Making Judaism Safe for America: World War I and the Origins of Religious Pluralism by Jessica Cooperman (review)

In early November 1918, the War Department’s Commission on Training Camp Activities (CTCA) launched the United War Work campaign, a fundraising appeal to improve the morale of soldiers sent to France with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). Posters proclaiming “united we serve” solicited money to “keep him smiling” and to “help us help our boys.” Americans learned—usually in English, but occasionally in Yiddish too—that Protestants, Catholics, and Jews cooperated to fight the Great War and support American doughboys together as one.

But, as Jessica Cooperman relays in Making Judaism Safe for America, the unified campaign almost did not happen. The Protestant YMCA and YWCA lobbied to lead their own fundraiser while letting the “sectarian” Jewish Welfare Board (JWB), Knights of Columbus, and Salvation Army organize a separate fundraising drive. Through the careful use of War Department contacts, JWB leaders convinced the military to adhere to its own policy of the “promotion of tri-faith unity and cooperation,” (142) and seven civilian welfare organizations—the YMCA, YWCA, JWB, Knights of Columbus, Salvation Army, American Library Association, and War Camp Community Service—displayed their logos together on marketing materials. The JWB’s successful entrance into this newly constructed, religiously pluralistic space was not, however, without its own difficulties, compromises, and costs, as Cooperman also lays out. How distinctive could American Jews be while proclaiming their Americanness? When were religious practices too sectarian and when did they underscore the American commitment to religious diversity?

Cooperman’s fine-grained analysis of the JWB’s World War I-era work both highlights the contributions of, and exposes the fault-lines within, the organization. Through a variety of wartime policies, the federal government—somewhat unevenly—expanded its definition of American religion beyond Protestantism, which “unintentionally created space for Judaism and Catholicism to enter the pantheon of American religions.” (8) The story of the “complicated relationship between the US War Department, the JWB, and the Jewish soldiers that both institutions sought to improve during World War I” (10) moves through six compact chapters.

Chapter 1 wisely begins before the United States entered World War I, while the military was nevertheless engaged in institution building through General John Pershing’s Punitive Expedition along the Mexican border. The problems Pershing faced were not just martial. Rather, “conditions on the Mexican border revealed dangerous problems within the military and convinced [reformers] of the need for effective government intervention to promote character building among American soldiers.” (19) Moral reform reignited the federal government’s interest in religion in the military. At the same time, Jewish groups like the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and the Central Conference of American Rabbis wanted to protect the 3,500 Jewish soldiers from the influence of Protestantism. This early work prepared American Jews to lobby for inclusion when the US mobilized the armed forces, and with them, the moral reformers of the CTCA, for World War I.

To push for a more pluralistic, or at the very least, nonsectarian CTCA, American Jews had to unite as a community. Chapter 2 examines the creation of the Jewish Welfare Board as the single Jewish organization operating under the CTCA. Though the YMHA, B’nai Brith, the socialist People’s League, and synagogues jockeyed to work with the War Department, the CTCA’s recognition of the JWB ultimately quashed these alternatives. Government sanction did not stem internal disagreement and the “diverse and divided interests of American Jewry” (60) would continue to challenge the JWB.

As a fledgling organization representing a religious minority, the JWB had to navigate national religious politics and embedded Protestant culture while representing and advocating for Jewish interests. In Chapter 3, Cooperman shows how JWB leaders “link[ed] Judaism and Americanism” or—in the words of both the book title and chapter title—strove to “mak[e] Judaism safe for America.” With the cooperation of...