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Neusner ch. 7, “Judaism in the World and in America”
*Updated reading:* The Jerusalem Declaration of Antisemitism (JDA)Links to an external site.
Please familiarize yourself with the definition of antisemitism provided within this declaration, and keep it in mind as you formulate your discussion post. FOR THE DISCUSSION ASSIGNMENT (FOCUS ON THESE READINGS IF YOU CHOOSE PROMPT A):
Goldstein, “Race and the ‘Jewish Problem’ in Interwar America”
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Loeffler, “An Abandoned Weapon in the Fight Against Hate Speech”
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CHAPTER 5
RACE AND THE “JEWISH PROBLEM”
IN INTERWAR AMERICA
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D
ESPITE RISING concerns about the uncertainty of Jewish racial
status, white Americans of the Progressive Era had largely been
able to keep their fears about Jewish distinctiveness in check. As
vexing as the Jewish presence seemed at times, American racial discourse
in the years before World War I continued to emphasize the distinctions
between whites and blacks and tried to understand the place of Jews
within those familiar categories. Looking back on the opening years of
the century, Harold Stearns, one of the major social critics of the 1920s,
expressed what was a widely held view concerning the Jews: “I thought
that in a few generations they would be absorbed into the general population by intermarriage,” he explained. “Whatever friction was engendered
was merely temporary inconvenience.”1 In the years after the war, however, such optimism vanished as discussions of Jewish status took on a
new, urgent tone. Unlike Progressive Era commentators, who either tried
to subvert the troubling presence of the Jew beneath the categories of
“black” and “white” or felt confident that the difficulties presented by
Jewish distinctiveness would simply be worked out in time, white Americans of the interwar period were increasingly convinced that Jews represented a distinct “problem” in American life.
“The after-the-war imagination plays busily about the Jew,” wrote
New York rabbi Judah L. Magnes in 1920, describing the excited mood
about Jewish issues. “Books, magazine articles, newspaper editorials, the
talk of the man in the street, figure him as a sort of Mephistopheles of the
peoples. It is the Jew, they say, who is bedeviling this distracted world.”2
A survey of the periodical press of the period confirms Magnes’s claim.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the Jews became the focus of dozens of
exposés, symposiums, and series of articles by leading experts that were
featured in magazines like the Nation, the Saturday Evening Post, Atlantic Monthly, and the World Tomorrow. The Forum was typical of American opinion in 1926 when it expressed the need to focus new light on the
“Jewish Problem” in America. “It was once the practice of medicine to
cover up a festering sore,” explained the editors. “But fortunately medicine has advanced to the point where a direct attack upon the causes of
the sore is practicable.” So too had the time come for a “fearless airing
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of honest differences of opinion” on the place of the Jews in American
life. “That a Jewish Question exists is a fact which nearly all sane men
and women, whether Jew or Gentile, will readily admit.”3
This new urgency concerning the Jew was a part of the larger ethos of
an era in which the confidence of Victorian America withered under the
challenges of postwar society. White Americans of the period, finding it
increasingly difficult to muster unquestioning faith in progress, became
determined to face up to the problems of modern life rather than obscure
them with optimism. As they came to terms with those problems, they also
stopped and took stock of the Jew as a distinct racial entity that stood
apart from the categories of “black” and “white” and was in need of
individual attention and analysis. As members of the dominant society
became less able to smooth over their anxieties about modernity, they
could no longer subvert the Jewish image that had come to represent them.
