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The

American JewishArchives

Journal

volume lxx . 2018 . numbers 1 & 2

CELEBR ATING 70 YE ARSCELEBR ATING 70 YE ARS

The

American JewishArchives

Journal

A Journal Devoted to the Preservation and Studyof the American Jewish Experience

Gary P. Zola, Ph.D., EditorDana Herman, Ph.D., Managing Editor

Jacob Rader Marcus, Ph.D., Founding Editor (1896–1995)

Published by

volume lxx . 2018 . numbers 1 & 2

Dr. Gary P. Zola, Executive Director–––––––––––––––––––––

LOCATED ON THE CINCINNATI CAMPUS OF THE

Hebrew Union College-JewisH institUte of religionCINCINNATI • NEW YORK • LOS ANGELES • JERUSALEM

Publication of this journal is made possible, in part, by gifts from

Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York

and by the

Dolores and Walter NeustadtAmerican Jewish Archives Journal

Endowment Fund

The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of theAmerican Jewish Archives

Located on the Cincinnati campus of theHebrew Union College‑Jewish Institute of Religion

Cincinnati • New York • Los Angeles • JerusalemRabbi David Ellenson, Ph.D., Interim President

On the cover: Cover of Israel Zangwill’s “The Melting Pot”:

The Great American Drama, 1916. Courtesy of University of Iowa Special Collections.

The American Jewish Archives Journal is indexed in the Index to Jewish Periodicals, Current Contents, American Historical Review, United States Political

Science Documents, and the Journal of American History.

Information for Contributors:The American Jewish Archives Journal generally follows The Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition) but issues its own style sheet, which may be accessed by

visiting the American Jewish Archives website at: AmericanJewishArchives.org

© 2018 by The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish ArchivesISSN 002‑905X

Table of Contents

volume lxx . 2018 . numbers 1 & 2 iii

Table of Contents

To Our Readers Gary P. Zola vii–x

articles

The Maccabaean and The Melting Pot: Contributionist Zionism and American Diversity Discourse, 1903–1915 David Weinfeld 1

The Maccabaean was the official organ of the Federation of American Zionists, published in New York from 1901 to 1920. Weinfeld’s article shows how the content of this magazine helped shape the discourse on di‑versity in the United States. From a Zionist perspective, the writers of The Maccabaean advanced the distinct but overlapping ideals for American di‑versity, including the melting pot, cultural pluralism, and cosmopolitan‑ism. These visions were linked by their contributionist rhetoric, namely that American Jews would contribute positively to American culture, just as the Jewish State would contribute positively to world civilization.

Maurice Eisendrath Comes to Toronto: The Rabbi’s First Year at Holy BlossomHoward Roger and Michael Cole 39

Maurice Eisendrath came to Holy Blossom Synagogue in Toronto as a young rabbi in the summer of 1929. He left in 1943 to lead the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. In this article, we examine some of his sermons during his first year in Toronto as well as editorials he wrote for the Canadian Jewish Review. His editorials and sermons on pacifism, Zionism, and racial prejudice, as well as on Judaism and Jewish identity, are an early indication of the thinking that guided his illustrious career as a religious and community leader in the years that followed.

Table of Contents

The American Jewish Archives Journaliv

documentary analysis

The Pilgrim Rabbis: Reform Rabbis Behaving Badly in a Lost SatireJoan S. Friedman 69

in celebration of nelson glueck (1900–1971)

Remembering Nelson GlueckSamuel Greengus 119

In Memory of Nelson GlueckSally J. Priesand 131

book reviews

Bonnie S. Anderson, The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist PioneerReviewed by Katherine Durack 135

Eric L. Goldstein and Deborah R. Weiner, On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of BaltimoreReviewed by Charles L. Chavis, Jr. 137

Adi Gordon, Toward Nationalism’s End: An Intellectual Biography of Hans KohnReviewed by Samuel Hayim Brody 140

Arlo Haskell, The Jews of Key West: Smugglers, Cigar Makers, and Revolutionaries (1823–1969)Reviewed by Henry Green 144

Table of Contents

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Jenna Weissman Joselit, Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten CommandmentsReviewed by Katherine Rosenblatt 146

Rachel Kranson, Ambivalent Embrace: Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar AmericaReviewed by Marc Dollinger 150

James Loeffler, Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth CenturyReviewed by Judah Bernstein 152

Rafael Medoff, Too Little and Almost Too Late: The War Refugee Board and America’s Response to the HolocaustReviewed by Mark Cowett 155

Shari Rabin, Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century AmericaReviewed by Andrew Offenburger 157

2017 select acquisitions list 159

2018–2019 fellows list 167

board & councils list 171

index 177

We mourn the passing of our beloved teacher and friend

Rabbi Aaron D. Panken, Ph.D. (1964–2018)

––––––––––––––––––

President, HUC-JIR (2014–2018)

“His was a Torah of kindness… Even as we grieve his loss, we will not

abandon his enduring legacy.”––––––––––––––––––

Rabbi David Ellenson, Interim President

“Memories of a Friendship with Rabbi Aaron Panken,” The New York Jewish Week, May 9, 2018

To Our Readers

volume lxx . 2018 . numbers 1 & 2 vii

To Our Readers . . .

Arthur O. Lovejoy (1873–1962) is often referred to as the “father” of a field of study known as the “history of ideas.” A faculty member of Johns Hopkins University from 1920 until 1938, Lovejoy conceptual‑ized an important methodological approach that would enable historians to trace the way in which important ideas have developed over time. According to Lovejoy, it is possible for a historian to identify an array of specific ideas—discrete concepts called “unit‑ideas.” The history of these unit‑ideas could be reconstructed, Lovejoy theorized, by studying how these concepts were understood from ancient to modern times. In 1923 he organized the History of Ideas Club at Johns Hopkins and, in 1940, he founded the History of Ideas Journal, which still publishes scholarly essays on this topic.1

It is often a challenge to distinguish between the terms history of ideas and intellectual history, because the two are frequently used inter‑changeably. Originally, these approaches to historical reconstruction were viewed as two distinct methodologies, and to this day many histo‑rians contend that each betoken distinctive fields of historical endeavor. There are those who argue that the history of ideas—as noted above—is an effort to “organize the historical narrative around one major idea” in order to trace the development of that discrete concept across “dif‑ferent contexts and times.” Intellectual history, by contrast, strives to understand how various ideas reflect the cultural or historical context in which they are found.2

1 On the history of the “history of ideas,” see Donald R. Kelley, The Descent of Ideas: The History of Intellectual History (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002). On Lovejoy, see Daniel J. Wilson, Arthur O. Lovejoy and The Quest for Intelligibility (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). On the History of Ideas Club, see Richard Macksey, “The History of Ideas at 80,” in Modern Language Notes 117, no. 5 (December 2002): 1083–1097. 2 Peter E. Gordon, “What is Intellectual History? A Frankly Partisan Introduction to a Frequently Misunderstood Field,” University of Oregon website, https://pages.uoregon.edu/eherman/teaching/texts/Gordon‑whatisintellhist.pdf (accessed 1 December 2018). See also Riccardo Bavaj, “Intellectual History,” Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung website, http://docupedia.de/images/a/a0/Intellectual_History.pdf (accessed 1 December 2018).

To Our Readers

The American Jewish Archives Journalviii

Whether one is convinced that intellectual history and the history of ideas are two distinct methodologies, or whether one prefers to view them as two sides of the same coin, there is at least one characteristic that both have in common: Any attempt to understand ideational history will, by necessity, require the historian to engage critically with a text (or several texts) that has been intentionally created to engage the intellect. As one intellectual historian recently observed, “What sets intellectual history off from other forms of historical inquiry is the sustained, close examination of texts.”3

Each of the essays and articles in this double edition of our journal sheds new light on the development of important ideas that have in‑fluenced the American Jewish experience. David Weinfeld’s article, for instance, provides us with a probing historical analysis on how Zionists conceptualized societal diversity in America. Weinfeld’s study is based on an important source—articles drawn from pages of The Maccabaean, a monthly journal published by the Federation of American Zionists (FAZ) during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Some may be surprised to discover that Zionists in America and elsewhere invested a great deal of intellectual energy debating how Americans should re‑spond to the dramatic upsurge in ethnic diversity brought about by the waves of immigration that came to the United States at the fin‑de‑siècle. By examining many issues of The Maccabaean, Weinfeld discovered that “the discourse over American diversity owes much to Zionism.” In fact, Zionists not only participated in this heated discourse, they actually served as thought leaders. Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) promulgated the “melting pot” concept, and Horace Kallen (1882–1974) proffered an alternative point of view, “cultural pluralism.” Still others, such as Rabbis Maurice H. Harris (1859–1930) and Meyer Waxman (1887–1969), elucidated the concept of “cosmopolitanism,” which asserted that it was important for people to preserve their ethnic identities and display them proudly because then the world would learn to appreciate “the divergent characteristics, customs, and convictions of their neighbors.”

3 Nils Gilman, “What Is the Subject of Intellectual History?”, https://s‑usih.org/2013/02/what‑is‑the‑subject‑of‑intellectual‑history/ (accessed 1 December 2018).

To Our Readers

volume lxx . 2018 . numbers 1 & 2 ix

Regardless of their ideological predilections, Weinfeld observes, all of the Zionist thinkers who sought to explain the character of societal diversity in America shared one notion in common: contributionism. In other words, if a minority group such as the Jews maintains its distinctive identity, it will, in doing so, make a valuable contribution to America and, through the fulfillment of the Zionist ideal, to the world at large.

The subject of our second article is Maurice N. Eisendrath (1902–1973), the towering leader of Reform Judaism during the last half of the twentieth century, who distinguished himself as a fiery activist in a wide range of latitudinarian causes during the post‑World War II era, including the Civil Rights movement, the anti‑Vietnam War move‑ment, nuclear disarmament, anti‑poverty initiatives, and so forth. Under Eisendrath’s leadership, the Reform movement in America experienced transformational growth in both the number of its adherents and in social influence. At the time of his unexpected death from a heart attack in 1973—only hours before he was expected to deliver his valedictory retirement address in front of 3,500 members of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) gathered for their biennial convention in New York—Eisendrath seemed to be the personification of Reform Judaism. His fiery oratory and passionate commitment to the univer‑salistic values of prophetic Judaism made him one of the dominant religious figures of his era.

Prior to becoming the leader of the UAHC in 1943, a young Eisendrath served as the rabbi of Holy Blossom Synagogue in Toronto, Canada. His oratory, activism, and boundless energy enabled him to become a prominent religious figure in Toronto, and his weekly radio show, Forum on the Air, helped him to become a popular Jewish spokes‑man all across Canada.4

Recently a cache of Eisendrath’s sermons delivered during his first years at Holy Blossom (1929–1930) were discovered. These texts had been tucked away in an inaccessible belfry at the temple for nearly eighty years! Howard Roger and Michael Cole, two members of Holy Blossom

4 On Eisendrath, see Avi M. Schulman, Like a Raging Fire: A Biography of Maurice N. Eisendrath (New York: UAHC Press, 1993).

To Our Readers

The American Jewish Archives Journalx

who located these sermons a few years ago, graciously donated them to the American Jewish Archives, where they augment the considerable Eisendrath holdings already in our collection. Roger and Cole not only recovered these “lost” sermons, but they have analyzed their contents carefully. Their essay on Eisendrath’s sermons contribute significantly to our understanding of how his thinking evolved over his career. Some of Eisendrath’s favorite themes, such as civil activism, as well as his passion‑ate commitment to Reform Judaism’s notion of prophetic Judaism, were already highly developed in the young rabbi’s mind when he arrived in Toronto. Yet Eisendrath’s sermons prove that his thinking changed—in some instances radically—over time. An ardent pacifist when he arrived in Toronto, he ultimately became convinced that war was the only way to halt the total destruction of European Jewry under the Hitler regime. He also changed his position vis‑à‑vis Zionism. Upon his arrival in Toronto, Eisendrath was unquestionably a non‑Zionist who eschewed the idea of a distinctive Jewish state. World War II and the Holocaust caused him to change his views, and he would eventually become one of Israel’s most ardent boosters. Still, as Roger and Cole illustrate, much of Eisendrath’s “first year in Toronto would remain with him for fourteen years in the city and throughout the distinguished career.”

Joan S. Friedman has provided readers with yet another perspective—a highly idiosyncratic one—on the history of ideas in the American Jewish experience. Foraging through the AJA’s records on Hebrew Union College (HUC), Friedman came upon a three‑act satirical play writ‑ten by a member(s) of the student body in the second decade of the twentieth century. If we accept the assertion that “what sets intellectual history off from other forms of historical inquiry is [a] sustained, close examination of texts,” then it is clear that Friedman has analyzed a won‑derfully atypical and consciously fascinating satirical text through which we can discern the ideological struggles that had erupted in American Reform Judaism during the early decades of the twentieth century. As Friedman promises in her detailed headnote, the parody she analyzes “offers a humorous perspective on the tensions that roiled the Reform rabbinate in those years: Zionism; competition between New York and Cincinnati for leadership of the Conference and of the movement; ten‑sion between radical Reformers and those who advocated a return to

To Our Readers

volume lxx . 2018 . numbers 1 & 2 xi

a more traditional model of practice; and uncertainty for the future of American Judaism in the face of massive immigration from eastern Europe.”

Finally, this issue of our journal takes note of two milestone an‑niversaries, both of which occurred in 2018. The first is the seven‑tieth anniversary of the establishment of HUC’s School of Graduate Studies (now known as the Pines School of Graduate Studies), founded in 1947–1948. With its excellent library collection and a large, well‑educated faculty—many of whom had been plucked from the Nazi inferno during the years leading up to World War II—HUC in the post‑World War II era realized that it had the academic resources it needed to create a high‑quality program of doctoral studies focused on Bible, the ancient Near East, and Cognate Studies. This program of study had been intentionally designed to attract all those who wanted to study at HUC—regardless of their religious orientation—and, over the years, this program has educated hundreds of fine students, many of whom had distinguished careers in the world of scholarship.5

Nelson Glueck (1900–1971) assumed the presidency of HUC in 1947, and as such he played a crucial role in launching the new School of Graduate Studies and nurturing its growth over the course of two decades. In tribute to the memory of Glueck, and to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the founding of HUC’s Pines School of Graduate Studies, we have reproduced two intimate, personal, and historically significant reminiscences of Glueck, both of which were delivered at the school’s Founders’ Day Ceremonies in March 2018. Professor Samuel Greengus, a longtime member of HUC’s faculty and a former director of the Pines School of Graduate Studies, described the important role Glueck played in putting the school on sure footing during those early years. Rabbi Sally J. Priesand reflected on the critically important role Glueck played in paving the way toward the ordination of the first woman rabbi in 1972.6

5 Michael A. Meyer, “A Centennial History,” in Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion At One Hundred Years, ed. Samuel E. Karff (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1976), 135, 181.6 On Nelson Glueck, see Jonathan M. Brown and Laurence Kutler, Nelson Glueck: Biblical

To Our Readers

The American Jewish Archives Journalxii

The second milestone anniversary is that 2018 also marks the seventi‑eth anniversary of the first issue of The American Jewish Archives Journal, published in 1948. The first article in the journal’s inaugural issue was titled “The Program of the American Jewish Archives,” wherein the founder of the American Jewish Archives, Jacob Rader Marcus (1896–1995), not only outlined the mission of the AJA itself but promised readers that his fledgling research institution would publish a “semi‑annual bulletin” containing “lists of our more important accessions and … at least one article of scientific caliber.7 Seventy years later, the AJA takes pride in its ability to fulfill the promise of Marcus’s inaugural pledge. This double issue constitutes a self‑conscious celebration of this milestone achievement.

Since the history of ideas plays such a prominent role in this seventi‑eth‑anniversary edition of our journal, it is only fitting that we conclude this introductory essay by focusing on a proposition that has influenced several generations of modern Jewish historians. Marcus believed—like Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891), Simon Dubnow (1860–1941) and other Jewish historians who preceded him—that knowledge of the Jewish past significantly enhanced the prospect of a vital Jewish future. In short, it was Marcus’s mission that the AJA and its journal would induce American Jews to reflect meaningfully on their past and, in so doing, be‑come “intelligently conscious of their future as Jews and as Americans.”8 Seventy years later, this remains our hope.

G.P.Z.Cincinnati, Ohio

Archaeologist and President of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2005).7 Gary Phillip Zola, The Dynamics of American Jewish History (Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2004), 115. 8 “After Five Years,” American Jewish Archives 5, no. 1 (January 1953): 4.

A Journey of Jewish Identity & Discovery Interactive discussions led by:

Dr. Jonathan D. SarnaProfessor of American Jewish History,

Brandeis University

Senior Rabbi Micah Greenstein, D.D.

Temple Israel, Memphis

Dr. Gary P. Zola Professor of the American Jewish

Experience, Hebrew Union College

For more information contact Lisa B. Frankel, Director of Educational Outreach of the American Jewish Archives, [email protected] (513) 487-3218 or visit AmericanJewishArchives.org

The Maccabaean and The Melting Pot

The American Jewish Archives Journalxiv

Sketching of Israel Zangwill, 1925.(Courtesy American Jewish Archives)

David Weinfeld

volume lxx . 2018 . numbers 1 & 2 1

The Maccabaean and The Melting Pot: Contributionist Zionism and American Diversity Discourse, 1903–1915

David Weinfeld

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Zionist movement in the United States anticipated and helped shape the discourse on American diversity and assimilation. Between 1901 and 1920, the Federation of American Zionists (FAZ), the largest Zionist organization in the United States, published a monthly magazine, The Maccabaean, out of New York. The Jewish nationalists who contributed to this journal advo‑cated the creation of a Jewish state or autonomous center in Palestine (or elsewhere) while also asserting the compatibility of Zionism and Americanism. In doing so, Maccabaean authors advanced ideas associ‑ated with the metaphor of “the melting pot,” as well as ideas future scholars would associate with terms such as “cultural pluralism” and “cosmopolitanism,” which would all become fixtures in discussions of diversity.

Though scholars have gone to great lengths to distinguish these terms, under the umbrella of Zionism they are linked in advancing a contribu‑tionist model to American and global diversity. “Contributionism” refers to minority groups making a positive contribution to the state in which they live, to the majority population, and to all the different groups that live in it. Jewish immigrants would contribute to American society, not just economically, but culturally. In the same way, the Jewish state or autonomous region would contribute culturally to world civilization. Maccabaean writers who advocated the melting pot, cultural pluralism, or cosmopolitanism may have differed on details, but they all presented optimistic visions of Jewish contributions to the United States, balancing


The American Jewish Archives Journal2

assimilation and Americanization with ethnic pride and communal in‑tegrity. The Maccabaean’s synthesis of Zionism and Americanism helped lay the foundations for modern debates over diversity.

Modern Zionism is not the only framework with which to understand the idea of Jewish contributionism. As Jeremy Cohen explains, this ancient idea dates to the Hebrew Bible, is featured in the New Testament, and persists through the medieval, early modern, and modern periods. German thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn, or the founders of the Wissenchaft des Judentums movement, all believed that Jews made a positive addition to German society. Both predate modern Zionism. Books referring to “Jewish contribution(s)” appeared in 1919, 1925, 1927, and 1938. Some invoked Zionism, but others did not.1 Zionism plays a minor role in Jeremy Cohen and Richard I. Cohen’s 2008 volume, The Jewish Contribution to Civilization.

In the American Jewish context, contributionism did not always equal Zionism. To take one example, in the early twentieth century, a group of students founded the Intercollegiate Menorah Association to advance Hebraism—their term for modern, secular Jewish culture—in the United States. The cultural aspect was key. As Daniel Greene notes, these intellectuals advanced “an inclusive definition of American national identity” along with a “cultural definition of Jewish identity.” For some nonreligious Jews, secular Zionism became their expression of Jewish culture. But their project was a thoroughly American one. As Greene observes, while many in the Menorah Association were Zionists, some were not; they preferred a “non‑partisan” organization “based on a broader conception of Jewish identity than Zionism alone.” They saw Hebraism primarily as a positive contribution to “the American nation.”2

Zionist contributionism, however, lent a political urgency to the Hebraist project. By helping Jews abroad, American Zionists were helping Jews at home. Moreover, Jewish contributionism in the United

1 Jeremy Cohen, “Introduction,” in The Jewish Contribution to Civilization: Reassessing an Idea, ed. Jeremy Cohen and Richard I. Cohen (Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), 3. 2 Daniel Greene, The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Association and American Diversity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 2, 22, 33.

David Weinfeld


States was also distinguished by Jews’ being just one among many ethnic groups. Americanized Zionism directly engaged the issue of American diversity, encompassing the melting pot, cultural pluralism, and cosmopolitanism, and extending beyond the Jewish community to include all immigrants and minority peoples in the United States. A study of The Maccabaean demonstrates this contributionist rhetoric in the American Zionist context. Though The Maccabaean ran from 1901 to 1920, this study concludes in 1915, when philosopher Horace Meyer Kallen, a frequent contributor to The Maccabaean, most fully developed his idea of cultural pluralism in repudiation of the melting pot. By this point, the contributionist case for American Zionism had been firmly established in the pages of The Maccabaean.

This contributionist framework influenced many non‑Jewish intellectuals in the United States, as well as Jews and non‑Jews across the globe. It was a Jewish writer from England, a contributor to The Maccabaean, who introduced the term “melting pot” into the zeitgeist. The Zionist origin of the American melting pot, along with responses in The Maccabaean, provides an excellent point of departure for this analysis.

One Play, Many OpinionsOn 5 October 1908, The Melting-Pot, a play written by English Jew Israel Zangwill (1864–1926), opened in Washington, DC. This was the first significant public use of the term “melting pot,” which would become the defining metaphor for American diversity. The play told the story of David Quixano, a Russian Jewish immigrant to New York. David, a musician, composes an “American symphony” to demonstrate his appreciation for his newfound home. Meanwhile, he falls in love with Vera Revendal, a Russian Christian immigrant to New York. David then discovers that Vera’s father, Baron Revendal, had led the pogrom on David’s home city of Kishinev, murdering his family. Despite the baron’s best efforts, love conquers all in America, and Vera and David live happily ever after.

The romance between these star‑crossed lovers reflected a broader and more important phenomenon: the immigrant’s love for the United States. David expresses this love while explaining the uniqueness and novelty of American diversity: “America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting‑Pot



where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming!... Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians—into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American.”3 The performance, doused in heavy‑handed rhetoric of American exceptionalism, impressed the opening night audience, including progressive president Theodore Roosevelt, to whom Zangwill dedicated the play. After the play moved to Chicago, settlement worker and philosopher Jane Addams, who had encountered hundreds of immigrants as director of Hull House, pronounced herself a big fan of Zangwill’s production. For her and Roosevelt, it represented a positive vision for the United States, where foreigners are welcomed with open arms and become Americans like any other, leaving Old World prejudices behind. Each group, Jews included, contributed to the construction of a new ideal American identity.4

Not everyone liked Zangwill’s play. Many American Jews denounced what they interpreted as a blatant endorsement of intermarriage, a paean to assimilation that foretold the end of Jews and Judaism in the New World.5 Zangwill, a literary celebrity in the Jewish and non‑Jewish

3 Israel Zangwill, The Melting-Pot, first performed in 1908 and published in 1909. Citation from Edna Nahshon, From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot: Israel Zangwill’s Jewish Plays (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006), 288. All citations from Zangwill’s The Melting-Pot are from the Nahshon volume.4 Zangwill had been espousing this sort of contributionist rhetoric at least as early as 1895, in his lecture, “The Position of Judaism,” republished in North American Review 160, no. 461 (April 1895). See Erik Greenberg, “A Prophet and His People: Israel Zangwill and His American Public, 1892–1926 and Beyond,” doctoral dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 2012, 34–35. 5 As Neil Larry Shumsky has shown, this criticism was largely unfair: The Melting-Pot expresses significant ambivalence about assimilation and celebrates the way non‑Jewish characters embrace and retain Jewish culture. See Neil Larry Shumsky, “Zangwill’s The Melting Pot: Ethnic Tensions on Stage,” American Quarterly 27, no. 1 (March 1975): 30–31. Similarly, historian Philip Gleason has brilliantly traced the ambiguous American history of the melting pot idea, labeling it a “symbol of fusion of and confusion” without any fixed meaning. For excellent histories of American discourse on ethnic amalgamation, see Philip Gleason, “The Melting Pot: Symbol of Fusion or Confusion?” American Quarterly 16, no. 1 (Spring 1964): 20–46; and Werner Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), esp. ch. 3, “Melting Pots.”

David Weinfeld


worlds, had married a non‑Jewish woman, feminist Edith Ayrton, in 1903.6 It was not a huge leap to imagine David Quixano as a stand‑in for the playwright and Vera for his wife. Those who took that leap believed Zangwill was encouraging American Jews down the path of complete assimilation, leading to the dissolution of Jewish community and identity.

Shortly after the play opened, an editorial in The Maccabaean lamented The Melting-Pot’s conclusion, where “traditions of centuries go by the board, and Russian Jew and Russian are married,” thanks to the former’s belief “in the amalgamation of races in America.” The unnamed Maccabaean writer had no wish to “quarrel with the character Quixano,” but found it “rather peculiar” that Zangwill offered “the play as his message to Jews and Americans.” The perplexed author called it “inconceivable that the man who for so many years advocated Zionism should have written [The Melting-Pot].” The editorial concluded, “The message of assimilation should come from American reform rabbis, not from Israel Zangwill.”7

This was the second time Zionists felt betrayed by Zangwill. He had once been one of them, a friend to Theodor Herzl, present at the earliest Zionist congresses, a leading activist in the movement to establish a Jewish state in the land of ancient Israel. In 1903, however, he soured on the prospect of a return to Palestine and embraced Herzl’s “Uganda Plan,” calling for the creation of a Jewish state in East Africa. After Herzl died the following year, the majority of Zionists rejected this African alternative. Undeterred, in 1905 Zangwill founded the Jewish Territorial Organization, committed to the notion that the Jews needed a state, but it could be located in any territory, from Africa to the Americas, and not necessarily the land of ancient Israel. He maintained his belief in Jewish contributionism, penning the introduction to the 1925 book, The Real Jew: Some Aspects of the Jewish Contribution to Civilization. Though Zangwill’s rupture with the Zionist movement made him

6 For an excellent analysis of Zangwill as celebrity, see Meri‑Jane Rochelson, A Jew in the Public Arena: The Career of Israel Zangwill (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), esp. ch. 1, “Becoming a Celebrity: Israel Zangwill’s Life and Work,” 9–34.7 Unnamed author [probably Louis Lipsky or Jacob de Haas], “The Melting Pot,” The Maccabaean (November 1908): 187.



enemies, Territorialism remained within the mainstream Zionist orbit until his death in 1926.

Reform Judaism, on the other hand, stood outside the mainstream Zionist movement, and criticism of the Reform movement was not uncommon in The Maccabaean. Though many individual Reform Jews were Zionists, including prominent rabbis like Judah Magnes and Stephen S. Wise, the official policy of the Reform movement, as stated in the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, rejected Jewish nationalism and peoplehood altogether. Article 5 read: “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.”8

This was the view held by Dr. Samuel Schulman, Reform rabbi of New York’s Temple Beth‑El, who also commented on Zangwill’s

8 Pittsburgh Platform, Article 5. Adopted at Pittsburgh Conference, 16–19 November 1885.

First issue of The Maccabaean, October 1901. (Courtesy Klau Library)

David Weinfeld


play. In a sermon printed in the American Hebrew, a New York–based Jewish weekly, Schulman asserted that the “idea that America is a meeting place of nations” was well established in the public sphere. The notion that Judaism’s participation in “the process and mutual co‑operation and coalescences of the various elements in the American national life” will require some adaptation was “quite common” to the Reform movement in the United States “for the last fifty years.” Further impugning Zangwill’s originality, he asserted the term “melting pot” did not originate with the English playwright.

Schulman claimed to have used the term “melting pot” from his pulpit on Passover, 30 March 1907, over a year before The Melting-Pot debuted in Washington, DC. He quoted his old sermon at length: “America, which is the melting pot of all nationalities, which has hospitably received a variety of races and creeds, and which offers opportunity to the best in Judaism to make itself felt as an influencing force in the composite national life.” Schulman hoped that American Judaism, following the teachings of the prophets, would “become a moral power, educating and uniting men, not a self‑centered, narrow racialism estranging them.”9

After quoting himself, Schulman labeled this view the bedrock of Reform Judaism. “We are to become Americans and remain Jews in religion. We are to assimilate to our environment as much as possible,

9 Samuel Schulman, “Judaism and Intermarriage with Christians,” sermon delivered at New York’s Temple Beth El, reprinted in The American Hebrew (20 November 1908): 59. Schulman cited a sermon from Passover, dated 30 March 1907. Schulman’s sermon as potential origin of the term “melting pot” is noted in Nahshon, From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot, 215. On 217–218, Nahshon also points to a book by English writer Ford Madox Ford, The Spirit of the People: An Analysis of the English Mind (London: Alston Rivers, 1907). Ford’s book has a chapter called “The Melting Pot,” in reference to England and in particular to London. It is unknown whether Zangwill read this book or heard Schulman’s sermon, but the fact that “the melting pot” was being used in England and America in 1907 suggests it existed in common parlance, at least among educated elites. The term “melting pot” appears as a metaphor for American diversity and assimilation as early as 1889 in two articles in The New York Times that contrast America as assimilationist melting pot with Canada as bicultural country, both English and French, with French Canadians particularly resistant to assimilation in both countries.



without surrendering the essential principles of our faith.” Crucially, he implored his fellow American Jews to “emphasize religion and not race.” Jews should value “‘the melting pot’” for the “influences of American democracy,” which will in turn allow “the pure gold of a world‑conquering Judaism” to “at last become apparent.”10

Schulman’s criticism of Zangwill, then, is not due to the metaphor of the melting pot, but rather because of the playwright’s seeming insistence “that the only way to become a true American is by intermarriage.” Schulman opposed intermarriage for religious reasons, had no interest in Jewish racial “purity,” and welcomed converts. He simply feared that intermarriage without conversion would led to the “gradual absorption and destruction of the Jewish religion,” what he later called “spiritual suicide.” He mocked Zangwill, first a Zionist and then a Territorialist, for becoming an “exterminationist.”11

Schulman’s critical conclusion about Zangwill went well beyond what the editors of The Maccabaean had leveled. “It comes from poor grace, therefore, from a man like Zangwill, whose only contribution to Jewish thought and Jewish life is the intensification of race pride and the preaching of Jewish nationalism, to preach also to those who dwell in such a free land as America the gospel of mixed marriages.” He summarized the view as follows: ‘“As for myself, I believe in the extermination of the Jew through intermarriage. As for those who want to be Jews, let them go back to Palestine.”’ He labeled Zangwill’s view “anti‑Semitic.”12

The editors of The Maccabaean, so critical of Zangwill in their own journal, jumped to his defense in the face of Schulman’s attack. Despite having lumped Zangwill the assimilationist with “Reform Rabbis” in their critique of The Melting-Pot, they made clear their preference for the English playwright over Samuel Schulman. “Dr. S. Schulman, rabbi of Temple Beth‑El, a rabbi [sic] anti‑Zionist and a doughty champion of the Jewish mission in exile, has preached a sermon on ‘intermarriage’ full of malicious and ill‑natured criticism of Israel Zangwill.” The author

10 Schulman, “Judaism and Intermarriage.” 11 Ibid.12 Ibid.

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mocks Schulman’s description of Judaism as “prophetic religion” as a flimsy barrier against intermarriage. “What shall preserve the Jew as Jew? is the question Zangwill asks.” With Judaism as prophetic religion alone it would be essentially identical to Christianity. If Jewishness is Judaism alone, and Judaism abandoned nationalism for universalism, “the logical conclusion is the ‘melting pot.’”13

Why did the editors of The Maccabaean criticize The Melting-Pot in one issue, comparing Zangwill to assimilationist Reform rabbis, and then in the next issue, defend Zangwill from an attack by an assimilationist anti‑Zionist Reform rabbi? A close analysis of The Maccabaean shows the idea of the melting pot, far from being incongruous with Zionism, was in fact very much part of the American Zionist movement. This compatibility went beyond Zangwill’s formulation for Jewish assimilation in America and particularism in Palestine (or any available territory).14 American Zionists embraced elements of the melting pot because of the contributionist nature of their Jewish nationalism. That is, they defended Zionism not only as a form of Jewish self‑preservation, but also because it would benefit America and the world.

