The Daily Bulletin Archive

Gerhard Falk, professor of sociology, has published his 23rd book: The German Jews in America: A Minority Within a Minority. This study is based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to the effect that language determines the real world as perceived by all of us. This means that German Jews who did not speak Jewish, as was true of 95 percent of Jewish immigrants to the United States, became alienated from the American Jewish community. Likewise, Sicilians are a minority within the Italian community, as are Swiss German speakers within the German community, etc. The principal conclusion of this book supports the view that all ethnics are not the same. The book shows that rates of assimilation and enculturation also differ between language subcultures, as do practices associated with the social institutions.