Postville: When Cultures Collide

Narrator: This is Postville, Iowa, a tiny farming community in the northeast corner of the state, 20 miles from the Mississippi River, 30 minutes from the nearest McDonald's, and light-years from the kind of place where multiculturalism usually takes root. The town's big claim to fame is that John R. Mott, winner of the 1946Nobel Peace Prize, spent his childhood here. And though few residents can recall exactly what Mr. Mott did, most everyone knows that he was a Christian and that his actions, whatever they were, must have been great. Men: 1 2 3 kick! 1 2 3 kick! Narrator: Postville is home to the celebrated Lawn Chair Brigade. [ Cow moos ] It rears some of the Midwest's most promising cattle wranglers. [ Cow moos ] Plus, it proudly boasts its own tourist accommodations. And while most vacation getaways offer predictable views of city skylines or scenic landscapes, the Pines Motel provides a refreshing vista of...

a pen of goats. [ Goats bleat ] [ Congregation singing, organ playing ] For nearly 150 years, Postville was all white, all Christian, and all but removed from melting-pot America. The kind of thing that people would say is that if you say the Meyers, the Schraders, and the Schultzes, you've said 'em all. And there's some truth in that. Choir: ♪ Amen ♪ Narrator: Postville is located in a state where the population growth is 1/4 the national average, and the town's last official census recorded just 1 people. So when 300 Hasidic Jews, 400 Mexicans, and dozens of Eastern Europeans migrated to this quiet farming community, well, let's just say the residents might have been less surprised if Jesus Christ himself had popped out of the nearest soybean field.

When they went up the street, I thought, "Oh, my goodness' sakes. What are they doing here?" [ Chuckling ] You know? Well, I wasn't sure I was in the right place. I think a lot of people are like me. We'd never seen any, you know, Orthodox Jews. We'd never been around any Eastern Europeans -- no Russians, Mexicans -- never. You know, I mean, we just never seen them. It was all just the same Anglo people that -- that we'd known all our life was the only people we ever seen. Choir: ♪ Lord, have mercy ♪ Foels: I guess I didn't imagine that this is what would happen. And I guess it makes me nervous to see what's going to happen in the next 10 years and what's going to happen to our town. Are they going to be -- You know, is it going to be good for our town? Are they going to, you know, bring more jobs? You know, is everything going to change, or is everybody going to move out? Are they all that's going to be here?

Narrator: It'd be easy to simply dismiss this rural community as a late bloomer in the flourishing field of diversity. But Postville is more than just some provincial meat-and-potatoes town struggling to appreciate tacos and pita bread. It's a place that reflects the same ethnic, cultural, and religious conflicts that plague cities all across the country, but because of its secluded environment and limited population, Postville illustrates these issues in a much clearer fashion. In many larger cities, ethnic grocery stores dot the street corners. Enclaves like Chinatown and Little Mexico are commonplace, and the brisk tempo of life often allows the complex issues surrounding diversity to be lost in the shuffle. But here in a town that's just five blocks wide and nine blocks long, people from varied backgrounds have no choice but to run into each other in the post office, to live in the same neighborhood, and to confront the dilemmas of diversity on a daily basis.

[ Bicycle bell dings ] Because it's void of big-city stimuli, Postville could very well be the control subject in the 21st-century American experiment. It's the kind of place that allows us to examine the limits and the limitations of multiculturalism. It requires us to re-evaluate what the American Dream has come to mean today and to ponder just whose dream will shape the future. Bloom: I think it's really a story about how people deal with differences. I think it's a story about how people are different and how people want to maintain their differences and what we as Americans are going to do to to maintain our country, our general sense of -- of Americans, our ethos as one people, 'cause America isn't one person anymore. It's not one group of people. It's made up with so many different kinds of people

who don't necessarily have their faith and loyalty directed at America itself. They're directed at their own individual faiths, their own individual heritages. It raises really troubling and, at the same time, fascinating questions about who we are as a nation. So I think it resonates throughout America. [ Cow moos ] Narrator: Change may not always be easy to accept, but when it shows up in the form of a 10-foot menorah, it's certainly hard to ignore. For the people of Postville, the first sign of change arrived in 1988 when a family of Hasidic Jews from New York bought an abandoned slaughterhouse on the outskirts of town. In a region where pigs outnumber humans 5 to 1 the Hasidic owners, guided by religious laws that prohibit the consumption of pork, opened a kosher meat plant. They posted an exaggerated menorah at its entrance and promptly began processing chickens, turkeys, cattle, lamb -- everything but hogs.

We were always on the kosher end business in New York. And what was happening is that the supply side, slaughterhouses, were closing up at an accelerated rate through the '80s. And the idea here was to come out to the source, where the cattle are, and produce the kosher meat here and ship it out. This is the only plant that's designed and run by people who care about kosher. The Jewish people who care about kosher other are kosher operations, and not many, maybe one or two or three in the whole country. Narrator: To oversee the intricate process of koshering meat, the plant recruited nearly 30 trained rabbis. The rabbis brought their families, friends and relatives followed, and soon Hasidic Jews from New York, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv were embracing cornfields, cattle farms, and backyard barbecues. [ Woman singing in Yiddish ] Goldsmith: First impressions? Norman Rockwell -- small-town America, you know, small-town Americana, you know?