In this way, the melting pot was similar to the ideology that it is often pitted against—that is, cultural pluralism, the ancestor to modern multiculturalism. American pragmatist philosopher, founding faculty member of the New School for Social Research, and leading Zionist intellectual Horace Kallen (1882–1974) claimed to have come up with the term “cultural pluralism” in 1906 or 1907 as a doctoral candidate and teaching assistant at Harvard, in conversation with his student Alain LeRoy Locke. Locke went on to become the first African American Rhodes Scholar, a philosophy professor at Howard, and a leader of the New Negro Movement of the 1920s, also known as the Harlem Renaissance.15

13 Unknown author [probably Louis Lipsky or Jacob de Haas], “Schulman on Zangwill and Intermarriage,” The Maccabaean (December 1908): 230.14 Rochelson, A Jew in the Public Arena, 183.15 For more on Locke and Kallen’s relationship, see David Weinfeld, “What Difference Does the Difference Make? Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, and the Development of Cultural Pluralism in America,” doctoral dissertation, New York University, 2014.



For Locke, cultural pluralism manifested in an aesthetic movement to gain African Americans civil rights. For Kallen, cultural pluralism emerged from Zionism as an anti‑assimilationist idea that allowed different ethnic groups to coexist in the United States. It stood in opposition to the coercive melting pot, which forced immigrants to conform to the dominant Anglo‑Protestant American norm. Kallen believed immigrant groups should maintain their cultures to contribute to American society. As Arthur Goren notes, Kallen especially championed “Hebraism,” his term for secular Jewish culture, as “a vital component of American civilization,” albeit one among many.16 Kallen developed his Hebraist and Zionist cultural pluralism in his frequent contributions to The Maccabaean and brought it to Americanized fruition in a 1915 essay in The Nation magazine, aptly titled, “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot.”

In a rebuke to Zangwill, Kallen replaced Quixano’s “American symphony” with another musical metaphor, “the symphony of civilization.” Kallen’s vision equated ethnic groups with musical instruments, retaining their unique sounds while playing together in harmony and enriching the broader American society.17 Each group would make their particular contribution to ameliorate the whole. This philosophy of cultural pluralism had an even greater representation in the pages of The Maccabaean than did the melting pot. Considering that between 1908 and 1914, The Maccabaean published seven articles that directly criticized the melting pot, and numerous others that touched on the idea, it is safe to say that The Maccabaean, despite its ostensible focus on establishing a Jewish state or cultural center in Palestine, was rife with discussion of diversity in the United States.

Above all, Maccabaean authors hoped to show that Jews would contribute to America through immigration and to the world through an autonomous Jewish entity in Palestine. In terms of the former, Zionism provided a nexus point for American ideas on diversity, especially

16 Arthur A. Goren, The American Jews: Dimensions of Ethnicity (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980), 67.17 Horace M. Kallen, “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot,” The Nation (18–25 February 1915), reprinted in Horace M. Kallen, Culture and Democracy in the United States (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924, republished New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1998), 117.

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the melting pot and cultural pluralism. The Maccabaean gave that convergence a voice. That both the melting pot and cultural pluralism coexisted in The Maccabaean suggests a harmonious American Zionist symphony based on the principle of contributionism. This principle, consistently expressed in The Maccabaean, demonstrates how American Zionism anticipated and shaped discourse concerning diversity in the United States.

Even before The Melting-Pot debuted, The Maccabaean both advanced and criticized ideas such as the melting pot, demonstrating the malleability and variability of Zangwill’s metaphor and of American Zionism, and anticipating modern debates on diversity in the United States. The Maccabaean’s particular brand of Zionism—political and cultural in Palestine, cultural and integrationist in America—moderated the melting pot. As American Zionists, both melting pot advocates and cultural pluralists wanted the same thing: a proud, cohesive Jewish community, living in the United States as patriotic citizens, sharing with and learning from non‑Jewish neighbors, and supporting a Jewish state in Palestine. Nonetheless, Zangwill’s critics posited rigid distinctions between the melting pot and cultural pluralism. Modern scholars followed suit.

Zionism and Scholarship on American DiversityPerhaps the best example of this framework is historian David Hollinger’s 1995 masterpiece Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. Though he did not examine The Maccabaean or Zionism in particular, Hollinger distinguished between the melting pot, cultural pluralism, and a third idea he called “cosmopolitanism.” Though he acknowledged that Zangwill’s Melting-Pot called for a cultural mixture and the creation of a new American identity, he correctly observed that the metaphor became associated with a “conformist impulse to melt down the peculiarities of immigrants” and turn them into copies of white Anglo‑Protestant Americans.

Kallen’s cultural pluralism, by contrast, “emphasized the integrity of each descent defined group” and “defended the right of immigrants to resist assimilation and to maintain cohesive communities devoted to the perpetuation of ancestral religious, linguistic, and social practices.”



Cultural pluralists, according to Hollinger, sought to preserve ethnic identities at all cost, even if that meant quasi‑segregation of immigrant communities.

The third idea, cosmopolitanism, was represented by white Anglo‑Protestant writer and Zionist sympathizer Randolph Bourne, whose 1916 Atlantic Monthly article, “Trans‑National America,” was inspired by Kallen’s “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot.” Like Kallen, Bourne denounced assimilation and celebrated ethnic cultural contributions to the United States, including those of Jews. Bourne’s follow‑up article in the Menorah Journal, “The Jew in Trans‑National America,” linked Jewish contributions to Zionism and cosmopolitanism. To Hollinger, cosmopolitanism offered a middle ground, implying “strength and resilience” for immigrants to retain their ethnicities while also emphasizing a “dynamic mixing” of cultures that the pluralist model seems to deny.18

This cosmopolitan via media resisted the assimilationism of the melting pot and the separatism of cultural pluralism. It encouraged individual freedom to move among communities, cultural blending but not erasure, and hybrid rather than monolithic identities. Hollinger saw cosmopolitanism as the foundation of a “post‑ethnic” America, with Bourne as its champion. He saw Kallen’s and Zangwill’s ideas as not quite villainous, but as inadequate for modern America, fundamentally inferior to cosmopolitanism.

Numerous other scholars, before and after Hollinger, have championed an equivalent of this cosmopolitan ideal. Historian John Higham, who corresponded with an elderly Kallen, called it “pluralistic integration.”19 Werner Sollors, whose landmark study Beyond Ethnicity influenced Hollinger, contrasted cultural pluralism with the philosophy of Kallen’s friend Alain Locke.20 Subsequent scholars have pitted the

18 David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995, Tenth Anniversary Edition, 2005), 91–94.19 John Higham, Send These to Me: Jews and Other Immigrants in Urban America (New York: Atheneum, 1975), 231–246.20 Werner Sollors, “A Critique of Pure Pluralism” in Reconstructing American Literary History, ed. Sacvan Bercovitch (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 250–279.

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modern, progressive, flexible cosmopolitanism of Locke or Bourne—or both—against Zangwill’s oppressively assimilationist melting pot on the one hand and Kallen’s static, conservative cultural pluralism on the other.21

Scholarship coming out of Jewish studies challenges these characterizations of Kallen’s views. In Zionism & The Roads Not Taken, Noam Pianko argues that the work of Sollors, Hollinger, and others

distorts the conscious effort Kallen made through his writings during the early decades of the twentieth century to find a language of collec‑tivity that supported both permeable and fixed boundaries of identity. These readings fail to appreciate Kallen’s attempt to dissolve the tension between national autonomy and integration.22

More important, these readings solidify the rigid boundaries between the melting pot, cultural pluralism, and cosmopolitanism, ideas that are in fact more similar than different, united by the principle that diversity contributes to American society. All three ideas functioned in tandem in The Maccabaean, undergirded by the Zionist premise of contribut‑ing here and there. In the Jewish state, Jews would bring progressive ideas from Europe and America to modernize the Jewish nation. At the same time, Jewish culture and ethics would add color and character to the diverse multiethnic world of America. The Maccabaean’s articles on the melting pot, cultural pluralism, and cosmopolitanism outlined a symbiotic relationship for Zion and America.

According to Pianko, some American Zionists embraced a non‑statist vision of nationalism along the lines of the writer Asher Ginsberg

21 See Ross Posnock, Color and Culture: Black Writers and the Making of the Modern Intellectual (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2001); Everett Helmut Akam, Transnational America: Cultural Pluralist Thought in the Twentieth Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); and Jonathan M. Hansen, The Lost Promise of Patriotism: Debating American Identity, 1890–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 22 Noam Pianko, Zionism & The Roads Not Taken: Rawidowicz, Kaplan, Kohn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 47.



(1856–1927), the Russian‑Jewish Hebraist better known by his pen name, Ahad Ha’Am (Hebrew for “One of the People”).23 Ahad Ha’am was considered the father of cultural Zionism, a movement that claimed Palestine as a spiritual center for Jewish culture, language, and religion, but did not require the formation of a political entity. The idea was that Jewish culture would blossom in its ancestral homeland and radiate to Jews across the Diaspora.

Though most Maccabaean contributors supported Herzl’s political Zionism that explicitly called for Jewish statehood, they recognized the value of Ahad Ha’am’s cultural program. They hoped the cultural content of The Maccabaean would stimulate ethnic pride to stem the tide of assimilation. The editors printed Ahad Ha’am’s writings alongside the writings of explicitly political Zionists such as Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau and articles specifically geared to Zionism in the United States.

Enter The MaccabaeanIn 1901, when the first issue of The Maccabaean appeared, Zionism was a weak force in America. Only after Louis Brandeis became a leader of the movement in 1914, and especially after the Balfour Declaration and World War I, did Zionism begin to play a significant role in American Jewish life. 24 Even then, most Jews leaving Europe voted with their feet, choosing to come to the United States over the land of ancient Israel. The American Jewish “establishment,” wealthy Reform Jews of German origin, felt comfortable in the United States; moreover, they had for‑mally rejected Zionism in the 1885 Pittsburgh platform. At the other end of the spectrum, the most traditionally religious rejected Zionism as blasphemous, preferring to wait for the Messiah to redeem them. Some socialists and anarchists found Zionism too narrow and particu‑laristic, or too dismissive of Yiddish language and secular culture. Even Jews sympathetic to Zionism, typically Eastern European immigrants, focused on working hard and providing for their families.25

23 Pianko, Zionism & The Roads Not Taken, 45–48.24 “Until 1914, Zionism in America was a moribund affair,” Melvin I. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 2. 25 For good accounts of American Jewish ideologies at the turn of the century, see Tony

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Only a small but vocal minority of American Jews offered time and money to support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This band formed the Federation of American Zionists (FAZ) in 1897. Four years later, they started publishing The Maccabaean. Despite Zionism’s relative unpopularity in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century, Zionist intellectuals from that period formulated influential ideas about culture and diversity in America. The Maccabaean provided a platform for thinkers to express ideas not just about Jewish nationalism, but about interethnic coexistence in the United States.26

The name “Maccabaean” was fitting. It referred to the Maccabees, ancient Jewish warriors who led a revolt against the Greek‑Seleucid king Antiochus and restored Palestine to Jewish control in 165 BCE. The Maccabees did not fight purely military battles; they also fought against the assimilating influences of Hellenism. This story, celebrated during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, also narrates the rededication of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, which had been desecrated and turned into a house of worship for Zeus. The strength of the Maccabees came in their resistance to both antisemitism and assimilation.

The Maccabaean was anti‑assimilation but not anti‑American. In her study of the journal, Naomi W. Cohen emphasized the American orientation of the magazine. In 1901, the FAZ had 3,800 dues‑paying members receiving the journal. They may not have been the wealthiest Jewish Americans, but they were likely well established in the United States. By 1914, that number increased to 12,000, and by 1919 to 176,000.

Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009) and Kenyon Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015).26 David Biale observes, “Much of the discourse about America as a ‘melting pot’ or as a pluralistic nation of cultural minorities was originated by Jews to address the particular situation of Jewish immigrants,” in “The Melting Pot and Beyond: Jews and the Politics of American Identity,” in Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism, ed. David Biale, Michael Galchinsky, and Susannah Heschel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 18. See also Daniel Greene, The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Association and American Diversity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).



Progressive Era American Zionism was fluid and unformed. There was no official Zionist platform, even in the FAZ. This fluidity went beyond factionalist debates. American Zionists were capitalists and socialists, secular and religious, Reform and Orthodox (and later Conservative and Reconstructionist). This was true not just because of the divided nature of the Jewish community, but because Zionism itself was not well defined. American Zionism was itself pluralist, reflecting the democratic nature of American society open to white people. The Maccabaean could be considered centrist or progressive, yet it published content from representatives of all the aforementioned groups.

Though connected to the World Zionist Organization, the FAZ’s situation in America gave it a very different agenda than the European branches. The Maccabaean catered to comfortable, English‑speaking Jewish readers—a Yiddish supplement was abandoned after a few issues. Articles asserting the compatibility of Americanism and Zionism abounded, with titles such as “Patriotism and Zionism,” “Zionism and American ideals,” and “Zionism and American Citizenship.”

As Cohen notes, the journal contained a “rich and varied menu” of essays, poetry, and fiction by prominent contemporary writers, creating a rich repository of Jewish culture.27 Though The Maccabaean never achieved the breadth, sophistication, or reach beyond the Jewish community of the Menorah Journal (1915–1962), it served as an important source of news, ideological content, poetry, and propaganda for the small but passionate American Zionist community. According to Melvin Urofsky,

Zionism in America has not been limited to a narrow Jewish experience, but has been part of and reflective of larger trends in the over‑all society; that in the United States, the movement has not only been Zionist, but American as well; that it has enjoyed its greatest successes precisely when its goals and methods have coincided with the dominant trends in the broader society.28

27 Naomi W. Cohen, The Americanization of Zionism, 1897–1948 (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2003), 16. The first chapter is on The Maccabaean.28 Urofsky, American Zionism, 2.

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The Maccabaean gave Zionist writers an opportunity to explore their visions for Jewish life in the United States. The writers, mostly U.S. citizens, celebrated American diversity. They rejected segregation and separatism, aside from an inconsistent opposition to intermarriage. They were Zionists and American patriots, with the intellectual flexibility to make those ideals compatible.

One such Zionist and American patriot was the magazine’s first editor, Louis Lipsky (1876–1963), from Rochester, New York. Already employed at the daily newspaper American Hebrew, Lipsky received no payment for his work at The Maccabaean. For the first issue, in October 1901, none of the writers—including Max Nordau and Henrietta Szold–received any monetary compensation. Lipsky recalled that “the publication was always in financial difficulties” and never seemed able to pay its staff. He edited the journal in its first year and was then replaced by Englishman Jacob de Haas (1872–1937), a religious Sephardic Jew from London whom Herzl sent to lead the Zionist movement in America. Lipsky and de Haas rotated the editorship until 1920, when the monthly magazine dissolved, replaced by the weekly newspaper The New Palestine.29 By World War I, according to Urofsky, “the Maccabaean reached thousands of readers and enjoyed a reputation of being a serious literary periodical as well as the chief English advocate of the [American Zionist] movement.”30

The editors and writers of The Maccabaean did not overly emphasize the establishment of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. Most Jews in the United States had no interest in moving to the Middle East and making aliyah—the Hebrew term for ascending to Zion. Instead, the journal stressed “the strengthening of Jewish national sentiment and national consciousness” without advocating a concrete political agenda. The FAZ mostly ignored the Muslim and Christian Arabs who formed the majority of the population of Palestine, focusing instead on building financial support from Jews in the United States to an important but distant cause.31 They also worked on finding a place for Jews in American society.

29 Louis Lipsky, Section 1, “A Memoir of Early Days” (New York, 1962), in Memoirs in Profile (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1975), 49–50.30 Urofsky, American Zionism, 116.31 This contrasted with a minority of socialist Zionists, who were more attentive to the



The Maccabaean was not the only outlet for American Jews to advance contributionist Zionism. Arthur Goren points to two other American Zionists who did precisely that: Reform Rabbi Judah L. Magnes (1877–1948) and Jewish Theological Seminary scholar Israel Friedlaender (1876–1920). In response to Zangwill’s Melting-Pot, Magnes delivered two sermons at Temple Emanu‑El in 1909. The first, in February, he called “A Republic of Nationalities,” and noted that “American culture, American nationality can be made fruitful and beautiful by contact with the cultures of the varied nationalities that are among us,” particularly that of the Jews.32

In October, Magnes’s sermon “The Melting Pot” flipped the script on Zangwill’s play, describing Quixano’s American symphony as a “vast monotone.” Anticipating Horace Kallen’s musical metaphor for cultural pluralism, Magnes noted that a real symphony contains a harmony “produced by a variety of distinct sounds,” and the real “symphony of America must be written by the various nationalities that keep their individual and characteristic note, and which sound this note in harmony with their sister nationalities.” In rejecting “the harmony of the Melting Pot,” Magnes advanced “the harmony of sturdiness and loyalty and joyous struggle.”33True American Jewish contributionism, of the kind the San Francisco‑born Magnes desired, required retention of cultural identity.

Even before The Melting-Pot hit the stage, Israel Friedlaender offered a contributionist model for Jewish culture in America. In December

Palestinian Arabs and preached unity among Jewish, Muslim, and Christian workers. Within the mainstream FAZ, there were also some exceptions, including Henrietta Szold, Jessie Sampter, and Judah L. Magnes. Szold and Magnes advocated a binational state within a Zionist framework. 32 Goren, The American Jews, 67; Judah Magnes, “A Republic of Nationalities,” The Emanu-El Pulpit 2, no. 6 (13 February 1909): 10. In Arthur Goren’s earlier work, New York Jews and the Quest for Community: The Kehillah Experiment 1908–1922 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 4, he notes that intellectuals such as Magnes “presented ethnic pluralism as a permanent and desirable feature of American society,” and then he quoted from Magnes’ sermon, “The Melting Pot.” 33 Judah Magnes, “The Melting Pot,” The Emanu-El Pulpit 3, no. 1 (9 October 1909): 9–10. Quoted in part in Goren, New York Jews, 4.

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1907 he delivered a lecture before the Mickve Israel Association in Philadelphia. His talk was titled “The Problem of Judaism in America,” and it focused on resistance to assimilation. This was a problem because America, unlike Europe, was relatively kind to the Jews, largely because of its tolerant ethnic pluralism: “The true American spirit understands and respects the traditions and associations of other nationalities, and on its vast area numerous races live peaceably together, equally devoted to the interests of the land.” Also relying on a musical metaphor, Friedlaender noted that human beings could contain multiple identities and were not “cheap‑musical slot machines which could only play a single tune.” 34

The Polish‑born Friedlaender’s vision was explicitly contributionist. In 1907 he said:

In the great palace of American civilization, we shall occupy our own corner, which we will decorate and beautify to the best of our taste and ability, and make it not only a center of attraction for the members of our family, but also an object of admiration for all the dwellers of the palace.

He insisted that Jews would be a crucial building block to American culture, returning to another numerous metaphor, including music:

With souls harmoniously developed, self‑centered and self‑reliant; re‑ceiving and resisting, not yielding like wax to every empress from the outside, but blending the best they possess with the best they encounter; not a horde of individuals, but a set of individualities, adding a new note to the richness of American life, leading a new current into the stream of American civilization.35

34 Israel Friedlaender, “The Problem of Judaism in America,” lecture delivered on 8 December 1907 in Philadelphia. Printed in Israel Friedlaender, Past and Present: A Collection of Jewish Essays (Cincinnati: Ark Publishing Co., 1919), 274–275. Also cited in part in Baila Round Shargel, Practical Dreamer: Israel Friedlaender and the Shaping of American Judaism (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1985), 138.35 Friedlaender, “The Problem of Judaism in America,” 277–278. Cited in part in Shargel, Practical Dreamer, 139–140.



Both Magnes and Friedlaender were not just committed to Jewish continuity; they were also passionate Zionists. For Magnes, his Zionism blended with his American patriotism to produce this contributionist vision. In the case of Friedlaender, he was likely influenced by the work of Russian‑Jewish historian Simon Dubnow (1860–1941). Friedlaender had translated several of Dubnow’s historical works into German and English and also adopted some of his philosophy of “Autonomism.” Friedlaender’s talk before New York’s Jewish Endeavor Society, “Dubnow’s Theory of Jewish Nationalism,” was printed in the June 1905 issue of The Maccabaean and then reissued as a pamphlet by the FAZ.

Dubnow worried that Zionism would lead to the neglect of the Diaspora, especially in Eastern Europe, where most Jews lived. He pushed instead for the development of a Jewish autonomous cultural center within the Russian empire that would cater to Jewish religious and educational needs and would also include secular Jewish culture in Hebrew and Yiddish. Friedlaender rejected Dubnow’s lukewarm attitude to Zionism but thought that some form of Autonomism could exist in America, a place where Jews could “remain ‘among the nations’ but still continue to be an ‘Israel.’”36

Relative to other minorities in the United States, Jews and particularly Zionists played a prominent role in developing ideas about diversity. In a 1917 article in the New York Tribune, white Anglo‑Protestant journalist Arthur Gleason noted that on the topic of religious and national diversity in the United States, “the clearest of American thinkers of all are the Jews.” He listed Louis Brandeis, Horace Kallen, Judah Magnes, and several others “among the many who are defining our citizenship.” Gleason observed, “The three nationalities in our country most highly self‑conscious, and therefore truest to their traditions, are the American Germans, the American Jews, and the American ‘Anglo‑Saxons.’” He criticized the melting pot concept and supported a multi‑ethnic

36 Israel Friedlaender, “Dubnow’s Theory of Jewish Nationalism,” an address delivered before the Jewish Endeavor Society, New York, 7 May 1905, published as a pamphlet (New York: The Maccabaean Publishing Company, 1905), 11. This talk was originally published in The Maccabaean (June 1905).

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commonwealth where “the Jew must be encouraged and aided in his noble and wistful desire for the recovery of his ancient home.” He echoed Brandeis, proclaiming that the Jew’s “Zionism makes him the better American.”37

Gleason did not explain why Zionism enhanced Jewish Americanism, or why American Jews were so adept at describing diversity. Unlike other European immigrants to the United States, Jews were well situated to navigate the insider/outsider role, to balance a more universalist commitment to integration with a particularist orientation toward the Jewish community.38 Since many Jews identified with a Jewish nationality, race, or ethnicity—as opposed to a Jewish religion—a sturdy secular Jewish culture emerged.39 Zionism provided that culture with a political goal that could be supported financially and expressed literarily in America.

Another advantage Jews had was racial. As Eric Goldstein notes, “racial language became a staple of the Zionist organ, the Maccabaean, which published defenses of Jewish racial identity and criticized Jewish leaders who denied the racial component of Jewishness.”40 The Maccabaean shows that race is a social construction; its Zionist writers constructed an American Jewish racial identity, and that identity was white.

Jewish whiteness allowed for easier integration in the United States, as nonwhite groups—including Asians, Native Americans, Latinos, and especially African Americans—were always treated worse both legally and socially. In this way, Jews were similar to other white immigrant groups of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially

37 Arthur Gleason, “Melting Pot or Commonwealth?” New York Tribune (8 July 1917): 2.38 In “The Dialectic of Jewish Enlightenment,” introduction to Insider/Outsider, Biale et al. observe, “no one evidently feels the pressing need to write a book entitled ‘Multiculturalism and the Italians’ or ‘Multiculturalism and the Irish,’” 4.39 For a look at the development of American Jewish ethnicity in a non‑Zionist context, see M.M. Silver, Louis Marshall and the Rise of Jewish Ethnicity in America (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013).40 Eric Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 92. See also 262, fn. 23 for list of relevant articles.



the Italians.41 While modern whiteness scholars might classify these European immigrants as “in‑between people,” most American Jews saw themselves, and were seen, as white. In the public arena, some questioned Jewish whiteness, but more often they advocated for racial (pseudo) science that classified (Ashkenazi) Jews as a separate subgroup within the broader white category. The Maccabaean advanced precisely this position, claiming the benefits of whiteness—and by extension civilization—along with a degree of racial separateness to fight off assimilation. Maccabaean writers regarded Jews as distinct from other white groups, but always placed Jews in the white category.

Zionist intellectuals in the United States and elsewhere often relied on the racial pseudoscience of the era. They mostly ignored African Americans; in Victoria Hattam’s words, they assisted a process of “fixing race, [and] unfixing ethnicity.”42 Race was biological and unchangeable. Ethnicity, equivalent to culture, could be shaped. Most American Zionists took Jewish whiteness, and even “European‑ness,” as a given. They designated Jewish culture as progressive and elite and thus worthy of preservation and development, a valuable contribution to global and American civilization. They did not approach black culture the same way. Blacks are mostly absent from The Maccabaean. There were no African elements in Zangwill’s Melting-Pot. Kallen excluded jazz from his cultural symphony. Within a contributionist Zionist framework, Jewish whiteness was the doorway to Americanization, enabling Jews to add to the fabric of American culture.

As whites and non‑Catholics, Jews suffered far less prejudice in the United States than they did in Europe. In the nineteenth century, and perhaps even in the twentieth, anti‑Catholicism proved stronger than antisemitism in the United States. In the words of Stephen Whitfield, American antisemitism represented a phenomenon when “the dog did not bark.”43 Jews were different, and occasionally threatened or disparaged,

41 See Thomas A. Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).42 Victoria Hattam, In the Shadow of Race: Jews, Latinos, and Immigrant Politics in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 51, 58–60.43 Stephen J. Whitfield, “The Longest Hatred,” Reviews in American History 23, no. 2 (1995): 367.

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but they were also the periodic beneficiaries of philosemitism. Though they suffered nativist discrimination, the period of 1901–1920, in which The Maccabaean ran, came before a major increase in American antisemitism. This relative lack of antisemitism presented American Jews with an opportunity to integrate into an advanced economy while maintaining their religious heritage.

Jewish culture prized literacy and education, producing a disproportionately large number of journalistic publications. Jews entered institutions of higher learning in large numbers—both public schools such as City College and Hunter College and elite universities such as Harvard and Columbia. The development of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, a secular Jewish cultural organization that spread to campuses across the country, emblemized broader Jewish entry into the intellectual if not social and economic elite of America. Zionist ideas in The Maccabaean fit well into the discourse of the American intellectual community.

On 23 January 1909, Maccabaean editor Lipsky read a paper in the Max Nordau Auditorium of New York’s Educational Alliance building titled, “The Duty of American Jews,” which The Maccabaean reprinted the next month. Lipsky advocated secular, progressive Zionism, attacked Reform Judaism and Orthodox Judaism, and implicitly labeled Zangwill un‑American, criticizing assimilating American Jews who sought to be “the first of all peoples coming to this country to jump into the melting‑pot which Israel Zangwill has imported to the United States.”44 Nonetheless, he went to some length to demonstrate the compatibility between Americanism and Zionism, implying that most American Jews would stay in the United States, Americanize, and contribute to American society—a contributionist vision actually quite similar to the melting pot.

The Zionist Melting Pot in AmericaBefore he wrote The Melting-Pot, Zangwill drew upon a long tradition of American thought about racial and ethnic amalgamation. He began

44 Louis Lipsky, “The Duty of American Jews,” The Maccabaean (February 1909): 46.



to contemplate the melting pot in a Zionist context. In the March 1904 issue of The Maccabaean, he wrote a piece titled, “Zionism and Loyalty,” which attempted to reconcile Americanism with Jewish par‑ticularism. He observed that “nationality in the modern world has become optional.” Though he believed in cultural preservation, he ap‑plauded the ease with which “Englishmen become Boers … Canadians become Americans or Americans Canadians at their own pleasure.” American Jewish Zionists who departed for the Holy Land would be “friends carrying to the new community the love for America and the admiration for its ideals,” while those who stayed in the United States would make better citizens because of their ability to display “only such sympathy for Palestine as German‑Americans have for the ‘Fatherland.’”45 American Jews would contribute American culture and ideals to Palestine, while Zionist loyalty would bolster their American patriotism.

The following year, another Maccabaean contributor and Territorialist, Max Levy, gave a Jewish contributionist vision of the melting pot avant la lettre. Influenced, he said, by Spencer, Huxley, and Darwin, and convinced the Jewish race was subject to the theories of evolution, Levy painted a harsh, segregated portrait of pluralistic America, which he imagined as “a colony of Irishmen in one section, of Frenchmen in a second, of Italians in a third, of Anglo‑Saxons in a fourth, Arabs in a fifth, Negroes in a sixth, Semites in a seventh, and so on through the whole scale.” This would negate the American people’s defining feature, “the intercommingling of the blood of the white races of the whole earth.”46

Levy thought Jews would benefit from “the admixture of their blood” with that of other Americans. Jews, he wrote, have something of value to give, so why not get something in return? “The Jew has undoubtedly many desirable qualities which would be diluted by transmission and infusion among other races, but he has also much to gain by this very dilution, and the absorption of some qualities boasted by other races.”

45 Israel Zangwill, “Zionism and Loyalty,” The Maccabaean (March 1904): 133. 46 Max Levy, “Jewish People and the Laws of Evolution,” The Maccabaean (May 1905): 189.

