A Concise History of American Antisemitism (review)

There is considerable breadth to Robert Michael's A Concise History of American Antisemitism, but the study lacks parallel depth. Michael begins in Christian Europe, devoting his first chapter to antisemitism's European Christian roots. Subsequent chapters take us from the colonial period to the late 1990s. There are a scant three pages on the antisemitic developments of the years 2000 to 2005.

Unfortunately this book has the quality of a list, not a sustained narrative. In the preface, Michael notes that "today, Jews seem to have achieved full equality in the U.S." (xv). But he then proceeds to undercut that assertion by minimizing Jewish achievement and acceptance. One example will suffice: after listing fifty American songs "written by Jews," from John Payne's "Home Sweet Home" to Carol King's "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman," Michael speculates that antisemitism was the reason that Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" did not replace "The Star Spangled Banner" as the national anthem!

The first chapter on European antisemitism before the founding of America is similarly unnuanced. Though Michael quotes some of the theoreticians of antisemitism, including Gavin Langmuir, he makes no allusion to their theories; thus the book is essentially an annotated list of antisemitic writings and incidents. Throughout, Michael's focus is on the Christian religious roots of antisemitism; little attention is paid to its social and economic roots. Subsequent chapters treat the colonies and the Early Republic, from the Early Republic to the Civil War, from the Civil War through World War I, the interwar period, World War II, and America and the Jews since 1945.

One might contrast Michael's A Concise History with Leonard Dinnerstein's Antisemitism in America (1994), which accurately describes itself as "the first comprehensive scholarly survey of anti-Semitism in the United States." Dinnerstein, too, finds that "Christian viewpoints underlie all American antisemitism, and "it cannot be emphasized too strongly that all aspects of American antisemitism are built on this foundation of Christian hostility toward Jews."¹ At the same time that he reminds us of the persistence of antisemitic feeling, Dinnerstein enumerates the opportunities, both social and individual, that the U.S. has offered to Jews. At the conclusion of Dinnerstein's book, he notes that, "Thus, while antisemitism has always been a problem for Jews in a Christian society it has always been weaker in the United States than in European nations."² Michael makes a similar point, but buries it in a discussion of U.S. inaction during the Holocaust. Dinnerstein points out that it is after World War II that American antisemitism declined. Michael, in contrast, uses World War II to focus on "American acquiescence in the murder of the Jews" (170) .

Throughout the book there are some astounding assertions, among them that in the 1920s and 1930s "the level of antisemitic feeling was perhaps even greater in America during this period than in Germany and Eastern Europe" (110).

While Michael's survey ends on a pessimistic note, Dinnerstein's 1994 book reminds us that "American Jews have never been more prosperous, more secure, and more 'at home in America' than they are today."³ In my opinion Michael's book would give the reader unfamiliar with the topic a distorted picture of American Jewish history, and particularly of the remarkable success Jews have achieved in the U.S. Though Michael alludes to this success in the first sentence of his preface, he makes little of it throughout the book.