. Though many had worked on the land in the old country, they did not go into farming, because agriculture here meant isolation, while they were used to a closely knit village life. Farming in Syria and Lebanon was an enterprise involving the entire family, including grandparents and grandchildren, whereas the immigrants were either unmarried or recently married, or at most had only a small family of young children. Finally, as Dr. Tannous points out, the system of agriculture, at least in the deep South where Syrians lived closer to the farm country, was “completely alien” to them. At home, farming had been “intensive, diversified, and undertaken as a joint family enterprise,” whereas in the South it was a “plantation system based upon cash crops, tenancy and share-cropping.”

In this early period before World War I, the Syrians were known to dislike working for somebody else. They also shunned factory work, although they enjoyed a reputation as diligent and efficient workers, quick to adjust to American ways—“almost equal to the Jews,” one observer reports employers as saying. Many Syrian peddlers and retailers soon turned to wholesaling in New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and later in the South and Far West, and then to manufacturing in New York’s clothing center. They now operate and own large enterprises in the trucking, clothing, amusement, and food industries, both in manufacturing and distribution. By World War II the second generation was coming of age, and many of the younger men entered the professions and the newer communications and entertainment industry.

A typical Syrian “success” story is that of the late patriarch of the Coury family, who died in 1956 at the age of eighty-four. He came to the United States in 1891, nineteen years old and practically penniless. With a little borrowed money he bought a meager stock of goods which he peddled across the country. He soon acquired a store, then branched out until he made several fortunes in various businesses. Retiring to Miami, he found it difficult to do nothing but relax; so he made another fortune through a chain of self-service laundries. His son, typically, has moved up the ladder of prestige but (less typically) without sacrificing opportunities to acquire more wealth; he is a prominent investment broker in Miami.

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Although not so prosperous as this family, most Syrians are by now comfortably off. How can one explain their prosperity, in view of their relatively recent arrival and poverty? First, many of them were familiar with urban life, with buying and selling. Many had in fact been small merchants in the old country—during the years 1899 to 1907, of 18,000 adult male immigrants with identifiable occupations, nearly 15 per cent were merchants. Those who did not come from cities hailed from villages which, though based on agriculture, were settlements dense enough to have an active social life. Many of them, as Christians living in a predominantly Moslem world, performed business functions avoided by the Moslems. Finally, all were accustomed to a frugal existence in the old country, to which most of them planned to return; they were able and willing to subsist on relatively little and to save much of what they earned.

Even while they were still in the lower income brackets and in working class occupations the “Syrians” displayed the social characteristics of the middle classes in American urban centers. Studies of these Arab immigrants in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and the South reveal a common pattern: low crime rate, better than average health, higher IQ’s and more regular school attendance among the children, few intermarriages and divorces. Family ties have been strong enough to preclude active interest in the wider community. It is not merely the difference in the size of the Jewish and Arab communities that explains the Jewish interest in ideological and political issues, as against the Syrians’ lack of interest. It is as though the Syrians’ capacity for relating themselves to others (at least among the foreign-born) were exhausted by the family and the group from the same village in the old country.

All studies of Syrian life in the U.S. emphasize the community’s cohesion, its powerful loyalties to place and family, the high degree of control the group exercises over the individual (which explains the low crime rate), and the extraordinary concern of each member for all the others. One concomitant of this kind of loyalty is that few Syrians have to seek relief from the public authorities: the community takes care of its own. The reverse side of this trait is an unwillingness on the part of the average Syrian to extend his loyalties beyond the limits of the local community to Syrians of other Christian denominations, or to those coming from other localities in the old country. As Professor Philip K. Hitti wrote in 1924, “The Syrian is the man without a country par excellence. His patriotism takes the form of love for family and sect. . . . Syrian patriotism has no political aspects.” Although this judgment must be modified today, it marks a low starting point for the growth of a wider conception of community in the ensuing three decades.

To appreciate these loyalties one has to know the various groups that make up what we loosely call the Syrian community in the United States. In the first place, as already indicated, the 450,000 “Syrians” are not all from what is now Syria. About half originate from what is now Lebanon, and slightly less than half from Syria. The rest, perhaps 20,000, are chiefly from Iraq, Arab Palestine, or Yemen. More important than national origin, however, is religious affiliation. About 125,000 are Lebanese Maronites, a community affiliated with Roman Catholicism. Another 100,000 or so belong to the Syrian branch of the Eastern Orthodox Church (loosely called Greek Orthodox); two-thirds of this group are from the major cities of Syria. The remaining sizable Christian group are the approximately 50,000 Melkites who, having recognized Papal leadership only in the 19th century, still retain many features of the Eastern Orthodox Church. There are an estimated 25,000 Moslems, mainly from Syria, Palestine, and Yemen, and about 10,000 Protestants from Lebanon, Syria, and Arab Palestine. The remaining 140,000 “Syrians” are either unaffiliated followers of these groups, or belong to other Christian sects.