It really is like the American dream of what an American small town should be. Postville's not only the American dream, but, too, I think for an Orthodox Jew, it's the double American dream, because most Orthodox Jewish communities are -- are set right in the middle of major cities -- you know, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago. So to be a part of a vibrant Jewish community, 99% of the time you're forced into a major city environment. This is one of the few small towns in all of America that has a vibrant Jewish community, but it has all the beauty and benefits of small-town life. Yosef: It's the most unusual observant community, I think, in America, and it's, uh -- it's for real, though. It isn't, uh, made up. It's not Hollywood. It's -- It's not on film. It's -- It's every day. [ Man singing in Yiddish ] Goldsmith: It's wonderful. And now we have a place where we're really more at home

with the way we are. You know, in Israel, 2 years ago, many Jews were farmers. It was only when when all the different groups came in and exiled the Jews out of it and sent them in other countries, wouldn't let them own lands for hundreds of years, that Jewish people lost their connection to the land. And now, you know, in Postville, we have this feeling, and it's pretty much like coming home. Narrator: For people who felt like they were coming home, the Jews experienced quite a case of culture shock. To these big-city dwellers, Postville was a foreign land, one where the natives practiced obscure rituals, like smiling at people in the grocery store and waving to neighbors on the street. Hyman: We do not lock our cars. We do not take the keys out of the ignition. We are very trustworthy people. And when the "foreigners" to our town came and they didn't wave and they didn't say hi and so on, people got a little bit, "What's going on here?" Leah: Most people that came

from the Jewish community to Postville are used to living in big cities where nobody has time for you and nobody is interested. When we came to town, you know, everybody's waving. I mean... "Hey, do I know that person? Did I forget who it was or something?" Like, you're always wondering, till you realize, "Hey, this is just what everybody does. Everybody comes and says hello because you are another human being and they want to acknowledge your existence," whereas in New York, you know, you're walking down the street, someone's coming towards you, and they just, like, run right past you. They don't even say hello. And you know them! [ Laughs ] It's not like it's a new person, you know? They're just too busy to take the time to acknowledge that you passed them. Basya: Here it's a matter of learning that you can wave to people and say hello, and, you know, on one hand, you want to teach your kids not to wave at strangers. On the other hand, you know, it's a very normal thing. You raise your fingers, you know, you're driving, and "hello" to every car you pass, you know? I can't imagine doing that in New York, you know> Somebody would think there's something the matter with you. Bloom: Some of the Jews came to Postville and were just used to cities,

and some of them had never driven cars before. And there are stories in the early days, in the late '80s, of Jews roaring down Lawler Street at 40 and 50 miles an hour. Other Jews made -- made U-turns downtown. That just wasn't done. And when the police chief stopped some of them, some of the Jews offered him a bribe, and the police chief said, "Hey, you just don't do that here. I'm not sure where you're from, if it's done there, but we don't do it here." Narrator: Disregarding a few unexpected traffic tickets, the Jews reveled in their version of the American dream and attributed their newfound fortune to divine intervention. The locals, on the other hand, wondered just what in God's name was going on. I know when they first come to town, it was -- you know, it was kind of the talk of a four-county area. You know, people would drive by on Saturdays and say, "Why are all these people wearing winter hats? You know, it's July.

I really don't understand what's going on." So I think it did -- I think it did scare a lot of people. The big long black coats and the big fur hats in the middle of the summer -- aren't they hot? But I suppose they're used to it, so maybe their metabolism's different than ours. Schroeder: I would say probably some of the old pioneers, the old Postville people, probably felt strange, you know, walking down the street and seeing their young boys and with their beanies. I think the change in scenery and the change in just walking down the street -- sometimes I see -- I can go down a block and I see maybe 6 8 9 10different people that I don't even know, see? So this is what's strange. You don't see, "Hi, Joe," you know? "Jack, how are you?" You just don't do that anymore. It's -- It's -- It's strange people. Basya: People are asking, you know, "Well, what do I say when I come to your door and what do I --" You say, "Hello," you know? [ Laughs ]