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Other groups, including “the Anglo‑Saxon, the Frank, the Goth, the Celt, the Scot,” have particular traits, “and they all cherish them as sacredly as does the Jew his own.” Levy did not advocate wholesale assimilation. Like Zangwill, he saw an alternative, modeled after other nations. Jews, like other peoples, needed their own territory “where they may reach their highest development.” With a strong national home, individual Jews could leave to other countries and “invariably assimilate and become an integral part” of the host society. For Levy this outcome was “inevitable” and “also just and proper.”47

Yet Levy insisted on “a certain merit” to perpetuating the races through granting every people “its local habitation, under its own control and regulation.” This way, the race could “work out its whole destiny and development” and “preserve the qualities that distinguish it from other races.” Levy recommended Territorialism, as Jews had qualities that would benefit all of “human development” and thus needed a state where they would be able “to maintain and to cultivate along their own particular lines.”48

Territorialists and Zionists believed Jews had something to offer. In the United States, they should provide their unique racial gifts through assimilation—and for some, through intermarriage. To preserve the purity of those gifts, they should also establish a state, in Palestine or elsewhere. This is the early American Zionist model. The Jewish state enters the family of nations, an international federation of elite cultures. In America no such federation is necessary. America would be the site of the fusing of the races, to which Jews would contribute.

In 1905, Levy’s melting‑pot formulation proved acceptable to the editors of The Maccabaean. When Zangwill advanced this ideal with his play in 1908, the journal’s writers mostly criticized his play for encouraging intermarriage and assimilation. Yet some offered qualified defense. In 1911, editor Lipsky noted immigrants were “strengthened by the cultural values” they brought with them. Though typical immigrants sought to assimilate, they had an “instinctive desire” to show off the

47 Ibid, 191. 48 Ibid, 192.



“heirlooms” they have “hidden in the corner.” Jews desired “a history, an encyclopedia of Jewish life” to hold on to as they entered “the melting pot of nations.” When Jews went in for a “melting diversion,” they entered “into the pot with all their clothes on … with their national and racial traits, their habits, their hopes, their history.” Jews who allowed themselves “to be fused” felt the need to “bring with them values of their own,” despite being “invited to become one of the brotherhood.”49

In “To Melt or Not to Melt,” a similar piece from November–December 1914, English Zionist writer Maurice Simon—brother of Ahad Ha’am translator Leon Simon—recognized the strength of Jewish racial particularism but also of American religious universalism, or theism. Maurice Simon, who would later edit a volume of Zangwill’s writing, thought the melting pot would be a failure if Jews “become merely melted without being fused; that is, if they lose their distinguishing Jewish characteristics”; however, it would be a success if “they become fused without being melted; that is, if they acquire all the externals of Americans while retaining the idealistic outlook on life which is the heritage of their people.” Simon even regarded the melting pot as a Darwinian test for true Zionists: “It may be that the Promised Land is once more destined for that part of the seed of Abraham which shall pass through the ‘melting pot’ of America unscathed.” 50

Zangwill rejected this criticism. The Melting-Pot was more nuanced than it appeared. Some form of ethnic mixing, from intermarriage or simple interaction, remained paramount, but particularism proved essential. The Jewish, Irish, and Italian portions needed to be recognizably Jewish, Irish, and Italian to add their particular flavors to the mix. Furthermore, Zangwill himself never sought the disappearance of Jewish identity, in America or elsewhere. A Territorialist, Zangwill intended for a global refuge to exist for Jews in Palestine or elsewhere that would preserve Jewish culture and peoplehood.

49 Louis Lipsky, “The Maccabaean Anniversary,” The Maccabaean (March–April 1911): 102.50 Maurice Simon, “To Melt or Not to Melt,” The Maccabaean (November–December 1914): 180–181.

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Cultural Pluralism for Zion and AmericaLike Zangwill, Kallen loved America and American diversity. He was the German‑born son of an Orthodox rabbi and immigrated to Boston at age five. A leading American Zionist, he also became a distinguished pragmatist philosopher who helped found the New School for Social Research in 1919. Though he first used the term “cultural pluralism” in print in 1924, his best‑known exposition of the idea is in his 1915 essay, “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot,” published in The Nation. He explained: “‘American civilization’ may come to mean the perfection of the cooperative harmonies of ‘European civilization,’ the waste, the squalor, and the distress of Europe being eliminated—a multiplicity in a unity, an orchestration of mankind.”51 Kallen’s formula was contribu‑tionist: Immigrants made the United States better, not just economically, but culturally.

Kallen’s ideal for the United States replaced the melting pot with a federation of nationalities. He was not the first to make this proposal. In his 1897 essay, “The Conservation of the Races,” black intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois argued against assimilation and in favor of preserving distinct cultures: “For the development of Negro genius, of Negro literature and art, of Negro spirit, only Negroes bound and welded together, Negroes inspired by one vast ideal, can work out in its fullness that great message we have for humanity.”52 He developed this point further in his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk, introducing “two‑ness” and “double‑consciousness” to present a positive spin on multiple and hybrid identities.53

While Du Bois focused on the racial divide, Kallen highlighted immigrant groups. He wrote “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot” in response to his University of Wisconsin colleague E.A. Ross’s 1914 nativist screed The Old World in the New. Kallen introduced his musical metaphor, arguing that America should be a “symphony of civilization,”

51 Kallen, “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot,” 1915.52 W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Conservation of Races,” originally published as The American Negro Academy Occasional Papers, no. 2 (Washington, D.C.,1897). 53 W.E.B. Du Bois, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” from The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A.C. McClurg and Co., 1903).



with each ethnicity providing its own instrument, working separately but harmonizing together.54 According to Hollinger, this vision, despite its apparent radicalism, was “conservative” since it emphasized the isolation and preservation of groups, rather than their interaction and mutual influence.55 Yet Kallen’s cultural pluralism was in fact a liberal idea, balancing universalism and particularism to create an outcome best for immigrants and best for America.

Cultural pluralism is easily discernible in The Maccabaean. It did not only come from Kallen. On 26 April 1906, A.H. Fromenson, editor of the Orthodox Yiddish newspaper the Tageblat, gave an address to the Yale Zionist Society, reprinted the following month in The Maccabaean as “The Sociological Function of the Jew.” Fromenson quoted French writer Anatole France, who proclaimed: “The various nations must take their places in the universal federation as living and not as dead entities.”56

That summer, and still two years before the debut of The Melting-Pot, Kallen advanced his contributionist cultural pluralism in the form of Jewish nationalism. In July 1906, he gave an address, “The Ethics of Zionism,” reprinted in the August issue of The Maccabaean. He posed three questions: “What then has the Jew done for civilization? What is his place in the evolution of the human race? What is his moral worth to humanity?”57 To answer them, Kallen set up a pluralistic framework for civilization. He imagined the cultures of the world fighting a Darwinian struggle for superiority and survival. Kallen justified Zionism because it preserved the Jewish spirit, which had a positive influence on other nations. Kallen’s vision was hierarchical: Some cultures were worth

54 Horace Kallen, “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot,” The Nation, 18–25 February 1915.55 Hollinger, Postethnic America, 85. 56 A.H. Fromenson, “The Sociological Function of the Jew,” The Maccabaean (May 1906): 187. 57 As Arnold Eisen notes, Kallen’s “two chief rationales for Jewish survival were the contributions Jewish culture could make to world civilization, and then specifically the contributions American Jews could make to American civilization.” See Eisen, The Chosen People in America: A Study in Jewish Religious Ideology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 47.

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preserving; others were not. Those worth preserving were those that could contribute. Despite the hardship it suffered, the Jewish community remained, in Kallen’s words, “the lightbearer of the world. In a society of ignorance and superstition it constituted a nucleus of culture and enlightenment.”58

In addition to cultivating their own culture, Jews assimilated into their surroundings, learning languages of host countries and adopting national traits, becoming “Russian, English, French, Austrian, or American,” reducing their “racial character to a sectarian label” to blend in.59 Political Zionism provided a solution to this problem. Kallen repudiated the “Culture‑Zionism of Achad Haam,” labeling it “assimilation” and “at best only an intensification of the status quo.” Ahad Ha’am’s program, unlike Herzl’s, did not explicitly call for a Jewish state in Palestine, but rather a cultural center in Palestine that would radiate Hebrew culture to Jews throughout the Diaspora. Kallen, however, feared that without a state apparatus, “the criss‑cross of influence” would dilute Hebraic culture in Palestine. Jews needed to undertake this movement on “native soil, under native laws, amid native institutions.”60

Kallen insisted the ideal development of a “race’s life, the expression of its spirit, the envisagement of its moral idea in art and letters,” needed “the permanent occupation of a definite territory.” He believed Jews could benefit from “the free struggle of Jew with Jew,”61 ignoring, like many other Zionists, the Arab population in Palestine. He imagined a Jewish‑only melting pot in Zion, with Jewish immigrants from all over the world producing the ideal Jewish culture. This would only work if this Jewish nation existed in safety and autonomy, under the protection of an independent state government.

In America, Zionism would be different. Though Kallen advocated Herzl’s statist political Zionism, he also provided a framework for

58 Kallen, “The Ethics of Zionism,” 66–67.59 Ibid., 69.60 Ibid., 70. 61 Ibid. Cited in part in Sarah Schmidt, “Horace M. Kallen: The Zionist Chapter,” in The Legacy of Horace M. Kallen, ed. Milton R. Konvitz (New York: Herzl Press / Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1987), 78.



cultural pluralism in the United States. From a global perspective, many nations should exist to bring diversity to the world. The Jews should be one such nation, in Palestine or elsewhere. America was a nation of nations, a stand‑in for the world. In America, every culture should be allowed to preserve itself in a modern American form. Jews would be one such culture, like the English, Irish, or Italians.

Kallen’s Jewish nationalism applied to both Palestine and America. Wherever they lived, he encouraged Jews to express “a vigorous natural life and the moral law in social organization, art and letter, functioning in the family of nations as an indispensable force.” The Jewish contribution to “human civilization and progress, by virtue of its physical integrity and spiritual splendor” justified the Jew’s “moral right to live.” His “ethic of Zionism”62 applied as much to America as it did to Zion.

Constance Pessels, an English teacher in San Antonio with a doctorate in ancient languages from Johns Hopkins, advocated a similarly contributionist Americanized Zionism. His 1908 contribution to The Maccabaean, “The Pragmatic Value of Zionism,” explicitly referenced Harvard philosopher William James (Kallen’s mentor at Harvard), employing James’s pragmatist language to “appraise the cash value of Zionism.” Pessels wrote:

[Zionism] stands for the conservation of those qualities which have made the Jew such a valuable asset in the spiritual and religious life of the world, for the perpetuation of those distinctive qualities of race and character, which, in spite of the numerical inferiority of the Jewish peo‑ple, have forcefully influenced the civilization of Europe and America.63

In keeping with the pragmatic spirit of The Maccabaean, Pessels did not ask American Jews to go to Palestine. He called for a Jewish cultural contribution to American (and European) civilization.

Editor Jacob de Haas offered a similar ideal in his 1910 Maccabaean article “The Jew in the Melting Pot.” He wrote:

62 Ibid., 71. Emphasis mine.63 Constance Pessels, “The Pragmatic Value of Zionism,” The Maccabaean (Feb. 1908): 63–64.

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Where would we be without the distinct efforts of the English, and the Scotch and the Irish and the German in this land? Each one has left a distinct mark on what we call American civilization, and the mark was made by the ego of race consciousness. On the contrary [to the melting pot] I claim that we need each other as we are. We are not a flat unified people. We are at least four worlds within these states, and if we want to dream into the future let us dream of the confederation of the races, not their individual destruction.64

Although de Haas was a Zionist, this passage did not concern Zionism, but rather the perpetuation of ethnic groups in the United States. In this explicitly contributionist passage, de Haas, an Englishman, showed a keen understanding of American diversity. He at least implicitly em‑braced some notion of melting, as each group absorbed the “distinct mark[s]” left imprinted by the others on “American civilization.”

Others echoed Kallen’s musical pluralism. In his 1911 Maccabaean piece, “The Spiritual Aspects of Zionism,” London rabbi and leading British Zionist Joseph Hochman urged the abandonment of universalism beyond appealing to the common bond of monotheism. He insisted, however, “that a brotherhood implies variety in individualities harmonized by fundamental kinship…. The creed shall be universal, not the expression and the application of it…. In the national expressions of that common creed shall be the variety of individualities which the kinship shall harmonize.”65 Hochman too was writing about Zion’s place in the world, not the Jews’ place in America.

Another Maccabaean contributor, Dr. Abram Lipsky, presented an idea similar to Kallen’s cultural pluralism. In his 1913 article, “Zangwill’s Melting‑Pot,” which criticized the play, Lipsky prophesied that “America can show the world a nation living at peace with nation upon the same domain, each contributing to the common welfare and zealous for the establishing of the common house. Not community of blood, but

64 Jacob de Haas, “The Jew in the Melting Pot,” The Maccabaean (December 1910): 198. 65 Joseph Hochman, “The Spiritual Aspects of Zionism,” The Maccabaean (March–April 1911): 103–104.



community of purpose binds these millions together.”66 Kallen introduced his idea of a federation, as well as the musical

metaphor, to The Maccabaean late in 1914. In an article that had been rejected by The Nation (the same magazine that would publish his “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot” the following February), Kallen wrote not about America, but about Zionism:

Our western world is a world of nationalities. Its strength has lain in the conservation of and harmonious development of differences of national type. The great European tradition is an international mosaic, having nationalities for its base, and the culture and civilization of Europe, at least, are the culture and civilization of the European nations, developed by the harmonious and discordant contacts of these nations…. In the concert of nationalities whose reciprocally interacting cultures make up the symphony of civilization, the Jewish people are recorded as having played a distinct part. The Hebraic note which has been an expression of their corporate life has given to the history of Europe an unquestion‑able coloring, for the possession of which that history is claimed to be spiritually the richer.67

Kallen regarded the Jewish nation as a crucial contributor to the in‑ternational “symphony of civilization.” From there, it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to immigrant Jews playing their part in the American orchestra.68 For Kallen, cultural pluralism and Zionism were deeply intertwined.

Zionist CosmopolitanismThough later scholars have tried to distinguish “cosmopolitanism” as a positive middle ground between the melting pot and cultural pluralism, the idea as expressed in The Maccabaean shares contributionist principles

66 Abram Lipsky, “Zangwill’s Melting‑Pot,” The Maccabaean (January 1913): 15. Abram (1873–1946) was the brother of Louis Lipsky, leader of the Federation of American Zionists.67 Horace Kallen, “Dr. Kallen on Zionism,” The Maccabaean (November–December 1914): 187.68 As Noam Pianko notes, “Jewish and specifically Zionist concerns helped shape this first wave of American pluralism.” Zionism & The Roads Not Taken, 105.

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from both schools of thought. Confusion arises because cosmopolitan‑ism has had different meanings over time. As Hollinger observes, in mid‑nineteenth‑century America, “cosmopolitanism carried implica‑tions of superficiality and shiftlessness.”69

The Maccabaean mostly adopted this earlier interpretation. In an assertion of Jewish racial particularism, German‑born Reform Rabbi Bernhard Felsenthal attacked liberal Jews who labeled the ancient Israelite prophets as “cosmopolitan.” In a 1903 piece titled “Israel’s Mission,” he wrote: “The ancient prophets of Israel were all and everyone, without exception, outspoken Jewish nationalists, and cannot be designated as cosmopolitans—as cosmopolitans in your sense of the word.”70

Examples in The Maccabaean of this definition of cosmopolitanism abound. In 1906, A.H. Fromenson, chairman of the FAZ propaganda committee, associated cosmopolitanism with the melting pot, of “amalgamated humanity” and “that Wedding of the World from which is to be born the Coming Race.” He regarded this ideal, co‑opted by socialists, as utopian: “The cosmopolitan, the citizen of the world, is a beautiful but mythical creature.”71 The journal reprinted an exchange between Zionist Max Nordau and Irish writer George Bernard Shaw, in which “cosmopolitan” was bandied about as an insult.72 In 1909 Rosa Pomeranz wrote, “Out of the racial Jewess there was evolved a cosmopolitan creature … [who] made herself at home everywhere except in her own house.”73 In 1911, Hochman warned against the creation of an “undifferentiated, cosmopolitan jelly‑world.”74 As late as 1915, poet Jessie Sampter referred to “those Jews who believe that all nationalism in itself is evil” as “cosmopolitans.”75

69 Hollinger, Postethnic America, 88.70 Bernhard Felsenthal, “Israel’s Mission,” The Maccabaean (March 1903): 135. 71 Fromenson, “The Sociological Function,” 183. 72 Max Nordau, “Dr. Nordau and G. Bernard Shaw,” The Maccabaean (December 1907): 258–259; George Bernard Shaw, “Mr. Shaw’s Jewish Sympathies,” The Maccabaean (January 1908): 27. 73 Rosa Pomeranz, “Zionism for the Jewess,” The Maccabaean (March 1909): 83–84. Translated from German. Pomeranz (1880–1934) was a Zionist author who, in 1919, became the first woman elected to the Polish Sejm as a member of the Zionist party.74 Hochman, “The Spiritual Aspects of Zionism,” 105. 75 Jessie Sampter, “The Jewish Position (A Formulation),” The Maccabaean (September



Yet The Maccabaean also referred to another sort of cosmopolitanism, one more similar to cultural pluralism or the moderate melting pot. In the 1905 article “Religion and Zionism,” Dr. Maurice H. Harris, a Reform rabbi at New York’s Temple Israel, applauded Jews who had emerged from the ghettos, while also invoking a turn‑of‑the‑century optimism not yet battered by World War I:

To mingle with the world about them, not merely as on‑lookers and denizens, but as participators and citizens, enthusiastically identifying themselves with the world’s culture and the world’s causes; winning lau‑rels in every great field of endeavor and working side by side and hand in hand with fellowman for all human ideals…. The spirit of cosmopoli‑tanism combined with strong national patriotism is a steadily advancing ideal. The world is learning to be more and more tolerant of the divergent characteristics, customs, and convictions of their neighbors about them.76

This contributionist Zionist cosmopolitanism liberated not only groups, but also individuals. As individuals, Jews could be citizens of the world and citizens of America, while remaining proud Zionists committed to their Jewish heritage.

The Maccabaean also recognized another feature of Hollingerian cosmopolitanism, namely that Jews could identify with multiple cultures at once. In his 1903 article “The Ethnic Character of the Jew,” Rabbi Meyer Waxman wrote:

It is this modification of character that made mental acclimatization a leading trait in the Jewish character. The Jewish mind adapts itself to every culture with ease. It is the Jew, Heine, who wrote the most per‑fect and smooth German. It is the Jew, Beaconsfield, who piloted the British ship of state in the most traditional English manner. Finally, it is the Jew, Brandes, who estimates and appreciates the national spirit of various literatures.77

1915): 74. Sampter (1883–1938) was born in New York and was physically disabled. She was a Zionist poet and Hadassah educator who made aliyah.76 Maurice H. Harris, “Religion and Zionism,” The Maccabaean (January 1905): 15.77 Meyer Waxman, “The Ethnic Character of the Jews,” The Maccabaean (February 1913):

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In Waxman’s estimation, Diaspora Jewish hybrid identity allowed for even greater contribution to host societies. Though Jews could modify their “character,” or culture, their “primary racial qualities” remained the same. Waxman called this “dualism.”78 This word, reminiscent of W.E.B. Du Bois’s assertion of African American “two‑ness,” or “double‑consciousness,” described a contributionist Zionist cosmopolitanism.

Kallen, too, recognized the contributionist cosmopolitanism of the Jew. His 1914 Maccabaean article described diversity among Zionists: “Orthodox believer, reformed, and agnostic, capitalist and workman, German, French, Russian, English, Turkish, Spanish, American.”79 In an address he delivered that winter in Cincinnati, printed in The Maccabaean, Kallen celebrated the “whole mass of neo‑English, neo‑Russian, neo‑German literatures” written by secular Jews, to say nothing of contributions in Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramaic, Arabic, and Ladino. He called for Zionism not because Jews had failed to adapt themselves to modernity, but because they needed a place where they could “adapt the world” to themselves.”80

From The Maccabaean to Multiculturalism?The discourse over American diversity owes much to Zionism. Whether the metaphor was a musical melting pot, a symphony of cultural pluralism, or a cosmopolitan concert, the media were different but the message was the same. In advancing Jewish interests in Palestine and the United States, the writers of The Maccabaean promoted ethnic diversity in America. By asserting Jewish contributions to America, they were asserting, sometimes explicitly, the possibility that many groups could contribute.

53. Georg Brandes (1842–1927) was a secular Jew and literary critic from Copenhagen. His real name was Morris Cohen.78 Ibid., 53–54. 79 Kallen, “Dr. Kallen on Zionism,” 187. 80 Horace Kallen, “The Distinction Between Hebraism and Judaism,” The Maccabaean (May 1915): 85–86. Based on address delivered at Third Menorah Convention in Cincinnati, December 1914. 81 Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: Norton, 2007); David A. Hollinger, Cosmopolitanism and Solidarity: Studies in



The Jewish contribution to American diversity discourse is important, if occasionally forgotten today. Cosmopolitanism is a newly popular term among academics,81 but the Jewish association with this word is often ignored, perhaps because its pernicious connection to Josef Stalin’s labeling Jews “rootless cosmopolitans.” The melting pot remains a prominent metaphor, though its connection to Zangwill and Zionism is largely unknown outside academia. In late 1960s and early 1970s, Kallen’s “cultural pluralism” came to be replaced by “multiculturalism.” This word reflected a new demographic reality in the United States, now populated by millions of immigrants from Latin America, Asia, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East. Jews, formerly a distinct group, mostly fell into the category of white.

A century ago, the writers of The Maccabaean proudly asserted Jewish distinction. By extension, they asserted the right of all American groups to their distinctions. Zionism made the political case for diversity over homogeneity. By making cultural expression and retention political, they made space for ethnic particularlism in an American setting and provided a language to legitimize diversity in the United States. American Zionism advanced a particular kind of diversity, one that allowed for sturdy cultural identities and communities to exist within the United States, not segregated from one another, but in constant contact and communication, allowing for exchange and hybridity without complete assimilation,with individuals having the freedom to explore the different peoples around them. Jews, and other groups, would contribute positively to American society, just as the Jewish and other states would contribute positively to the world.

Ethnoracial, Religious, and Professional Affiliation in the United States (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006); Adam Etinson, “Cosmopolitanism: Cultural, Moral, and Political” in Sovereign Justice: Global Justice in a World of Nations, ed. G. de Angelis and R. Quieroz (New York: de Gruyter, 2010), 25–47.

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David Weinfeld is the visiting assistant professor of Judaic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. He received his doctorate in history and Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University. He was born and raised in Montreal, Canada.

Maurice Eisendrath Comes to Toronto


Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath. (Courtesy American Jewish Archives)

Howard Roger and Michael Cole


Maurice Eisendrath Comes to Toronto: The Rabbi’s First Year at Holy Blossom


Maurice N. Eisendrath arrived in Toronto in the summer of 1929 to become the rabbi of Holy Blossom Synagogue. At the time he was twenty‑seven years old, with only three years of rabbinic experience. He left Toronto in 1943 to become head of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), the umbrella organization of Reform Jewry in North America. In the intervening years, Eisendrath became a leading figure in the Reform movement, in the Canadian Jewish community, and in the general Canadian community.

In 2006, a few members of Holy Blossom Temple Brotherhood, the syn‑agogue’s men’s club, were recruited to clean out the temple’s tower. The tow‑er, which resembles a steeple, is a part of Holy Blossom’s neo‑Romanesque structure. Unheated, dimly lit, and accessible only via a narrow staircase, it was a seldom‑visited area of the building that eventually became a reposi‑tory for old administrative documents and accounting records. However, in clearing away the detritus of several decades, the Brotherhood volunteers came upon two boxes of papers that seemed to demand a further look. They were, for the most part, sermons written by Eisendrath, composed mostly during his early years at Holy Blossom, from 1929 until the mid‑1930s. There were also sermons written while he was the rabbi at his previous synagogue, Congregation B’nai Israel, in Charleston, West Virginia.1

Two of Holy Blossom Brotherhood’s past presidents—the authors of this essay—were so intrigued by this discovery that we began a project

1 Because the sermons are mostly undated, we had to ascertain their dates from matching their titles (when there was one) with sermon announcements in the temple’s bulletin or by references in the sermons to current events. Some sermons appear to have been delivered in both Charleston and Toronto.



of reading and analyzing the sermons. We believed that they would re‑veal some interesting things about Eisendrath, about Reform Judaism, and about Holy Blossom and Canadian Jewry during the period of the rabbi’s stay with us. We were not disappointed.

This essay will explore Eisendrath’s first year in Toronto through an examination of some of the sermons he delivered. We will also examine some of the editorials he wrote during that year for the Canadian Jewish Review.2 The editorials often dealt with the same concerns as his ser‑mons. Reading these sermons and editorials (and the response to them), we get insight into Eisendrath’s religious and political philosophy and a picture of the Canadian Jewish community of 1929 and 1930, before the cataclysmic events of the years to come.

Holy Blossom must have been a surprise to Eisendrath when he arrived in Toronto in 1929. He was the son of a culturally assimilated German Jewish family in Chicago, and he himself was brought up in a Reform temple. At age sixteen, he went to study for eight years at the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College. Cincinnati was the heartland of the American Reform movement. One of his student pulpits was in Muskogee, Oklahoma, which was, in the rabbi’s own words, a “virtually non‑Jewish milieu.”3 (It was there that he met his first wife, Rosa.) His only pulpit after becoming a rabbi and before coming to Toronto was in Charleston, West Virginia, another town with a small Jewish population. In contrast to these towns, 1929 Toronto boasted a Jewish population of over 40,000, with many synagogues, landsman-shaften, a Jewish hospital, a Jewish home for the aged and Jewish political groups of every stripe.4

2 Portions of this article are based, with modifications, on the authors’ blog, The Lost and Found Sermons of Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, http://eisendrathsermons.blogspot.com (ac‑cessed 1 October 2018).3 Maurice N. Eisendrath, Can Faith Survive? The Thoughts and Afterthoughts of an American Rabbi (New York: McGraw‑Hill Book Company, 1964), 54–55.4 Official census data for 1931 showed the Jewish population of Metropolitan Toronto as 46,751. Louis Rosenberg, The Jewish Community in Canada 1931–1961 (Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1965), 3. The Toronto Jewish Old Folks Home was established in 1918. The Hebrew Maternity and Convalescent Hospital (later Mount Sinai Hospital) opened in 1923.

http://eisendrathsermons.blogspot.com/p/introduction.html



Holy Blossom (as Eisendrath was about to learn) had a history and composition quite unlike that of Reform synagogues in the United States. Like Toronto Jewry in general, most of Holy Blossom’s members were of Eastern European background and traditional in their Jewish identity. Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, who came from Minnesota in 1961 to be one of Eisendrath’s successors at Holy Blossom, in his memoirs recalls discovering that when he arrived in Toronto, many members of the temple board still could understand Yiddish.5

Established in 1856, Holy Blossom was the first Jewish congrega‑tion in Toronto. Like the city itself, it was, in its early history, British in composition and orientation. Three of its four rabbis prior to 1920 were educated in Britain at Jews’ College, London. 6 As one historian of the period has noted, “Probably more than any other one factor, it was this orientation towards England which kept the congregation … from joining the Reform movement until 1920. Conservative in outlook, in a tradition‑minded, English‑oriented city, Holy Blossom … presents a picture of the very gradual and moderate growth of Reform sentiment.”7

Eisendrath was only the third rabbi from the Reform movement to be hired by Holy Blossom. He was different in some ways from the first two, being neither fluent in Yiddish nor a Zionist. Barnett Brickner, a graduate of Hebrew Union College, was hired in 1920 and, as one scholar has written, “had already achieved some measure of fame as a fiery orator in Yiddish before he arrived.”8 Ferdinand Isserman, who fol‑lowed Brickner in 1925, was a committed Zionist who, in editorials in the Canadian Jewish Review, urged his readers to give financial support to Palestine reconstruction and Keren Hayesod.9

5 W. Gunther Plaut, Unfinished Business (Toronto: Lester Orpen Dennis, 1981), 200.6 Rabbi David H. Wittenberg was an American rabbi, trained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, who was hired in 1899 and served for one and one‑half years before departing for the United States.7 Michael Brown, “The Beginnings of Reform Judaism in Canada,” Jewish Social Studies 34, no. 4 (October 1972): 327.8 Richard Menkis, “Both Peripheral and Central: Toward a History of Reform Judaism in Canada,” CCAR Journal (Fall 2004): 47.9 See for example, Ferdinand M. Isserman, “An Open Letter to Non‑Zionists,” Canadian Jewish Review (9 April 1926): 1 (hereafter, CJR).



About the Manuscripts and the SermonsThere are, in the manuscripts we found, some four thousand pages that Eisendrath handwrote, each page approximately 6 inches by 9 inches. A typical sermon runs forty‑plus pages. A few of the sermon manuscripts match typescripts preserved elsewhere in the Holy Blossom Archives.10 From instances where we have both the typescript and the manuscript, we can see that the former conforms closely to the latter, apparently having been transcribed directly from the manuscript.11 Sadly, a few of the sermon manuscripts are incomplete, and we have some pages that are remnants of unidentified documents.

We also have some shorter documents, fewer in number, in Eisendrath’s hand, written in outline or point form. These shorter docu‑ments appear to be notes for less formal sermons delivered on Saturday mornings or for minor festivals. The temple bulletins tell us that on Shabbat morning he would speak on either the Torah portion of the week or on a particular book of the Bible—often the Prophets, of whom he was especially fond. It is possible that these sermons were more in the nature of informal Bible study classes than lectures.

The longer manuscripts are fully composed sermons, suitable to be delivered, word for word, as written. They were prepared for the High Holidays or for major festivals, or for delivery as lectures at Sunday morning services (more about those later). We can see signs in the longer manuscripts of extensive revision during the writing process. There are numerous insertions and deletions. Some insertions are single words or short phrases squeezed between previously composed lines. Others

10 The manuscripts and typescripts are now found at The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (hereafter, AJA) in Cincinnati, Ohio. On 11 February 2017, we were pleased to present the documents on behalf of Holy Blossom Temple to Rabbi Gary P. Zola, executive director of the AJA. 11 In addition, some of the manuscripts correspond to sermons in “The Holy Blossom Pulpit.” These were pamphlets, each containing a single sermon, that were published begin‑ning in 1930—Eisendrath’s second year in Toronto—and could be purchased for ten cents each. An annual collection (usually ten pamphlets) was bound together into a small booklet each year, from1930–1931 (vol. 1) to 1941–1942 (vol. 12), and given to confirmation stu‑dents. In 1939, Eisendrath published The Never Failing Stream (Toronto: The Macmillans in Canada, 1939), a collection of eighteen sermons (one of them, a radio address).



are longer, snaking out to the margin and continuing sometimes per‑pendicular to the main text, and even turning again and spilling into the space at the top of the page, upside‑down relative the rest of the document. There are also longer insertions on the back of some pages and on supplementary pages.