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The Jew in National Life
While anxiety about modernity, and particularly the rise of an urban industrial society, was not new in the period after World War I, the postwar
generation experienced a level of doubt about the future of the nation
that was unprecedented in American history. Overt expressions of national doom had been limited during the early twentieth century to a
handful of antimodernist patricians, but by the 1920s there was a widespread feeling among white Americans that they were living in a “botched
civilization.”4 Much of this dramatic decline in self-confidence was due
to the destabilizing political and social changes ushered in by the war. In
exchange for the massive toll it took on American material and psychological resources, the war delivered few of the sweeping benefits it had promised. Instead of being remade in the cast of American democracy, Europe
during the 1920s seemed as politically unstable as ever, threatened by
the specter of Russian communism. As a result, many Americans became
fearful of continuing foreign entanglements and the importation of radical political ideologies to these shores. In addition, the domestic social
landscape was thrown into turmoil by disagreements about the return to
prewar conditions. American labor was sorely disappointed when, at the
war’s conclusion, employers sought to reverse the gains made by workers
during the wartime surge in production. Finally, racial and ethnic tensions
flared when native-born whites sought to reassert their dominance in a
society where African Americans and immigrants had benefited from wartime opportunities.5
Perhaps most significantly, the war represented to many native-born
whites a final break with the idealized, community-based culture of their
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past. Not only had the conflict placed the United States in a position of
world leadership from which it could not turn back, but it had also hastened the irreversible expansion of the country’s burgeoning mass culture.
If these feelings of insecurity and dislocation existed during the prosperous 1920s, they were experienced even more sharply during the 1930s
and early 1940s, when economic depression and war loomed as threats
to American life. Aside from the grave doubts that the economic crisis
elicited about the viability of American capitalism, members of the dominant class also feared that the time was ripe for the overthrow of democracy by an alien political ideology, a fear exacerbated by the rise of communist and fascist governments in other parts of the world.6
If the changes of the 1920s and 1930s brought new doubts about modernity to the surface, however, they could not totally obscure white
Americans’ faith in progress. Even the most backward-looking groups,
like the Ku Klux Klan, resisted change only in piecemeal fashion, ultimately accepting new ways as long as their vision of “traditional values”
could be affirmed symbolically. For most members of the dominant society, the blandishments of modern culture—automobiles, movies, massproduced goods, urban leisure—were too attractive and promising to reject.7 Unable to suppress their sense of fear and disillusionment amidst
rapid change, they were also unable and unwilling to turn back from the
new social and cultural realities of their world. It is no surprise that in
this time of radical ambivalence about modern life, the Jew became a
focus for discussion and debate as never before.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Jews continued to be linked in American
discourse with many of the features of modernity about which white
Americans were ambivalent: business, urban life, intellectuality, self-interest. But during the interwar years, many new markers of modern life were
added to this list. As the children and grandchildren of Eastern European
Jewish immigrants became more acculturated in these years, they grew
more prominent in the areas of American life associated with social change.
Their heavy concentration in the cities and their overrepresentation in
schools of higher learning made them leaders in many of the new intellectual and cultural movements. During the 1920s, Jews achieved great success in politics in the major urban centers, and by the Depression decade,
they were conspicuous in the New Deal establishment. The interwar years
saw the two largest Jewish garment unions transformed into major players
in American industrial relations. Finally, and perhaps most importantly,
the expansion of America’s mass culture provided Jews who were often
excluded from other fields with a means of advancement and a chance to
help shape American discourse as writers, editors, artists, and performers,
not to mention as creators of the era’s two most important media, radio
and motion pictures.8 Despite accusations to the contrary, Jews were far
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from dominating American institutions, but because they remained a visible minority and were concentrated in pursuits that had such a great impact on American values and perceptions, it was easy for members of the
dominant society to associate them with the forces of modern life.
