Anti-Semitism in American History

Anti-Semitism in American History PDF Author: David A. Gerber
Publisher: Urbana : University of Illinois Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Get Book

Book Description

Anti-Semitism in American History

Anti-Semitism in American History PDF Author: David A. Gerber
Publisher: Urbana : University of Illinois Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Get Book

Book Description


Antisemitism in America

Antisemitism in America PDF Author: Leonard Dinnerstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195313542
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book

Book Description
Is antisemitism on the rise in America? Did the "hymietown" comment by Jesse Jackson and the Crown Heights riot signal a resurgence of antisemitism among blacks? The surprising answer to both questions, according to Leonard Dinnerstein, is no--Jews have never been more at home in America. But what we are seeing today, he writes, are the well-publicized results of a long tradition of prejudice, suspicion, and hatred against Jews--the direct product of the Christian teachings underlying so much of America's national heritage. In Antisemitism in America, Leonard Dinnerstein provides a landmark work--the first comprehensive history of prejudice against Jews in the United States, from colonial times to the present. His richly documented book traces American antisemitism from its roots in the dawn of the Christian era and arrival of the first European settlers, to its peak during World War II and its present day permutations--with separate chapters on antisemititsm in the South and among African-Americans, showing that prejudice among both whites and blacks flowed from the same stream of Southern evangelical Christianity. He shows, for example, that non-Christians were excluded from voting (in Rhode Island until 1842, North Carolina until 1868, and in New Hampshire until 1877), and demonstrates how the Civil War brought a new wave of antisemitism as both sides assumed that Jews supported with the enemy. We see how the decades that followed marked the emergence of a full-fledged antisemitic society, as Christian Americans excluded Jews from their social circles, and how antisemetic fervor climbed higher after the turn of the century, accelerated by eugenicists, fear of Bolshevism, the publications of Henry Ford, and the Depression. Dinnerstein goes on to explain that just before our entry into World War II, antisemitism reached a climax, as Father Coughlin attacked Jews over the airwaves (with the support of much of the Catholic clergy) and Charles Lindbergh delivered an openly antisemitic speech to an isolationist meeting. After the war, Dinnerstein tells us, with fresh economic opportunities and increased activities by civil rights advocates, antisemititsm went into sharp decline--though it frequently appeared in shockingly high places, including statements by Nixon and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It must also be emphasized," Dinnerstein writes, "that in no Christian country has antisemitism been weaker than it has been in the United States," with its traditions of tolerance, diversity, and a secular national government. This book, however, reveals in disturbing detail the resilience, and vehemence, of this ugly prejudice. Penetrating, authoritative, and frequently alarming, this is the definitive account of a plague that refuses to go away.

Jews Against Prejudice

Jews Against Prejudice PDF Author: Stuart Svonkin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231106399
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Get Book

Book Description
Recounts how Jewish organizations for fighting antisemitism became leaders against all prejudice.

Hollywood and Anti-Semitism

Hollywood and Anti-Semitism PDF Author: Steven Alan Carr
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521798549
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Get Book

Book Description
Examines the role of American Jews in the entertainment industry.

Antisemitism and the American Far Left

Antisemitism and the American Far Left PDF Author: Stephen H. Norwood
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107036011
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Get Book

Book Description
Stephen H. Norwood has written the first systematic study of the American far left's role in both propagating and combating antisemitism. This book covers Communists from 1920 onward, Trotskyists, the New Left and its black nationalist allies, and the contemporary remnants of the New Left. Professor Norwood analyzes the deficiencies of the American far left's explanations of Nazism and the Holocaust. He explores far left approaches to militant Islam, from condemnation of its fierce antisemitism in the 1930s to recent apologies for jihad. Norwood discusses the far left's use of long-standing theological and economic antisemitic stereotypes that the far right also embraced. The study analyzes the far left's antipathy to Jewish culture, as well as its occasional efforts to promote it. He considers how early Marxist and Bolshevik paradigms continued to shape American far left views of Jewish identity, Zionism, Israel, and antisemitism.

Trials of the Diaspora

Trials of the Diaspora PDF Author: Anthony Julius
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199600724
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 870

Get Book

Book Description
The first ever comprehensive history of anti-Semitism in England, from medieval murder and expulsion through to contemporary forms of anti-Zionism in the 21st century.

America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today

America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today PDF Author: Pamela Nadell
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039365124X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
A groundbreaking history of how Jewish women maintained their identity and influenced social activism as they wrote themselves into American history. What does it mean to be a Jewish woman in America? In a gripping historical narrative, Pamela S. Nadell weaves together the stories of a diverse group of extraordinary people—from the colonial-era matriarch Grace Nathan and her great-granddaughter, poet Emma Lazarus, to labor organizer Bessie Hillman and the great justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to scores of other activists, workers, wives, and mothers who helped carve out a Jewish American identity. The twin threads binding these women together, she argues, are a strong sense of self and a resolute commitment to making the world a better place. Nadell recounts how Jewish women have been at the forefront of causes for centuries, fighting for suffrage, trade unions, civil rights, and feminism, and hoisting banners for Jewish rights around the world. Informed by shared values of America’s founding and Jewish identity, these women’s lives have left deep footprints in the history of the nation they call home.