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The Syrians have experienced two stages of political awakening in this country. The first, which began just before World War I, was oriented toward events in Lebanon and Syria only. The second, beginning in the middle 1930’s with the sharpening of the Arab-Jewish struggle over Palestine and the subsequent growth of independent Arab states, was directed toward the Arab world as a whole.

In the earlier period, the Syrians (or Lebanese) in the United States did not think of themselves as Arabs. Although Arab nationalism was already strong in the Middle East, it had not yet penetrated the predominantly Christian groups in this country who still remembered their inferior status under the Moslem Turks and their uneasy relations with the Moslems in general. At that time, “Arab” to them meant “Moslem,” and as Christians they looked to France or England to support the Lebanese and Syrian aspirations for liberation from the Turks. But as the Arab nationalists in the Middle East achieved greater unity, the Syrian community in America, by now composed mainly of the second and third generation for whom the “old squabbles” were no longer so important, began to advocate Arab independence of the West, the removal of the last vestiges of Western domination in the now independent states of Lebanon and Syria, and the support of the Palestine Arabs in their struggle against Zionism. Such attitudes, the Syrians felt, were in accord with traditional American anti-colonial policy (at least outside of Latin America); and indeed the United States supported England against France in favoring independence for Lebanon and Syria during World War II.

Despite their broad (though somewhat vague) support for Arab causes in the Middle East, the Syrians in America differ among themselves with respect to the intensity of their feelings and the degree to which they translate these emotional involvements into organized action. Like the Jews with regard to Israel, the community includes a small hard core who are concerned with little else but the cause of Arab nationalism; a somewhat larger circle that feels strongly but is not very active; and a vast majority who feel some sympathy for the Arab cause but have no intention of doing anything about it. There is little doubt that American Jews, as a more highly educated and articulate community, are much more concerned with Israeli affairs than are the Syrians with Arab questions.

Religious affiliation usually determines the Syrians’ attitude toward Israel and toward the West. The Maronites from Lebanon, who have for centuries looked to France as their protector and many of whom were educated in French schools, have been least affected by the growth of Arab nationalism in the Middle East and the anti-Western outlook of some Arab spokesmen. In 1956 two American Maronite newspapers (one printed in Arabic, the other in English) attacked the Eastern States Federation of Syrian-Lebanese American Clubs for devoting too much attention to Pan-Arab matters instead of confining itself to Lebanese affairs; the leaders of the Federation were accused of slighting the distinction between Lebanon (whose population is roughly half Christian and half Moslem) and the other Arabic-speaking states (whose Christian element is much smaller).

Syrians of the Orthodox faith, who are from Syria proper as well as from Lebanon and Palestine, feel less like a nationality than do the Maronites, who incline to emphasize their pre-Arab, Phoenician origins, and are less prone to trace their origins to the period prior to the rise of the Arab. Moreover, they do not feel so estranged as do the Maronites from the Moslems, with whom they had less antagonistic relations dating back to the time of the Ottoman Empire. The Orthodox Syrian attitude is more accurately reflected in the official position adopted in 1956 by the National Association of Syrian-Lebanese American Clubs. Combining a statement of loyalty to the United States with support for the position of the Arab League on the Palestine question, the Association points out that it is an American organization “devoted to the . . . best interests of all the American people.” Because its members are of Arab descent, “it can and has served as an effective link between America and the Arab world. . . . However . . . it has not and does not interfere in the internal affairs of these Middle Eastern nations.” The Association refers to the responsibility of American citizens to make their views known on foreign policy. “Because its membership has close cultural ties and intimate knowledge of the Arab world, the National Association has a special responsibility to make recommendations regarding foreign policy in the Middle East.” Guiding itself “solely by the dictates of the genuine interest of all the American people,” the Association urges the United States to insist upon the implementation of all the United Nations resolutions on the Palestine question, as a means of bringing “peace and justice” to the area.

