Introduction: The Jew as "Other" in America

Fifty years ago, historians of American Jewry portrayed the United States as a virtual utopia for Jews. While admitting to the existence of antisemitism, they downplayed its significance, explaining that it occurred infrequently and rarely impeded Jewish economic mobility and success. Beginning in the 1960s, however, a different picture began to immerge. Third-generation American-Jewish historians, increasingly secure in their American and Jewish identities, began to scrutinize American Jewish history in a less sentimental and more dispassionate way. Their research led to the publication of studies that objectively delineated the position of Jews in American society as well as the ways in which Americans have perceived them. These works have furnished us with fresh insights and broadened our knowledge of antisemitism in the United States. The essays in this issue of American Jewish History contribute to this trend and shed additional light on the attitudes of non-Jewish Americans toward Jews.

The first essay, by Robert Rockaway and Arnon Gutfeld, focuses on the nineteenth century and examines the demonic representations of the Jew that appeared in political discourse, schoolbooks and the popular literature of the time. Although American Jews were free from legal restrictions and from the kind of violence and brutality perpetrated against African Americans, Native Americans and Catholics, the authors show that demonic images of Jews pervaded American culture during that era.

Eric Goldstein's essay presents various aspects of the Progressive Era debate on the assimilability of the Jews into American society. He discusses how various white commentators sought to assuage their concerns about the changes America was undergoing and their anxieties concerning the Jewish immigrants in their midst by placing Jews into America's black-white racial dichotomy. Seeing Jews as a distinct racial group allowed them to introduce a sense of order and confidence into the national culture and reinforced their perception that Jews, like blacks, could not be assimilated into American society. But not all white Americans felt this way. Some commentators located the Jews on the white side of the racial divide. Ironically, this cast Jews as a powerful element in the progress of white America.

The third essay, by Joseph Bendarsky, examines antisemitism in the United States military from the end of World War I through World War II. Focusing on the Military Intelligence Division of the United States army, he shows that antisemitic attitudes and conspiracy theories about Jews prevailed among the officers heading that branch of the service. Bendarsky also shows that racial theorists and antisemitic thinkers headed and taught at the nation's War College and prejudiced men who later held key positions in the army's general staff and as military attaches in Europe. The perceptions and beliefs of these men influenced American governmental policies regarding Jewish refugees, the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, and the admission of Jewish displaced persons after the war.

The last essay, by Marc Dollinger, discusses and analyzes Jewish support for and involvement in Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. He shows how this activity, while solidifying the Jews' standing as the nation's most liberal white ethnic group, often put Jews at odds with American groups who were more conservative in their approach.

In terms of hatred, terror and murderous violence, the Jewish experience in the United States never approximated the Jewish experience in Europe. But it also never quite approached the elysian Eden depicted in earlier histories of American Jewry. As these original essays illustrate, the view of the Jew as "other," as different and as posing a danger to the United States and her institutions, commonly existed in the United States during the so-called benign nineteenth century and beyond. In addition, these essays demonstrate that antisemitism in America as a field for research is far from being exhausted.