Gypsies, Jews and Amish

It is a book I want someone to write. The three groups are in many ways similar, in many different. Each has, for substantial parts of its history, been effectively self governing, imposing its own rules on its own people with or without the permission of the government over it. Each has created and maintained its own culture, complete with its own language. Each imposed constraints on its members that might be expected to make them want to exit the group, and each found ways of keeping most of the members from doing so.

All of the Amish and many of the other two groups ended up in North America, a more tolerant and accepting environment than those they experienced in the past. The Jewish group has mostly dissolved in the wider culture–only about ten percent remain orthodox, and many even of the orthodox are more nearly a part of the surrounding culture than most Jews were a few hundred years ago. Only the more extreme factions, such as the Hasidim, retain the traditional pattern of cultural separation.

The Romani, as I interpret the evidence, are a little farther behind on the same path. For evidence, compare two books on the American Romani by Anne Sutherland, Gypsies: The Hidden Americans and Roma: Modern American Gypsies. The first, based on research done around 1970, described an independent and alien nation with its own language, law, and customs, embedded within modern day America. The second, published last year, describes the gradual collapse of that system.

Only the Amish have been almost completely successful in maintaining their own society, peacefully embedded in ours. They have done it for more than two centuries now and, judging by its current state, may well continue for another century or two. 

Which raises an interesting puzzle.

Those interested in more details on all three will find them in the relevant chapters of the book on legal systems very different from ours that I have almost finished writing.

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When someone got very sick, they all flocked to the hospital and to the funeral. The living were never left alone day or night. Everyone brought food or took up a collection for the family so ones far away could come. People took care of each other. That is gone now. In the past anyone could drop by the house and you would feed them, they could stay the night. Now you have to phone if you want to visit, and they often say, “No. We are busy.” Someone throws a party and makes a lot of food and hardly anyone shows up. The saddest thing is the loss of community. We never visit with the Machwaya. They keep to themselves and we keep to ourselves.

The Machwaya still have the slava and pomani and kris. They are mostly not Christian and only go to a priest for baptism of a baby. The ones who have become Christian have their own churches and we do not go to their churches, and they do not come to ours. In the past we all were part of the kumpania, we had slavi together, and we all went to the pomani. Now everyone keeps to his own kind. The children are not taught our language, go to school, and have no respect for elders. We don’t even have any elders anymore. They are all dead.

(Sutherland, Anne H., Roma: Modern American Gypsies)