Reading one of these sermons aloud from the manuscript would have been quite difficult—turning the pages one way and another and flipping back and forth between unnumbered pages. Our presumption is that when delivering his major sermons Eisendrath read from a typescript prepared for that purpose. We very much doubt that he delivered the sermons from memory. Their length—the sermons took forty minutes or more to deliver—and the detailed manner in which the manuscripts were written and revised—some revisions were as slight as the transposition of two words to allow for a more felicitous delivery—suggests otherwise.12

Aside from holy days, especially the High Holidays, the main forum for the rabbi’s sermons was at Sunday morning services. The practice of holding Sunday morning services at Holy Blossom was initiated in 1927 by Rabbi Isserman and continued until shortly after Rabbi Eisendrath’s departure.13 Holy Blossom was not unique in this respect. Sunday morn‑ing services had been held for years in liberal or Reform synagogues in cities such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Detroit.14 We should note that Sunday services were never a replacement for Sabbath services, which continued to be held at Holy Blossom on Saturday mornings.

The Sunday lectures were seasonal, beginning after Sukkot and con‑cluding after Shavuot. They were attended not only by Holy Blossom

12 Gerald Tulchinsky reports that the rabbi spoke without notes. Tulchinsky, “The Social Voice of Canada’s Reform Rabbis,” in Religion and Public Life in Canada, ed. Marguerite Van Die (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 320. This was probably true only for his shorter sermons. 13 Eisendrath’s successor, Abraham Feinberg, replaced the Sunday morning service with a late Friday evening service after his first year in the pulpit. This practice continued at Holy Blossom until the early 1980s, when Saturday morning became the main occasion for sermons.14 See Isserman, “Holy Blossom Synagogue to Initiate Sunday Morning Services,” CJR (4 November 1927): 1.



congregants but also by many others, Jewish and Christian. These people obviously felt that Holy Blossom’s rabbi had something to say to them. In his Sunday morning sermons (often more lectures than sermons), the rabbi felt no need to connect what he was saying to the Torah portion of the week. He could, and did, speak on political, literary, and religious topics as he saw fit.

Palestine, Pacifism, and the Canadian Jewish ReviewThe Canadian Jewish Review was a weekly publication founded in 1921. It allowed a diversity of opinion on its editorial pages. Rabbis Brickner and Isserman had been contributing editors who wrote weekly editori‑als for the paper, and Eisendrath, upon arrival in Toronto, was granted the same privilege. His first column was a rather bland piece, introduc‑ing himself to the community.15 But his editorial the following week launched a storm of protests and calls for him to be dismissed from Holy Blossom, even before he had preached his first sermon.

The controversy arose from an editorial titled, “We Pacifists?” It ap‑peared in the 20 September 1929 edition of the Canadian Jewish Review, only a few weeks after the Arab riots in Hebron. The riots were deeply disturbing to the Jewish community in Toronto. Sixty‑seven defense‑less Jews were murdered at the outset of the disturbance. As the unrest spread to other cities and towns, there was further loss of life, Arab and Jewish. In Toronto, a parade was organized “to press the British into ac‑cepting a brigade of young Canadian Jews as part of a proposed Jewish Legion to safeguard the Jews in Zion.”16 Eisendrath, an ardent pacifist, used his editorial platform to express his disagreement with the proposal.

He begins his editorial with a critique of You Gentiles, a book written by Maurice Samuel. Samuel claimed to see a difference between gentile and Jewish attitudes toward war and peace, the gentile being essentially militaristic, and the Jew, pacific. Samuel’s sympathies clearly aligned with the latter.17 Likewise, Eisendrath notes, Ludwig Lewisohn, in a

15 Maurice N. Eisendrath, “To all Canadian Jewry—Greetings,” CJR (13 September 1929): 1.16 Eisendrath, Can Faith Survive?, 52.17 Maurice Samuel, You Gentiles (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1924).



then‑recently published sermon, “The Pagan in the Heart,” contrasted the peace‑loving Jew with the warlike gentile.18

18 Published in an anthology of sermons, If I Could Preach Just Once, ed. Bertrand Russell (New York: Harper & Bros., 1929), 17–38.

Eisendrath with his confirmation class, 1935. (Courtesy the authors)



Eisendrath disagrees with Samuel’s and Lewisohn’s characterizations, seeing the Jew also as militaristic, especially in the most recent events in Palestine:

The most pointed refutation of [Samuel and Lewisohn’s] chauvinistic thesis is to be found in the reaction to the recent most lamentable situation in Palestine. Granted that, in the main, the Jew has not sought to slay every Arab in sight…. The very fact, however, that Jewish blood ran so tem‑pestuous and so hot, that the cry went up to mobilize a Jewish army, to wreak primeval vengeance on the Arab, to “rally to a new determination to complete the age‑long dream by resorting to arms, if necessary” this fact in itself is a potent negation of our innate Jewish pacifism. Our whole reaction has been military. Palestine must be defended at the point of the bayonet, if not by ourselves then by Great Britain, at least…. The Arab must be kept in his place—whether he likes it or not—with battleship and fortress; “Palestine must yet be more Jewish, than England is English.” So has run the bulk of comment on the Palestine situation. But what earthly use, I ask, is Palestine, its University, its Tel‑a‑Vivs [sic], its Wailing Walls, if it fails to exemplify the fundamental Hebraic ideal of peace? Not by nature are we pacific, but we have a great opportunity to demonstrate to the world our traditional idealism, by dwelling together with the Arab and the Christian in harmony and peace…. It were well that we, who throughout the ages, have flaunted at our adversaries the prophetic dictum, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit” heed the selfsame injunction.19

Response to the editorial was not kind; there was immediate indigna‑tion. Perhaps the greatest offense was taken from what Rabbi Eisendrath had omitted to say. Absent from his writing, unlike the writing of other contributors to the Canadian Jewish Review at the time, was any denun‑ciation of the Arab violence, anguish over Jewish suffering and loss of life, appeal for aid to the victims, or demand that British authorities be more steadfast in keeping the peace.20

19 Eisendrath, “We Pacifists?,” CJR (20 September 1929): 1. No citations were given for the quotations in the editorial. The “prophetic dictum” is Zechariah 4:6.20 Eisendrath had, the previous week, appended to his editorial a single sentence, expressing sympathy “for those who have been so miserably and so unjustly afflicted.”



Leaders of the Canadian Zionist movement called for Eisendrath to be dismissed from Holy Blossom. Their request was denied. “The august board of Holy Blossom Congregation would not be panicked,” Eisendrath would later write, “nor would its members be so unprinci‑pled as to jeopardize a rabbi’s entire career because of a single unpopular statement.”21

It happened that another contributing editor of the Canadian Jewish Review was A.B. Bennett, a staunch Zionist. In a front‑page editorial in the next edition of the publication, Bennett expressed his outrage at what Eisendrath had written. He had, Bennett protested, libeled the Jews and blamed them for the unfortunate events in Palestine:

Assuming that for some reason the Jews ought to be pacifists, does that mean that when attacked by a mob of rioters they should not lift a finger to defend themselves? Are they to be reviled and condemned because they did not lie down passively and permit to be slaughtered like sheep?22

Elsewhere, in the same edition of the Review, a terse article report‑ed that at a meeting of Jewish organizations in Toronto, Eisendrath’s editorial was unanimously declared to be “untrue and anti‑Jewish and therefore damaging to the Jewish People and the Cause of Palestine.”23

Eisendrath responded the following week with a lengthy defense—longer, in fact, than his original editorial.

That I have expressed [in my writing] views that are anti‑Jewish, is a grossly erroneous accusation. That the editorial was written to stir up strife and to foment antagonism within our Jewish fold, that it was even anti‑Semitic in its aim, as some of my traducers have gone so far as to maintain, is absurd and childish. It was neither anti‑Semitic, anti‑Zionist, nor anti‑Jewish; it was solely and simply anti‑militaristic and anti‑war.24

21 Eisendrath, Can Faith Survive?, 53.22 A.B. Bennett, “Pacifism and the Arabs,” CJR (27 September 1929): 22.23 “Hold Protest Meeting,” CJR (27 September 1929): 22.24 Eisendrath, “An Interpretation,” CJR (4 October 1929): 1.



He concluded by stating his “profound regret over the entire incident, [and] over the misunderstanding and ill‑will which my article innocently and unjustifiably engendered.” It is hard to imagine that this statement had any calming effect. While deploring the controversy and expressing a desire to bring it to an end, Eisendrath persisted in suggesting that he had acted “innocently” and his opponents “unjustifiably.”

The last word, at least in the editorial pages of the Review, went to Bennett the following week. He suggested that, if there was misunder‑standing regarding what Eisendrath wrote, surely it was because his words were “equivocal and open to misinterpretation.” But he, Bennett, called on “the reasonable members of the community” to accept the rabbi’s explanation “in good spirit” and to receive him “as an acquisi‑tion to the forces which are striving for a finer and nobler Jewish life in this country.”25

Bennett may have been willing to let the matter rest there, but Eisendrath was not. He returned to the topic a mere one month later with a sermon titled, “What Price Palestine?”, as we shall see later in this article. However, for the moment, other concerns, including the High Holidays and Eisendrath’s formal installation as rabbi of Holy Blossom, put that discussion on hold.

Rosh Hashanah 1929Holy Blossom heard Eisendrath give his first sermon on Erev Rosh Hashanah, 4 October 1929.26 It was a notable experience. The congre‑gation saw a tall young man with dark brilliantined hair parted in the center, sporting a black moustache and rimless spectacles—and no head covering!27 They learned quickly that Eisendrath made demands upon

25 Bennett, “A Critic’s Interpretation,” CJR (11 October 1929): 23.26 Eisendrath was not asked to deliver a sermon at Holy Blossom before being selected for the post. In an editorial published shortly before Rosh Hashanah he thanked the pulpit committee for not asking candidates to deliver a trial sermon, a practice that he described as an “abominable and inexcusable institution.” Eisendrath, “On Foraging for Rabbis,” CJR (27 September 1929): 1.27 Unlike almost all American Reform synagogues, Holy Blossom had retained the custom of men wearing yarmulkes during prayer. (It was optional, however, for Sunday mornings.)



his listeners. His vocabulary was extensive and often obscure. (People who remember him have told us that you had to bring a dictionary with you to understand Rabbi Eisendrath.) His style was flowery and orotund. He had a love of rhetorical devices such as poetic imagery, peri‑odic sentences, inverted word order (a favorite of his), parallel structure, and alliteration. Consider the introduction to this Erev Rosh Hashanah sermon, the very first of many his congregants would hear from him:

My dear friends: This very moment as we sit here, silently ruminating, the last lingering grains of sand are falling through the mighty hourglass of the centuries, and according to Israel’s reckoning a year is passing out of our sight and another is coming into view. By the hallowed custom of our people we are assembled here tonight solemnly to bid farewell to the dying year and with prayers and meditations and hymns to welcome the new born messenger of eternity. True it is that in the light of sophisti‑cated intelligence this habit of ours to gather in our synagogues in early autumn rests upon an utter illusion. To some in fact the custom might appear even childish and absurd … both time and space are immeasur‑able and vain seems our human conceit to divide month from month and year from year as the ever flowing stream of days beats incessantly against the eternal bastions of endless time.28

These are probably not words with which a young rabbi today would introduce himself to his new congregation. But this was a different era, in which rhetoric was admired, people’s patience in the pews was greater, and rabbis—even very young rabbis (at least this one)—had about them a sense of gravitas.

Eisendrath uses the occasion of the New Year to contemplate how radically our world has changed from biblical and medieval times.

One of the rabbi’s first acts on his arrival, just before Rosh Hashanah—with the far‑from‑unanimous approval of the board—was to make the wearing of head coverings optional for congregants. Furthermore, to the shock of its members, he himself led services on the holy days without a yarmulke. He notes in his memoirs that, by Sukkot, all but a few of the men had abandoned head coverings. Eisendrath, Can Faith Survive? 225–228.28 Eisendrath, “Retreat or Advance” (unpublished sermon manuscript, AJA.) Eisendrath mentions that this is his first address to the congregation.



Changes in religious practice are natural and to be expected. In true Reform spirit, Eisendrath sees that which is modern and up‑to‑date as good. Rituals that do not jibe with modern sympathies should be discarded:

It were foolhardy; nay it were suicidal to force upon ourselves religious ideas and sentiments, principles and practices, customs and ceremonies, regulations and rites which cannot be spontaneously associated with modern life, which are incongruous and irreconcilable with our present day habits of thinking and feeling.

As a proof‑text he uses a quotation from Kohelet: “One generation goeth; another generation cometh—but the earth abides forever.”29 He later offers this appreciation of the text:

Generation goeth and generation cometh is true not only of human forms and faces, as they crowd upon the boards of history, but it is also true of the inner man, of his ideals no matter how ennobling, of his aims, however high; all is a part of the rushing current of continual change as it tosses and surges and whirls throughout eternity.

With the phrase “human forms and faces,” Eisendrath links his ser‑mon that evening to his appearance before the congregation hatless, and with the mention of “ideals” and “aims” he makes the external practice emblematic of internal values.

This then is our answer to those who would inveigh against us for the reformation of habits and customs, the beliefs and practices, not only of our own day but of the entire conception of Judaism. Emphatically we reply to their deprecation that we are not so much worse than our ances‑tors, that we are not poorer Jews than our more Orthodox forebears, that we are not to be designated as gentiles, as faithless, as pig‑eating pagans, wanting in reverence and piety merely because that which inspired and edified our ancestors leaves us cold and untouched, merely because we gather, in some quarters at least, without hats and prayer shawls, without

29 Ecclesiastes 1:4. Koheleth, the writer of Ecclesiastes, is identified by tradition as King Solomon.



the caterwauling chants and beaten breasts, who pray rather with music and decorum and with our loved ones at our side.

In defense of modernism and Reform, Eisendrath quotes again from Koheleth: “‘Do not say,’ wisely counsels Koheleth, the Preacher, ‘Do not say that the former days were better than these.’”30 Comparing Reform practice of his day to the orthodoxy of “former days” he says this:

It is said of Reform that it is a religion of comfort and convenience, that it is easy to be a Reform Jew—but my friends it is not so; it is not easy to carry one’s religion out of the privacy of the bedroom and the remoteness of the Schule into the throbbing activities of life itself, into the store, the factory, the marketplace, the chambers of parliament and the courts of law.

To me it is far easier to reduce religion to a few harmless and ceremonial, ritualistic forms; it is easier, far easier, to say that the wearing of hats, the circumcision of the young, the prohibition of swine, the reciting of the kaddish, the kindling of lights, the davening night and morning—it is easier, far easier, to say that this is Judaism. It is difficult, it is infinitely more difficult, it is hazardous, it is dangerous to apply our Judaism to life itself.

The repeated mention of “life itself,” defined by Eisendrath as “the store, the factory, the marketplace, the chambers of parliament and the courts of law,” foreshadows a message of social justice that he would maintain throughout many future sermons and indeed throughout his life. In contrast, his message concerning traditional practices, for which he expresses here no enthusiasm whatsoever—dismissing so many of them as harmless, ceremonial, ritualistic forms—is one that he would moderate in future years. He would eventually write, “It is time we learned that we are more than intellect alone, more than cool reason…. Through prayer and meaningful ceremony and symbol we reach beyond ourselves.”31

30 Ecclesiastes 7:10.31 Eisendrath, Can Faith Survive, 234–235.



Interestingly, Eisendrath ends this Rosh Hashanah sermon by advo‑cating for a new building. In vivid language, he describes the unsatis‑factory conditions in which the students in the religious school study:

Our entire community is looking to Holy Blossom, most revered and honored of all synagogues in our land, to build a house of worship and a home of learning worthy of its long hallowed name. Our little children, huddled and cramped, choked and stifled in their narrow, sordid, and hazardous quarters below are yearning, dreaming, longing, crying out to us to erect for them a structure conducive to the study of their faith.

It would take a while. Less than a month after Eisendrath preached this sermon, the stock market crashed, and his congregation experienced the onset of the Great Depression. What is quite remarkable is that, by 1938, at the very height of the Depression, Holy Blossom did in fact open the doors of a grand new structure “worthy of its long hallowed name.” That it was able to do so was in no small measure due to the efforts of its rabbi.

Installation SermonEisendrath’s formal installation as rabbi of Holy Blossom occurred on Friday evening, 1 November 1929, but the occasion was a weekend‑long event. Friday evening he shared the pulpit with Dr. Felix A. Levy of Emanuel Congregation, Chicago, Eisendrath’s childhood rabbi, who spoke in honor of the occasion. The Saturday morning sermon was given by Rabbi Harry J. Stern of Temple Emanu‑El, Montreal. Ferdinand Isserman, serving as rabbi at Temple Israel in St. Louis, Missouri, spoke on Sunday morning.

Eisendrath begins his address that evening by referring to the story of the prophet Hosea and his faithless wife, Gomer. The story, he explains, is an allegory of the love between God and Israel. “Surely all of you,” he remarks, “are fully familiar with this sublime story of simplest love.”32 Like the relationships between Hosea and Gomer and between God and Israel, so, too, is the relationship between rabbi and congregation, he states.

32 Eisendrath, “The Divine Betrothal” (unpublished sermon manuscript, AJA.)



Extending the analogy, Eisendrath likens the installation ceremony that evening to a wedding ceremony: “What then is the purpose of this solemn and impressive service if it mark not the sacred betrothal of congregation and rabbi in bonds of unbounded love and selfless devo‑tion one to the other?” He then quotes, in a slightly unconventional translation, the words of Hosea, often recited at weddings, “I shall be‑troth thee unto me, forever, I shall betroth thee unto me in justice and righteousness, in kindness and love. I shall betroth thee unto me in Truth and thou shall love the Lord.”33

The rabbi does not extend the analogy so far as to imply to his con‑gregation that they, like Gomer and like the people of Israel, are faithless, but he does say that his task will be to bring his people to faithfulness, to the ideals of their religion—to proclaim “not the passions, the preju‑dices and predilections of men, but the ideal as the prophet Hosea and his contemporaries, by virtue of their religious genius, were privileged to observe it, the ideal of perfect justice, perfect truth, and perfect good will insofar as I may be blessed to see it.”

The next part of his address is a compliment to the free pulpit of Holy Blossom, a declaration of the right of the rabbi “to champion unpopular though righteous causes,” and a promise that, with the sup‑port of the congregation, he will do so, notwithstanding opposition and temptation.

For I know that in your midst there are those who will never permit this Ideal of Holy Blossom to be besmirched, to be dragged into the mire of mere opportunism and pleasant compromise. Some there will be, no doubt, who will urge the easier way, who will tempt us to temporize and plead with us to please, to tickle the ears of the multitudes and to tread upon the whims and caprices of none. But such will we, who are enthralled by the prophetic vision of Justice, of Truth, of Love, we, who will have burned into our memories this sacred betrothal night, such will we ignore notwithstanding the bait, the rewards with which they would lure us from our cause: increased budgets and memberships, lowered mortgages and cheap acclaim.

33 Hosea 2:22.



Page of Eisendrath’s handwritten sermon, “The Divine Betrothal.” (Courtesy American Jewish Archives)



Eisendrath continues his sermon with this biblical paraphrase: “Not alone with you standing before me this day did I seal this covenant said God unto his people Israel—but likewise with those who are not in your midst this day—yea every living creature would he bring into this divine and holy bond.”34 The usual interpretation of this text is that the covenant is between Israelites standing on Mount Sinai and their as‑yet unborn descendants. However, the rabbi’s interpretation this night is that it is his obligation to minister to everyone in the community in which he lives, Jew and non‑Jew alike. He pledges that he will be an “Or le-Goyim: a light unto the peoples.”

To the ears of the other rabbis present that night, portions of Eisendrath’s address may have been grating. The comparison of the re‑lationship between rabbi and congregation to an unbreakable marital bond was made even as Rabbi Isserman, who had departed Holy Blossom for St. Louis, was sitting on the bimah. Likewise, Eisendrath’s assertion that he would not pander to popular opinion or be swayed by the pros‑pect of lowered mortgages was blind to the fact that under Isserman’s leadership Holy Blossom’s mortgage had been discharged. It was also a not‑so‑indirect reference to the differences between him and the Zionist members of the community, many of whom were his own congregants. (It may also have been a challenge to Rabbi Stern, who served his con‑gregation in Montreal from 1927 to 1972 and was a life‑long follower of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Revisionist Zionism.) In addition, Eisendrath’s convenient rendering of Hosea’s vow as “I shall betroth thee unto me in Truth,” rather than the more usual “I shall betroth thee unto me in faithfulness” 35 could not fail to be noticed by all of the rabbis present, who doubtlessly were familiar with that passage and its meaning themselves.

We have heard a few installation addresses from Eisendrath’s suc‑cessors, both senior and junior rabbis, but none like his that evening. Conventionally, these sermons are humble and appreciative of the op‑portunities given to the rabbi. Eisendrath, however, was not one to fol‑low convention, even on a celebratory occasion such as his installation.

34 Deuteronomy 29: 13–14.35 Hebrew: B’emunah.



Palestine, Bi-nationalism, and Judah Magnes“What Price Palestine?”, Eisendrath’s sermon delivered on Sunday morning, 8 December 1929, renewed the controversy between him and Toronto Zionists. He did not try to win them over with flattery: “Never have I felt greater trepidation,” he told the congregation, “than I do today in addressing Toronto Jewry upon the topic of the Holy Land; for in all my experience I have never encountered as feverish a fanati‑cism, as frenzied a zeal and as opinionated and stiff‑necked a dogmatism as exists in this City of Toronto.”36

The Hebron massacre, Eisendrath acknowledges, was despicable, but there is more needed to explain it, he says, than simply “perennial hatred of the Jew.” He analyzes, at some length, the causes of the riots. He discusses the Jewish as well as the Arab claim to Palestine, on which the Arab has lived “for many centuries.” He notes that the Zionists have purchased land from absentee landlords and Jewish settlers have then forced Arabs off the land. The Arabs, naturally, perceive the Jews as Western foreigners who will drive them from their homes.

The rabbi refers to the “ghost of the Balfour Declaration,” a docu‑ment that contradicts the promises Britain made to the Arabs. The na‑tive Arabs thus feel betrayed; “they are resentful and sullen.” At the same time, “overly eager Jews are clamoring for the fulfillment of [Britain’s] pledge.” Faced with the question of whether the only possibilities are the abandonment of Zionism or constant strife, Eisendrath answers that there is a third way: the way of Judah Magnes. Judah Leon Magnes, renowned American Reform rabbi, was then chancellor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He and his group, later known as Ihud, advo‑cated reconciliation with the Arabs and a bi‑national (Jewish‑Arab) state in Palestine. Eisendrath likens Magnes to the prophets and avers that he will be persecuted as prophets always are.

What Eisendrath would like to see in Palestine is a Jewish spiritual and cultural center of the kind envisioned by Ahad Ha’Am. Jews would live as a minority in peace and security with the Arabs but would give up the dream of having their own country.

36 Eisendrath, “What Price Palestine?” (unpublished sermon manuscript, AJA.)



To achieve this, as Magnes so vividly pointed out, there must be re‑pudiated the conviction, so stubbornly rooted in the hearts of a few Zionist leaders, that to endure, Palestine must be predominately a Jewish state; for a Jewish state means surely a non‑Arab state, and a non‑Arab state the Arab world will not allow, all the force of Britain notwithstanding.

But wherein is such an aspiration essential to the dream of Zionism? If this be the ideal for which the Jew has sought and suffered and sacri‑ficed these many centuries, of what avail its fruition? Zion is too noble a dream, too fine a vision, too glorious a hope to be desecrated by the mere physical establishment of another petty state feverish with pride and arrogant with power, another banner unfurled amid the confusion of flags and frontiers already existing upon this earth.

Eisendrath recalls historic periods when Arabs and Jews lived ami‑cably in Spain and, “under the Turk,” in Palestine. A Jewish Palestine, “more Jewish than England is English,” will lead to a cataclysm between Arabs and Jews. The rabbi looks forward to a bi‑national Arab and Jewish state that will be antimaterialist, antimilitarist, and antinational‑ist. He mocks Joseph Trumpeldor37 and the romantic legend of fighting and dying for one’s country. Such sentiments are “a betrayal of Israel’s immortal faith,” and Eisendrath quotes again (as he did in his editorial) the prophet Zechariah: “Not by might nor by power, but by My spirit [says the Lord of hosts].”

Like Magnes—and, later, Martin Buber and others—Eisendrath sees a bi‑national state as the only solution to the Arab‑Jewish conflict. Like Ahad Ha’Am, he looks upon the Jewish homeland in Palestine as a spiritual and cultural center rather than a political entity.

In later years, Eisendrath did modify his opinions on Zionism, as he recounts at some length in his memoirs. A first visit to Palestine in 1935 was instrumental in changing his views. He was especially taken with the Labor Zionist movement and the kibbutzim:

37 Joseph Trumpeldor (1880–1920), Zionist hero who died defending Tel Hai. His dying words were, “Never mind, it is good to die for one’s country.”



I learned that there was quite a difference between standing in a pulpit decrying the evils of nationalism and the visceral commitment to one’s own land; between writing an abstract editorial, advocating non‑retalia‑tory, peaceful coexistence with the Arabs regardless of provocation, and standing on a hillside overlooking the blood‑spattered ruins of what had once been a thriving Jewish settlement.38

Of course, the rise of Hitler in Germany also served to change his mind, as it did those of so many others.39 Nevertheless, it seems to us that Eisendrath was prescient in some of his observations that Sunday morning in 1929. He was correct in his prediction of continuing conflict between Arabs and Jews. He understood also that to be loyal to Jewish ideals, there must be a spiritual element to Jewish life in the Jewish homeland.

Confronting the Ku Klux KlanOn Sunday, 23 March 1930, Eisendrath delivered a sermon in response to events of the previous month in Oakville, Ontario, a small town twenty miles west of Toronto. A group of fifty to seventy‑five hooded Ku Klux Klan members had visited the town at night for the purpose of preventing the marriage of Isabel Jones, who was white, to Ira Johnson, whom the Klan regarded as black. (Johnson later claimed otherwise, saying he was of part European, part native background.) They erected and burned a cross on Oakville’s main street. Another cross was burned in front of the house where Jones was staying. She was placed in a car and driven to a Salvation Army residence. Johnson’s mother was warned that if her son “was ever seen walking down the street with a white girl

38 Eisendrath, Can Faith Survive?, 56.39 Joe Kronick, director of youth activities at Holy Blossom in the 1950s, related in an oral history interview for Holy Blossom Archives that, when he went to his first meeting with colleagues at the UAHC headquarters in New York City, Eisendrath introduced him to the group and told a story from his early tenure at Holy Blossom: During one of Eisendrath’s sermons critical of Jewish nationalism, Joe’s father, Sam Kronick, and his friend Archie [A.B.] Bennett, stood up, looked the rabbi in the eye, and walked out. Eisendrath went on to say that “they were right, and I was wrong, because now, as you know, I believe firmly in the State of Israel.”



again the Klan would attend to him.” As they left town, the Klansmen encountered the Oakville chief of police, who made no effort to detain them.40

A provincial investigation ensued, and three men were charged. Eisendrath, in an editorial in the Canadian Jewish Review, gave his opinion about how they should be judged: “Those of us familiar with [the Klan’s] bigotry, its boycotts, its lynchings and its savage, medieval, primitive intolerance in the United States cannot but pray … that the perpetrators of this ugly, night prowling, and hooded demonstration be summarily punished.”41 At trial only one person, a chiropractor named William Phillips, was convicted. Although the maximum penalty was five years in prison, he was fined only $50.

This was the state of affairs as Eisendrath stood to deliver his sermon. His objective was to share his American experience with his Canadian listeners, to caution them against apathy and indifference, and to present to them the “vapidity and malignity” of the Klan’s doctrine of Protestant white supremacy.42

For an authoritative statement of Klan doctrine, Eisendrath referred to an essay by Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard and Emperor, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.43 That doctrine could be boiled down to this: that the Klan represents the Nordic race, “the race which, with all its faults, has given the world almost the whole of modern civilization”;44 that in America (and in Canada, the Canadian Klan would say) the Nordic race is threatened by foreign races; and that “the Klan is orga‑nized to defend our loved ones and our culture from the danger of these

40 Quotation and description of events in Oakville and the subsequent trial is from Constance Backhouse, Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada 1900–1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 173–225. 41 Eisendrath, “Within or Without the Law?”, CJR (14 March 1930): 1.42 Eisendrath, “This Nordic Nonsense” (unpublished sermon manuscript, AJA.) The title is the same as an article by Franz Boas, professor of anthropology at Columbia University, “This Nordic Nonsense,” The Forum (October 1925): 502–511. Rabbi Isserman used quotes from that article in his editorial, “The Nordic Illusion,” CJR (9 October 1925): 1.43 Hiram Wesley Evans, “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism,” The North American Review (March–April–May 1926): 33–63.44 Ibid., 38.



foreign races.”45 From such assertions the Klan derived its well‑known prejudices: against Catholics, against negroes (to use the vocabulary of the time), and against Jews. Catholics are dominated by non‑Nordic Italian popes; negroes can never claim equality with whites; Jews stub‑bornly refuse to assimilate. Such principles, Eisendrath stated, constitute a threat to the very existence of Canada:

Impudent in action, sinister in motive, bestial in conception, vicious in method, pernicious in purpose, flagrant and frenzied and fanatic in the execution of its illegal, its irreligious, its un‑British designs, it threatens the moral integrity and stability of our nation, and unless summarily and speedily brought to justice—by the prostitution of the ideals of this Dominion, it will turn one people against the other in hatred and contempt—Protestant against Catholic, white against negro, Christian against Jew, until even this wondrously cosmopolitan land will be torn by inner dissension and strife, until it perish in the blood of its own internal feud.

This language is possibly the most passionate in all of Eisendrath’s ser‑mons.

