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74 8 Americanize as Fast asYou Can The Civil War accelerated the Jewish community’s process of becoming American in spirit and form. Conflicts of such magnitude have profound effects on society , and the pace of acculturation certainly would have been slower had peace prevailed. The war forced Jews to shed their European way of life as they made sacrifices on the battlefield and on the home front.To historian Bertram Wallace Korn, the events of the war shaped the life of American Jewry for generations. More recently, Jonathan Sarna writes that “General Orders No. 11 marked a turning point in American Jewish history. Paradoxically, Ulysses S. Grant’s order expelling the Jews set the stage for their empowerment.”1 Every immigrant group felt the impact of a war that tore the nation apart, and every immigrant group engaged in rebuilding the Union. The signing of the peace at Appomattox made all residents of both the Union and the Confederacy into Americans. In late 1863, as Union forces sent Confederates retreating into Georgia after the Battle of Missionary Ridge, Myer Isaacs held out hope that the war would unite Jews and Christians in the common struggle to save the nation.2 A sudden and vicious spike in anti-­ Semitism provided a rude awakening to Jewish communities in both the North and South that had for the most part been comfortable and unnoticed in antebellum America. In Wise’s words, General Grant’s expulsion order was“a thunderclap from a clear sky.”3 Even before the surrender at Appomattox, American Jews recognized that in times of severe stress on the economy and the breakdown of order, they indeed were noticed. For Simon Wolf, one of the most influential Jewish leaders in postwar Washington, the rise in anti-­ Semitism “furrowed deep the doubts” about whether Christians regarded Jewish citizens as equals, and he warned Americanize as Fast as You Can 75 that as long as Jews remained a community apart and foreign in every aspect, they would be subject to the prejudices of a few conniving politicians.4 Immigrant Jews stood out in their dress, speech, and occupations, all of which differed markedly from those of their Christian neighbors. In the words of one historian, the Civil War years led many Jews to“reassess both their Judaism and their Americanism.”5 The Jews of the postwar years were unequivocal. The only proper course was to assimilate into the greater American culture. Doing so meant modernizing the synagogue, abandoning the life of the itinerant peddler, rejecting foreign languages and customs, and participating fully in the country’s political life.“This will attach us closer to American society and protect us against many an evil that might come,” Isaac Mayer Wise wrote.6 With liberties unheard of in Europe, American Jews were obligated to create a Judaism“corresponding to the . . . political freedom of the age and country in which we live,” Wise said.7 Even the traditionalists at the Jewish Messenger realized that Americanization was the best defense against anti-­ Semitism:“When Israelites are known to be Americans in every respect . . . there will be nothing to fan the flame.” With assimilation , the Messenger optimistically predicted,“prejudice will cease.”8 Crude anti-­ Semitic pronouncements by political leaders on both sides of the Mason-­ Dixon Line shook Jews out of their insular lives and forced them to reconsider their place in the greater society.“In the political and social life, we exclude ourselves too much,”Wise warned.“Be Israelites in religion and Americans in every other respect.”9 If American Jews remained outsiders, he pointed out,they could not rightly complain about being targeted by those who resented or looked suspiciously on foreigners. Directing his remarks to the younger generation , he urged,“Americanize as fast and thorough as you can. . . . We apprehend the danger growing out of this state of exclusiveness.”10 The Problem with Peddling American Jews recognized above all that the Protestant majority had little esteem for peddlers and small-­ scale merchants. Thick German accents and peddlers ’ wagons made Jews an easy scapegoat during the war. Isaac Leeser told readers of his Occident that Jews were shunned partly because“so many of us are engaged in pursuits which others consider dishonorable” and because of what he described as a “somewhat unsettled [way] of life.”11 Leeser went so far as to say that earning a livelihood“by means of small trading has a debasing influence on the mind.” One reader of the Occident asked...

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