Under these circumstances, Jews increasingly became a target for those
nervous about the direction of modern American culture. In their attempt
to understand why the nation was going astray from what they considered
its core values, many white Americans cast the Jewish “race” as an infiltrating force, one that was powerful enough to penetrate the central institutions of American life but dedicated to its own selfish interests. This
view of the Jew was articulated almost immediately after the war, when
the nation was gripped by a series of red scares, and Jews were singled
out by witnesses before several congressional committees as importers of
revolutionary communism to these shores.9 By the early 1920s, Jews were
held responsible for a variety of the country’s modern evils. The revived
Ku Klux Klan, which now aimed its venom at Catholics and Jews as well
as African Americans, argued that Jews engaged in unfair business practices and exploited the American working class while producing nothing
in return. The Klan also charged that the Jew undermined American
moral foundations by producing “lewd” motion pictures, selling immodest clothing to Christian women, and providing the public with “vile
places of amusement.”10
Significantly, such accusations played as well in the nation’s major urban
centers as they did in the traditionally rural bases of Klan support.11 In
fact, what most distinguished anti-Jewish sentiments during this period
was that their appeal extended not only to those on the fringes of society,
but to some of America’s most prominent mainstream figures, like automobile tycoon Henry Ford. In a series of articles published in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, between 1920 and 1924, Ford charged
the “International Jew” with a string of intrigues, from bringing the United
States into World War I, to manipulating American business and finance
for their own ends, to corrupting Anglo-Saxon virtues through their control of Hollywood and the music industry. Similarly, the fact that quotas
and restrictions against Jews were no longer found only in exclusive clubs
but also in major American institutions like Harvard University indicated
just how pervasive fears about the Jew’s place in society had become.12
The economic crisis of the 1930s only intensified these hatreds and
added to the number of spokesmen who saw the Jews as a destabilizing
force. Fear of “Jewish communism” became widespread, and was exacerbated by the frequent identification of Jews with New Deal economic
and social policy. Additionally, after the rise of Nazi Germany and the
impending threat of another war, figures of no less stature than the aviation hero Charles Lindbergh lashed out against Jews as a force they feared
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would propel the nation once again into world conflict.13 During the Depression decade, urban Catholics suffering in difficult circumstances became especially active in making such accusations against Jews. Because
they often lagged behind Jews in the attainment of economic mobility and
saw them as competitors for political power and influence, many Catholics found Jews to be attractive symbols for the forces that seemed to
control their lives. These resentments were most powerfully expressed by
organizations such as the Christian Front and by the immensely popular
“radio priest,” Father Charles E. Coughlin, who blamed Jews for the sufferings and “persecution” of the American people.14
While the 1920s and 1930s represented a rising tide of fear and hostility
toward the Jews, however, there was also a noticeable current of positive
attitudes toward the Jews during the same period.15 Just as white Americans expressed radically ambivalent attitudes toward their changing social and cultural environment, they were also hopelessly conflicted about
the Jews they associated with those changes. While certain spokesmen
bemoaned Jewish influence in government, in Hollywood, and in the
music industry, significant segments of the white population still seemed
willing to elect Jewish politicians to high office (including governors Herbert Lehman of New York and Henry Horner of Illinois) and to embrace
the cultural contributions of Jews as expressions of quintessential Americanism.16 In addition, as pervasive as antisemitism and antisemitic movements were during these years, they frequently had their counterparts
among those who spoke out on behalf of the Jews and in favor of a more
tolerant society. In the wake of the antisemitic campaign of Henry Ford’s
Dearborn Independent, several respectable journals took the billionaire
car manufacturer to task for his anti-Jewish rhetoric, as did leading intellectuals and statesmen. In 1921, without any pressure from Jewish
groups, social reformer and writer John Spargo organized a petition condemning Ford’s efforts that was signed by an impressive array of eminent
American intellectuals, clergy, and civic leaders, including former presidents Taft, Wilson, and Roosevelt.17
In the wake of these initial protests of Ford’s antisemitism, a number
of Christian and Jewish denominational bodies founded “goodwill” committees to promote interfaith cooperation. In 1927, these committees crystallized into the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ), a
group led by rabbis, Christian churchmen, and several Jewish and Christian laypersons.18 In many of places across the country that were labeled
trouble spots for Jewish-gentile relations, one could find impressive efforts at interfaith cooperation. In Indiana, a stronghold of Ku Klux Klan
power and influence, Jewish leaders drew support from Christian clergy,
politicians, and the local press in their campaign to discredit the Klan,
eventually leading to the organization’s downfall in the state.19 And in
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the country’s major urban centers, where Catholic-Jewish tensions flared
during the Depression, several Catholic leaders trumpeted the pope’s official rejection of antisemitism and distanced themselves from the antiJewish rhetoric of radio priest Charles Coughlin.20
Despite the presence of a strong movement for goodwill between Jews
and Christians, however, there was still not always a neat divide in
America between the camps of antisemites and philosemites. Different as
they were, each of these positions was shot through with ambivalence,
making it impossible to say that any group of Americans was of one mind
in their approach to the Jews. Henry Ford, despite his persistent attacks
on Jewish “control” of American culture, claimed to think highly of some
Jews and continued to court the friendship of the prominent Detroit rabbi
Leo Franklin.21 Charles Lindbergh, too, had close Jewish associates and
claimed to admire the Jewish “race.”22 Despite the antisemitic rhetoric of
the Ku Klux Klan, tales abound of the organization’s frequent “cordiality” toward Jews in both the North and South. In certain cities, the Klan
threw its support behind Jewish political candidates and sometimes extended offers of membership to Jews.23 And if those who tended toward
antisemitism were not thoroughgoing in their rejection of Jews, neither
were those who promoted tolerance completely at ease with the Jewish
presence in America. Although less cynical about the Jew’s “subversive”
influence on American society and more hopeful that relations between
Jews and non-Jews could be worked out, advocates of tolerance often
shared in the belief that Jews constituted a distinct “problem” for the
nation. Not immune themselves from the anxieties and pressures of modern life, many of them were willing to accept at least some of the associations made between Jews and the wayward direction of American culture.