It's pretty basic, but, you know, I guess if you grow up in a small community -- I know often I'd ask people, you know, "Where are you from?" And they'd say, "Oh, I'm not from here." "Where are you from?" "Oh, I'm from, you know, a city 10 miles down the road." "Oh. You're not from here. No." [ Laughing ] You know? Goldsmith: One time I went to one merchant, and he got to be very friendly with me, and he said, you know, "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?" I said, "Yeah, go ahead." So he said, "Do Jewish people use banks?" And I was, like, stunned by the question. But I said, "Well, yes. Why do you ask that question?" So he said, "Well, all the Jewish customers that ever came in here gave us cash." And I burst out laughing because he had the kind of a business that if, in L.A. or New York, you tried to give the guy a check, he would call the police right away and have you carried away, so nobody had -- You know, I mean, you come to a place like Iowa and you can write checks for your gas, you cannot dream to do that in California or New York. Nobody would even think to accept that kind of an idea. So instead of thinking about big city, small city, he automatically thought about Jews and banks

and all these other things, but -- but it's cute nevertheless. Narrator: In Postville, nothing brings out gossip quite like a stack of pancakes and a bottomless cup of coffee. So with yarmulkes suddenly surfacing in this inherently seed-cap community, the local cafe began brewing more dialog than decaf. I think everybody was just a little bit, you know, like -- like if you, uh, see a bear coming toward you, you know, like, your first reaction is, you know, "How are we going to take to one another?" Never in my born days did I ever think anything like this would be in Postville. It was kind of like when -- when, um, we joined the Lutheran church and it was a lot of -- it was really German background. I was Norwegian, and, you know, it's just a little change. It's almost like "you're invading my country" sort of thing. [ Laughs ] Narrator: Technically,

the majority of the town's new citizens were Lubavitcher Jews, members of a prominent Hasidic movement started in Lubavitch, Russia. For Lubavitchers, daily life revolves around the 613 commandments found in the Torah, among them, a series of strict dietary rules. Hasidic Jews are forbidden from mixing dairy and meat products and do not consider food edible if it has come in contact with pots, pans, plates, or silverware that have touched non-kosher food. In the beginning, though, the only thing the locals knew about these Jewish newcomers was that they refused to join the rest of the community for a bite to eat at the popular but non-kosher Postville Bakery. Drahn: There were lots of people that, you know, when these people first came, said, you know, "What's the deal with these strange people walking around?" Some of our people, you know, would speak to these people or want to include them in their "coffee klatches," so to speak, those type of things, because that's the way we are in northeast Iowa, and a lot of us with a strong German background that we should, you know, greet our neighbor,

take them coffee and cookies and whatever, and these people weren't into that. So that part, I think, was -- was real tough. Bloom: I think oftentimes in America and throughout the world, breaking bread is the way people get to know each other. But that can't happen in Postville because there are too many strictures and rules that, um, require a certain way of preparation. So there was no way for the Jews to get to know the locals over dinner. One man I interviewed wanted so badly to meet a Lubavitcher that he went up to that person and he said, "Why don't you come over to my house for Kool-Aid and cookies?" And the Lubavitcher just walked by him and said, "No. I can't do that. I could never do that." So I think what happened was, right from the beginning, the stringent rules of the Hasidic Jews in Postville precluded their getting to know the locals. Schlee: It seems like we're conforming to their ways

more than than they are because I know years ago, when somebody new would come to town, you'd invite them in and -- or go take something over to them and get acquainted or invite them to church or something. But you can't because they can't go to your church or they can't eat your food or drink from your cup or -- And that's hard. It's hard when you're used to being so sociable. [ Bell dings ] Narrator: In no time, the standard cafe talk of soybean prices and high-school sports was replaced with newly discovered tidbits about the town's newest residents, like the fact that Hasidic Jews are forbidden from working, from driving, and even from turning electricity on or off during the Sabbath, that, out of modesty, all married females wear wigs to conceal their natural hair, and that Hasidic men and women generally don't interact unless they're married to one another. That idea of segregating the sexes really got people riled up. From the men at the men's table to the women at the women's table,

they just couldn't stop talking about those confusing Jewish customs. [ Man calling in Hebrew ] [ Children responding in Hebrew ] To their dismay, the locals found the Hasidic children no less baffling. In these parts, a kid wasn't a kid unless he lived on good old pork hot dogs, yet these Jewish youngsters couldn't even eat animal crackers that were shaped like pigs. [ Children responding in Hebrew ] And as if that wasn't strange enough, these kids, instead of answering questions with the standard "You betcha," insisted on responding with a perplexing "Yes, thank God." Drahn: With the Jewish people, because their religion is so different -- they're not Christians, this type of thing -- they didn't send their children to public school, they didn't, uh -- they didn't worship in one of our houses of worship, we had -- we had problems with that. [ Speaking Hebrew ] Narrator: For as long as anyone here could remember,

newcomers to Postville had always assimilated into the community. They joined the PTA and dutifully whipped up cookies for the school bake sale. Their children starred in the church Christmas pageants and were fierce competitors in the annual Easter egg hunt. But when the Hasidic Jews moved to town, the local ritual of integration came to an abrupt halt. Bloom: I think the locals, on their part, were surprised because every newcomer to Postville, whether it was Catholics or Presbyterians or Episcopalians, they all wanted to be folded into the local society. The Jews did not. Hasidic Jews in Postville really don't care what the locals think. They just will operate the same way they have operated, whether it's in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York, or whether it's in Postville. It really doesn't make any difference. [ Men singing in Hebrew ] People have to understand them --