Eisendrath makes it clear that there is no scientific basis for accept‑ing the racial categories spoken of by the Klan or for believing in white superiority:

Anthropology to be sure is the youngest of the sciences and although it has yet come to no definite conclusions with regard to such highly complicated problems as the various races of men, still it is absolutely certain according to Professor Haddon … that “there is no such thing as racial culture. The culture of any given people is primarily dependent upon their mode of life which is itself largely an expression of geographi‑cal conditions,” and the division of men into races, Nordic, Alpine, Caucasian, Mongolian, Semitic, etc. is solely for the purpose of conve‑nience as a means of categorizing different groups—but a pure racial type, he emphatically concludes, exists purely in our imagination. And Professor Dorsey goes him one better when he states that “we have no

45 Eisendrath, “This Nordic Nonsense” (paraphrasing H.W. Evans).



anatomical nor psychological evidence which can prove that physically or mentally the white race is the highest type of man.”46…

Now I have no objection to anyone claiming that he is better than his neighbor. That is his prerogative; any man has an inalienable right to make a fool of himself, but when such sentiments are wholly false and set brother against brother and destroy all discipline and co‑operation, then they become in very truth not merely a nuisance but a positive menace.

This passage illustrates some characteristic aspects of Eisendrath’s preaching: reasoned, scholarly, and modern, but also at times mocking and sarcastic, ridiculing and showing contempt for those whose views he considered backward and harmful. But his criticism was not only for members of the Klan. He warned of “tacit submission” to Klan gospel and denounced those who publicly condemn the Klan for its tactics but privately approve of its goals. Fear, the rabbi believed, was at the root of these demonic behaviors: “fear of losing jobs, of being declassed and degraded, of relinquishing fond hopes for the future.”

Our manuscript of this sermon appears to continue with two in‑complete alternate endings, indicating that what we have is not in final form. Still, we know from newspaper reports that the sermon was indeed delivered.47

Subsequent events gave the rabbi some satisfaction. Newspapers re‑ported the following day that Johnson and Jones had married.48 On appeal, Phillips’s sentence was increased to three months in prison with a warning that any subsequent offence would be dealt with more harshly. The Chief Justice of Ontario called the actions of the accused and his companions “mob law … like a venomous serpent, whenever its

46 Eisendrath mentions several anthropologists of the time: A.C. Haddon, Alexander Goldenweiser, Franz Boas (supra, note 42), and George Amos Dorsey. No citations are given for the quotations.47 “Rabbi Calls Klan Lawless,” Toronto Star (24 March 1930): 3; “Rabbi Calls K.K.K. Lawless Body,” Hamilton Spectator (24 March 1930): 19.48 “K.K.K. Oakville Raid Has Sequel at Altar,” Toronto Star (24 March 1930): 1. The marriage had taken place on Saturday, the day before Eisendrath delivered his sermon. He was probably unaware of it at the time.



horrid head appears it must be killed, not merely scotched.”49 Eisendrath praised the decision in the Canadian Jewish Review, calling it a “mag‑nificent verdict” but reminding his readers that the Klan remained “still audacious and not in the least humbled.”50

A Personal Conception of Judaism While Eisendrath never considered himself a theologian, his sermons reveal a particular conception of Judaism and Jewish identity.51 Consider these words from his first Yom Kippur morning sermon in Toronto regarding the origin and purpose of Judaism:

For me Judaism is not a polity, a nation, a race, nor even essentially a people, but a faith, not a contract nor a covenant but a living inspiration, not a survival nor a tradition but a development, a continual growth, an expanding idea, a universal ideal, a consuming task. However mis‑understood by the cursed world and caricatured by our own, Judaism is neither foil nor stepping stone for Christianity, nor racial exclusive‑ness, nor national pride clustering bygone glories, shattered dynasties and painful martyrdoms. To me Judaism is a spiritual force, a moral impetus, an ethical dynamic, a social vision. It came into this world not as the invention of a priest, nor the policy of kings, nor the dialectic of rabbis, nor the superstitions of the masses, but as the burning inspira‑tions of prophets, as the spiritual illumination and profound insight and universal outlook of the religious genius of our people, the bards, the prophets, the psalmists, the poets of our past.52

49 R. v. Phillips (1930), 38 O.W.N. 323 (C.A.).50 Eisendrath, “Justice in Ontario—Speedy and Sure,” CJR (25 April 1930): 1.51 Many of the principles he stated in the manuscripts quoted here had been expressed before at Holy Blossom. See Isserman’s inaugural sermon at Holy Blossom, which contains several similar statements: “Inaugural Sermon,” CJR (13 November 1925): 1. Likewise, see portions of his editorial in memory of, and quoting from, Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler: “Kaufmann Kohler,” CJR (5 February 1926): 1, 14. 52 Eisendrath, “The Basis of Jewish At*One*Ment” (unpublished sermon, AJA.) The sermon survives only as a typescript with a few handwritten emendations. It is labelled “Morning Day of Atonement, Charleston W. Va., 1928.” We know from the Holy Blossom Bulletin that it was also delivered in Toronto the following year.



Also in the same sermon, he comments on the nature of Israel (“Israel” meaning the Jewish people, not the then‑unborn State of Israel):

Israel is more than a religion and a theological system. Israel is more than a nation, a race, a people, a sect. Israel is a moral force, a national corrective, a social ideal. It is a united effort, a common quest to regulate more sanely and more justly the relation of man to brother man, of na‑tion to sister nation, of group to fellow group.

This is the tendency and temper and drift of the Jewish mind, forced by its very minority to be liberal and broad and even radical.

In a sermon later the same year, “If We Were Really Jews,” Eisendrath tells his congregation how they would behave “if we were really Jews.”53 We would, to begin with, be more Jewishly learned, he says. Today, “Talmud and Midrash are strangely esoteric terms,” Jewish philoso‑phers are beyond our comprehension, and we do not appreciate “our own poets of the synagogue,” Ibn Gabirol or Yehuda HaLevi. (This is an interesting observation, and one that we might apply to Eisendrath’s own preaching; his sermons seldom quote from the Talmud or midrash or refer to classical Jewish sources other than the Prophets.)

Eisendrath’s suggestions of how we would live “if we were really Jews” are many: We would not be a people who dwells alone; we would not be afraid to associate with non‑Jews or be active in non‑Jewish society; we would welcome non‑Jews into our synagogues, which would become “a house of prayer for all people”; we would be at peace with other Jews despite our differences; we would attend synagogue more regularly; we would, perhaps as a result, become more spiritual rather than secular or nationalistic; we would make tzedek the cornerstone of our religion, meaning we would promote economic justice and peace. Indeed, “if we were really Jews, we would not ever participate in bloody battles.”54

53 Eisendrath, “If We Were Really Jews,” 2 March 1930 (unpublished sermon manuscript, AJA.)54 By the time Eisendrath delivered this sermon, his pacifist views were well known in Toronto. In addition to his editorial writings and sermon on Palestine, noted above, he had also delivered a pacifist sermon on Sunday, 10 November 1929, one day before Armistice Day. Eisendrath, “All Quiet on the Western Front” (unpublished sermon manuscript, AJA).



More provocative is the rabbi’s suggestion that if we were really Jews we would accept Jesus—although, importantly, without accepting his divinity—as an ethical Jewish teacher and successor of Amos.

If we were really Jews we could do our share toward the elimination of the most deep‑rooted cause of anti‑Jewish feeling without sacrificing one iota of our own absolute unmitigated monotheism, without accepting none but the Lord as God, without surrendering our faith in a future Messianic kingdom alone—we could none the less accept the ethical teachings of Jesus.

This suggestion that Jews accept Jesus as an ethical teacher, although controversial, was not unfamiliar. In a sermon titled “A Jew’s View of Jesus,” delivered in New York on 20 December 1925, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise urged a new and appreciative Jewish view of Jesus. The sermon was widely reported and debated.55 Remarkably, Eisendrath goes even further and says, “We could teach his exemplary life to the children in our schools … along with Jeremiah, Isaiah and Moses.” This concept of Jesus as one of the Jewish prophets is one to which Eisendrath would often return, not without opposition, throughout his career.56

Further indications of Eisendrath’s philosophy of Judaism can be found in his sermon “Why I Am a Jew.”57 “Judaism,” he says, “calls for no compromise or surrender of the emancipated and enlightened knowledge of our day.” It is a rational religion compatible with mod‑ern scientific thought. He describes Judaism as an ever‑changing and ever‑developing religion: “It is an erroneous conception to believe that

55 The CJR printed two editorials regarding Wise’s sermon less than two weeks after it was delivered. Herbert J. Samuel, “Rabbi Stephen Wise’s Sermon on Jesus,” and Isserman, “Tolerance in Jewish Circles,” CJR, (1 January 1926.): 1. Further commentary appeared in subsequent weeks. See also “Dr. Stephen S. Wise Creates Storm with Sermon,” Canadian Jewish Chronicle (1 January 1926): 6, 18.56 See Eisendrath, Can Faith Survive?, 176–203 (Chapter 10, “Jesus—Man of my People”).57 Eisendrath, “Why I Am a Jew,” 2 February 1930 (unpublished sermon manuscript, AJA.) The title is the same as the now‑famous work by Edmond Flegg, Why I am a Jew (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1929), translated from the French by Louise Waterman Wise. Eisendrath acknowledges that he is quoting from that work, but the bulk of his remarks are his own.



Judaism is in any way a stationary or a static cult.” Furthermore, he asserts, Judaism is a universal religion with a message of social justice and peace:

Correctly understood, my religion is not a narrow nationalism … but is rather a world embracing universalism, offering to all men not blind faith, not catechisms or creeds, not rituals or rites, but righteous action, love and peace alone.… I am a Jew, because through our bitter trial and brutal test we are prepared indeed to teach men the lesson of brother‑hood, of mercy, of Peace.

These principles of rationality, reform, universality, social justice, and peace were the foundation of Eisendrath’s Judaism. To him, Jewish existence was primarily a matter of precepts and practice rather than of peoplehood or nationality. “It may be true that persecution has pro‑duced solidarity in Israel and that danger has made for cohesion—still unless there be positive factors present, unless the yoke or the joy of Judaism be consciously accepted,” he told his congregation, “I cannot grant that one is a Jew.”

Final ObservationsThe authors of this article never knew Maurice Eisendrath. We get the impression that, upon his arrival in Toronto, he was a young man im‑bued with enormous self‑confidence bordering at times on arrogance. He believed that it was his duty as a rabbi to give moral guidance to his (mostly much older) congregants and to instruct them in the right way to live. People who remember him describe him as a rabbi who was somewhat distant, perhaps even aloof. However, we are told that after delivering his lectures on Sundays, he spent the afternoons calling on congregants in their homes. We also know that he was interested in arts of many kinds, especially theatre. As of 1930 he had read all the published plays of Eugene O’Neill, and in that year he delivered four sermons devoted entirely to O’Neill’s plays.58

58 Eisendrath, “Strange Interlude,” 5 January 1930; “ ‘Dynamo’: Can we Pray to Electricity?,” 12 January 1930; “Business Is Business,” 19 January 1930 (also 3 May 1929 in Charleston, WV, reviewing “Marco Millions”); “Saying ‘Yes’ to Life,” 26 January 1930 (reviewing “Lazarus



Eisendrath wanted his congregants to think about Judaism and reli‑gion in a modern, scientific context. He presented Judaism as a rational, non‑static religion, capable of evolving and consistent with enlighten‑ment and knowledge. One of his sermons was a response to a lecture given to the American Association for the Advancement of Science call‑ing for “a new conception of God.”59

Eisendrath was an energetic participant in the political controversies of his time. He preached against political Zionism when Zionism was at the very core of the Toronto Jewish community’s values. He com‑mented on Zionist politics and advocated for the political philosophies of Judah Magnes and Ahad Ha’Am. He reviewed critically the works of contemporary Jewish writers Maurice Samuel and Ludwig Lewisohn. In addition, Eisendrath was, at least in his early years, an uncompromising pacifist. In a sermon before Armistice Day he warned against “a lethargic and somnolent apathy toward war” and praised authors who were “strip‑ping war of all its mock heroics and false posturings.”60 He preached and wrote about the scourge of the Ku Klux Klan when Ontario was overwhelmingly white and its establishment largely Protestant. He was acquainted with the work of African American artists and intellectu‑als and knew of the scholarly writings of anthropologists of his time. He also drew inspiration from gentile thinkers, frequently citing Rev. John Haynes Holmes, a prominent Christian minister, as an authority.61 Controversially, Eisendrath referred frequently to Jesus as “the rabbi of Nazareth” and, while rejecting Christian beliefs regarding his divinity, suggested that Jews should study his moral teachings.

Like many Reform rabbis of his time, Eisendrath was against ritual and ceremony that he considered not relevant to the times, and for the

Laughed”) (unpublished sermon manuscripts, AJA; “Business Is Business” also in typescript.)59 Eisendrath, “Do We Need a New Religion? A Reply to Harry Elmer Barnes from Christian and Jew,” 17 November 1929 (unpublished sermon manuscript, AJA.) 60 Eisendrath, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” 10 November 1929 (unpublished sermon manuscript, AJA.)61 For example, Eisendrath wrote a review of Holmes’s book, Palestine Today and Tomorrow: A Gentile’s Survey of Zionism (New York: Macmillan, 1929). See Eisendrath, “A Gentile Looks at Palestine,” CJR (13 Dec 1929): 1.



social justice message of the Prophets, which he considered timeless. While he would moderate his views on ritual (although not hugely), pacifism, and Palestine, he never lost his passion for social justice. The qualities that defined Maurice Eisendrath during his first year in Toronto would remain with him for fourteen years in the city and throughout the distinguished career that followed.

Howard Roger and Michael Cole are a retired lawyer and school teacher, respectively. They are members of Holy Blossom Temple and past presidents of the temple’s Brotherhood. Since they do not play golf or bridge, they spend Friday mornings together reading, analyzing, and commenting on the ser-mons of Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath. Their musings on individual sermons can be found on their blog, eisendrathsermons.blogspot.com.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


James Heller (Courtesy American Jewish Archives)

Joan S. Friedman


The Pilgrim Rabbis: Reform Rabbis Behaving Badly in a Lost Satire

Joan S. Friedman

In the papers of the Hebrew Union College (HUC) among faculty‑student correspondence dating mostly to the 1910s, is an anonymous manuscript.1 It is an eleven‑page carbon copy of the typescript of Acts I and III of a three‑act satirical play, The Pilgrim Rabbis, lampooning prominent members of the American Reform rabbinate. The manuscript offers a humorous perspective on the tensions that roiled the Reform rabbinate in those years: Zionism; competition between New York and Cincinnati for leadership of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and of the movement; tension between radical reformers and those who advocated a return to a more traditional model of practice; and uncertainty for the future of American Judaism in the face of mas‑sive immigration from Eastern Europe. There is no reference to this typescript in the faculty minutes or any indication of how, why, or when it ended up in faculty hands, or which faculty member had it.

Who Wrote the Play?While the evidence is entirely circumstantial and contextual, I believe that James G. Heller (1892–1971) is the likely candidate.2 Heller, son

1 The Pilgrim Rabbis, undated, MS‑5, box B‑6, folder 11, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH (hereafter AJA). This folder of miscellaneous and undated material, ar‑chived with student correspondence, also contains several anonymous letters complaining about rabbinic students’ conduct and/or the state of Reform Judaism; student petitions to add, change, or skip classes; correspondence relating to several disciplinary issues; and sev‑eral inquiries from women or their male sponsors regarding their admission to the rabbinic program.2 For basic biographical information in this article, unless otherwise noted I have relied on Kerry M. Olitzky, Lance J. Sussman, and Malcom H. Stern, eds., Reform Judaism in America:

The Pilgrim Rabbis


of Rabbi Max Heller of New Orleans, entered HUC in 1912 after com‑pleting his bachelor’s at Tulane University and was ordained in 1916. Upon ordination he went to Keneseth Israel in Philadelphia as assistant to his father’s friend, Joseph Krauskopf, until he was called to active duty as a military chaplain.3 Discharged in 1919 after less than a year of service, he briefly served a congregation in Little Rock before mov‑ing to Cincinnati’s Isaac M. Wise Temple in 1920 as assistant to Louis Grossman, his former HUC professor and friend of Heller senior. When Grossman passed away suddenly in 1927, Heller succeeded him and remained there until his retirement in 1952.

Heller is the most likely candidate based on four inferences we can draw about the play. First, the author had a wicked sense of humor and a talent for writing satire. Heller is well known as the composer and primary author of “The Quest of the Holy Dagesh,” a musical comedy performed at the HUC annual student banquet of November 1914.4 “The Quest” features a whimsical plot in which the college’s faculty discover that the dagesh has disappeared, set off to find it, and are kidnapped by Jewish pirates. It portrays the foibles and quirks of vari‑ous faculty personalities with affectionate mockery that makes clear its purpose of lighthearted in‑house fun.

The Pilgrim Rabbis demonstrates a similarly clever and playful hand, but with far less whimsy and far more bite. Crucial for linking it to Heller, it also has an obvious editorial perspective. Max Heller’s expe‑riences as a CCAR leader are the background against which the play comes into focus. Though everyone is spoofed, he and his friends within the CCAR are treated more gently, with the same affectionate humor

A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993).3 Heller and Solomon Freehof, the last two Jewish chaplains called to active service, shipped out to France on 12 November 1918. Joan S. Friedman, “Solomon B. Freehof, the ‘Reform Responsa,’ and the Shaping of American Reform Judaism,” doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 2003, 107.4 James G. Heller, Simon Cohen, Edward Davis, and Edward L. Israel, “The Quest for the Holy Dagesh,” MS‑147, box 1, folder 14, AJA. Rabbi Henry J. Berkowitz recollected that “The Quest” originated as the 1913 Purimspiel. Stanley Brav, ed., Telling Tales Out of School (Cincinnati: HUC‑JIR Alumni Association, 1965), 16–17, 75.

Joan S. Friedman


employed throughout “The Quest,” while Heller’s ideological and po‑litical opponents within the CCAR are subjected to stinging mockery. Significantly, the satirist targets Stephen S. Wise, who was Heller’s ally within the CCAR in the cause of Zionism but, for a brief period in 1909, his adversary in CCAR politics.

Second, the author was intimately familiar with CCAR politics and the personalities of many of its leaders. Max and James Heller were pas‑sionate about the same issues, and their correspondence5 shows that they shared the details of their activities. James certainly knew his father’s friends, and he certainly knew his father’s opinion of his enemies.

Third, the author was a Zionist, and James Heller embraced Zionism passionately. He later reminisced that HUC made him into a Zionist. His father, he asserted, had never tried to “pressure” him, and he didn’t really give it much thought, he claimed, until he arrived at HUC as a student in 1912.

There, at the opening session, Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, its President, spoke to the new students. He fulminated against Zionism, with not a little violence. This appeared to me so unfair, so wide of the mark, that I was almost at once driven to the other direction, driven to study and to ponder. During those student years, the longer I considered, the more certain I became that my own sentiments were all upon the side of Zionism. I became embroiled in bitter controversies, even as a student.6

During his student years, virtually all of Heller’s activities placed him on a collision course with President Kaufmann Kohler. He gravitated to the company of the other Zionist sympathizers among the student body and the faculty. In February 1913 he wrote his parents that he had spent an afternoon at the home of Grossman with fellow students Ed Israel and Simon Cohen, listening to Grossman’s new phonograph records of European cantors. (Israel and Cohen would collaborate with Heller on “The Quest.”) A month later he wrote that he had presented a

5 Max Heller kept carbon copies of the letters he wrote to his sons. There is an extensive collection of them in MS‑33, AJA.6 James G. Heller, “How I Became a Zionist,” The New Palestine, 22 January 1943 (pho‑tocopy), MS‑147, box 1, folder 12, AJA.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


well‑received paper, “The Jew in Music,” to the Student Literary Society, but had caused a bit of a stir because he had adopted a Zionist perspec‑tive, meaning that “the Jew has a psychology common to almost all Jews, which may be called Jewish.” He also informed his family that he

went to a meeting of about five boys, all Russians except me, who had asked me to join them in a little circle for reading modern Hebrew. Of course, I did so with pleasure, and last night got real profit out of it. We read an essay of Achad Haam, and I found that I could read almost as well as any of them.7

(The students were reading modern Hebrew on their own because one of the curricular changes Kohler had made when he became president of HUC was eliminating any instruction in modern Hebrew.8)

A month later Heller wrote to his family that he had been invited to join the Yod‑Kaf‑Tav, a secret organization to which some of the students and “many of the more prominent conservative Jews” in Cincinnati be‑longed, “the purpose of which is to promulgate Jewish sentiment and to study and read papers on Jewish subjects.” It would require giving up ham and shellfish, and he thought about it very carefully before assent‑ing. This controversial secret fraternity, Zionist in orientation, existed at the college for perhaps six or seven years, disappearing around 1920. In March 1914 a younger student named Jacob Rader Marcus confided to his diary that he believed James Heller was “the main Macher” in the organization.9 In 1914–1915, Heller was at the center of a controversy that made headlines in the national Jewish press, when Kohler forced him and three other students to rescind their invitation to Horace Kallen to speak on campus (see below).

7 James Heller to Max and Ida Heller, 23 February 1913 and 3 March 1913, MS‑33, box 7, folder 5, AJA. 8 Michael A. Meyer, “A Centennial History,” in Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion at One Hundred Years, ed. Samuel E. Karff (Cincinnati: HUC Press, 1976), 59.9 On the Yod‑Kaf‑Tav organization see Meyer, “Centennial History,” 75, and Joan S. Friedman, “The Making of a Reform Rabbi: Solomon B. Freehof from Childhood to HUC,” American Jewish Archives Journal 58, nos. 1 & 2 (2006): 21–22.

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Finally, the author had some connection to the HUC faculty, since it was found among faculty papers. Family friend Louis Grossman was on the faculty and is a character in the play, and may have received a copy.

An argument from silence is never conclusive, but in the absence of evidence pointing to anyone else as a possible author, I have proceeded on the assumption that James Heller wrote the play.

When Was It Written?[T]he type of subject preferred by satire is always concrete, usually topi‑cal, always personal. It deals with actual cases, mentions real people by name or describes them unmistakably (and often unflatteringly), talks of this moment and this city, and this special, very recent, very fresh deposit of corruption whose stench is still in the satirist’s curling nostrils. This fact involves one of the chief problems the satirist has to face. To write good satire, he must describe, decry, denounce the here and now.10

The “here and now” in this satire spans nearly a decade, perhaps more. Two references argue for its completion no earlier than 23 March 1918 and no later than 30 October 1918. First, Joseph Mandelberg, the former cantor of Cincinnati’s Rockdale Temple, who died on 23 March, is referred to as deceased.11 Second, Moses Gries, rabbi of Tifereth Israel Congregation (The Temple) in Cleveland, died on 30 October, and ap‑pears here as a live character.12

Nevertheless, the summer of 1918 is an unsatisfying answer as a time of composition, because there are several elements that would have had more bite at an earlier date. One of these is the play’s unflattering por‑trait of Stephen S. Wise. Wise and Max Heller had a serious contretemps in 1909, when Wise tried to derail Heller’s accession to the CCAR presi‑dency, but it blew over, and they resumed their friendship as well as their

10 Gilbert Highet, The Anatomy of Satire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 16–17.11 “Obituary,” The American Israelite (18 April 1918): 7. I am deeply grateful to Professor Jonathan D. Sarna for pointing this out to me.12 “Rabbi Gries Passes,” The American Israelite (6 November 1918): 1.

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cooperation in Zionist affairs.13 Another is the playwright’s skewering of Samuel Schulman’s ambition to lead the CCAR. By 1918 Schulman had succeeded Max Heller and served his term as president and was then completing his time on the Executive Committee.

Furthermore, the play has a juvenile feel to it. Many of the jokes sound like something students would come up with, and some explic‑itly relate to rabbinic students’ experiences in Cincinnati. It requires no stretch of the imagination to envision James Heller as a student, hanging out with his friends, chewing over a pompous remark by David Philipson or the latest anti‑Zionist pronouncement by Kaufmann Kohler, getting the CCAR dirt in his father’s latest letter, and venting his feelings in the form of a vicious satire that could never be performed. It is more difficult to envision Rabbi James Heller—assistant rabbi at a prestigious pulpit, a relative newlywed (married August 1917), an enlisted chaplain waiting to be called up for wartime duty—having the time or the inclination to write it.

Another possibility is that the play had its genesis back in Heller’s student days, and this was merely an updated version, with allusions to events that span nearly a decade. A survey of CCAR doings in the 1910s reveals plenty of fodder for a satirist.

CCAR Politics: Background to The Pilgrim RabbisMaximilian Heller (1860–1929)14 was born in Prague, immigrated to the United States in 1879, and was ordained in 1884 as a member of HUC’s second graduating class. Although Isaac Mayer Wise was his beloved mentor, he found a Zionist mentor in Bernhard Felsenthal, his senior rabbi in Chicago from 1884–1886. Heller became rabbi of

13 During the Kohler‑Kallen controversy at HUC, Max Heller wrote his son that he was “glad to hear that you, James, liked the redoubtable Stephen,… [who,] I think, [is a] sincere [friend] of mine.” Max Heller to James and Isaac Heller, 11 January 1915, MS‑33, box 17, folder 10, AJA.14 Unless otherwise noted, this survey of Heller’s career relies on Gary P. Zola, “Reform Judaism’s Pioneer Zionist: Rabbi Maximilian Heller,” American Jewish History 73, no. 4 (June 1984): 375–397, and Bobbie Malone, Rabbi Max Heller: Reformer, Zionist, Southerner, 1860–1929 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997).

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Temple Sinai in New Orleans in 1887 and remained there for the rest of his life. In the 1890s he and Stephen Wise began a warm correspondence based on their shared commitment to progressive social reform, though they had not yet met.15

In December 1901 Heller went public with his Zionist convictions in an article in the B’nai B’rith national monthly, The Menorah. Over the next few years he became increasingly involved in the leadership of both the Federation of American Zionists (FAZ) and the CCAR, a combina‑tion that raised eyebrows among both sets of colleagues. Additionally, Heller’s disappointment with the state of American Jewish life and what he saw as the emptiness of Reform Judaism led him to increase his commitment to Zionism and to engage with the growing number of American Jews beyond the Reform camp. Within the Reform movement he became increasingly identified with the minority of rabbis who had begun arguing for a return to discarded rituals.

Nevertheless, Heller was one of the most senior members of the CCAR and well respected by his colleagues. In 1907 they chose him as the organization’s vice‑president, although the incoming president was David Philipson (1862–1949), a staunch anti‑Zionist who heartily disapproved of Heller’s views. The unwritten but hitherto uncontested practice of the CCAR was that after serving a two‑year term, the vice‑president would succeed to the presidency.

Philipson, a member of HUC’s first graduating class, served as rabbi of Bene Israel Congregation in Cincinnati from 1888 until his death. He also taught a variety of subjects in the rabbinic program—where the students ridiculed his pomposity—though by 1909 he had given up his part‑time faculty position for what he thought was a more influential position on the Board of Governors.16 He saw himself as the “heir appar‑ent to Wise’s Cincinnati empire,”17 but very few others shared that view.

Philipson persuaded the CCAR Executive Committee to postpone the annual convention by four months and to hold it in New York City

15 Max Heller to Stephen S. Wise, 9 December 1896, MS‑49, box 3, folder 9, AJA.16 Meyer, “Centennial History,” 68.17 Zola, “Pioneer Zionist,” 383.

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for the first time since 1892,18 ostensibly to hold a special commemora‑tion on 10 November, the centennial of the birth of David Einhorn, the premier exponent of radical Reform in the United States. But Philipson’s proposal was undoubtedly a tactical move in his ceaseless quest to be recognized as the leader of American Reform Judaism, as well as to establish the superiority of the claim of Cincinnati’s rabbis to unofficial leadership of the CCAR over that of the New York Reform rabbis.

The dominant figure in the New York Reform establishment was Samuel Schulman (1864–1955). Brought to the United States from Russia as a small child, he received both a public school and a Talmudic education. He earned his bachelor’s degree at City College of New York in 1885 and then went to Berlin, where he studied at the University of Berlin and, in 1889, was ordained at the Hochshule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. He then served congregations in New York City; Helena, Montana; and Kansas City, Missouri, before being chosen as Kohler’s assistant at Beth‑El Congregation in New York in 1899. When Kohler left in 1903 to become president of HUC, Schulman succeeded him as Beth‑El’s rabbi. Schulman was a passion‑ate theist who strenuously opposed all secular definitions of Jewish identity, including Zionism. He was also a leader of the CCAR faction that wanted more ritual, not less. In 1909 he had been a member of the CCAR Executive Committee for four years and was ambitious to obtain the presidency, which meant securing the nomination for vice‑president that year. According to Philipson, Schulman protested against the decision to hold the CCAR convention in New York City on the (mistaken) grounds that postponing it for four months would violate the organization’s constitution by extending the president’s term past its two‑year limit, and insisting that Philipson should therefore not be allowed to preside at the New York sessions. Philipson’s conclusion was that Schulman “wished no strong presentation of liberal Judaism in the metropolis.”19 When Schulman delivered the opening address

18 David Philipson, My Life as an American Jew (Cincinnati: John G. Kidd & Son, Inc., 1941), 205. For additional discussion of the background to this event and the relationship between Philipson and Heller, see Zola, “Pioneer Zionist.”19 Ibid., 205.

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at the 1909 CCAR convention, he used the opportunity to emphasize that New York, and not Cincinnati, was the center of the Jewish world: “For it cannot be denied that, in order to study Judaism completely and exhaustively, one must come to New York, for it is the Jewish world in miniature.”20

All the political maneuvering was not only about large egos. Serious issues were at stake—the very identity and future direction of Reform Judaism in North America. Of the European‑born founders of the Reform movement in the United States, Kaufmann Kohler (1843–1926) was now the last one remaining. His prestigious rabbinic ordination, equally prestigious German university doctorate, and superior erudition had not sufficed to secure for him recognition as the leader of American Reform Judaism until after the death in 1900 of his rival Isaac Mayer Wise. At that point Kohler clearly emerged as the dominant figure within the CCAR. In 1903 he acceded to the presidency of HUC and proceeded to put his stamp upon its curriculum and general atmosphere. But within only a few short years, the “classical” Reform Judaism he epitomized was already becoming outmoded, and ambitious younger men were scheming to succeed him. There was a general feeling of un‑certainty among Reform rabbis in those years as the continuing mass migration from Eastern Europe gradually brought them to the realiza‑tion that their vision of Reform as the inevitable next stage of Judaism was a false one, that in fact they were already a minority in the United States, overwhelmed by Jews—especially in New York—who had not the slightest interest in joining their grand temples. They also struggled to understand why their magnificent temples, eloquent preaching, beau‑tiful choral music, and modernized prayer book were not producing pious, committed Jews. Tensions flared between the Cincinnati and New York establishments over which city held the movement’s “real” leadership; between those who thought Reform had gone too far in discarding ritual observance and those who thought it needed to go still further; between pro‑ and anti‑Zionists.

20 Samuel Schulman, “Address of Welcome,” Central Conference of American Rabbis Yearbook 19 (1909): 23 (hereafter CCARY).