In keeping with contemporary understandings of intergroup relations,
most subscribed to the widely held notion that antisemitism stemmed not
from irrational prejudice but from “race antipathies”—concrete differences in temperament and outlook that needed to be worked out and
overcome through the elimination of group differences.24
The contradictions in the attitudes of both the antisemites and the proponents of tolerance suggest that ambivalence about the Jews was endemic in white American society. Ambivalence about the Jews, however,
was nothing new. What distinguished the approach of white Americans
in the 1920s and 1930s was the fact that few could continue to obscure
the doubts about national life that ambivalence about the Jews represented. Just as they were unable to solve the quandary of their approach
to American modernity, white Americans of the interwar period seemed
unable to totally demonize the Jews or to satisfy themselves that Jews
were in harmony with American ideals. Instead, for the first time in Amer-
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ican history, they faced up to their disquieting inability to understand the
Jews within the familiar categories of American life.
Traditionally, in times of national crisis and doubt, members of the dominant white society had been able to turn to the country’s black-white racial
system as a means of affirming their sense of superiority and their ability
to overcome adversity. In the years before World War I, faith in the blackwhite dichotomy seemed to bolster their belief in progress and forestall
fears about the mounting costs of modernization. By the 1920s, however,
they increasingly began to lose the sense of confidence white supremacy
had previously afforded. Once focused on the relationships between superior whites and inferior peoples of color, white Americans now became
preoccupied with their own racial failings and the dangers faced by their
civilization, themes popularized by racist thinkers like Lothrop Stoddard
and Madison Grant.25 The migration of a half million African Americans
from the South to northern urban centers between 1915 and 1920 made
whites’ fears about the inadequacies of their racial strength and solidarity
even more acute. In many cases, white Americans’ particular fascination
with African American culture during this period, while usually expressed
in paternalistic fashion, stemmed from an underlying fear that blacks retained a strength and vitality that whites were losing.26
The period’s tendency toward facing up to even the most unpleasant
“truths” decisively shaped the way white Americans of the interwar years
described and understood the racial place of Jews.27 Most significantly,
they were no longer able to contain the troubling image of the Jew within
the more comforting categories of black and white. Given the mood of
skepticism prevalent between the wars, the method used to suppress the
Jewish image in the early twentieth century now seemed hopelessly naı̈ve.
On the one hand, there was a growing recognition that, for better or for
worse, Jews and the forces of modernity they represented were an integral
part of national life. As a result, American whites could no longer plausibly dismiss their connection to those forces by comparing Jews to “inferior” peoples of color. On the other hand, few white Americans retained
sufficient confidence in the path of modern American life to see the Jews—
the bearers of that modernity—as stable members of white society. Unable
to either place Jews beyond the pale of whiteness or to fully embrace them
as undifferentiated whites, whites Americans came to increasingly see the
Jews as a distinct racial “problem.”
Neither Black . . .