their rules and their procedures. They're really not terribly interested in fitting in. They don't want to fit in. [ Men speaking Hebrew ] Yosef: The truth of the matter is, in order to be kosher, you have to be somewhat separate. By its very nature, we can't eat the foods that they eat, and it isn't that we don't want to like them or be with them, it's that we just can't be with them and we have to maintain some separateness, and even to protect our own children from assimilation, we have to keep them separate. And that's just a fact and a way of life if you are to keep this thousands-of-year-old tradition going. You have to be somewhat separate. [ Men singing in Hebrew ] Miller: The one thing that's real different between the two groups is this long, long sense of anti-Semitism, and that's just different.

And so people have already been taught that there is something... you know, fearful enough about the Jews that -- and, you know, that's part of a German -- Now, they're coming to a German community. And during World War II, Jews weren't particularly well treated in Germany, you know, and so I think sometimes, even though those things are not expressed or even thought about, they're just there. [ Men singing in Hebrew ] Bluma: Back in World War II, when Hitler had the camps and people were taken as groups and exterminated, I think that has done something to most of our people, our Jewish people. It keeps them on guard, and I think that sometimes people worry that, in every time, there's always a bad person that could come along and do something. So maybe that's why they keep their guard up just a little bit, so that they don't get pulled in by somebody who's bad.

[ Men singing in Hebrew ] Miller: When you get trained from little on to be that you are a group that people are afraid of and are willing to kill in mass numbers, you begin to kind of be a little bit hesitant about how you relate with other communities, and I think that's why, in my estimation, why the Jewish community is -- is so closely knit the way they are, because they're going to keep their integrity by being very bounded and very specific and rigorous about how they do certain things. [ Men singing in Hebrew ] Narrator: Though the locals wouldn't have dared to contest the theories behind the Jewish community's isolation, they couldn't help but find the social segregation hard to swallow. To the people of Postville, the spirit of community is as sacred as any religious practice, and to hear the natives tell it, committing blasphemy could be as simple as forgoing the annual Ag Days parade. [ Drums beating rhythmically ] [ Playing "Eye of the Tiger" ]

The desire to endure sporadic rain showers to see a next-door neighbor tow a bloated bovine down Main Street may seem incomprehensible to many urbanites. But rural America revolves around the concept of community. When drought threatens area crops, residents pull together for moral support. When a farmer falls ill, neighbors pitch in to finish his harvest. In Postville, a place known for its brutal winters, blistering summers, and around-the-clock-farmwork, interaction is essential for survival. So when newcomers don't honor the civic bond, it's a startling violation of the small-town code of ethics. Schlee: Well, the Jewish really don't participate in anything. I mean, I don't think they want to communicate with us. It is frustrating because you think that when they come, they'd want to be part of it. but when they don't want to, it's hard to understand why. Well, if they don't want to be part of Postville,

they shouldn't have came here. Our back door is a Jew. I don't know him because we have not been -- They have their way, and we have ours. All: 1 2 3 kick! 1 2 3 kick! Marks: In a small Iowa town, there's a sense that the town is -- has a life of its own. It's an entity. And if you're going to join into our entity, you need to participate in it. We try to convey the message that it's important for us to learn about their culture, to help celebrate those cultures. It is equally important for them to learn our culture and to help us celebrate our culture. [ Horn honks ] Bloom: I think the Postville people have been stretched to the limit of tolerance. I think they've done everything they possibly can to embrace these newcomers, and they've been snubbed.

Narrator: Stung by the Jews' breach of small-town etiquette, the locals took solace in the belief that things couldn't get much worse. But that was before these Hasidic newcomers committed one of the biggest sins known to Midwestern man. They didn't take care of their lawns. That was the major thing. I would like to see the yards kept up better than what they are on some of the cultural people. Ever since I've been here, we, I think, took pride in our yards, you know -- mowed nicely -- and this is the hardest to get used to because they do not mow. Narrator: To the untrained eye, nearly every yard in Postville seems straight off the pages of Better Homes & Gardens. But to the natives, people who battle it out for the coveted Lawn of the Month award and who proudly uphold the city's "grass no longer than 4 inches ordinance," the place was in shambles. Goldsmith: People mowing the lawns in small towns -- it's a very big issue.

You know, you have a lot of people who are retired and they can mow their lawn 12 times a week. The average Jewish member of the community is a young person with a number of kids working hard to keep food on the table, so probably mowing the lawn is lower on the list. Narrator: Of course, the Jews were dealing with more than just a militant gang of greenthumbers. In this area, most everyone knows that the first sign of a city's demise is when people stop caring about its appearance. And with so many of America's small towns struggling, no one here dared tempt fate. Marks: If you are a Midwestern American, you know that you mow your lawn once a week, whether it needs it or not. If you grew up in a place where they don't have lawns, you don't know that, and by the middle of May, the grass is knee-high and your neighbors are looking down their noses at you and you don't know why. Narrator: In a town where denim is thought to enhance the beauty of flowers and where shrunken replicas of beloved grandparents grace front yards, the line separating revered landscapes from questionable ones would seem a touch vague.