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In private, Syrian Christians feel less intensely on these matters than such public statements indicate. Stronger identification with Arab causes is expressed by the few thousand Moslems in America. They are of course close to the leading Arab countries in religion and culture and have been in the United States only a few years. Many of them are from Arab Palestine (some are Arab refugees) and share the hostility of the Arab states toward Israel and the West.

An Iraqi Moslem who studied the Christian and Moslem communities in Chicago observes: “There are no amicable relations between the Christian Syrians and the Moslem Palestinians in the Chicago area. The Moslem Palestinians criticize the Christian Syrians because they neglect their Arabic traditions and do not have nationalist aspirations. During the Palestinian war (of 1948) the Christian Syrians were not sympathetic and did not raise money for the Arab cause” (Abdul Jalil al Tahir, The Arab Community in the Chicago Area, Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1952).

The extreme nationalism, anti-Western-ism, anti-Americanism, and, more recently, pro-Soviet neutralism in Arab lands have disturbed the Syrians here. But while they are rather critical in private conversation, very little of their uneasiness finds its way into their publications or into the official statements of their organizations.

Syrian spokesmen take great pains to avoid the charge (which they make against American Zionists) of “dual loyalty.” They have no counterpart either to the Zionist Organization of America or to the American Council for Judaism. Their relation to the Arab states thus lies within a narrower and less emotion-laden range than that of American Jews to Israel. This is not to say that the Syrians avoid contacts with representatives of the Arab governments here. They usually hold a banquet for newly arrived delegates from the Arab states or to honor them when they leave. They also welcome talks by speakers sent out by the Arab Information Center in New York, which is supported by the Arab governments. Recently, too, the national association of Syrian clubs endorsed the Center’s program of disseminating information to Americans about the Arab world, and called upon the local organizations to avail themselves of the Center’s services. Syrian Americans, however, are circumspect in dealing with the Arab Information Center. When they ask for speakers, many clubs think it advisable to emphasize their American character, and the fact that they are requesting some service or other “as Americans.”

Professional anti-Semites here may try to recruit Syrians for anti-Jewish propaganda, but there is little evidence that they are very successful at it. Though many Syrians are active in disputing Zionist and Israeli claims and in supporting the Arab position, their attitude toward American Jews is not hostile. Among the older people relations between the two groups are chiefly commercial, and they have a healthy respect for one another’s ability. The younger generation of Syrians and Jews seem to relate to one another in much the same way that each relates to other groups, that is to say on the basis of individual experience. With fewer Old World memories, less attachment to Middle Eastern causes, and no business rivalry, they tend to be less suspicious of one another. Although there are examples of close friendships among the older foreign-born Syrians and Jews (many of the latter being from Syria too), such intimacy is much more frequent among the younger people born in this country.

The Syrians’ feeling of remoteness from political life of any kind poses serious difficulties for organizations seeking to raise money among them, even for such causes as Arab refugee relief. The older people are generous in support of their relatives in the villages of Lebanon and Syria, and in aiding churches here in America. They also contribute for the building of schools and hospitals in their “own” villages “back home.” Outside agencies have a difficult assignment, however, in seeking to raise money for general purposes in the Arab world. For one thing, they run into the old Christian suspicion of the Moslems. For another, some Syrian businessmen are said to be apprehensive lest their contributions to Arab causes antagonize Jewish businessmen on whose trade they depend. Finally, many of them say (partly in earnest, partly as an excuse), “After all, we’re Americans. What have we got to do with those people over there? Let’s forget old ties and realize we’re here to stay.”

The Syrians’ reluctance to get involved in international Arab affairs is only one aspect of their general lack of interest in politics. But to the extent that they do commit themselves, the foreign-born are concerned mainly with the politics of the old country, and the native-born with affairs over here. In either case, Syrians appear to be conservative with respect to domestic American politics.