Growing recognition by white Americans that the Jews defied easy placement into the categories of black and white did not mean that the color
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line ceased to play a significant role in framing the “Jewish Problem”
during the 1920s and 1930s. In fact, antisemites in the period between
the two wars became preoccupied with understanding the relationship
between Jewishness and whiteness. If they could no longer defuse the
danger they saw in the Jews by likening them to African Americans, they
aimed instead to study, clarify, and expose their role as an unstable element in white society.
This new focus on exposing the Jew as a problem in white America
was exemplified by Henry Ford’s campaign in the Dearborn Independent.
Ford’s propaganda aimed at unmasking aspects of Jewish racial difference
that were thought to be dangerously masquerading as sameness. Early in
the “International Jew” series, the editors of the Independent published
the statements made by Simon Guggenheim and Simon Wolf during their
campaign to remove the Jewish racial designation from the immigration
and census records. According to the Independent, their testimony was
nothing more than an attempt to conceal the true character of the American Jewish community and to keep other Americans ignorant of the number of Jewish immigrants that were daily arriving on their shores. In fact,
the Independent argued, Jews were a “separate people, marked off from
other races by very distinct characteristics, both physical and spiritual,”
and one need not look past the repeated statements of Jewish writers and
spokesmen to prove it.28 In a similar vein, Ford also drew attention to the
Jewish practice of name changing, exposing it as another means by which
Jews tried to blend in to the American mainstream while secretly retaining
their racial solidarity. The worst offender in the regard, argued the paper,
was Louis Marshall, who worked his way to a high station in America
using an assumed “Anglo-Saxon” name and then dedicated himself to
uprooting the principle that America was a “Christian nation.” 29
Thus, a persistent theme of the Independent’s articles was that unless
Jews were made visible in white America, they would subvert all the standards of the nation for their own ends. The paper bemoaned, for example,
how “Jewish dealers” had lowered American business standards and destroyed “the old way of the white man, when a man’s word was as good
as his bond, and when business was service and not exploitation.”30 As
promoters of both Hollywood and African American jazz (labeled by the
Independent as “Yiddish moron music”), they had contaminated American morals and tastes.31 In some articles, more direct attention was given
to the danger the Jew posed to the maintenance of white supremacy. One
charged that Jewish distillery owners in the South specialized in the manufacture of alcohol known as “nigger gin,” a beverage “compounded to
act upon the Negro in a most vicious manner.” Not only was the liquor
itself said to provoke criminal activity among African Americans, but the
labels on the bottles “bore lascivious suggestions and were decorated with
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highly indecent portraiture of white women.” The account went on to
suggest that as the drink caused a wave of black criminality across the
South, a period of great regional strife began—all due to Jewish influence.
Jews’ support of black civil rights organizations and charitable causes
was also singled out as part of their “Divide-Conquer-Destroy” strategy.
“Their role in distributing Jewish influence is directly behind the present
attitude of the Negro toward the white man,” explained the article.
“Look at the so-called ‘Negro Welfare Societies’ with their hordes of Jewish officials and patrons! Jewish influence in the South today is active in
keeping up the memory of old divisions.”32
The Independent’s accusations are significant in that, instead of painting the Jews as blacks or whites, they highlighted both the power Jews
wielded in white society and the damage they did to it by acting in their
own group interest. This theme was echoed over and over again in American discourse during the 1920s and 1930s and was typical of the era’s
attempt to uncover and expose the complex racial place of the Jew. Part
of this process was the elaboration of new terms for the Jew, especially
the increasingly popular epithet “kike.” While the derivation of the term
is vague, it was most likely coined by acculturated Central European Jews
as a term of reproach for their less cultivated Eastern European cousins,
whose surnames often ended in “ki.” By the 1920s, it had attained wide
currency among the non-Jewish public. “Kike” was used most often to
refer to the Jews as members of a distinct race who were dangerously
powerful and influential, rather than marginal, in the white world.33
This image of the Jew was particularly salient in discussions about Jewish college admissions that raged in the early 1920s. College students and
administrators during these years frequently argued that schools were
being overrun by Jews who were changing the character of the institutions