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In the weeks leading up to the 1909 CCAR convention, Stephen S. Wise (1874–1949) was gearing up for a showdown with the organization’s leadership. Born in Hungary into money and a distinguished rabbinic lineage, Wise possessed a great intellect and passion for social justice, matched by equally great ambition and ego. Though admitted to HUC by Isaac Mayer Wise without even an interview, he declined to matriculate, preferring to study privately with a number of rabbis, and ultimately re‑ceived private ordination from Adolph Jelinek of Vienna. By 1909 he had already established himself as the enfant terrible of the Reform rabbinate. In what was probably a calculated move, he had parlayed his rejection as candidate for rabbi of Temple Emanu‑El in late 1905 into a springboard from which to return to New York from Oregon and launch his Free Synagogue, which was formally organized in April 1907.21 He identified with the radical wing of Reform and had little use for ritual; his closest clergy friend and collaborator was the Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes. Wise’s rejection of ritual was more extreme than the CCAR’s norm even in its classical phase; he was also a Zionist and a champion of the underdog against all establishments. For those reasons he had a highly ambivalent relationship with the organized Reform movement. He and Samuel Schulman maintained an intense rivalry for primacy among New York’s Reform establishment that was both ideological and personal.

Wise laid a plan to have Emil G. Hirsch (1851–1923) of Chicago elected CCAR president. Hirsch was the son of one radical Reformer (Samuel Hirsch) and the son‑in‑law of another (David Einhorn), as well as the brother‑in‑law of Kohler, who had married Einhorn’s other daughter. Uncompromising in his approach to Reform, he was minimally involved in the CCAR. He and Wise bonded over their shared passions for inter‑religious activity and progressive social reform, their dismissal of Jewish ritual and emphasis on ethics, and their ambivalence toward the organized Reform movement.22 Wise preached frequently at Sinai Congregation in the early years of the twentieth century, while Hirsch was an enthusiastic

21 Melvin I. Urofsky, A Voice That Spoke for Justice: The Life and Times of Stephen S. Wise (Albany: SUNY Press, 1981), 56–57.22 Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 270ff.

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guest at the organizing meeting for Wise’s Free Synagogue in 1907.23 To make Hirsch the new CCAR president, however, Wise needed

to orchestrate a movement to derail his friend Max Heller’s succession. In late October he and two New York colleagues sent a letter to a select number of Heller’s friends in the CCAR asking them to support Hirsch’s nomination for the presidency by persuading Heller to remain as vice‑president for another term. (Wise did not yet have Hirsch’s agreement to serve, and, in fact, Hirsch subsequently told Wise that he was not interested.) Heller, who had been forced to cancel his trip to the con‑vention because of a critically ill congregant, learned of Wise’s plan in a letter from his friend Louis Grossman:

It will interest you to hear of a little game that was played a week or so ago. About that time I got a letter from Stephen Wise, Fleischer and Harris24 (on a joint circular) in which they propose Hirsch for the Presidency of the Conference and ask me to endorse their undertak‑ing…. They added that they did not mean to affect the present custom of succession in office (that meant you), but that under the circum‑stances the matter could be arranged. What they really had in mind was to put in Hirsch over your head and leave you in the Vice Presidency….

The thing was aimed at Schulman whom the New Yorkers do not want even in the Vice Presidency. I must confess that I myself do not care to see Schulman in office. Well, I replied that I had no objection to Hirsch, but that I would not go in with them, because you were a friend of mine and are entitled to the succession.

A few days after that, I got a second communication from the trio, stat‑ing that they had given up the scheme, because “Hirsch does not want

23 Tobias Brinkmann, Sundays at Sinai: A Jewish Congregation in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 244; Urofsky, Voice, 63.24 Charles Fleischer was rabbi of Temple Adath Israel in Boston. Born in Breslau in 1871, he was raised and educated in New York and ordained at HUC in 1893. Maurice Harris, rabbi of Temple Israel of Harlem, was born in London in 1859 and held a doctorate from Columbia University. Both men studied at the Emanu‑El Theological Seminary, a short‑lived radical Reform seminary associated with New York’s Temple Emanu‑El from 1877–1885, during the tenure of Samuel Adler. Harris was one of the very few men actually ordained there.

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it.” You can imagine that, now that you are going to be absent … they will work up their scheme afresh. I am very, very sorry that you cannot go to NY. It gives Schulman a chance, and Hirsch, and the anti‑Zionist crowd. Well, if I go, I shall have a talk with Joe Silverman25 and we shall see what we can do. You are entitled to the succession and we shall make a plea on that score. I think you have enough friends, and surely enough of those who respect you, and I think we can carry the day.26

Heller, understandably upset, wrote a very strong letter of protest to Wise, denouncing what he saw as a betrayal of friendship. Wise fired back in an angry, supercilious tone, completely unrepentant: “You have no right to address me as you do, but I shall overlook that and try to answer you as if you had written in the way in which you should have written.” First, he argued that he had acted solely out of concern for the welfare of Reform Judaism:

For several months, a number of men, including…myself, have felt that at this time the Presidency of the Conference should not be lodged in a man who has…chosen to place himself in the forefront of the counter‑reformation movement. That movement is fundamentally opposed to the principles of the Jewish Reformation…

In the next paragraph, however, he asserted that he was not actually blocking Heller’s presidency but only delaying it for a year, to honor Hirsch—who did not want the office, in any case.

You do not deserve the explanation which I am making to you but, I would have you understand, sir, that there was no evasion, no con‑cealment, nothing underhanded in the manner in which we addressed ourselves to this task… We not alone felt that, whatever your personal qualities were, you would not at this time become the President of the Conference but also that the next President of the Conference should be Doctor Hirsch of Chicago. Doctor Harris and Fleischer and I prepared a statement, a copy of which I enclose. That statement was addressed to

25 Joseph Silverman (1860–1940) was an HUC classmate of Max Heller and the long‑serving (1888–1922) rabbi of New York’s Temple Emanu‑El.26 Louis Grossman to Max Heller, n.d., MS‑33, box 2, folder 23, AJA.

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a number of your friends and we asked for a frank expression of their opinion. You will notice that we expressly stipulated in the postscript of that statement that there was to be nothing more than a postponement of your election to the office. Personally, I may say, without finding it necessary to say this by way of explanation, that I felt that Doctor Hirsch was entitled to the titular as his is the real leadership of the American Jewish ministry. The letter, I repeat, was sent to a number of your friends and, if I am not mistaken, in a second communication addressed to Doctor Berkowitz, I suggested that he write to you in order that you might understand that there was no unfriendliness underlying this plan, and in the hope, which I now see I vainly cherished, that you might even be magnanimous enough to nominate for the Presidency the name of him who is facile princes [sic] in our Rabbinate….

The answers we received in response to our inquiry were of such a char‑acter that we felt it might be unwise to press the candidacy of Doctor Hirsch, in justice to whom it should be stated that he said again and again that he did not wish to become the President of the Conference. I shall be so underhanded, ‑‑ to quote your fraternal expression, ‑‑ as to say that I am profoundly disappointed in the failure of the Conference, and of the Conference leaders, to rise to the opportunity of making Hirsch, at this time, its President….

After brazenly insisting that there was nothing “underhanded” about going behind Heller’s back to his friends to ask them to convince him to step aside so that the presidency could go to Hirsch, Wise went on to advise Heller that there was, indeed, a conspiracy afoot to deny him the presidency. The “Cincinnati cabal” (meaning Philipson and his sup‑porters there, who also did not favor the accession of Schulman) was plotting to secure the presidency for one of their allies. “They would not violate the sacred precedent of rotation in office to elect Doctor Hirsch but they seem ready to carry out their plans, if they can, in forgetting this precedent and equating [sic] what they have professed up to this time was your own claim to the office.”27

27 Stephen S. Wise to Max Heller, 12 Nov 1909, MS‑49, box 3, folder 9, AJA.

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While Wise was trying to outmaneuver Schulman, Schulman was attempting to do the same to Wise. It was at the 1909 convention that the CCAR passed its first resolution on mixed marriage, declaring mildly that these marriages were “contrary to the tradition of the Jewish reli‑gion and should therefore be discouraged.”28 Schulman had proposed the original, much more strongly worded draft as a deliberate rebuke of Wise. As Grossman reported to Heller after the convention, “Schulman brought in a resolution against mixed marriages. But his motive was to slap Stephen Wise, who (it happened) had some time ago married a couple whom Schulman had rejected. The Committee on Resolutions made the Schulman resolution tame.” Grossman was smugly amused by the failure of both sets of schemers:

The Hirsch episode was funny. As to Schulman, he strained everything to get the nomination [for president]. He allied himself with the combina‑tion [i.e., the Cincinnati rabbis], so as to get that nomination. Imagine Schulman flirting with, in fact heart‑to‑heart friend with Kohler, and Kohler, on his part, doing the same….

Harris was interested in the campaign only to down Schulman, and so was Stephen Wise, and for that matter every one of the rest. Hirsch did not have a friend. Not even his brother‑in‑law [Kohler], who, as you know, was committed to Schulman.29

Heller, representing the Zionist and traditionalist factions within the CCAR, did succeed to the presidency, but with Schulman—also a traditionalist, but representing the anti‑Zionists and New York’s desire for primacy—as his vice‑president. The Cincinnatians had to be content with getting one of their own, Julian Morgenstern, into the position of recording secretary, rather than Heller’s preferred candidate, Moise Bergman of Congregation Gates of Prayer in New Orleans. As Jacob Kaplan, another of Heller’s friends, wrote him after the convention, “This trick will no doubt complicate matters for you, and possibly lay

28 “Report of the Committee on Resolutions” and discussion, CCARY 19 (1909): 174, 170.29 Louis Grossman to Max Heller, 24 Nov 1909, MS‑33, box 2, folder 23, AJA.

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your plan and work before the omniscient Ohio rabbinate, before your Zionistic tendencies might ‘safely’ be entrusted to the secretary of ‘our’ choice, but I have absolute faith in your ability and sincerity to accom‑plish your work even with all their tricks and obstacles.”30

Having failed to take control of the CCAR, Stephen Wise resigned after the 1909 convention, along with allies Charles Fleischer, Samuel Sale, Isaac Leucht, and Emil G. Hirsch himself. Maurice Harris re‑mained, however, and became an active member of the Executive Committee.31 When Schulman succeeded Heller in the presidency in the summer of 1911, he made a formal gesture of reconciliation by invit‑ing Wise to rejoin. Wise accepted the invitation and the two exchanged cordial notes—but within months of rejoining the CCAR he was hard at work formulating a new rabbinical organization, the Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis (ECRR).32 While the group’s stated purpose (as Harris assured a concerned Heller)33 was to enable the Reform movement in the New York area to function more effectively in the new conditions created by mass immigration from Eastern Europe, Wise obviously in‑tended to use it a platform to enhance his stature vis‑à‑vis both the Cincinnatians and New Yorkers like Schulman. To this end he invited colleagues outside of New York—most notably, Hirsch of Chicago—to join his new group.

This, of course, set off a storm of fury within the CCAR. As CCAR president, Schulman attempted to force the group to disband or at least limit its membership to the New York area and become a genuine

30 Jacob H. Kaplan to Max Heller, 22 November 1909, MS‑33, box 3, folder 16, AJA.31 Sale, a former rabbi of Har Sinai Congregation in Baltimore, was a radical. Isaac L. Leucht of New Orleans’s Touro Synagogue was also, and he had also clashed with Max Heller repeatedly since the latter had been chosen to succeed James Gutheim at Temple Sinai, a position Leucht wanted. Schulman to Wise, 18 September 1911; Wise to Schulman, 21 September 1911; and Schulman to Wise, 29 September 1911, MS‑49, box 1, folder 7, AJA. Also Wise to Isaac L. Leucht, 25 September 1911, Mic 2350, AJA; Malone, Max Heller, 30ff.32 The ECRR was officially organized on 22 April 1912 at a meeting at Wise’s home, barely a week after the conclusion of the 1912 CCAR convention. Stephen S. Wise to I. Edward Kiev, 8 September 1930, MS‑49, box 1, folder 7, AJA.33 Harris to Heller, 20 May 1912, MS‑33, box 3, folder 3, AJA.

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subgroup of the CCAR.34 This move generated a very public controversy, with extensive coverage in the Anglo‑Jewish press in 1912 and 1913. Typical of the passions of the day was an exchange in The American Israelite between Martin A. Meyer of San Francisco and Schulman, with Meyer asserting that the ECRR came into existence because the CCAR leadership was a clique that excluded dissenting voices and Schulman heatedly rebutting the charge.35

Wise was not seriously interested in investing the effort to climb the ladder to leadership within the CCAR ranks. He refused Schulman’s invitation to serve on the Committee on Civil and Religious Marriage Laws because, he claimed, the committee he had served on the previous year had never met. CCAR Corresponding Secretary Solomon Foster replied that he checked with the committee chair, J. Leonard Levy, who said that Wise was the only one who had not responded to his com‑munication about committee work. Foster then snapped, “Considering the help you rendered the Committee last year, I can now understand what you mean by the statement: ‘I prefer in self‑respect not to accept appointment to such committees.’” 36 (Tensions between these two men were already high, since Wise, always an advocate for labor, had torn Foster to shreds over Foster’s milquetoast lecture at the 1909 CCAR convention on “Judaism and the Working Man.”37)

In 1913 Heller again had cause to feel wronged by the CCAR—this time by his successor to the presidency, Samuel Schulman. Schulman tried to prevent him from delivering a scholarly paper at the upcoming convention, critiquing Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s Foundations of

34 Samuel Schulman, “President’s Message,” CCARY 23 (1913): 198ff.; “Report of the Committee on the President’s Message,” CCARY 23 (1913): 113–119. Schulman also vented his feelings in private letters, even turning down an invitation to a dinner honoring Henry Berkowitz and William Rosenau because the honor came from the ECRR. Schulman to Abram Elkus, 15 April 1915, MS‑90, box 6, folder 6, AJA.35 Martin A. Meyer, “Narrow Clique Policy of C.C.A.R.,” 22 Aug 1912, and Samuel Schulman, “Letters from People,” 26 September 1912. 36 Foster to Wise, 15 July 1912; Wise to Foster, 19 July 1912; Foster to Wise, 2 August 1912, Mic 2350, AJA.37 Solomon Foster, “The Working Man and the Synagog,” CCARY 19 (1909): 432–489; Urofsky, Voice, 87ff.

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the Nineteenth Century (1899) and Werner Sombart’s Jews and Modern Capitalism (1911), both of which had recently appeared in English translation.38 Schulman canvassed the CCAR Executive Committee to strike Heller from the program because he worried that critiquing the books at the CCAR convention, which received annual coverage in The New York Times and other mainstream newspapers, would just foster antisemitism by drawing attention to the authors’ ideas. (Schulman himself had published a review of Sombart the previous year, but the book was then only available in German, and the review appeared in The American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger.39) Committee member Harris was outraged, seeing personal animus at work, and wrote to a select number of colleagues to muster support, if need be, to protest and overturn the decision. He pointed out that Solomon Schechter had already critiqued Sombart at length in The New York Times. Sending a copy of Harris’s circular to Heller, Harris scribbled at the bottom, “The works of your well‑wishers Schulman and Philipson again?”40 A flurry of angry correspondence followed; one anonymous committee member wrote to Corresponding Secretary Solomon Foster that when he first received Schulman’s letter asking him to approve the elimination of Heller’s paper, he was ready to go along; but then he saw Heller’s letter to Schulman, “and now I am definitely opposed to eliminating it.” In the end Schulman retreated, but Heller apparently agreed to address only Chamberlain’s work.41

38 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols, trans. John Lees (London: John Lane, 1911); Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1913).39 Samuel Schulman, “‘The Jews and the Economic Life’: A Review of Werner Sombart’s Book,” The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger, 5 April 1912. 40 “German Professor’s Book Stirs Jewish Circles Here: Dr. Solomon Schechter Dissects Some of the Views of Professor Werner Sombart as Expressed in ‘The Jewish in Economic Life.’ Novelty of Deductions by the Author Excites Criticism and Comment,” The New York Times, 3 March 1912 Magazine Section Part Five; Maurice Harris to Max Heller, 26 March 1913, MS‑33, box 3, folder 3, AJA; unsigned carbon to Maurice Harris, 1 April 1913, MS‑33, box 3, folder 1, AJA; Leo Franklin to Max Heller, 4 April 1913, MS‑33, box 2, folder 9, AJA.41 Unsigned copy of letter to Solomon Foster, 7 April 1913, MS‑33, box 2, folder 8, AJA.

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The year after his father’s clash with Schulman, during the 1914–1915 academic year, third‑year rabbinic student James Heller got into a roaring controversy with Kaufmann Kohler that ultimately drew in many of the CCAR’s leading members, the outcome of which was a sig‑nificant defeat for Kohler. The initial skirmish took place in December 1914, when Heller and the leaders of the HUC student Literary Society extended an invitation to Horace Kallen—who was to address a Menorah Association gathering at the University of Cincinnati—to speak at HUC. Kohler detested Kallen’s secularism, his advocacy of a cultural “Hebraism,” and his support for Zionism. He forced the students to rescind the invitation. Kallen then went public with the matter,42 embarrassing and enraging Kohler and other Reform leaders. Four students, including Heller, then wrote a letter of apology to Kallen in defiance of express instructions from Kohler. The four students were censured by the faculty with the “assistance” of a special committee of the Board of Governors. Louis Grossman, who supported the students, kept Max Heller informed and urged him and Stephen Wise to rally the out‑of‑town rabbinic members of the Board of Governors against the proceedings. Again, multiple issues were at stake: Zionists or not, the out‑of‑town rabbis who served on the board saw a chance to loosen Kohler’s rigid ideological control over the school. The resolution that was reached allowed the students to advocate Zionism more explicitly than before, but also allowed Kohler to save face by retaining control over what was said in the college chapel. Almost immediately thereafter, James Heller—clearly testing the limits—clashed with Kohler again over the content of a sermon on Zionism. Faced with conflicting accounts of

Schulman wrote to Philipson that he had decided to let Heller go ahead with his paper under the title, “The Jew and Recent Racial Theories—A Resume.” He wrote that while he would have preferred no discussion—as he knew Philipson and Foster agreed—at least Heller would not talk about Sombart. Samuel Schulman to David Philipson, 9 April 1913, MS‑90, box 6, folder 6, AJA. 42 The Baltimore Jewish Comment published Kallen’s letter containing the text of both student communications and accompanied it with a scathing editorial about the difference between liberal Judaism and the HUC establishment. “Liberal Judaism and Hebrew Union Collegism,” Baltimore Jewish Comment, 20 December 1914, n.p. in Mic 2350, AJA.

Joan S. Friedman


the incident from his son and his colleague, Max preferred to attribute the incident to Kohler’s failing memory.43

Max Heller continued to be the odd man out in the CCAR leader‑ship circle. At the 1917 CCAR convention (which James did not at‑tend), outgoing president William Rosenau strongly urged the CCAR to condemn political Zionism and to renege on its commitment to partici‑pate in the upcoming congress of American Jewish organizations.44 The majority of the Committee on the President’s Message—including Max Heller’s friends Louis Grossman and Joseph Silverman—crafted resolu‑tions tailored to Rosenau’s specifications. Heller was the committee’s lone holdout, vainly proposing minority reports affirming that there was no inherent contradiction between Zionism and Reform Judaism, and that the CCAR had to fulfill its commitment to attend the congress.45 Although Zionist rabbis were numerous enough by 1917 to compel the CCAR to accept a milder version of the anti‑Zionist resolution, the con‑troversy made clear that the fault line between Heller and his colleagues was just as deep as ever.46 In that year, however, Louis Grossman acceded

43 For a concise summary of the whole incident see Meyer, “Centennial History,” 77–78 and notes ad loc.; also Malone, Max Heller, 167ff., and Zola, “Pioneer Zionist,” 391ff. Max Heller’s papers include numerous letters, especially personal ones to James during this period, that bring the issues into sharp relief. While there are too many to list each individually, on the sermon incident see Max Heller to Kaufmann Kohler, 12 March 1915, and Max Heller to Isaac and James Heller, 11 April 1915, MS‑33, box 17, folder 10, AJA.44 “President’s Message,” CCARY 27 (1917): 195–202. On the background to the conven‑ing of the American Jewish Congress see Urofsky, Voice, 123ff.45 The committee’s members were Leo Franklin, David Alexander, Henry Berkowitz, Hyman Enelow, Solomon Foster, Louis Grossman, Max Heller, Joseph Krauskopf, Joseph Kornfeld, Clifton H. Levy, Alexander Lyons, Isaac Landman, Harry Mayer, Morris Newfield, David Philipson, Charles Rubinstein, Marcus Salzman, Samuel Schulman, Joseph Stolz, Joseph Silverman, Samuel Sale, and Abram Simon. “Report of the Committee on the President’s Message,” CCARY 27 (1917): 132ff.46 In reality, Reform rabbis’ views on Zionism were far less monolithic than any resolu‑tions indicated. Many were sympathetic to some version of cultural Zionism; others, at the very least, wanted the new Yishuv to flourish, just as they wanted the best for Jewish com‑munities everywhere. Among those who voted anti‑Zionist but in fact were sympathetic to the idea of a revitalization of Jewish life through the up‑building of Eretz Israel were Max Heller’s friends Louis Grossman and Joseph Silverman. Silverman later publicly supported

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to the CCAR presidency and a year later delivered his first President’s Message, a masterful attempt to reconcile the sides beneath the “big tent” of postwar reconstruction, in which he evinced support for the emerging Yishuv (even while remaining skeptical of political Zionism).47

The summer of 1918 was a time for optimism within the Zionist movement: Britain had issued the Balfour Declaration and its army was firmly in control of Palestine; with the end of the war in sight, it was possible to envision the creation of a Jewish polity in Eretz Israel in the not‑too‑distant future. Grossman—Max Heller’s dear friend and James’s mentor—was at the head of the rabbinical organization to which they were all devoted. But the complex interplay of large egos, feuding with equal intensity whether it concerned a trivial perceived snub or an es‑sential question of Jewish existence, was still going on. So perhaps it was a good time to polish up an old manuscript, just for a laugh.

We turn, therefore, to the two surviving acts of The Pilgrim Rabbis. (Note that the play is transcribed here exactly as written, with no cor‑rection of typos.)

The Pilgrim Rabbis48

Act I Scene 1. The Wharf at Jaffe49

political Zionism. See Jonathan D. Sarna, “Converts to Zionism in the American Reform Movement,” in Zionism and Religion, ed. S. Almog, Jehuda Reinharz, and Anita Shapira (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998), 188–203; Michael A. Meyer, “American Reform Judaism and Zionism: Early Efforts at Ideological Rapprochement,” Studies in Zionism 7 (1983): 49–64; Richard Keith Harkavy, “Non‑Zionism Within Reform Judaism: 1917–1948,” rabbinic thesis, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, 1984; Ya’akov Ariel, “Kaufmann Kohler and His Attitude Toward Zionism: A Reexamination” American Jewish Archives 43, no. 2 (1991): 207–223.47 Louis Grossman, “President’s Message,” CCARY 28 (1918): 158–187.48 The premise of the play is that the rabbis are on their way to the annual CCAR conven‑tion, which is being held in Jerusalem. 49 Popular European and American images of Jaffa were shaped by Orientalizing descrip‑tions such as this: “The first view of Jaffa, gained from the deck of the ship, is beautiful and entrancing…. [T]he sandy shore trends away in both directions in a monotonous line; but orange‑groves, palms, and other Oriental trees combine to render the first view of the Holy Land for ever memorable to the European visitor. A disenchantment, however, follows from the very moment of landing. Jaffa is one of the dirtiest and most uncomfortable of all the

Joan S. Friedman


Kohler How good it is to be on land and to stretch ones legs, on the

land of our fathers, where our sacred religion first arose to become the

banner bearer of truth.50

Philipson Be careful doctor. That you do not turn Zionist. I cant see

anything to rave about. The smell is peculiarly oriental and reminds me

of sixth street.51

Enelow52 You should have sat next to that Arab boatman; then you

would have experienced the acme of odors. Now I realize why our

towns of Palestine. The houses are crowded together[;]… the streets are narrow, crooked, and filthy [and] filled with groups of wild Arabs and eager traders…. Although Jaffa itself is dirty and uninteresting, its outskirts are delightful. New and well‑built houses have sprung up amongst the splendid groves of oranges, and there are many signs of increasing wealth.” Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine (London, 1892), 2, cited in Mark LeVine, Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880–1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 284 n189. Furthermore, despite handling extensive commerce and more than eighty thousand visi‑tors annually, Jaffa’s harbor facilities were minimal and rocks offshore made it impossible for large ships to land, requiring cargo and people to be offloaded into small boats and rowed ashore. Lloyd’s of London classed it as “one of the worst harbours in the world.” MacMillan’s Guide to Palestine and Syria, London, 1910, 9, cited in Ibid., 272 n44.50 This is the first of numerous instances where the author mocks the grandiloquent style of the classical Reformers in referring to key elements of classical Reform belief, such as ethical monotheism and the mission of Israel. 51 724 Sixth Street was Hebrew Union College’s address from 1880–1912. The area had been an elegant German Jewish neighborhood, but by the early 1900s it had become a run‑down, semi‑industrial area populated by poor East European Jews and African‑Americans. In 1903 the Board of Governors purchased land for a new campus on Clifton Avenue, near the new University of Cincinnati campus, but fundraising and construction took some years, and the new campus did not open until 1912, Heller’s first year as a student. Friedman, “Making of a Reform Rabbi,” 13 and notes ad loc. 52 Hyman G. Enelow (1877–1934) was ordained in 1898 and served two congrega‑tions in Kentucky before coming to Temple Emanu‑El in Manhattan in 1912 as Joseph Silverman’s associate, filling the position left vacant by Judah Magnes upon his resignation in 1910. Enelow was strenuously opposed to political Zionism. H.G. Enelow, “Does the Jew Assimilate,” The American Israelite, 3 Mar 1904 and “Letters From People,” The American Israelite, 21 February 1907.

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biblical ancestors laid so much stress on Reach Nechoach.53 I tell you that boatman got my goat.

Kohler I didn’t see any goat.

Enelow No Dr. This goat is a psychological animal, a chimera.54 But I tell you that boatman made me itch all over. Ugh I wonder if I caught anything. I dont like this country at all.

Philipson Nor I. Why those Zionists should rave about it gets me. As for me again I affirm, America is my Zion, and Washington my Jerusalem.55

.a pleasing odor,” is the phrase that regularly appears in the Torah (e.g., Lev“ ,חיר חוחינ 531:9) in reference to offerings burnt upon the altar, the scent of which is “a pleasing odor” to God.54 HUC students were exposed to psychology, still a relatively new discipline, in classes on “pedagogics” taught by Louis Grossman. Meyer, “Centennial History,” 60.

This sentence may be an allusion to the conclusion of a particularly abstruse passage in William James’s Principles of Psychology—just the sort of thing a student might find amusing: “Now I do not wish just yet to ‘commit myself ’ about the existence or non‑existence of the ego, but I do contend that we need not invoke it for this particular reason—namely, because the manifold of ideas has to be reduced to unity. There is no manifold of coexisting ideas; the notion of such a thing is a chimera. Whatever things are thought in relation are thought from the outset in a unity, in a single pulse of subjectivity, a single psychosis, feeling, or state of mind.” William James, The Principles of Psychology, Chapter IX: “The Stream of Thought,” 1890, 278, in Classics in the History of Psychology: An internet resource developed by Christopher D. Green, York University, Toronto, Ontario. 55 According to David Philipson, this phrase had its origin in 1898, at the first Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) convention held after the First Zionist Congress in Basle, issued its call for the establishment of a Jewish state. Philipson chaired the com‑mittee tasked with producing an official Reform response to the Basle declaration. Their draft read:

We are unalterably opposed to political Zionism. The Jews are not a nation, but a religious community. Zion was a precious possession of the past, the early home of our faith, where our prophets uttered their world‑subduing thoughts and our Psalmists sang their world‑enchanting hymns. As such, it is a holy memory, but it is not the hope of the future. America is our Zion. Here, in the home of religious liberty, we have aided in founding this new Zion, the fruition of the beginning laid in the old. The mission of Judaism is spiritual, not political. Its aim is not

Joan S. Friedman


Ever shall I proclaim this watchword. Well I am glad that I am off of the ship. Those Rabbis gave me a pain.

Kohler That’s all right. Lefoom Zaara Agra.56 According to the pain is the reward. You have had your pain you will get your reward.

Philipson Inshallah.

Kohler What means inshallah?

Philipson (proudly): If Allah wills. That’s Arabic. Here in Palestine we should all speak Arabic.

Enelow How wonderful that you should speak Arabic.

Philipson Oh, that’s nothing.

Enelow Do you know, it seemed to me that those fellows in the steamer avoided us. They always seemed to be holding a meeting and when any of us drew near, they immediately adjourned.

Kohler Well anyhow, I am glad I came over on the Americal.57 When

to establish a State, but to spread the truths of religion and humanity throughout the world.

Philipson later explained that in the debate over the resolution a speaker used the phrase, “Washington is our Jerusalem,” which was then picked up and publicized by the Associated Press, and from then on, what he referred to as “the opposition Jewish press” insisted that the resolution had stated, “America is our Zion and Washington our Jerusalem,” though he had often attempted to set the record straight. Nevertheless, Philipson continued, there was, in fact, a rhetorical precedent for the phrase in a Reform context, in the address by Rev. Gustav Poznanski at the dedication of the Charleston temple in 1841. What he meant, explained Philipson, was “his advocacy of the universal interpretation of Judaism as over against the narrow national.” Philipson, My Life, 137..According to the suffering is the reward,” Avot 5:25“ ,ארגא ארעצ םופל 5657 While Americal appears to be a simple typo of no significance, the reference is to the SS Amerika of the Hamburg America Line. When the United States entered the war, the German‑owned ship was in Boston Harbor. It was seized by U.S. authorities, renamed the America, and commissioned by the U.S. Navy for use as a troop ship. On 15 October 1918, while berthed at Hoboken, the ship inexplicably sank. It was salvaged and repaired several months later. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/steamers/ america2.htm (accessed 27 July 2018). What is the satirist’s point? If this

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I heard that the Zion American58 was established, I was glad. When I heard that the conference would meet this year in Jerusalem on Tisha Beav, I was doubly glad.59

Philipson Yes but those other fellows may spoil the whole conference.

Enter Beggar

Enelow Here comes another one of those walking menageries. I am itching all now more than ever.

