Hi Cindy, thanks for your thought-provoking response! I think every single immigrant has to make this decision themselves of how much to assimilate. And I think that it’s inevitable that their kids and grandkids are more assimilated than the original immigrants are. I mean, they go to school, and we generally underestimate schools as a transmitter of cultural values and norms. I also think that individual family units have their own sub-culture too, and kids grow up cherishing the things their family did, whether it’s a particular meal that they enjoyed as kids, or a walk they took on Sundays, or whatever. That becomes “tradition,” so they don’t really lose traditions; they just have different ones from other families.
No, I haven’t been to the Jewish Museum yet, but it’s top of my list for next time I’m there!

You raise interesting questions about assimilation. All of grandparents were immigrants, all landing fairly quickly in relatively rural areas of Minnesota – largely where there were at least a few other immigrants from their same country. Aside from the perennial argument over whether Christmas presents were opened Christmas eve or Christmas day, I can’t think of a single tradition that was passed down to us from our grandparents homelands. My paternal grandparents never spoke Swedish to their children again after the oldest’s first day of school. And, other than the names of a few foods, neither of my parents learned any of their parents’ native language. (I taught my dad a little Swedish when we went to Sweden to visit cousins!) I’ve tried to reintegrate a few Scandinavian traditions into my life, but I wish that either my grandparents or parents (hard to really tell how big a role each had) had not become so completely assimilated that they gave up or simply lost the culture of their homeland. Of course, one grandmother died fairly young, and she did continue some traditions, but little seems to have been continued by her daughter and none by her sons. I think my father missed the bit of Swedish culture he grew up with, but there didn’t seem to be any attempt to pass any of it on to us. (My mother seems to have not been interested until she got much older.) I’m envious of my mostly Italian and Ukrainian friends who seem to successfully blend the culture of their parents and grandparents with an American identity. In an America that doesn’t really have a cultural identity, I feel a bit adrift. And, while I am connected with a number of cousins in “the old country,” learning and adopting the culture of my grandparents feels like an add-on, not part of who I am. I think society often forces immigrants to give up too much of who they are — if others allow it, you can be fully American and without completely giving up your culture. Too often that gets lost in a belief that everyone conform to some American ideal that doesn’t really exist for most Americans and never has. That was as true of the Know Nothings in the 1850s as it is today. And the USA is a poorer county for it.

On a related note, we were using a New York Pass when we were in the city to hit as many museums as we could to check them out — especially ones we wouldn’t have paid to enter otherwise. Among them was the Jewish Museum. I mostly wanted to see the meditation garden, but I found the museum fascinating because it actually told the history of Jewish people in a way that made them real people with full lives, not just victims who’s only identity was their Jewishness. Curious to know if you’ve been there and what your thoughts are.

Haha! Every group of immigrants to any country has to make decisions about how much to assimilate. And I think it often causes tensions between generations too. The same debate that happens now — the idea that immigrants are a threat and that they’re not assimilating enough — was what led to some very restrictive laws in the early 1920’s. Some things don’t change.

I certainly agree. I made learning Dutch my priority when I moved here, yet I still use English almost exclusively at home.

We definitely hang on to some of it, don’t we? I see it with my kids too, who grew up in the Netherlands, but have certain American traits as well.