There have been some minor changes, of course. Some Syrians born in this country have become interested in politics. Several have reached important appointive offices in the Federal government; more have been able to do so in executive and judicial agencies. Where they constitute a sizable minority vote, Congressmen have addressed their meetings, usually stressing the Syrian-Lebanese heritage and the community’s contribution to American life. But thus far few Syrians have reached prominent positions in the major parties. It is only occasionally that one of them has been nominated even for a state elective office; in 1956, for example, the first Syrian in Massachusetts history was put forward (by the Republicans) for state senator. In general, there is an impression that, although both parties have occasionally nominated Syrians, the Democrats have done more in this respect. Yet, unlike most immigrant groups which settled in the large Eastern cities, the Syrians have not become faithful Democratic party members or voters. In the South, where they have adopted the outlook of the dominant majority, they have more often voted Democratic. But because of their concentration in small business and retail trade, and because of the identification of the Democrats with support for Israel, the Syrians, even in the South, have been more readily attracted to the Republicans, at least in national elections. In the Northern cities their political loyalties were more mixed, even before the rise of Israel as a domestic political issue. In New York, for example, they were lost in a crowd of minor immigrant groups which Tammany Hall—concerned mostly with the Irish, Jewish, and Italian groups—had largely ignored. During the 1932 election campaign a Democratic club of Syrians, Greeks, and Armenians even went Republican because Tammany refused them “recognition.”

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Since the recognition of Israel by President Truman in May 1948, the Republicans have gained voters among the Syrians. President Eisenhower has been applauded by the Syrian community as being more “impartial” on the Israel-Arab question than his Democratic predecessors. As a Syrian weekly put it when the President insisted on the withdrawal of Israeli, British, and French forces from Egypt last year, “It is certainly gratifying to us that Mr. Eisenhower, and not Mr. Stevenson, is in the White House at this time, and we hope this setup will not change.” Yet the Democrats were not always so unpopular with the Syrians. The study of the Chicago area, referred to earlier, reported as late as 1952 that the Syrian Christians tended to be Democrats “because of American recognition of Lebanese and Syrian independence during the Truman administration.” (Actually this took place during the Roosevelt administration, in 1944.) It appears, however, that this action was forgotten in the resentment over President Truman’s quick recognition of Israel.

Many of the younger Syrians seem to support Democrats for local offices and Republicans for the Presidency and Congress. In Detroit, where the unions are so strong, a larger proportion of Syrians vote Democratic than in other cities. They have been successful, moreover, in getting local elective and appointive posts as Democrats with the support of the trade unions and, incidentally, of Jewish leaders in local politics. Syrian-Jewish cooperation in Detroit politics seems to have little ideological basis; it is chiefly the hope for political spoils that brings them together. Indeed, some Syrian political leaders are even friendly to Israel and publicly contribute to the UJA!

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The low level of interest in political affairs is paralleled by a lack of interest in political ideology. The European Enlightenment of course left the Middle East virtually untouched until quite recently, which in part accounts for the failure of the Syrians to develop an intellectual tradition to sustain them here. Few Syrians (even allowing for the small number of the community) have become prominent in radical politics or thought, nor does the community itself support serious journalism or any other effort to evaluate the role of immigrants in American life. Discussion of problems such as cultural pluralism, assimilation, and so on, which traditionally agitated the intelligentsia of other immigrant groups, are dismissed with phrases such as “We’re all Americans and our main business is here.” The more recently arrived “Syrians,” many of whom are in fact Moslems from Palestine and Yemen, show a similar indifference, except toward Middle East politics, on which subject they have strong feelings. A large number of them have settled in the Detroit area where they are employed by the Ford Motor Company. They have a reputation as hard workers who are not much interested in union affairs but take great pains to please their superiors. Two members of the old Syrian community, Emil Mazey and George Addes, have attained important positions in the United Automobile Workers union, but not because of their connection with the Syrian community. In fact they are considered “radicals.”

Political conservatism among the Syrians probably derives from their traditional distrust of government, which they have found oppressive both before and after Turkish control of the Arab world. This outlook has been reinforced by their entrance into retail and wholesale trade here. Few of them became workers, and fewer still (especially in the earlier years) entered the large-scale industries where the CIO, depending on became workers, and fewer still (especially tion, made every effort to have its members vote Democratic. As businessmen, a large proportion of the Syrians adopted the prevailing political attitudes of their class. Moreover, they were probably repelled by some of the non-political features of the Democratic party machines—the rowdyism, the drinking, the free-and-easy behavior, all of which was strange and even dangerous to a group accustomed to a patriarchal family system, to restrictions upon wives and daughters, and to an intensive effort to earn a livelihood. Finally, the Democratic machines on their part seem to have ignored the Syrians.

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A special factor operated among Christian Arabs of the Eastern Orthodox faith. Belonging to a church divided along national-linguistic lines, they found little to attract them in Orthodox churches based on other language groups. Instead, where they had no church of their own (or where there was no Orthodox church of another national-linguistic group) they were drawn into Episcopal churches and came under the influence of politically conservative Americans of the middle and upper social classes. The reason for their attraction to the Protestant Episcopal Church, which is in communion with the Church of England, is to be found in the tortuous history of 19th-century international politics and religious controversies.