But in this land of dubious lawn art, one thing was clear -- the townsfolk knew a good yard when they saw it. The Jews, it was said, did not. Sholom: A lot of these people had no involvement with flowers and grass, and a lot of people here are from city people, and we need help from them how to adapt, the same way the Westerners learned from the Indians. Goldsmith: I think that -- that there is some under-the-surface things, so when you don't want to talk about big issues, just talk about small issues. If you feel uncomfortable about your neighbor and you don't really know how to approach them and maybe you don't want to approach them but you want to get out some of your -- call it "let off some steam," you can focus on the lawn. Narrator: In reality, the problems in Postville probably weren't the type that could be solved with a good hedge trimming, and though it was hard for the locals to concede, their frustration may have had less to do with green lawns than it did with greenbacks. Bloom: Postville 15 years ago was a city on the skids.

I think some of the Postville people were miffed that these outsiders from Brooklyn, New York, came in and made this place hum and made it really work. So I think there was a sense of, um -- of, "Well, why couldn't we make it work? Why couldn't some of us? Why couldn't an Iowan make it work? Why did these people have to come in from 1 miles away and now it's really successful?" Narrator: In a town sustained by Midwestern pride, it was the New Yorkers with the foreign customs and the penchant for separation who brought economic stability. In addition to creating 400 new jobs, buying up long vacated real estate, and expanding the town's tax base, the Jews became Postville's savior in the ongoing war against rural America's decline. [ Bell tolling ] During a time when banks were foreclosing on family farms, retail stores were being forced to shut their doors, and small-town residents were fleeing for the big city.

Postville, Iowa, became an unlikely boomtown. Wahls: Every other community has people going out without people coming in. I could take you to a town 20 30 miles from here and 10 15 20 houses for sale. If you find a house for sale in Postville, you better buy it, 'cause tomorrow it won't be there. I think it's a growing community, probably one of the few that is growing right now. Looney: Our town is not dying no more. You know, it's not maybe exactly what everybody wanted, but there is a vitality to Postville, you know? You see people walking. You see people talking. You know, new people are coming in. For long periods of time, we didn't have any of that. All we'd have is, "Do you know such-and-such a place is going to close?" or "This is going to close," and it's not that way anymore, you know? So I-I think this vitality part is -- for me, has been really great. I know that, you know, Postville is going to survive. It isn't going to just dry up and be gone. Bloom: I think there's a separate peace

that has been made. I think the Jews brought wealth, brought power, and, uh, brought a special kind of influence to this tiny town. And I think the locals, on one hand, feel that their economic plight is much, much sounder, but there are issues to contend with. Narrator: As it turned out, some of the most controversial issues in Postville didn't have to do with the Jews at all but rather with whom the Jews were hiring. Like processing plants across the country, Postville's kosher operation relies on immigrant workers, people more than happy to endure such harsh conditions for a shot at their American dream. But Postville has had a hard time accepting the modern-day face of immigration, one much less European-looking than the one that settled this German town. Granted, the Jews hadn't exactly been the new neighbors this town had hoped for, but take away their distinctive facial hair and their aversion to pork tenderloin, and they would have made fine Iowans.

This other breed of newcomers -- now, they were altogether different. I don't think the religious differences is a problem. It's more so racial, I would say. And part of that's our own fault. I mean, this area has been largely white for a good many years. But, uh... I think I was perhaps in high school before I probably saw my first Black person. Unfortunately, there are some people who are afraid to say hi. You know, they just say, "There's the Mexican. He's probably got a knife." I'm not going to name any names, but I wish some of the people in this town would lighten up a little bit. It's kind of hard. There's a lot of prejudice in this town, and kind of makes me sick at times. Narrator: While the Jews seemed in a perpetual hurry and rarely stopped to chat, the Mexicans reveled in the casual pace of small-town life and, like the locals, made themselves at home on Main Street,

yet somehow, when the Mexicans graced the sidewalk, it just didn't have the same charm as when the guys from the feed store gathered on the corner to chat. Schlee: I hoped that it would be like it was then, where you could -- the little kids could play on the street and not be scared, but I know they're scared now. You don't let them walk home after a ballgame or after church or after anything. You are there to pick them up and take them, make sure they get home okay, because it is scary. Gourarie: The Mexicans -- they are, like, scary. They're always staring at people. And Jews aren't like that. They're also a different culture. We're like -- We're still American, and they're, like, from a different country, and so it's different. They're much different than us. Leontieva: I don't see any -- I haven't seen any Americans that are friends with Jewish people or just any Russians that are friends with Jews, but... I think the Mexicans are just hated more. Narrator: While living around Hasidic Jews encouraged the locals to learn the basics of Judaism,

