Making a Life, Building a Community places Hartford within the larger contexts of American social, urban, ethnic, and Jewish history by comparing its unique experience to those of New England and other American Jewish communities.

Drawing extensively on primary sources such as synagogue minute books, newspapers, family memoirs, and an important new collection of oral histories, the authors skillfully document internal divisions and issues of communal cohesiveness. This careful study will be illuminating for anyone interested in American social or ethnic history and the immigrant experience.