Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism, the discrimination against Jews for reasons associated with their racial heritage, has been present in the North American continent since the first community of Israelites settled in Manhattan in 1654. However, it was only after the Civil War, when immigrants from Europe increased considerably in numbers, that a racist attitude toward Jews started gaining ground. Discrimination against and hatred of Jews peaked during the interwar years, but they never reached the same levels of paroxysm and magnitude as in Europe. With the United States being a heterogeneous multiethnic society, Jews found themselves to be a minority alongside Many others, and consequently they have been spared the role of natural and exclusive target of racial hatred that was common in European societies. This explains why no indigenous theorization of anti-Semitism has developed in the United States. However, the perception of widespread diffidence toward them shaped the attitude of American Jews in connection to human and social services; communal self-help was seen as the most feasible way to provide for the needs of the population. The prominent role of tzedakah (in Judaism, the religious obligation to charity) also drove Jews in the United States to seek help from their own ranks rather than ask the government.

The first Jewish community in America dates back to 1654, when a small contingent of Israelites arrived in the then Dutch colony of Nieuw Amsterdam (later New York) from Recife, another Dutch settlement on the Brazilian coast that had been snatched by the Portuguese. Memories of the violence and massacres perpetrated against their kind during the Iberian inquisition persuaded these Jews to move to more tolerant shores. In fact, these immigrants were granted permission to stay in Nieuw Amsterdam by the Dutch India Company, although the then governor Peter Stuyvesant, a devout Christian, opposed the decision and considered Jews “hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ.”

One remarkable case of anti-Jewish behavior took place in 1733 when the trustees of the Georgia Charter pressed the colony's leader, James Oglethorpe, into denying Jews permission to settle in the territory. Oglethorpe, however, opposed the decision and granted Jews permission to stay.

The American Revolution marked a turning point in the History of American Jews. The First Amendment to the Constitution provided that the republican government would not interfere nor legislate on matters concerning religion, while a 1790 letter by George Washington to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island, assured its members that “the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land” would do well so long as they would “demean themselves as good citizens.” This latter formulation, according to recent scholarship, has to be seen as a foreboding of the trials and ordeals to come, as it implied that Jews would fare well in the United States only as long as they would comply with white Protestant standards of citizenship; and, [Page 98]during the course of American History, Jews would often find themselves to be beyond these standards.

Starting from the latter half of the 19th century, anti-Semitism shifted its focus from religion to the social sphere, as attacks would target the cultural and racial differences of Jews in relation to the Anglo-Saxon norm. The rise to prominence of a significant number of German Jewish businessmen and financiers, together with a huge increase of Ashkenazi newcomers from eastern Europe, caused concern among the white elite: the former were seen as uncouth upstarts whose enormous wealth could challenge their social exclusivity, while the latter appeared an alien tribe responsible for all kinds of social evils, from crime to political radicalism. Aversion and fear of the aliens became the nurturing ground of a nativist movement that advocated the end of unrestricted immigration—with no distinctions between Jews and gentiles, Europeans and Asians.

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