At that time, the Ottoman Empire was being dismembered by the European powers, among whom England and Russia were rivals for first place. Orthodox churches, closely attuned to political trends, were splitting off from the patriarchate at Constantinople and establishing themselves as separate national churches in the countries liberated from Ottoman rule. In this situation British foreign policy set itself the delicate task of encouraging Christian European nationalism within the Ottoman Empire, without letting the Orthodox churches fall under the influence of the Russian Orthodox patriarchate. The British, therefore, encouraged the separatist tendencies of the Orthodox churches, seeking to make them independent of both the Ottomans and the Russians. Foreign policy was aided here, consciously or unconsciously, by the established Church of England, which sought a special relationship with the Orthodox churches of the East, on the grounds that both were anti-papist. The Church of England sent missions to, and sponsored conferences with, the Orthodox churches; in recent decades relations have been further strengthened with the Orthodox Christians in the Arabic-speaking countries of the Middle East, where the Church of England has had missionary and educational programs of long standing.

Competing with the Russians, to some degree, in “protecting” the non-Catholic Christians in the Arab world, the British government and the established Church of England thus enjoyed a special position among the Orthodox Arabic-speaking peoples. When the Eastern Orthodox Syrians began to emigrate to the United States, they naturally turned to the American counterpart of their “protectors” at home, that is, the Protestant Episcopal Church, and thus fell under the influence of a socially conservative group.

The influences we have been discussing operate more strongly upon the older than upon the younger generation. The younger people are not unaffected, but their conscious response to their Syrian heritage is conditioned by their interpretation of its effect upon their position as Americans. The result is the familiar gulf between the generations. American-born Syrians grow up in a culture strikingly different from the one their parents knew. Their relationship to government and religion (their own and that of others), their attitudes toward work and play, are different. The “old country” to them is a place of poor, uneducated people with “old-fashioned” ideas about relations between men and women, or between parents and children—people who are only now beginning to “catch up” with the “modern” era. Nevertheless, over the past fifteen years or so, the younger people have experienced a revival of interest in their national culture and religion. The tides of Arab nationalism in the Middle East have weakened the old localism here too. Syrians, especially younger ones, are now more willing to refer to themselves and their tradition as Arab. The rise of independent Arab states, with prominent and polished spokesmen in the United Nations, has made the younger generation less reluctant to recognize their Arab heritage. The new image of the Arab—“Westernized,” skilled in diplomacy, influential in world affairs—is more suited to their own self-image as fully assimilated members of a powerful American nation. Arab neutralism has, however, recently introduced a disturbing element; for however strongly they support the independence of the Arab countries as against Western political influence, they think of these countries as Western and would like to see the Middle East move toward democracy at home and a pro-Western policy abroad.

The renewal of interest in the Arab heritage among the younger generations is thus not a rejection of “Americanization,” but a reflection of the degree of assimilation that has already occurred, and the acceptance of innocuous cultural differences as the new “American pattern.” Younger Syrians are now more willing to eat “Syrian” food and to introduce their friends to it, to attend the parties the older folks give and join in Arabic songs and dances, to listen to stories of the old country. Name-changing seems to have levelled off, perhaps because it was so frequent in the first American-born generation (Sham’un became Shannon, ‘Ashashi became Cook, Mãrun Moran, al-Khuri Corey, ‘Abbud Abbott). First names are now almost exclusively American.

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“Americanization” has transformed the Syrian Orthodox Church too. Under vigorous leadership, the Arabic language has been gradually eliminated from the service, choirs have displaced the single voice, the organ has been introduced, and the ancient Near Eastern or Byzantine melodies have been harmonized and Westernized. The local churches, moreover, have taken on the qualities of “community centers,” with recreational activities becoming more prominent. Americanization of the clergy has likewise been a deliberate policy; no one is ordained who has not been educated in America. The older generation has unsuccessfully resisted most of these innovations. Dr. Afif Tannous quotes (with his own emphasis on certain revealing words) the Orthodox priest in a small Syrian community in the Deep South: “Some members of the community were strongly opposed to some of the changes we introduced, but there is always a way to . . . keep the church prospering. We have to keep up with the times as they change; we must keep our church streamlined, if we are to compete successfully with other churches. Otherwise the new generation will lose interest.” In Detroit, this conflict between the generations reached such intensity that a church was split in two.