How to Fight Anti-Semitism

How to Fight Anti-Semitism PDF Author: Bari Weiss
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0593136055
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book

Book Description
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD • The prescient founder of The Free Press delivers an urgent wake-up call to all Americans exposing the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in this country—and explains what we can do to defeat it. “A praiseworthy and concise brief against modern-day anti-Semitism.”—The New York Times On October 27, 2018, eleven Jews were gunned down as they prayed at their synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. For most Americans, the massacre at Tree of Life, the synagogue where Bari Weiss became a bat mitzvah, came as a shock. But anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred, commonplace across the Middle East and on the rise for years in Europe. So that terrible morning in Pittsburgh, as well as the continued surge of hate crimes against Jews in cities and towns across the country, raise a question Americans cannot avoid: Could it happen here? This book is Weiss’s answer. Like many, Weiss long believed this country could escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. With its promise of free speech and religion, its insistence that all people are created equal, its tolerance for difference, and its emphasis on shared ideals rather than bloodlines, America has been, even with all its flaws, a new Jerusalem for the Jewish people. But now the luckiest Jews in history are beginning to face a three-headed dragon known all too well to Jews of other times and places: the physical fear of violent assault, the moral fear of ideological vilification, and the political fear of resurgent fascism and populism. No longer the exclusive province of the far right, the far left, and assorted religious bigots, anti-Semitism now finds a home in identity politics as well as the reaction against identity politics, in the renewal of America First isolationism and the rise of one-world socialism, and in the spread of Islamist ideas into unlikely places. A hatred that was, until recently, reliably taboo is migrating toward the mainstream, amplified by social media and a culture of conspiracy that threatens us all. Weiss is one of our most provocative writers, and her cri de coeur makes a powerful case for renewing Jewish and American values in this uncertain moment. Not just for the sake of America’s Jews, but for the sake of America.

The Jewish Threat

The Jewish Threat PDF Author: Joseph W. Bendersky
Publisher:
ISBN: 0465012191
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 586

Get Book

Book Description
Very little has been written about America's own history of anti-Semitism. In this shocking book, the first documented examination of anti-Semitism in an American governmental institution, Joseph Bendersky shows that such racism permeated the highest ranks of the U.S. military throughout the past century, having a very real effect on policy decisions. Through ten years of research in more than thirty-five archives, the author uncovered irrefutable evidence of endemic and virulent anti-Semitism throughout the Army Corps from the turn of the century right up to the 1970s. This fully developed and clearly articulated perspective had a direct effect on policy discussions and decisions, affecting such matters as immigration, refugees, military strategy, and the establishment of Israel. Written with novelistic intensity and attention to intriguing detail, The "Jewish Threat" forces us to revise some of our cherished notions about our country and its most revered leaders.

A Rosenberg by Any Other Name

A Rosenberg by Any Other Name PDF Author: Kirsten Fermaglich
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479872997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Get Book

Book Description
Winner, 2019 Saul Viener Book Prize, given by the American Jewish Historical Society A groundbreaking history of the practice of Jewish name changing in the 20th century, showcasing just how much is in a name Our thinking about Jewish name changing tends to focus on clichés: ambitious movie stars who adopted glamorous new names or insensitive Ellis Island officials who changed immigrants’ names for them. But as Kirsten Fermaglich elegantly reveals, the real story is much more profound. Scratching below the surface, Fermaglich examines previously unexplored name change petitions to upend the clichés, revealing that in twentieth-century New York City, Jewish name changing was actually a broad-based and voluntary behavior: thousands of ordinary Jewish men, women, and children legally changed their names in order to respond to an upsurge of antisemitism. Rather than trying to escape their heritage or “pass” as non-Jewish, most name-changers remained active members of the Jewish community. While name changing allowed Jewish families to avoid antisemitism and achieve white middle-class status, the practice also created pain within families and became a stigmatized, forgotten aspect of American Jewish culture. This first history of name changing in the United States offers a previously unexplored window into American Jewish life throughout the twentieth century. A Rosenberg by Any Other Name demonstrates how historical debates about immigration, antisemitism and race, class mobility, gender and family, the boundaries of the Jewish community, and the power of government are reshaped when name changing becomes part of the conversation. Mining court documents, oral histories, archival records, and contemporary literature, Fermaglich argues convincingly that name changing had a lasting impact on American Jewish culture. Ordinary Jews were forced to consider changing their names as they saw their friends, family, classmates, co-workers, and neighbors do so. Jewish communal leaders and civil rights activists needed to consider name changers as part of the Jewish community, making name changing a pivotal part of early civil rights legislation. And Jewish artists created critical portraits of name changers that lasted for decades in American Jewish culture. This book ends with the disturbing realization that the prosperity Jews found by changing their names is not as accessible for the Chinese, Latino, and Muslim immigrants who wish to exercise that right today.