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  • A Concise History of American Antisemitism
  • Cheryl Greenberg
A Concise History of American Antisemitism, by Robert Michael. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. 256 pp. $24.95.

It seems a tautology to assert that "negative Christian beliefs about Jews serve as the bedrock on which antisemitism has been built" (p. xix), but few have traced those beliefs, and their impact on American Jews, across U.S. history. Such is the purpose of this book. Michael traces Christian antisemitic thought from its early church and European origins through the colonization of North America, the founding of the nation, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century American history. Remarkably broad in its scope, the book explores the anti-Jewish sentiments expressed in the writings and pronouncements of political, civic, philanthropic and business leaders, contemporary literature and poetry, law, and (some) forms of popular culture. Emily Dickinson and Abraham Lincoln share the stage with Henry Ford and Louis Farrakhan in the unfolding drama of American antisemitism; virtually every major event of U.S. history is scrutinized for its antisemitic aspects.

In compiling such a comprehensive list, Michael does students of American Jewish history a great service. He also offers an important challenge to historical works that see antisemitism rooted more in social conditions or economic and social competition than in Christian theology. But the consequences of such an approach are sometimes unfortunate. In this case, Michael [End Page 173] weakens his arguments by conflating pro-Christian and antisemitic thought, and sometimes skews historical events to make them seem centrally about antisemitism when in fact their antisemitism was part of a greater whole. A few examples should make these problems clear.

Michael asserts, with justification, that most Americans and most American leaders have considered the U.S. a Christian country. But beyond the pernicious examples of antisemitism that resulted (and there are many), Michael includes as evidence our use of the Christian calendar and the belief of many Christians that non-Christians were misguided (at best) and in need of proselytizing, or damned. That Christians, who after all believe that redemption occurs through faith in Jesus, might conclude that those who lack such faith are wrong, doomed, or in need of evangelical uplift, may be offensive to non-Christians but hardly equates with the antisemitism of pogroms or even university quotas. Nor is the use by our founders of their traditional calendar over a Jewish or Islamic or Buddhist one necessarily a sign of intolerance. The conflation of both relatively benign and more explicit pro-Christian activity actually weakens the author's argument of the persistence of problematic and dangerous American antisemitism.

By evaluating historical events by their antisemitic content, the book also misleadingly implies that antisemitism was at their core. In the American South, for example, Michael suggests that African American slaves "provided a substitute target for [white Christian] Southerners to scapegoat" (p. 89). But unlike Europe, from the start the primary divide in the United States has been racial and not religious; that is, race has always, in the end, proved the more pernicious and deep-rooted division. If that were not the case, it would be Jews and not Africans who were enslaved in the first place. Later, the Ku Klux Klan is described as a fundamentally anti-Jewish group that "also attacked Blacks and Catholics" (p. 137). Similarly, the anti-immigration restrictions of the 1920s targeted all those from southern and eastern Europe, including Jews, but are described here as if anti-Jewish bias served as the single, root motivation of nativists. The antisemitism of southern white Klansmen and nativists is important to highlight. But making these grander, and false, assertions obfuscates or distorts the historical facts.

Elsewhere, Michael makes his arguments by selective examples. It is hardly fair, for example, to assert black antisemitism from the writings of George Schuyler, reviled by many African Americans for his offensive and rightist positions, or the antisemitic Dynamite, so underfunded that it appeared as a cheap broadside in a few black Chicago neighborhoods. And if Franklin Roosevelt was indeed so antisemitic, why did he appoint so many Jews to positions of importance? (In fact Roosevelt opponents labeled the New Deal the "Jew...

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