living around Mexicans provided a different kind of inspiration. For starters, it inspired the police to patrol the streets more often. Halse: I know one of the complaints everybody has is how they hang around in groups. The citizens have gotten a little bit afraid. We've increased our patrol and -- to protect the citizens that are concerned about that. You see all these Mexicans hanging out or in groups or whatever, and that's what a lot of outside people see, and I know that's a sore spot with our local people because we don't want to get that reputation or whatever and, well, get the name of Little Mexico or whatever, I guess. [ Crow caws ] Narrator: Moreover, the influx of Mexicans motivated some people to raise real-estate prices in hopes of keeping these immigrants in the trailer courts rather than having them move in next door. Hyman: The Hispanic population has kind of a negative connotation about it. Quite frankly, there are homes in town which are overpriced.

Plain and simple. And that's, I would assume, a legal way that you can control who buys your home. Garcia: See, I speak perfect English. When you go and they see you, then they change their mind. Why is that? I don't say it to their face because I know it's just their ignorance. They don't -- They don't trust us because we're from another nationality. That's what it is. But then you got guys, you know, people around here that rent. They're more than happy to rent to you, you know, because, you know, we're only human. We need somewhere to live. But there's a lot of racists. But it's not hard racists. It's not bad racists. It's just they're ignorant to nationality. [ Congregation singing ] Narrator: While insurmountable religious differences were blamed for the isolation of the Jewish community, it soon became clear that even Jesus Christ couldn't unite the locals and the Mexicans. [ Singing continues ]

Unlike the Jews, who had established their own house of worship, the Mexicans were delighted to join Postville's Catholic church. But when Spanish became the primary language of the Saturday night service, well, let's just say it gave new meaning to the phrase "mass exodus," as some members of the congregation were so appalled by the thought of Bible passages in Spanish, they drove to another town to worship. Fr. Ouderkirk: It threatens their way of life and all of this, and what does this mean? "How am I going to have to change? It's too scary." Another big thing for the parish is, "Well, how far will this mass in Spanish go? Now they have it on Saturday night. How about comes the day when they want to have it on Sunday? Now, this means they're sitting in my pew. They're sitting in the same place where I usually sat." Yeah. And people get real threatened by things like that because they -- they've never had that happen to them before.

Now it's happening. [ Singing in Spanish ] Narrator: Although they probably never would have admitted it to the coffee klatch crowd, some locals privately confessed that the Spanish Mass was the highlight of their week. Others, though, just shook their God-fearing heads and wondered why these newcomers couldn't just learn English. Of course, if people hadn't been so distracted by the bizarre language echoing through the sanctuary, they might have recalled that up until the 1950s, Postville's Lutheran Church conducted its services in German. [ Speaking Spanish ] They should give other people a chance, too. For one thing, 'cause of our color -- we're much darker, and -- and I think they're just not, you know, used to us being here. [ Drum beating rhythmically ] Narrator: The Mexicans may not have looked the way the natives expected immigrants to look, but the Hasidic Jews certainly didn't act the way the locals expected newcomers to act.

[ Cymbal crashes ] Bloom: In terms of the Postville Hasidim, they came as different from this -- from the traditional rags-to-riches immigrant story as possible. They came to Postville, they bought homes in Postville, they bought a factory in Postville, and they were immediately the ruling class. [ Klezmer music playing ] Narrator: It's often said that money brings power, and around here, power means having the ability to go out and throw your own parade. Word of the Jews' march down Main Street rang through town like church bells on a Sunday morning, leaving quite a few locals looking to the heavens for an explanation. The way they remembered the grade-school history lessons, immigrants were to leave their customs, languages, and distinctive dress behind and blend in to the American melting pot. But, apparently, the Hasidic Jews had missed that chapter yet. [ Girls calling, children responding ] Narrator: Of course, the vast majority

of these so-called immigrants were actually full-blooded Americans. But that technicality wasn't about to stop the locals from viewing them as full-blown foreigners... foreigners who refused to follow the textbook rules of immigration and foreigners who, many locals feared, were intent on taking over this Christian town. Yosef: It is not our intention to make them Jewish. It's not our intention to reject their religion. It's simply that we are not interested in what they think. When you celebrate life, how could you think that somebody would say, "This is not good"? We just simply don't worry about what they think. They worry about what they think. When they have a parade, a Christmas parade, they don't worry about what the local Jewish population thinks. They don't even care. And you know what? Our attitude is, "Enjoy! Have a good time!" That's all we we want from them to do for us. Just leave us be and let us enjoy life.