and undermining white unity. Harvard, for example, had long prided itself on its unified student body, but now Jews were said to be instilling
the spirit of competition by trying to demonstrate academic superiority
over their non-Jewish counterparts. Among the surest signs that the Jewish college student concentrated on his own academic advancement to the
exclusion of all else, according his detractors, was his avoidance of sport
and recreation, which were meant to instill fellowship and shared school
spirit among the students.34
Given such a critique, it is not surprising that protesters against Jewish
influence at both Harvard and New York University (NYU), another
school with a large Jewish enrollment, argued that these schools needed
to be preserved as “white man’s college[s].” Here the intent was not to
suggest that the Jews were inferior by likening them to African Americans;
Jews were referred to specifically as “kikes” in both instances. Rather,
the assertion was that Jewish infidelity to the standards of whiteness was
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dangerous precisely because of the Jew’s high stature in the university. At
Harvard in 1922, a visiting alumnus, struck by the number of “kikes” in
the Yard, was particularly alarmed at the sight of “two Jews and a negro,
fraternizing.” This scene, he suggested, was only one example of Jews’
tendency to ignore time-honored social standards. He also charged Jews
with creating a highly competitive academic environment in which “white
boys” were eliminated. “Are the Overseers so lacking in genius,” inquired
the alumnus, “that they can’t devise a way to bring Harvard back to the
position it always held as a ‘white man’s’ college?”35 Apparently the same
sort of feeling raged at NYU, where in 1923 students hung posters warning away “scurvey kikes” and admonishing university officials to “make
New York University a white man’s college.”36
The notion of the Jew “infiltrating” and undermining the standards of
white society soon mingled with the popular image of the Jew as communist, especially during the years of the Depression when both Jews and
African Americans were conspicuous in American communist circles.
This stereotype took root deeply in the South, where the threat of communist infiltration was most closely linked to fears of an African American
assertion of power. In several southern states, Jewish communists—usually transplants from the North—were active in organizing black workers
during the Great Depression, and became widely seen as troublemakers
by local whites.37 In 1930, David Weinberg, a Jewish tailor and active
communist in Miami, was singled out by his non-Jewish neighbors for
“associating with Negroes.” To show their disapproval of his activities,
a group of men abducted Weinberg, tarred and feathered him, and threw
him from a car into a downtown intersection.38 When attorney Samuel
Leibowitz, who was not a communist but received backing from the Communist Party, defended the African American “Scottsboro nine” against
charges of rape in 1931, he won the scorn of southern whites who argued
that local racial standards were being threatened by “Jew money from
New York.”39 In the wake of the Scottsboro case, militant southern
groups like the James True Associates claimed that Jews intended to overthrow the white power structure and use African Americans as “the shock
troops of the revolution.”40
While fear was particularly strong in the South that powerful Jews
would help undermine the racial balance, such feelings were also frequently expressed in the North. Meyer Levin, in his novel of Jewish life
in Chicago, The Old Bunch (1937), portrayed the scorn with which the
Irish police of the city greeted radical Jews who protested with African
Americans on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys. In one scene, the police delight in humiliating Jewish activists after a demonstration, lining them up
and making them kiss their African American comrades.41 In the northern
urban centers, where racial tensions often centered on the issue of housing
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14. The Jew as “kike,” 1923. Beginning in the 1920s, many Americans used the
epithet “kike” to convey an image of the Jew as powerful in white society but
disloyal to its standards. This antisemitic broadside posted by students at New
York University singled out Jews as an unstable element in the white population.
(Courtesy Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives)
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CHAPTER 5
competition, the Jewish property owners were often labeled “sell-outs”
that destroyed the integrity of white neighborhoods.42 The willingness of
Jews to rent and sell to blacks angered members of other immigrant
groups—usually Irish—who, for reasons of both religion and class, often
found it more difficult to move to other neighborhoods. As a result, they
sometimes vilified Jews as “kike real estate bastards.”43 As Studs Lonigan,
the title character in James Farrell’s classic portrait of Chicago life in the
1920s, expressed it, “It’s a lousy thing . . . Jews ruining a neighborhood
just to make money like Judas did.”44 In New York, too, Jews often provoked the ire of non-Jewish whites who blamed them for allowing blacks
to move into previously rest
