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 i n t r o d u c t i o n The Chosen People in the Chosen Land the jewish encounter with american capitalism Rebecca Kobrin More than a century ago, German sociologist and economist Werner Sombart (–) marveled at two remarkable economic “exceptionalisms” in the world.1 First, he focused on the exceptionality of the United States, a nation that in just a few short decades had emerged as an industrial juggernaut, replete with huge mills, transcontinental railroads, and large cities. Writing in  Sombart pondered why, despite this new nation’s rapid growth and expanding economic inequality, the United States and its capitalist system did not nurture a mass socialist movement among its working class like its counterparts in Europe.2 What exceptional forces made workers in the United States, imagined by some as a “chosen nation,” seem more content and less inclined to protest their condition? Equally as exceptional, argued Sombart, was the unique role played by the Jews, or the self-proclaimed “chosen people,” in the development and expansion of capitalism in Europe.3 Revising Max Weber’s vision of capitalism as linked to Protestant ethics, Sombart contended that Jews’ intrinsic proclivities made them central provocateurs in the creation of modern capitalism. Indeed, as historian Jonathan Karp points out, Sombart’s portrayal of Jews as “capitalist pioneers”—rooted in his vision of Judaism as a rational, law-oriented and acquisitive religion—molded the ways in which interwar intellectuals, anti-Semitic writers, and politicians discussed the Jews.4 Sombart’s summoning of the idea of exceptionalism to describe both America ’s and the Jews’ engagement with the developing economic system known as capitalism hints at the complex set of charged ideas, questions, and reflections  r ebecca kobrin that undergird this volume. During the long century in which industrialization and mass migration reshaped the United States, Jews, like many immigrant groups, were transformed by their encounter with America’s ever-expanding and ever-evolving system of capitalism.5 The essays in this collection, most of which were adapted from presentations first delivered at a conference at Columbia University and New York University in March , try to assess these encounters, but they all remain cognizant of the looming ghost of Sombart , who was the first to argue for the alleged economic exceptionalism of the Jews and the United States. As discussions of American capitalism have become commonplace in the past two decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, we often forget, as historian Howard Brick aptly points out, that American “capitalism has a history.”6 And Jews, some posit, were central to this history, just as they are alleged to have been in Europe.7 But we cannot assess this claim because the study of Jews and their relationship to American capitalism has remained anecdotal. In fact, we know very little about the real or imagined role of Jews in the creation, expansion, and maintenance of American capitalism, a lacuna that must be filled if we ever hope to fully understand the economic forces shaping the fateful encounter of Jews and the United States. This lacuna is nothing particular to American Jewish history. In general, the larger field of economic history does not see the subject of Jewish history as particularly urgent, and the overwhelming bias of modern Jewish history has been toward the life of the mind rather than the toil of the hand. The forebearers of modern Jewish history may have pondered how economic thought intersected with intellectual discussions of emancipation, but they rarely assessed the actual day-to-day business practices of Jews throughout the modern world.8 As Polish Jewish historian Ignacy Schipper pointed out in : Thanks to them [the nineteenth-century leaders of Jewish historiography], we possess an impressive picture of the spiritual directors of Diaspora Jewry. But what is completely lacking is the history of hundreds of thousands of Jews who have left few traces for the future, not of the spiritual riches [of their world] but of their toil and drudgery as well as of their speculative abilities. In short, we know about the Sabbath Jew and his extra [Sabbath] soul. But it is time we got to know the history of the weekday Jews . . . [and] the history of Jewish working life.9 This volume follows Schipper’s programmatic call to map out the daily business activities, economic strategies, and fiscal mechanisms deployed by Jews as they strove to succeed economically and to adapt their religious practices to the American marketplace.10...

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