Enjoy it with us. [ Klezmer music playing ] Goldsmith: Jews are not in Israel with Moses anymore. Things changed. Most of the communities that are here in Postville came from Germany. They came from -- from Norway. They came from other places. Those things changed, too. So they didn't have a problem a few generations ago demanding and expecting that the world should accommodate them, so why today do they feel that that's taking away? Yosef: We are not going to hide ourselves. And there really isn't anywhere to hide, especially in a small town. We're just doing what we would do even if we were in a ghetto behind a wall and soldiers on the outside. We would still do these things. The American system is designed to allow two very different groups to get along and tolerate each other. Don't have to love each other. We have to tolerate each other. That's the beauty of America. [ Music continues ]

[ Music stops, chicken clucks ] Narrator: Persuading the locals that the beauty of America was centered on individual expression rather than community cohesion would be like trying to convince this county-fair crowd that the prize rooster can lay eggs. [ Chicken clucking ] Bloom: It used to be that people would come to America and want to be part of America. That is happening no more in many instances. The Postville Jews epitomize that. They don't really embrace America. They don't embrace Postville. They embrace themselves, their own culture, their own legacy. But they really don't care that much about America. They don't care that much about Postville. And I think, increasingly, there are other strident groups who come to America, who flourish in America, but who also erect walls and don't want to be contaminated by the rest of America. I think it's markedly different from how America used to be,

because certain ethnic groups truly want to remain above and apart from the rest of this nation. [ Cow moos ] Narrator: If there was one foreign phrase the locals felt comfortable with, it was "E Pluribus Unum" -- from many, one. From many people, one language. From many people, one community. From many people, one way of life. I think if you would go to their place, you'd have to learn their culture, so why shouldn't they learn ours when they come here? Hey, you! Grey: When you really press people who have concerns about this, what they really want is they want -- they want linguistic assimilation, they want cultural assimilation, but when you really push them about their willingness to accommodate people in terms of social assimilation, then they start to back off. Narrator: Iowa is a state where immigrants now make up 65% of the population growth. [ Speaking Spanish ]

It's a state where unemployment figures hover at all-time lows and the governor believes immigration may be the only way to reach Iowa's economic goal. [ Speaking Spanish ] And it's a state where, according to a Des Moines Register poll, 59% of residents disapprove of Iowa's plan to encourage immigration. Marks: I'm not sure what percentage of the population really understands that if it were not for the immigrants, Postville would cease to exist. Go. Go. "Guh." "Guh." Go. Alondra? In Postville, many people talk about how frustrating it is that the public school has to teach English to immigrant children. Fewer talk about how if the immigrant population left town, 10 teachers would have to be laid off. You know, "awesome" means that it was something really what? Cool? Really cool. Okay. Really cool. Narrator: Many people talk about how the country is supposed to be a melting pot. Fewer talk about just what they really mean by that term. Grey: A lot of established residents will ask me about, "Well, shouldn't this be a melting pot?"

Or they insist upon an American history which is based on the metaphor of the melting pot. Then you take it the next step and ask, "Okay. Well, what would it take for that to happen today? What would it take for a melting pot? As you understand it, what would it take for a melting pot to happen today?" And that's where people -- well, they either have some pretty hard opinions about that -- "Well, I'm talking about -- I mean, they have to learn English immediately, of course, and they have to take mainstream jobs and they've got to stop migrating back and forth to Mexico. And they've got to -- they've got to -- They've just got to cut off all their ties to their previous culture and become American." [ Indistinct conversation ] The notion of what an American is or what it takes to become an American -- those things are very, very narrowly defined. [ Speaking Spanish ] Despite the fact that people insist upon using the metaphor of a melting pot, a lot of people have some pretty clear ideas about who's welcome and who isn't.

[ Speaking Spanish ] A lot of people take great pride in their ethnic background. I am proud of being Danish. I am proud of being Norwegian. It's important to people. They put their Norwegian flags out on the front porch. But Mexicans want to do the same thing. Hondurans want to do the same thing. The Lao want to do the same thing. And when those kinds of celebrations come up, a lot of Anglos and a lot of white people with European backgrounds are quite uncomfortable with them. Down the road, we're going to face these very interesting questions about whether or not the communities which have experienced rapid influxes -- rapid influxes of Latinos and others -- Are those towns going to adjust their own rituals... their own celebrations, to reflect the changing nature of their -- of their ethnic composition? [ Singing in Spanish ] Narrator: In a town centered on tradition,

the Taste of Postville Festival could be seen as the changing of the guard, with multiculturalism replacing the melting pot as the new paradigm for cultural relations. Here, Jewish kids took a crack at Mexican-made piñatas, hog farmers devoured kosher cuisine, and people usually wary of the Hispanic community had second helpings of tacos and tamales. Salsa? If the "show me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are" is true, then for one day in August, the people of Postville were voracious multiculturalists. I don't even know how to eat it. You unwrap it. Unwrap it? What is that, Stephen? That's what I said. No, it's banana leaves, okay? Banana peel. Banana leaves, not banana peel. It's a good community, it's a fast-changing community, and it has growing problems. And now you're seeing some of the people that were native here that, 40 50 years, are all of a sudden saying, "Hey, some of this food, some of these customs -- it's an interesting thing." It's like being world traveling