American mass culture has also penetrated areas of Syrian life other than the religious. Parties and “social functions” are now bilingual. The community has developed a group of professional entertainers who play American dance music, as well as the old Syrian tunes, and tell jokes that require a smattering of Arabic to be appreciated. The Syrians have a small number of summer resorts in the Catskills, and their wedding celebrations are the occasion for a conspicuous display of clothing and food. A form of poetry has developed which combines Arabic and English; the following couplet not only illustrates the form, but incidentally reveals the Syrians’ skeptical attitude toward the British-backed Arab revolt during World War I that brought fame to T. E. Lawrence and two crowns (first of Syria, then of Iraq) to his protégé, King Faisal:

B’sayfika am b’sayf al Inkilizi
Dakhalta ila Dimashk a’ Sham-easy?

(By your own sword or by the sword of the
   In-ki-li-zi [Englishman]
Did you enter Damascus so “easy”?)

A few entertainers have been able to break out of the Syrian “borscht circuit.” The most famous of them is comedian Danny Thomas who responds as generously to Syrian groups as do Jewish entertainers to Jewish community organizations and the UJA. (His relations with his Jewish colleagues are excellent.) He has injected bits of Syrian references into his material, much as the more numerous Jewish comedians have done with Jewish lore. Last spring, for example, when he presented some of the “Emmy” awards sponsored by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, he remarked that he himself had not been nominated this year. “I was too busy guarding the Canal,” he explained. He hastened to add that he was not Egyptian but Lebanese, and then told an inoffensive Yiddish dialect joke about the Canal.

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Much of the space in the American Syrian press is devoted to the reporting of achievements in various fields, to personal news, and to organizational affairs. This is more characteristic of the English-language than of the Arabic-language publications, which carry more literary articles and more news of international politics. Probably because they are a relatively small community, the Syrians have not been able to sustain any serious journalism or literary magazines in either language. The trend, indeed, is toward increasing triviality and mediocrity. A recent addition to the English-language magazines is cutely “wholesome” and vigorously “American”—a “family” publication with fiction, stories of the Arab past, sports articles, children’s stories, recipes for Syrian dishes, all spiced with Arabic phrases. The folksy tone is reminiscent of the “daily bulletin” at a summer resort: “Frankly, we’re pleased as punch to bring this first issue . . . to you.” To those who helped put out the magazine the editor gave “a resounding slap on the back” and “a special ‘thank ya, podners.’”

Such journalism is painful to many Syrians of an older generation aware of Arab literary traditions, as well as to younger intellectuals who lack the knowledge of Arabic necessary to appreciate and carry on these traditions. Before the First World War the Syrian community here supported several serious literary journals in which writers and poets experimented with freer forms than traditional Arab culture permitted. Intellectual life was intense. “Assimilation” proceeded, however, and both the writers and their audience declined in number, for the Arabic language was not perpetuated among the native-born generations. To them the language was too “different” and held no cultural values they wanted to maintain; it was a mark of foreign—therefore of inferior—origin. In South America, by contrast, where Syrians confronted a culture they held inferior to their own, and an economy and political system no more “modern” than the one they had fled, Arabic-language literature flourishes. The younger generation there has not only continued but even developed the community’s cultural life; many of them are better read in the Arabic language, and more interested in Arab affairs, than the less educated members of the older generations.

As an immigrant group the Syrians may thus be said to have gone through much the same processes as others in America. The effects of domestic and international politics in their home countries have been felt only very recently, but then Arab nationalism has been a political force only since about 1914, when it coincided with the intensification of Jewish nationalism. The Arab-Jewish confrontation in the Middle East is different from what it is in America. Here the Jews are the more numerous and influential, whereas in the Middle East Israel faces an Arab domain whose potential power is greater.

To what extent can Syrian-Jewish relations in America affect Arab-Israeli relations in the Middle East? Some Jews believe that an “American” approach to Middle East problems by American-born Syrians and Jews would facilitate a rapprochement in the Middle East. Such hopes seem naive. The current flows in the other direction—the conflict in the Middle East affects Syrians and Jews here far more than they can affect events over there, for a simple reason: in the area of conflict sovereign states and whole nations are in embattled contact, while in America Syrians and Jews are both small minorities whose major interests lie in this country rather than abroad. Whatever cultural significance Arab-Jewish confrontation may hold for the two groups in America, it is not likely to affect seriously the historic confrontation of Arabs and Israelis in the Middle East.

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