Beggar Ya Ashabi itaroo, shuwayatan minni.60

Kohler What does he say?

was written prior to April 1917, it is that Kohler is traveling to Zion on one of the ships responsible for bringing large numbers of east European Jews to the United States—an inversion of their journey. If it was written between April 1917 and June 1917, the rather sophomoric joke is that he is traveling on a ship that has been impounded and is stuck in port. If it was written between June 1917 and 15 October 1918, it is the incongruity of this distinguished elderly scholar traveling in the rough quarters of a troop ship. Most unlikely, if it was written between 15 October and 30 October (the day, as noted above, of Moses Gries’s death), then the joke is that he claims to be traveling on a ship that is sitting at the bottom of New York Harbor. 58 Having Kohler state, on his putative journey to Zion, that he was glad that the “Zion American” was established is a mocking reference to the assertion that “America is our Zion” as well as to his flowery preaching and writing style and his non‑native English. 59 A reference to Psalm 122:1–2: “I rejoiced when they said to me, / ‘We are going to the House of the LORD.’ / Our feet stood inside your gates, O Jerusalem, / Jerusalem built up, a city knit together, / to which tribes would make pilgrimage.…” Nineteenth‑century Reformers unanimously rejected Tisha B’Av as a day of fasting and mourning, since they rejected the theology of exile and redemption. Kohler advocated reinterpreting it as the commencement of Israel’s mission: “[T]he commemoration of the destruction of State and Temple, the great turning‑point in the history of the Jew, ought to be given a promi‑nent place in the Reform Synagogue as well, though celebrated in the spirit of progressive Judaism.” Most Reform rabbis, however, simply eliminated it from the calendar, as did Philipson. Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology Systematically and Historically Considered. Introduction by Joseph L. Blau (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1968 [originally pub‑lished 1918]), 469; Philipson, My Life, 125.60 “Hey, my friends, take a look at these things I’ve got!” I thank my Wooster colleague Dr. Sarah Mirza for the translation from Arabic.

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Philipson Oh it’s many years since I studied Arabic under Haupt.61 When Haupt showed himself to be an antisemite, I determined that I would not profit by instruction, so I tried to forget everything that he taught me. Gentlemen, believe me, it is very hard for me to forget anything. I am the original boy with the iron memory. But in this case, I think that I have succeeded.

Enelow (to Kohler) Suppose Dr. you address him in Hebrew.62

Kohler Adoni Mah Tevakesh.63

Beggar Ma Amarta64 I dont get you.

Kohler Shoalti Mah Tevakesh.65

Beggar I don’t follow you. Your accent aint real Hebrew. Lets quit bluff‑ing and talk English.

Philipson What do you speak English?

Beggar Sure didnt I spend most of my lifetime in little old N.Y. How do you do Kohler I remember you when you were at Bethel.66 Howdy Doc Enelow, youre the guy who put the man in Emanuel?67 Aint you.

Enelow You are right. I am the man. What can I do for you. [p. 2]

Beggar (Aside) I knew that that would get him. Now gents Ill sell you a few Jewish trinkets fresh from the soil of Palestine. Echt Genuine They

61 From 1884–1886, while serving as rabbi of Har Sinai Congregation in Baltimore, Philipson studied Arabic and Semitics at Johns Hopkins University with Paul Haupt (1858–1926), a leading nineteenth‑century Assyriologist. Philipson, My Life, 35–36.62 Another joke on the anti‑Zionists: Kohler, who eliminated from the rabbinic curriculum all study of modern Hebrew, must now speak Hebrew. ”?Sir, what do you seek“ שקבת המ ינודא? 63”?What did you say“ תרמא המ? 64 ”?I asked, what do you seek“ שקבת המ יתלאש? 6566 Kohler served as rabbi of Beth El Congregation in Manhattan from 1879–1903.67 Enelow, a lifelong bachelor, was still a relatively recent arrival in New York. The com‑ment, amplified by the following exchange, may imply that he was suspected of being gay, although there is no way to know.

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will please the wife and tease the baby back home. By the way, Doc Enelow, have they got you tied up yet?

Enelow (stiffly) Not yet.

Beggar Well if you like to make a nice shidduch, I have fine Yiddishe Mädel for you. I never made a bad shidduch yet, and all I want is five per cent.

Enelow (more stiffly) Never mind.

Beggar Doc, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, seeing that you are a real rov68, I’ll make it just 4½%. I wouldn’t do as much for my own brother.

Enelow That will do. Let me see your trinkets.

Beggar All right. Here you are. Penholder made from the wing of an eagle of Lebanon. Paperweight from Mount Carmel. Cane from the canes of the Jordan. Buy it if you are able. All echt69 genuine.

Philipson I’ll buy something. But tell me how long you have been here.

Beggar Seven months. But I am going back soon. I have made enuf. (To Enelow) Say Doc how are the Giants doing this year?

Enelow What does he mean? [Of w]hat Giants does he speak?

Kohler Maybe he means the Anakim.70

Rabbi” (Heb. and Yid.). Irony drives the humor here. A Reform rabbi, possessor of a“ בר 68university degree and a thorough grounding in the modern critical study of Judaism, would be insulted to be lumped into the same category as some bearded, impoverished greenhorn who knew only Talmud and halakhah. But the beggar’s comment also grants these Reform rabbis the legitimacy that their traditionalist adversaries regularly denied them. For example, after the CCAR’s 1909 New York convention, a number of Orthodox rabbis held a protest meeting at which they adopted resolutions condemning Reform rabbis as “self‑appointed representatives of American Judaism” who “defied all the laws of Judaism” and “besmirched traditional Judaism,” and labeling them “traitors to the cause of Judaism.” “Protest Against Rabbis’ Conference,” The American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, 19 Nov 1909. 69 Echt (Ger. Or Yid.): “genuine.”70 Joshua and Caleb, the two spies sent by Moses, reported seeing the Anakim, the “giants,” in the Land of Israel (Num. 13:28).

Joan S. Friedman


Beggar Quit; youse get my goat. You call yourselves Americans and you don’t know who the Giants are.

Philipson He means the Federal League baseball team.71

Beggar That’s right nix. Say don’t you know the difference between Federals and Muggsy’s Giants? You talk like Zionists.72

Philipson Excuse me; we are Americans and we scorn Zionism. (Together) America is our Zion and Washington is our Jerusalem.

Beggar I get youse. Them’s my sentiments too. Only Brownsville73 is more like Jerusalem than Washington. Say what is Benny Kauff’s74 average this year?

71 The Federal League was a short‑lived professional baseball league. It fielded eight teams in the 1913–1914 and 1914–1915 seasons, but resistance by the established American and National Leagues doomed it. The National League’s New York Giants, managed by John “Muggsy” McGraw, were nationally recognized and had an enthusiastic following among the city’s Jews. The team won five National League pennants (1904–1905 and 1911–1913) and a World Series championship (1905), so Enelow, the New York rabbi, comes off as clueless, while Philipson’s attempt to appear knowledgeable makes him appear ridiculous. http://www.baseball‑reference.com/bullpen/Federal_League (accessed 12 January 2017); https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/History_of_the_New_York_Giants (accessed 12 January 2017). Many scholars and popular writers have addressed the importance of baseball for im‑migrant Jews. See, e.g., Haskell Cohen, “Can Jews Play Baseball?” Jewish Advocate, 6 April 1934, 1; Walter L. Harrison, “Six‑Pointed Diamond: Baseball and American Jews,” The Journal of Popular Culture 15, no. 3 (1981): 112–118; Alan Owen Patterson, “The Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Experience with Baseball in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century,” Modern Judaism: A Journal of Jewish Ideas & Experience 28, no. 1 (February 2008): 79–104.72 This is a dig at the anti‑Zionists’ charge that support for Zionism is inconsistent with integration into the society and culture of the countries where Jews live.73 In 1916 the Jewish population of the Brownsville‑East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn numbered about 225,000, second only to the Lower East Side. By 1925 the population of this “Jerusalem of America” reached 285,000, surpassing that of the Lower East Side. Alter F. Landesman, Brownsville: The Birth, Development, and Passing of a Jewish Community in New York (New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1971), 3, 96. It “resembled the Lower East Side in its density, poverty, and Jewishness.” Annie Polland and Daniel Soyer, Emerging Metropolis, City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York, vol. 2, ed. Deborah Dash Moore (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 131.74 Benjamin Michael Kauff (1890–1961), the “Ty Cobb of the Feds,” was not Jewish.

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Kohler Do you mean Benny Kaufman in the 3rd Collegiate Class. His average is 93 and he is a fine student.75

Beggar I give up. I cant get any American news from you. I am going back to America, and find out for myself.

Enelow Are there many of you here?

Beggar: Sure. We’ve organized the trinkets sellers trust. I have all the selling rights on this wharf.

Enelow: But don’t most strangers buy the products of the Bezalel school?76

Beggar: Sure, from us. We own the Bezalel factory, and it is located on the east side of N.Y. Well, I guess I’ll skip along. Ta, ta.

Philipson: We’ll go too. Here are those plotters darn. Hofer Atsasom.77 May their plots fail. They will soon realize that (together) America is our Zion and Washington our Jerusalem.

He was an outstanding player in the Federal League for both years of its existence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny Kauff (accessed 7 January 2014).75 The joke here is that Kohler was notorious for not knowing students’ names, or for mixing them up. There was never any student named Benny Kaufman enrolled at the Hebrew Union College. There was, however, a Harry Kronman enrolled in the preparatory department beginning in 1916. In 1916–1917 he was in D grade (the lowest level) and earned grades of 90 or better in all his classes, including 99 in three different classes taught by Solomon Freehof. His average was high enough to qualify him for a scholarship for the next year. He continued to do well through his four years in the preparatory department and one year at the collegiate level, but then he apparently dropped out. There was also a Max Kaufman ordained in 1919 after an undistinguished career at the college; he would have been in the third collegiate class in 1917–1918, Microfilm #118, AJA; Brav, ed., Telling Tales, 72ff.76 The Bezalel School was founded in Jerusalem in 1906 by Boris Schatz to enhance the cultural life of the nascent Yishuv. Wartime economic hardship and Turkish persecution virtually closed the school down. The Zionist Heller’s ability to refer to it in such a light‑hearted tone supports the thesis that the play was written before war broke out. “Bezalel,” Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 4 (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1972), col. 788. ;Foil their plots,” an allusion to Isaiah 8:10: “Hatch a plot—it shall be foiled“ םתצע רפה 77/ Agree on action—it shall not succeed. / For with us is God!”

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Exeunt.

[p. 3] Act I Scene 2.

Wise Heller Silverman78 Grossman.79 At the Wharf.

Wise: There they go. They got away just in time to give us a chance to settle things.

Silverman: I hope that we don’t have to stop at the same hotel. It was bad enuf to have them on the same ship.

Grossman: Well I know what Ill do. I’m going off to find a private hotel where I can be by myself. I am the president of this conference,80 and I must have time and quiet to mature my plans. Solitude I desire and honors. and freedom from disturbance rather than the joys of office.81

Wise: Why don’t you let someone else preside for you?

Grossman: Good idea. I’ll still have the honors and not the burdens. But whom would you suggest. How about yourself.

78 Joseph Silverman (1860–1930). Born in Cincinnati, Silverman was an 1884 classmate of Max Heller at HUC. He was the rabbi of New York’s Temple Emanu‑El from 1888–1922 and served as president of the CCAR from 1900–1903. 79 Louis Grossman (1863–1927). His last name has also appeared as Grossmann. Together with Joseph Silverman and Max Heller, Grossman was ordained in 1884. He served a Detroit congregation for several years before being chosen by Isaac Mayer Wise to serve as his associate at B’nai Yeshurun Congregation in Cincinnati, where he became rabbi upon Wise’s death. Grossman remained there until his own sudden death in 1927, at which time he was succeeded by his associate, James Heller. While his 1918 CCAR President’s Message includes an endorsement of the CCAR’s opposition to political Zionism, Grossman was clearly sympathetic to the Zionist desire to revitalize the Jewish people. 80 Louis Grossman was appointed a member of the CCAR Executive Committee annually from 1903–1908 but then was rotated off the board. In 1915 he was elected CCAR vice‑president and succeeded to the presidency after a normal two‑year term. 81 This line is in keeping with Joseph Silverman’s description of Grossman’s personality in the memorial tribute to him at the 1927 CCAR convention. CCARY 37 (1927): 259–261.

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Wise: Oh no. I aspire to no office in this conference. Let me be the humblest member just so I appoint its presidents.82 But why don’t you appoint your friend Philipson.83 Don’t look glum. I haven’t lost my senses. When he is in the chair, he cant vote or make speeches. We’ll be stronger on the floor. Let Philipson be chairman.

Heller: An excellent idea. But I remember that when I was president I frequently yielded the chair to the Vice President Schulman and took the floor myself. I considered that that was my duty to the conference.84 I kept Schulman from wasteing time and I gave the conference the benefit of my incisive logic. May I suggest—

Wise: You err Dr. Heller. The conference hasn’t opened and long speech‑es are out of order. So that’s settled. Philipson will be acting president. Remember Grossman you are to appoint the committees. I will tell you

82 The reference, of course, is to the 1909 fiasco, when Wise tried to derail Heller’s being named president. But Wise must have repeated this statement about CCAR offices fre‑quently, which would explain how Heller’s dialogue can bear such a marked resemblance to a passage in Wise’s private correspondence. In November 1914 Wise wrote to J. Leonard Levy of Pittsburgh—a member of the Executive Committees of both the CCAR and the Eastern Council and a mutual friend of Wise and Heller—simultaneously belittling the CCAR and expressing insult that it had not paid him more respect. “I was amused … that I was to be asked … to give some little talky‑talk.… I notice that the really big men of the Conference … are asked to read the important papers … so I shall again go to the Conference as a lowly, not even a high private…. I am very much disturbed about the Conference. I can view the matter with perfect disinterestedness because, as you know, I have resolved never to accept any office, even the most trivial, at its hands.” Wise to J. Leonard Levy, 5 November 1914, AJA Mic 2350; “Jewish National Organizations in the United States,” The American Jewish Year Book 15 (1913): 365. 83 Grossman and Philipson, who occupied Cincinnati’s two most prestigious pulpits and played active roles at HUC, were rivals who detested each other. Jacob H. Schiff’s 1909 donation of funds to establish a Teachers’ Institute at HUC was an occasion for friction between them. Grossman, who already taught pedagogy to the rabbinic students, turned to his friend Max Heller for help in obtaining the appointment to head the new program. “To my misfortune,” he explained, “I have on the Committee Kohler and Philipson and you can imagine how they block my way. They are ransacking the country for someone, no matter how insignificant and no matter what a novice he may be, so long as they might crowd me out.” Grossman to Heller, 17 May 1909, MS‑33, box 2, folder 23, AJA. 84 The joke is that Heller thereby prevented Schulman from speaking.

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how to do that. Perhaps I better take a room at your hotel.

Silverman: I think it is a fine idea to silence Philipson. I wish I could do something to Schulman.85 I tell what would be a fine idea. Bef[ore] I left NY I spoke to Hudson Maxim and he is now at work inventing a Schulman Silencer—he says it is the hardest job he ever tackled.86 Let us leave the whole bunch behind here in Palestine. Then we would have America to ourselves and the conference would be purged of pernicious influence.87

Wise: You leave it to me. I’ll find some way to carry it out.

85 Silverman was the senior rabbi of New York’s Temple Emanu‑El, while Schulman led Temple Beth El. Like Wise Temple and Rockdale Temple in Cincinnati, they were both large, wealthy, and distinguished. Both Silverman and Schulman wanted to be acknowledged as the city’s leading Reform rabbi.86 This sentence is a pencil addition to the typescript. Hudson Maxim (1853–1927) was an inventor of military equipment and technology, best known for inventing a type of high explosive. (His older brother Hiram invented the Maxim machine gun.) Hudson Maxim wrote and spoke widely about his work from about 1895 until his death, so Heller’s audi‑ence would readily appreciate the reference. A contemporary issue of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, for example, carries an article by Maxim titled, “Hudson Maxim’s Gigantic Torpedo Howitzers,” with the subheading, “Hudson Maxim, the Distinguished Inventor, Explains How He Invented Seventeen Years Ago a Howitzer of Greater Range and Power Than the Marvelous Guns of the Germans That Battered Down Liege and Namur.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 7 February 1915, p. 35.87 In 1904 The American Israelite sought to rally the Anglo‑Jewish press against Zionism with an editorial in which it quoted, with enthusiastic approval, an editorial from the Memphis Jewish Spectator that opened with the declaration, “The pernicious influence of Zionism in its present aspects is becoming a serious matter.” The next issue of the paper carried a scathing rejoinder by Jacob de Haas, secretary of the Federation of American Zionists (FAZ), quoting the “pernicious influence” phrase. A casual Internet search shows that “pernicious influence” was a popular term of disparagement in early‑twentieth‑century prose, so it cannot be said with certainty that this exchange from at least a decade earlier was in Heller’s mind when he was writing. But it is quite likely that it enjoyed a wide cir‑culation, becoming the sort of popular catchphrase that a satirist would gravitate toward. “Opposition to Zionism: Opposition of American Jewish Press Increasing,” The American Israelite, 14 Jan 1904; Jacob de Haas, “Letters from People: The Secretary of the Federation of American Zionists on the Possibilities of Palestine,” The American Israelite, 28 January 1904: 5.

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Heller: How soft and balmy are the breezes wafted from the mountains of Judah. How redolent of orange and grape. My soul thrills within me as my feet press the sacred soil, the land where my fathers—

Wise: Cut that out Heller. I am a Zionist myself Yet I must confess that this smells like a real N.Y. dump.

Heller: Well literally you may be right. On second smell I perceive dif‑ferently. Yet with imagination everything is possible, and imagination is the soul of the Zionist movement.

Wise: Yes yes. But the time for imagination has passed. The moment of realization is at hand. Our Zionist state is established. In my Tisha be’av address I shall outline its policies. and immediately afterwards we shall elect our national officers. Aha our plans shall be fulfilled.

All: How How.

Wise: My friends leave that to me. I must think and plan.

enter Kaplan

Kaplan: Ah my brothers I bid you welcome. to our native land and nation.

Wise: Whose this?

Grossman: Don’t you know? That’s Kaplan our great Zionist leader of Cincinnati.88

88 Jacob H. Kaplan (1874–1957) immigrated to the United States from Germany as a child and was ordained at HUC in 1902. He had to leave his first pulpit, Temple Albert in Albuquerque, after an article he wrote in a magazine he co‑edited with a local minister generated some controversy. The article was about the antisemitism he experienced as a child in the Buffalo, New York, public schools and was apparently quite sarcastic on the topic of Christian attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. After a few years of moving about—in Jackson, Mississippi; Selma, Alabama; and Terre Haute, Indiana—he came to Cincinnati in 1915 as rabbi of Congregation Sh’erith Israel‑Ahavath Achim. Kerry M. Olitzky, The American Synagogue: A Historical Dictionary and Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1996), 221.

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Wise: How do you do Rabbi Chaplin.89 We are glad to see you.

Kaplan: Thrice welcome to our glorious soil. When I heard that your ship was coming in I hastened down to bid you welcome.

Wise: How long have you been here Dr. Chaplin.

Kaplan: A month. I hurried over here immediately after Shabuoth that I might breathe the air that my father breathed. The atmosphere is Jewish thru and thru.

[p. 4]

Act I Scene 2 continued

Kaplan continued: As G. Stanley Hall90 says –

Silverman: But Dr. Chaplin—

Kaplan: Call me not Dr. I have abjured that title as the product of Christian culture. I have now the Morenu of from the University of Jerusalem.91 I desire no other title than Rav Jacob Hayim Cohen the

89 That Wise cannot bother to get Kaplan’s name right is another dig at Wise’s egotism. “Chaplin” may be a particularly pointed dig, because Kaplan’s replacement in Albuquerque was named Chapman.90 Granville Stanley Hall (1844–1924), the first president of Clark University, studied with William James at Harvard and received the first doctorate in psychology awarded in the United States. In 1887 he founded the American Journal of Psychology and in 1892 became the first president of the American Psychological Association. His approach to education was paradoxical by today’s standards, combining social Darwinism with a commitment to inclusion of hitherto excluded groups. He emphasized the need for education to address the whole child and not only the rational intellect and actively supported graduate education for women, African Americans, Asians, and Jews. Lester F. Goodchild, “G. Stanley Hall and an American Social Darwinist Pedagogy: His Progressive Educational Ideas on Gender and Race,” History of Education Quarterly 52, no. 1 (February 2012): 62–98; G. Stanley Hall, Educational Problems (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1911). 91 The cornerstone of the first building of the Hebrew University was laid on 24 July 1918, but this is not helpful in dating the manuscript. The idea of establishing a university as a part of the revival of Jewish life in Eretz Israel was part of the Zionist conversation going back at least to the 1880s. For example, at the FAZ annual convention in Cincinnati in June 1913, Horace Kallen spoke about the need to establish a Jewish National University

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first of the generation of Amoraim.92

Grossman: Would you not rather call yourself one of the Saboraim?93

Kaplan: No, that title does not fit the modern Rav. We are not of the Saboraim the thinkers, but rather of the Amoraim, the talkers.

Wise: Indeed!!! Come on Grossman, we had better look up your private Hotel. The rest of you stay at the regular Hotel. Keep your eye on our friends there, and you will hear from me later.

Kaplan: Come gentlemen I’ll show you to your rooms. Then I’ll lead you to a nice little Jewish Carmel WineStube.

Heller: But can you stay out that late?

Kaplan: O yes. My wife did not accompany me on this trip and so I no longer have to be in at midnight, I am one of the boys now I tell you. I’ve got the Jewish Spirit.

Grossman: Then let us sing our song and leave.

We’ve been working on the Levy94, All this blissful day.

We’ve been working on the Levy, to put the ring95 out of the way.

in Jerusalem. The fact that the playwright calls it “the University of Jerusalem” rather than “the Hebrew University” might even indicate that the institution had not yet formally come into existence. “Federation of American Zionists,” The American Israelite (26 June 1913): 3; “A Brief History of the Hebrew University,” https://new.huji.ac.il/en/page/452 (accessed 30 July 2018). 92 Aramaic, “speakers.” This is the classic term for the rabbis of the Gemara. The rabbis of the Mishnah are called the Tannaim, “teachers.” 93 The Saboraim, “thinkers” or “reasoners,” is the traditional term for the Babylonian rabbis of the period after the supposed completion of the Talmud and before the emergence of the Geonim.94 J. Leonard Levy was no Zionist, but he was a friend of Max Heller. During the contro‑versy that followed the Kallen invitation, he was among the rabbis Heller considered calling on to intervene at the college. Max Heller to James and Isaac Heller, 12 March 1915, MS‑33, box 17, folder 10, AJA. 95 In private correspondence with Max Heller and Stephen Wise, Louis Grossman used the term “combination” to refer to Kohler and Philipson and their supporters. “Ring” appears

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Don’t you smell the kugel cooking, cooking in the pot?

Weve got to kick the old ring out,

But just how we know not.

Ode Lo ovdo Tikvosaynoo, Hatikvo Hachadosho

Loshuv Le‑eretz Yankee Doodle, Beli Reb Schulman Horosho.96

[All of Act II is missing]

[p. 5]

Act III THE CONVENTION IN JERUSALEM

Meeting Place in the Mosque of Omar

President Grossman: And now that we have just listened to this soul‑stirring and epoch‑making address of our dearly beloved colleague we will proceed to the main business of the day. My friends, life is genuine.97 It emanates from the protoplasmic source and courses through all the

to be a similar derogatory term, but here it includes Schulman, who was allied with Kohler and Philipson in opposition to Zionism, though opposed to them on other issues. Grossman to Heller, 24 November 1909, MS‑33, box 2, folder 23, AJA; Grossman to Wise, 22 April 1915, Mic 2350, AJA. 96 “Our hope is not yet lost, / The new hope / To return to the land of Yankee Doodle / Without the evil Rabbi Schulman.” This is a parody of the original version of Hatikvah:

Our hope is not yet lost ונתוקת הדבע אל דוע

The ancient hope הנשונה הוקתה

To return to the land of our fathers וניתובא ץראל בושל

.To the city where David encamped הנח דוד הב ריעל

An updated version of the original lyrics circulated in the Yishuv from 1905 on, but this version remained the standard one in the Diaspora for several more decades. http://www.timesofisrael.com/how‑an‑unwieldy‑romantic‑poem‑and‑a‑romanian‑folk‑song‑combined‑to‑produce‑hatikva/ (accessed 26 June 2017).97 Grossman’s speech is an obvious parody of his HUC classes in pedagogy.

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phases of anthropomorphic evolution. To live is to exist. To die is to cease to be. Man is mirrored in the amoeba and in the infant brain of the little child. God is above all and in all. The child is by nature a liar and a thief. The teacher, if a real pedagogue with pedagogical instincts, is the acme of eternal civilization. Imagination is the projection of one personality into another, by which the human race is perpetuated. We are in a state of constant flux. I am in flux and you are in flux. The Jew is a human unit and ethnic group. All of which, briefly stated means that life is real, life is genuine. And with these wise thoughts, that may well guide our deliberations today, this day so eventful in Jewish his‑tory and pregnant with Jewish possibilities, I shall call to the chair one who has served the Conference faithfully, loyally, and valuably, without whose tireless labors we may truly say, the Conference would not be what it is. His name occupies more space upon the Conference index than any other. He is such a man, friend and colleague, that I deem it a rare privilege to yield my chair to him. He is one in honoring whom the Conference only honors itself. I gladly yield the chair to David Philipson.

Philipson. Gentlemen, I am amazed, nay astounded by this unexpected honor and from this unexpected source. I know not what to make of it. The words of esteem and affection just spoken, have touched me deeply. Our honored President, beloved by all of us, with accustomed modesty, has professed his unworthiness of this exalted office. He must know best. He has called me to the chair and proclaimed me singularly fit and able to fill it with dignity and dispatch. Again I say, he must know best. Far be it from me to disagree with him or question the meaning or correct‑ness of his cryptic utterances. So be it. I shall rejoice to once more sac‑rifice myself and save the Conference. I would live humbly and quietly, but to the call of duty I must respond. I believe the business before us is the election of the Kohen Godol. Although we have abolished this office and all caste in Judaism, still it has again become a necessary and important office. So let us sink personalities and select the best man.

L. Grossman. Mr. President, you have spoken the right word. The child is father of the man. Man is the moral order of the universe. Eternity is but an atom of the infinite. Therefore ours is the task to select the right

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man for the right place. We have found the right place. Now for the right man. And I know him. I say I know who he is. He is an honored man, a good man, a wise man, a loyal man, a genuine man. He is a man who has been close to me in many associa‑[p.6] tions. At times we have differed on minor matters. Now I humbly confess that he was always right and that I was always wrong. I shall be loathe to lose him. It will be a great sacrifice. Yet I must be reconciled. And so I nominate for this exalted position of Cohen Godol, our honored member and present acting president David Philipson.

Philipson This is so sudden. I don’t quite understand it.

S.S. Wise I second the nomination of the honorable gentleman.

Max Raisin98 I deem it an honor and a privilege to nominate one most fit for this high office. Himself a child of the sunny south, he can most readily adapt himself to our Palestinian climate. This [is] one of the strongest arguments in his favor. The scion of a long race of rabbis him‑self a Kohen and descendant of the High Priest of old, he is traditionally fit for this high office. And not only as a scion but also as a Zionist, a faithful leader in our nationalist movement, a perpetual vice‑President99 I may say, who has ever discharged the duties of a vice‑president most punctiliously, he is preeminently fitted for this job, certainly in every way superior to one who has consistently opposed the reestablishment of our Jewish nation and who has even been heard frequently to declare, “America is our Zion and Washington our Jerusalem.”

98 Max Raisin (1879–1957) was one of the CCAR’s most vocal and fervent advocates for Zionism in the 1910s. See Michael A. Meyer, “Two Anomalous Reform Rabbis: The Brothers Jacob and Max Raisin,” American Jewish Archives Journal 68, no. 2 (2016): 1–33. Here, however, he is made to appear clueless, since he does not pick up on the joke being played on Philipson and thereby almost ruins it. 99 In 1907 Heller was elected vice‑president of the CCAR and honorary vice‑president of the FAZ. Some of his CCAR supporters worried in 1909 that his FAZ role would prevent his election to the CCAR presidency and suggested he resign from it, but he refused. See Malone, Max Heller, 132ff. However, the phrase “perpetual vice‑President” here is a sly allusion to Wise’s attempt to keep Heller in the CCAR vice‑presidency for an additional term while Emil G. Hirsch stepped in as president.

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Chairman But whom do you nominate?

Max Raisin. Oh I was carried away by the fervor of my passion and for‑got. Mr. chairman and gentlemen I nominate Rabbi Maximilian Heller, and move that his first name be changed to Moshe. I admit that a High priest Maximilian would sound strange and unJewish.

M. Heller Gentlemen I am profoundly touched, nay deeply moved by the honor which is mine. All the more do I regret that I must decline the nomination so unsought and unexpected. I feel altogether unequal and unworthy of the high office, particularly since one so able and emi‑nently fit has just been nominated. Beside him my little powers dwindle into insignificance. Gladly do I acknowledge his superiority. Besides I am now loathe to leave New Orleans. In recent years in fact since the advent of Leipziger100 or shortly thereafter, New Orleans has become a peaceful, quiet, and pleasant habitation. As the Talmud says: behold how good and how rare it is when Rabbis dwell together in unity, for there the Lord commandeth blessing, even life Jobs for evermore. And finally brethren I must confess. I have been extolled as a zionist. Sionism [sic] was a beautiful dream. It was based upon imagination and hope. Now our Jewish state is a reality, and imagination and hope no longer function. Thus Zionism ceases to be a dream and a hope; therefore

100 Emil Leipziger (1877–1963), ordained at HUC in 1900, was an anti‑Zionist who also opposed the reintroduction of traditional practices. Articles in New Orleans’ Jewish newspaper, the B’nai B’rith Jewish Ledger, hint at tensions between him and Heller. Leipziger was brought to the city to assist and then succeed the elderly Isaac Leucht, Heller’s long‑time bitter foe, who was not only anti‑Zionist but also a radical who joined Wise’s Eastern Council and quit the CCAR with Wise in 1909. In 1913–1914 the Ledger—whose editor had feuded with Heller fifteen years earlier—prominently featured a number of laudatory articles about Leucht’s and Leipziger’s involvement in local welfare institutions. During the same period it published a long editorial about how rabbis spend their time when not actually ministering to their congregations, praising those who devote themselves to the community and criticizing those who use their “free” time to earn money as lecturers or professors. Max Heller, whose letters to his sons are replete with references to financial worries, lectured around the country on Zionism and taught Hebrew at Tulane. The Jewish Ledger: A Weekly Journal for Jewish Families, 28 November 1913, p. 14, and 6 January 1914, p. 1, microfilm; Malone, Max Heller, passim.