without traveling from your home. That's tortilla? Narrator: To many locals, this whole idea of diversity seemed far more appealing on a full stomach. But for many of America's minorities, multiculturalism is about much more than homemade falafel, bean burritos, and Chinese takeout. In the past, many American immigrants felt so much pressure from the mainstream that they did everything they could to hide their differences. For others, like the Jews, history has shown just how fatal identity can be. For all of them, multiculturalism isn't about rejecting America. It's about finally having the freedom to celebrate one's heritage without having to fear the consequences. Sholom: When you say, "Blend together," it means to lose our -- who you are. I think a lot of -- a lot of emptiness has been experienced in our generation, but a lot of the emptiness, I bet you, is for the lack of culture, the lack of who I am, and a person should be -- This is our position, I guess. A person should be able to retain his beauty,

his culture, as a unit for himself and be part of a big mosaic, and I think that's -- that's the beauty. Narrator: So what really does happen when multiculturalism moves to the most unlikely of places? [ Cow moos ] Simply put, it reminds us that, in this nation of countless immigrants, we still struggle with many aspects of immigration. It shows us that some newcomers are more easily accepted than others, that the American dream means different things to different people, that skin color still continues to influence people, that much is expected of immigrants, that much is expected of natives, and that, regardless of all of that, small towns need to adapt to survive. Marks: I believe the majority of immigrants who come to this country in the future will come to small towns, not to the big cities. What we're going to see continuing in the United States in the small towns

is an amplification of what Postville has seen. We're going to see small towns where one group of immigrants finds a comfortable life. Yosef: Postville is the better for us coming. We're the better for being here. And I think the Postville people will find that once everybody's here long enough... by design, we'll all be good Americans. We'll all raise the flag. We'll all fight for this country. We'll all abide by the laws. But, socially, we're just not going to fit in. Zieman: I'm telling you from the heart the way I feel. We don't own this any more than they own it, and we're all here for a purpose, and we've got to learn to work together and cooperate. Oh, they don't all agree with me on that. No, that's right. They say, "Oh, we don't want anything to do with them. We just don't want 'em." I said, "You got to be open-minded. Just -- Just think.

Go back a couple generations when your ancestors came. They went through the same thing." And I said, "Now we're just going through it again." Looney: Any time there's change, you know, people have trouble accepting it, you know, and myself included, you know? But once you get over -- over the -- the strangeness of it, you see that they're -- that nobody that's come to Postville is any different than -- than, you know, myself, you know? They want the same things, you know? They want good things for their children. They want to buy houses, and, you know, they -- they want to make a little money, and... they're just common, ordinary people, you know? They're just trying to better themselves, and that's basically, I think, maybe what we're all trying to do. Bloom: I do think that Postville is a harbinger for the rest of America, where people are going to have to understand the rules, the procedures, how people live, and they're going to have to be much more tolerant

of each other. The days are long gone when Postville can just be Lutherans who all work together and pray together in St. Paul Lutheran Church. So I think Postville is going through some of the things that America is and will continue to go through. Narrator: Diversity asks a lot of people in a small town like Postville and of people in a big country like the United States. Some may resist multiculturalism, others may reject assimilation, and everyone in between will continue to search for guideposts to help direct them down the winding and often dusty path of diversity. Some of those guideposts may be found in big cities, but others just might turn up in little towns like Postville, Iowa, a tiny farming community 20 miles from the Mississippi River, 30 minutes from the nearest McDonald's, and light-years from the kind of place where multiculturalism usually takes root. [ "America the Beautiful" plays ]

[ Laughs ] No question they're going to be calling folks from the Big Apple. No, it's, uh -- It's, um, you know, the Big Pumpkin out here. [ Music continues ] This man says, "Oh, are you going to the corn town? 'Cause I just came from over there. You don't want to go over there." Oh, my God. [ Music continues ] My name is Vada -- "V" as in "victory," A-D-A -- Guyer -- G-U-Y-E-R -- and live on East Greene Street, and we've had five children that we raised. And, by the way,

"Vada" means "full of life." That's Hispanic. [ Chuckles ] [ Music continues ] The Jewish ones, a little bit -- I haven't been to New York, but they drive like they're in New York, and that's one thing that hasn't changed, and I don't know whether it ever will, but we'll just keep writing a citation here or there and, uh... [ Music continues ] The grocery store has all kinds of ethnic foods now than it ever used to have before, and -- I don't know -- it's just kind of cool. Then you introduce them to our foods, and they're like, "Ooh, this is good!" and I'm like, "It's a cheeseburger." [ Music continues ] Leah: When I go back now to New York, we're just waving to everybody, and, you know, people are looking at us like, "Where are these people from?" And we always just say, "Oh, we're from Iowa," you know. Under our breath -- Under our breath, we always say, "Don't mind us. We're from Iowa." [ Music continues ]