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I being a pure idealist, cease to be a Zionist. Henceforth O proudly proclaim, “America is my Zion and New Orleans my Jerusalem.” I must therefore refuse the nomination and willingly withdraw in fa‑vor of my esteemed colleague and very dear friend, who has already been nominated. Of course I would be glad, should occasion of‑fer, to deliver a course of lectures at our national Jewish University.

[p. 7]

Philipson. You may be sure Dr. Heller that the occasion will soon offer. Upon what subject would you prefer to lecture?

Heller. Oh, any subject. It makes little difference. Meanwhile I move that nominations be closed.

Silverman. I second the motion.

All. Question.

(The motion is carried unanimously.)

Philipson. Friends, my emotion is too deep for words. I am over‑whelmed by the honor you have conferred upon me. I pledge myself to discharge the duties of this office loyally, and efficiently. I have never failed in anything I have undertaken, and I shall not fail in this. I am loathe to leave beloved America, where I spent so many happy and fruitful years. Loyally I upheld its traditions and discharged my duties as citizen. But after all, our sojourn there could only be temporary, a mere “Nachtasyl.”101 This I realized from the first, though loyalty and

101 “Temporary refuge” (German). This is another dig at Philipson’s anti‑Zionism. At the 1903 Zionist Congress, Max Nordau tried to persuade the delegates to support Theodor Herzl in his willingness to accept the British offer of a Zionist home in Uganda by describ‑ing it to the gathering as a “Nachtasyl.” While the details of the Uganda episode are now of concern only to historians of Zionism, this was a massive public controversy at the time, and Nordau’s term became a derisory catchphrase. See, for example, “Uganda Deceased,” The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger, 2 June 1905: 10; J. Mitchell Rosenberg, The Story of Zionism (NY: Bloch Publishing Co., 1946), 48; and https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium‑1903‑zionist‑leader‑gets‑shot‑at‑1.5301541.

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gratitude bade me be silent. In my youthful enthusiasm and shortsight‑edness I even gave frequent expression to foolish thoughts. Es chattosi ani mazkir,102 which means, I always remember my mistakes. On next Yom Kippur, clad in the sacred high priestly robes, I shall enter the new holy of holies, which shall be patterned after the Rockdale Avenue Temple, of Greek style of architecture, which I still insist is the only pure Jewish architecture, and there I shall make full atonement for my follies. But now that we once more tread the sacred soil of the land of our fathers, now that our eyes behold its rare beauties, our noses inhale its fragrant odors, our lunks103 inhale its invigorating ozone, I have come to see the light. And in the presence of all of you, my erstwhile friends and colleagues, I proudly proclaim, “Zion is our America and Jerusalem our Washington.” Verily the new Messiah has come, a second David sits on the throne of his fathers, and once more shall the law go forth from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem. My policies I shall state later. Let us now proceed to elect my subordinate officers.

S.S. Wise. Mr. President, the office of S’gan104 is highly important. The duties are, I believe, those of confidential adviser and assistant to the high priest and in general head Shammes.105 Not that the present high priest needs an assistant or would take advice. But a Shammes he might make use of. The etymology of S’gan is dubious. I understand, however, that it is probably an abbreviation of our English honorary title, Son‑of‑a‑gun. I rise to nominate one who has frequently proved himself worthy of this honorary title. I bear him no malice. I have for him and his profound abilities only the deepest admiration. I shall see him leave

.I must make mention of my offenses” (Gen. 41:9)“ : ריכזמ ינא יאטח תא 102103 This could be a typo, or it could be a dig at Philipson, mocking his eagerness to be named as Kohler’s successor at HUC to the extent that he adopts some of the latter’s German‑accented pronunciation. .deputy.” This priestly office came into existence during the Second Temple period“ ,ןגס 104According to the Talmud (B. Yoma 39a), the s’gan substituted for the high priest in the Yom Kippur ritual if the latter was unable to fulfill his duties.105 Shammes (Yiddish), “beadle.” The synagogue shammes (shamash, Hebrew) is a low‑paid, low‑status, but essential employee—and often a figure of levity—in a traditional Jewish community.

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New York with utmost regret. He can never be replaced. Yet we must sacrifice ourselves for the cause. In this sincere spirit of love, admiration and self‑sacrifice I nominate as S’gan, Rabbi Samuel Schulman. And in view of his eminent fitness for this exalted office I move that nomina‑tions be closed.

[p.8]

Silverman. In rising to second both nomination and motion I too wish to pay my sincere and humble mead of tribute to the illustrious rabbi whose name has been put before you. Only a minute fraction of his true praise has been spoken. To do him full justice would require gifts far greater than mine, in fact an oratory such as he alone possesses. I can say only that the gentleman keeps all the Ten Commandments, both ancient and modern,106 and is the real author of the pregnant phrase, “The Melting Pot.”107

Schulman. Mr. Chairman, one moment. Somewhere Virgil says truly, “Timeo Judaeos et dona ferentes.”108 In modern English this means, I have my suspicions when they offer me high office. What would Temple Beth‑el do without me? Furthermore I do not like this land and its antiquated customs. I am still a loyal American, and America is still my Zion and Washington my Jerusalem. I would stifle in this land. And so I refuse the nomination.

Wise. The gentleman misinterprets our motives and our spirit of

106 I am unable to identify the referent for this line.107 Israel Zangwill is credited with coining the phrase “the melting pot,” which was the title of his 1908 play celebrating America’s potential for breaking down barriers of religion and nationality through intermarriage. In a passionately anti‑Zionist sermon in 1907, however, Samuel Schulman referred to America as “the smelting pot of nationalities,” by which he meant a place where everyone, including Jews, could be integrated into a single society, thus obviating the need for Jewish nationalism. Samuel Schulman, “American Judaism: Shall It Surrender Its Ideals?—Excerpt from Passover Sermon Preached in New York Temple Beth El, The American Israelite, 9 May 1907: 1.108 “I fear the Jews even when they bear gifts,” parodying the Aeneid II:49: Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, “I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts,” spoken by the Trojan priest Laocoön upon seeing the wooden horse left by the departed Greeks.

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sacrifice. We hate to let him go. He has made life in New York pleasant and interesting. True, his place in Beth‑el can not be filled. Yet possibly some may be willing to try. But here in Palestine the palace of the S’gan can be located at the ancient and real Bethel. Furthermore the gentle‑man underestimates the advantages and privileges of this land and this climate. I almost envy him his glorious opportunity. Let me remind him that among other things, the customs of the country, which he has berated, will permit him keeping a harem,109 and—

Schulman. Enough, enough! I accept. Life in this glorious land of privi‑lege and opportunity will be fair indeed. Solomon, look to your laurels. Henceforth Zion is my America and Bethel my New York”. I move the previous question.

Philipson. Gentlemen, before putting the question, let me state that despite the flattering assurances of Dr. Wise, in my humble opinion the office of S’gan is superfluous. I need no assistant. Since the passing of Mandelberg Selig,110 I have become accustomed to conduct affairs alone and unaided, and I say, in all modesty, that they have not suffered thereby.

Wise. Mr. Chairman, I believe you fail to understand how multifarious are the duties of the high‑priest. There are many tasks of minor impor‑tance and questionable pleasure that might well be entrusted to the

109 Schulman was known as a moralist. 110 Joseph Mandelberg (1876–1918) served as cantor at the Rockdale Temple from 1906–1914, until he was forced to retire due to illness. Upon his retirement, Philipson read the prayers himself, with the choir singing all the liturgical music. Mandelberg passed away in New York on 23 March 1918. I am grateful to Professor Jonathan Sarna for explaining that uttering “selig” after a name is the German equivalent of “God rest his soul.” Email communication to the author, 2 February 2018; “Obituary,” The American Israelite (18 April 1918): 7; “Rev. Joseph Mandelberg Dead,” American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger (12 April 1918): 694; Jonathan D. Sarna and Karla Goldman, “From Synagogue‑Community to Citadel of Reform: The History of K.K. Bene Israel (Rockdale Temple) in Cincinnati, Ohio,” in American Congregations, vol. I, ed. James P. Wind and James W. Lewis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 217, n. 101.

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S’gan. For example, he might be made special emissary to the Falashas.111 For this task he is peculiarly fitted. And I respectfully suggest that in virtue of his new office and duties, his name be Judaized to Dr. Samuel Jacques Schulman Feitlovitch.112 I move the previous question.

(Carried)

Chair. It give me pleasure to announce the election by acclamation S’gan of Dr. Samuel Jacques Schulman Feitlovitch. I hereby bestow upon him my highpriestly blessing.

Silverman. Mr. Chairman I ask the privilege of the floor to present the following ticket.

[p. 9]

Secretary of the treasury Moses J Gries113

111 At the 1915 convention the CCAR formed a special committee to look into assist‑ing the Falashas (then the common name for Ethiopian Jews). Its membership comprised members of the existing Committee on Jews of Other Lands plus Samuel Schulman, who had evinced interest in assisting the Falashas since meeting Jacques Faïtlovitch in 1912. CCARY 25 (1915): 75, 90.112 Jacques Faïtlovitch (1881–1955) was a French Jewish Orientalist who devoted his life to bringing the Falashas of Ethiopia into the larger community of the people of Israel. In December 1912 The American Israelite reported the creation of a committee in New York to assist him in educating the Falashas to return to Judaism. Samuel Schulman was a member, as were Reform rabbis Hyman Enelow, Maurice Harris, Judah Magnes, and Joseph Silverman; Jewish Theological Seminary chancellor Solomon Schechter; Zionist leader Joseph Barondess; and magnates Cyrus Sulzberger, Solomon Sulzberger, and Felix Warburg. “To Aid Falasha Jews,” The American Israelite, 26 December 1912: 7; Max Wurmbrand and Emanuela Trevisan Semi, “Faïtlovitch, Jacques,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, vol. 6 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 676–677.113 Moses Gries (1868–1918) was ordained at HUC in 1889 and served as rabbi of Tifereth Israel Congregation (“The Temple”) in Cleveland from 1892–1917, building it into one of the Reform movement’s large and influential congregations. A close friend of David Philipson, he was an anti‑Zionist and served as the CCAR’s treasurer during Max Heller’s presidency. Herbert Parzen and Max Margolis, “The Purge of the Dissidents, Hebrew Union College and Zionism, 1903–1907,” Jewish Social Studies 37, no. 3/4 (1975): 291–322; CCAR Yearbook 23 (1913): 187; David Philipson, “Moses J. Gries,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, no. 28 (1922): 274–76.

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Secretary of Agriculture—Joseph Krauskopf.114

Secretary of the Interior and Exterior—J. Zalel Lauterbach.115

Inspector of Lodging and boarding Houses—Abraham Cronbach.116

Superintendent of Irrigation and Water supply—H. La Fontaine Rosenwasser.117

Inspector of Theatres and Public Amusements—I. Mordecai Blum.118

114 Joseph Krauskopf (1858–1923), one of the first four graduates of HUC, founded the National Farm School in 1896, while serving as rabbi of Philadelphia’s Congregation Keneseth Israel. Krauskopf had been lifted from a life of poverty by a fortuitous encounter that enabled him to prepare for entry to HUC and was passionately committed to improving the lives of the poor by educating and helping them obtain employment. The Farm School was an outgrowth of his idea to train Russian Jewish immigrants for agricultural pursuits, but he did not limit its enrollees to Jews. The Farm School still exists as Delaware Valley University. “History Delaware Valley College,” http://www.delval.edu/about‑delval/history (accessed 27 September 2018)115 Jacob Zallel Lauterbach (1873–1942) began his tenure as professor of Talmud at HUC in 1912, the same autumn that James Heller arrived as a student. Although he was a terrible pedagogue, the rabbinic students loved him. This is an inside joke for which no explanation has survived. Friedman, “Making of a Reform Rabbi,” 16.116 Abraham Cronbach (1882–1965), known for his lifelong commitment to social justice, was ordained at HUC in 1902. The joke here refers to a lengthy article he published in The American Israelite about his extensive tour of the dirty and crowded steerage section of the ship on which he traveled as a comfortable second‑class passenger. He called for improve‑ments to the ship’s sanitary and sleeping arrangements. Abraham Cronbach, “With the Immigrants on Shipboard,” The American Israelite 16 January 1915: 1–2, accessed 18 July 2018.117 Herman Rosenwasser was ordained in 1908. The office is an obvious pun on his name; perhaps the French name, which means “fountain,” was intended as a reference to his days as rabbi of Congregation Bene Israel in Baton Rouge (1908–1914). Oddly, for a Jew, Rosenwasser supported the Temperance Movement: In 1939 he published a pamphlet of fulsome praise for Frances Willard on the centenary of her birth. Herman Rosenwasser, Frances E. Willard: Memorial Message on Her Centenary (Port Huron, MI: Willard Centennial Committee toward Better Living, c. 1939), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015071650092 (accessed 29 Jul 2017).118 Irving Mortimer Bloom (1899–1956) was ordained in 1913. The allusion remains obscure.

Joan S. Friedman


Editor of the Jewish Funny paper—The Chayim—Wm. H. Greenberg.119

Superintendent of the old folks home—Joseph Stolz.120

Superintendent of the High Priestly Stables—Hyman C. Enelow.121

Secretary of Labor and Capital—Solomon Gompers Foster.122

In nominating Rabbi Foster Secretary of Capital and Labor, permit me to say that it is capital to sentence him to hard labor. But before he presumes to write a report, let him go and get a reputation. I move that nominations be closed.

Grossman I second the motion.

(Motion carried)

Chair. We come now to very important business, viz. making proper provision for the great congregations whose pulpits are thus vacated. It is a great loss for all, my own among them. But we must not let them

119 William H. Greenburg (1868–1951) was ordained by Moses Gaster at Jews’ College in London and held a doctorate from Heidelberg. He served as rabbi of Temple Emanu‑El in Dallas from 1900–1931. There is one very faint possible hint to the point of this joke: Greenburg’s descendants have a family tree posted on Ancestry.com that includes a page from the 1881 British census identifying thirteen‑year‑old William as a musician by pro‑fession. “Biographical Sketches of Rabbis and Cantors Officiating in the United States,” American Jewish Year Book 5 (1903–1904): 59–60.120 Joseph Stolz (1861–1941), a classmate and friend of Max Heller, was rabbi of Isaiah Temple in Chicago and served on the board of Chicago’s Home for Aged Jews. Prior to the 1909 CCAR convention Stolz suggested to Heller as a “compromise” that while he was serving as CCAR president he should forgo any activity related to his position as a vice‑president of FAZ, lest people erroneously conflate Zionism with Reform Judaism. Heller declined the advice. Malone, Max Heller, 133; Zola, “Pioneer Zionist,” 385.121 This is a way to portray Enelow as slavishly subservient to Philipson. 122 Solomon R. Foster (1878–1966) was ordained in 1902 and served Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Newark until his retirement in 1940. He was among the anti‑Zionists. Giving him the middle name “Gompers” was a reference to Samuel Gompers, the premier Jewish figure in the U.S. labor movement. This is a dig at Foster’s 1909 CCAR paper, “The Working Man and the Synagogue,” which Stephen Wise scathingly criticized as being all talk and no real action. CCARY 19 (1909): 164–166, 432–494.

The Pilgrim Rabbis


suffer. Now gentlemen, what shall we do for them? (All crowd around him and shout.) But gentlemen, please stand back; don’t crowd me too closely. You are too eager to sacrifice yourselves. First let us dispose of my own pulpit.

Grossmann. It would be hard, nay impossible to fill the pulpit left vacant by our illustrious friend. No man of lesser ability should dare desecrate the spot hallowed by his presence. Therefore I propose that my congre‑gation annex the Rockdale Ave. congregation. I am sure that I can fix this. We will then move on the hill,123 and then I will occupy the pulpit.

Philipson There can be no objections to that.

Wise Then may I suggest that following the same principle, that the Temple Bethel be annexed to the Free Synagogue, (Carried.)

Philipson I will not attempt at this time to make a complete announce‑ment of my policies. I will say, however, that not an inconsiderable part of our work this year will be to take the new Bible translation and render it into the New and better Hebrew, creating if necessary the proper vo‑cabulary.124 This will be a noble work worthy of us. Now since the hour is late, the conference will stand adjourned until tomorrow.

[p. 10]

Act IV At The Wharf. Wise Heller Kaplan Kory125, Philipson Shulman et al.

123 Philipson’s congregation was located at the corners of Rockdale and Harvey Streets, up on the heights not far from HUC. Grossman’s congregation, though it had an additional facility on Reading Road, was still in the Plum Street location downtown.124 David Philipson served on the committee that produced the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation of the Bible. Again, the humor is that the anti‑Zionist plans to engage in a quintessentially Zionist activity, translating something into modern Hebrew. 125 Solomon Kory (1879–1936) was a native of New Orleans and grew up at Temple Sinai, where Max Heller’s influence led him into the rabbinate. He was ordained in 1903 and be‑came rabbi of Temple Anshe Chesed of Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he remained until his untimely death. In February 1904 he was Heller’s guest at Temple Sinai, where he preached a sermon rejecting Zionism. “Rabbi Kory Heard in Native City,” New Orleans Times-Picayune,

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Wise Well it worked.

Kaplan You bet it did. Now they are all staying here. and we are going home to America.

Heller Now at last the conference will pass my motions.126

Kaplan Yes Dr. Heller, we are all one now in mind and heart. In the future whatever you will say, none will disagree with you.

Heller Well that is not so good. What bothers me now, is that we can’t remain Zionists when this bunch is in Zion.

Wise Well what is the use of talking. Let’s go back where we belong. I am sure that Goldstein127 has balled everything up in my absence. Here is the steamer; let’s board it, and Lechodesh Habo B’America.128

Enter Kory

Kory Are Wise Heller and Kaplan here?

All Yes here we are. Talk quick. We have to take this boat.

Kory You will never take that boat.

All What do you mean?

Kory. The conference at a special [session] has granted leave of absence to Philipson and Schulman, and you three are to take their places.

Wise Absurd.

13 February 1904. I am grateful to Rabbi Debra Hachen, Kory’s great‑granddaughter, and to her nephew Ezra Seligsohn, for this information and for the newspaper report of the sermon.126 As noted above, Heller could not get the CCAR to pass either of his resolutions in 1917.127 Sidney E. Goldstein was ordained at HUC in 1905 and served as the director of the social service division of Wise’s Free Synagogue—in effect, as Wise’s assistant rabbi. Urofsky, Voice, 88.128 “Next month in America,” a play on the concluding line of the Passover Seder: “Next year in Jerusalem.”

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Heller We refuse to accept.

Kory You cant refuse. The conference has adjourned, and has left the enforcement of its order in the hands of the new Zion Police Force.

Enter Philipson Schulman et all

Wise Say Philipson you are joking aren’t you about leaving us here and you going away?

Philipson. No indeed. I mean it. Schulman and I and the rest of us are go back. I left my golf clubs in Cincinnati.

Heller. Tell me Rabbi Schulman, how long do you intend to stay. I want to go home to New Orleans.

Schulman Oh I guess I’ll be back in about seven years. You see I am going to stay long enuf to raise a fund for the support of the Falashas. That will take at least seven years. Until then farewell/ . I hope the cli‑mate agrees with you.

Wise and Heller and Kaplan No use trying. You cant get around the ring.

END

Joan S. Friedman is associate professor of History and Religious Studies at the College of Wooster and the author of “Guidance, Not Governance”: Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof and Reform Responsa, a 2012 National Jewish Book Award Finalist.

Joan S. Friedman


Remembering Nelson Glueck


Nelson Glueck on the 1963 cover of Time magazine (Courtesy American Jewish Archives)

Samuel Greengus


Remembering Nelson GlueckHUC-JIR Founders’ Day, 28 March 2018

Samuel Greengus

It is altogether fitting to remember Nelson Glueck and his enduring impact upon the College. It is an honor for me to have been asked to say a few words this morning about him. I admired him greatly and will try to give you a sense of his person, career, and historic contributions—to our school, to the Reform movement, and to our total community.1

I first met Nelson Glueck in 1958 when I was a graduate student at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Dr. Glueck was presenting a lead paper at a symposium of invited scholars who were there to share their thoughts on factors that may have contributed to the rise of advanced civilizations in the ancient Near East. A small group of graduate students—including me— were invited to attend and listen to the proceedings. At that time, in 1958, I had no idea that I would one day serve on the faculty of HUC‑JIR.2

Already on that first occasion, when I saw Dr. Glueck and heard him

1 My recollections were enhanced by revisiting Jonathan M. Brown and Laurence Cutler, Nelson Glueck: Biblical Archaeologist and President of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (Cincinnati: Alumni Series of the Hebrew Union College Press, 2005). In addition, I consulted Michael A. Meyer, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion: A Centennial History 1875–1975, rev. ed. (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992).2 Looking back, I find it as notable that among the invited participants were scholars from leading American universities: Chicago, Yale, Johns Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Michigan, Brown—and as a major participant in this august company there was also the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, represented by Nelson Glueck, professor of Bible and biblical archaeology and its president. Proceedings of the symposium are published in Carl H. Kraeling and Robert M. Adams, eds., The City Invincible: A Symposium on Urbanization and Cultural Development in the Ancient Near East Held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago December 4–7, 1958 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).



speak, I got the impression that he was a person of strong personality and energy; and—it seemed to me—a bit more worldly than most of the other professors and scholars at the symposium. After I became part of the College, these first impressions were confirmed and enlarged. Glueck was a charismatic leader of deep passions and drive; I came to see that he was not only a rabbi, a scholar, and a noted field archaeologist; he was also a visionary and dynamic leader of our school; a major figure within the American Reform movement; and a pioneer in planting liberal Judaism in the soil and social fabric of modern Israel.

His life began right here in Cincinnati, where Glueck was born in 1900; he was the third of nine children born to parents, who were im‑migrants from Lithuania. Glueck, a gifted student, entered Woodward High School at thirteen and, a year later, at the age of fourteen, entered HUC. He graduated from high school in 1916 and four years later earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Cincinnati, which he attended concurrently with HUC. Glueck was ordained as rabbi in 1923.

Becoming a rabbi was a significant accomplishment, but Glueck had further aspirations—for a Ph.D. Dr. Julian Morgenstern was president of HUC at that time, having succeeded Kaufmann Kohler in 1921. Morgenstern saw Glueck as a possible future faculty member and pro‑vided him with a fellowship. Glueck wanted to follow in the path of rabbinical graduates like Jacob Marcus and Sheldon Blank and, like them, study at a university in Germany. Germany, despite its defeat in World War I, retained its place as a center of higher learning in many areas, including biblical studies and religion. You will of course remem‑ber that prior to World War II, a majority of rabbis and scholars teach‑ing in Jewish institutions of higher learning in the U.S. had studied or were born in Europe. Thus, one could look to Poland and Lithuania for traditional Jewish learning centered on the Talmud. In a similar fashion, Germany was the place for studies of Bible and Jewish religious literature that were open to considering ideas coming from secular disciplines, like history, philosophy, theology, along with Semitic and classical lan‑guages and literatures. The Reform movement had been founded on the idea of embracing knowledge coming from all fields of learning. Many years later, when Dr. Glueck was president of our school, he powerfully expressed this ideal in his mission statement for the College, printed in

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its academic catalogues:

We are a liberal institution of higher learning in Judaism. Nothing in the Jewish past or present is alien to our interest. We cherish the right of the free conscience to study Judaism, and we impose the need to study as an obligation on candidates for the Reform rabbinate. We have confidence that the accurate and affirmatively critical and free study of our tradition will ensure its survival and enhance its sanctity. We are dedicated to God and to Israel.

Even now, the lofty aspirations expressed in his concise declaration still resonate with me.

In Germany, Glueck chose the University of Jena and received his Ph.D. in 1926. The title of his German dissertation can be translated “The Word ‘Hesed’ in Old Testament Linguistic Usage as Human and Divine Reciprocal Conduct.” Some years later, in 1967, it was translated into English and republished through the HUC‑JIR press by Dr. Alfred Gottschalk, who was at that time dean of our school in Los Angeles.3

After finishing his Ph.D., Glueck went on to spend a year in Palestine, which, as you may recall, was then part of the British Mandate created after World War I. The Mandate Palestine was carved out of the former Ottoman Empire and included what are today the countries of Jordan, Israel, and the territory of the West Bank. President Morgenstern put Glueck in contact with William Foxwell Albright, professor of Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins University; Albright was at that time the director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. Albright in 1926 had begun a new excavation at the site of Tel Beit Mirsim, which he believed could be the biblical town of Devir, located in the southern part of the Shefelah. Albright invited Glueck to come to Jerusalem and dig with him. This relationship was to prove significant for Glueck, as he worked alongside of Albright; Rabbi Doctor Glueck now also became a skilled field archaeologist. Glueck’s fieldwork in Mandate Palestine continued concurrently with his also being appointed to the

3 The original dissertation, Das Wort hesed im alttestamentlichen Sprachgebrauche als menschliche und göttliche gemeinschaftsgemässe Verhaltungsweise, was reprinted in Germany in the series BZAW in 1961.



HUC faculty, teaching Bible, in 1928. President Morgenstern also did his best to support Dr. Glueck in his archaeological work and allowed him leaves of absence to continue digging with Albright during the years 1929 through 1931.

In 1929, in Cincinnati, Glueck was introduced to a young woman, Helen Iglauer, through Adolph Oko, who was librarian of HUC and a good friend of Helen’s parents. The couple were married in 1931. Helen was a clear‑thinking, intelligent, and independent woman who planned to become a physician like her father. Helen had received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and entered medical school at the University of Cincinnati. Helen’s career over time would prove to be helpful in her navigating through years of her husband’s archaeological work that frequently took him—along with her, too, at times—away from home in Cincinnati. It was not always easy for both of them. Helen also had to find a balance between living in Cincinnati and in Jerusalem. She finished medical school in 1934, gave birth to their son Charles in 1939, and joined the faculty at the U.C. medical school in 1945, where she rose to become professor in the fields of hematology and pathology. Helen continued working until her death in 1995. Nelson Glueck was proud of Helen’s career and her work; he recognized its importance, and he was fond of telling this story: Glueck was working at home and the doorbell rang; he answered it; and the man standing there said: “I want to see Dr. Glueck.” Nelson said: “I am Dr. Glueck.” The man looked him up and down and said, “No, I want to see the Dr. Glueck!” I think being married to Helen helped him later understand the aspirations of Jewish women for ordination in the rabbinate, which Dr. Glueck later facilitated when he was president of the College. Helen herself served as a member of the Board of Governors from 1972 to 1995.

Excavating with Albright in Mandate Palestine was to prove impor‑tant both in the history of archaeology and in the trajectory of Nelson Glueck’s career. I think everyone knows that the levels of human occu‑pation in an archaeological excavation are similar to the layers of fossils that one finds in prehistoric geological strata of sedimentary rock. Nelson Glueck, as a boy, had in fact been interested in fossils and collected fossils out of exposed surfaces of rock in the Cincinnati area hillsides. Working under Albright’s mentorship, Glueck discovered that he had an amazing

Samuel Greengus


talent for analyzing, organizing, and remembering the vast quantities and varieties of pottery and artifacts to be found in the levels of an ar‑chaeological site. The goal of Albright’s project was to establish a careful analysis of the pottery found in each level of his excavation; and to the extent possible, to connect the pottery with history recorded in ancient Near Eastern documents, including the Bible. Albright was inspired by the then‑recent work in Egypt of the British archaeologist Sir William Flinders Petrie, who had arranged careful sequences of early Egyptian pottery found in prehistoric burials. In 1920, Petrie published findings showing that it was possible to link some of his pottery and other artifacts to historical epochs in Egyptian history known from written records. There was thus a link between pottery history and document history, even in early periods. Petrie also discovered that some of the pottery types found in the Egyptian burials were in fact imported into Egypt from Palestine. Albright wanted to exploit these historical links and, us‑ing the pottery findings at Tel Beit Mirsim, to create a reliable guide with which the pottery found throughout Palestine could be compared and correlated. Albright’s goal was to supply more accurate historical dating to the pottery and artifacts belonging to the earliest periods in Palestine, which archaeologists were calling the Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Persian periods of civilization in the Holy Land.

During these years of working with Abright, Nelson Glueck also de‑veloped his profound and abiding love for the ancient, ancestral land of Israel. He would often later proclaim: “I am a native son of Cincinnati; but a spiritual son of Jerusalem.” Glueck never tired of exploring and studying the land that gave rise to the Bible. He acquired an intimate knowledge of its geographical features: its hills and watercourses, both wet and dry; and towns and cities, both ancient and modern. The land and its topography enabled him to envision the history of the Jewish people that took place within its borders during biblical times and be‑yond. Glueck also created deep personal bonds with the people now living there; he was eager from the beginning to speak modern Hebrew in order to connect with the Zionists who were then living in Palestine, building a new Jewish life and homeland. Among these was his friend and mentor, Judah Magnes, who was ordained by HUC in 1900; Magnes had emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1922 and was instrumental in



founding the Hebrew University, where he was president and chancellor from 1925 to his death in 1948. Glueck, moreover, also learned Arabic and made many friends with individuals within the Arab communities who were living in these historic lands.

Even later, as president, Dr. Glueck couldn’t wait to get back to Israel. There he could relax and be himself; he would tell jokes; he was more open and accessible as a person. I got to see this during my years of dig‑ging with the College at Tel Gezer in the 1960s. My family and I traveled with him through the Negev in 1967. I remember his teaching my young daughters how to identify Nabatean pottery, which he was delighted to examine and confirm when they brought him fragments of pottery they found on the ground. My daughters still fondly recall this experience; they also can still identify Nabatean pottery.

In 1932, Albright retired from fieldwork and returned to Johns Hopkins to teach full time. Albright was impressed with Glueck and his talents and urged that he be appointed as the next director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. Glueck was ap‑pointed and served as director from 1932–1947. During those years, Glueck also achieved the rank of full professor at HUC and continued to make ground‑breaking new discoveries through his surface explora‑tions of ancient tels located in eastern Palestine, i.e., that part of Mandate Palestine located east of the Jordan River—what is now Jordan. Glueck would survey these ancient sites and collect samplings of pottery sherds found at the surface and at the eroded edges of the unoccupied ancient tells in the territory. After he was back at his desk—either in Jerusalem or in Cincinnati, where he had shipped many of his burlap bags filled with pottery—Glueck was able to study the pottery in detail and thereby assign a dating range to these tells from which they were gathered. He could base his dates using the sequences that were established by Albright at Tel Beit Mirsim in western Palestine, which is now Israel and the West Bank. He traveled usually accompanied by two Arab‑speaking native guides, sometimes on camels, sometimes on foot, through vast land‑scapes inhabited here and there by Bedouin tribesmen. It was said of Glueck that he possessed the amazing ability to spot and identify pottery “from the back of a camel.” He ultimately surveyed and collected pottery samples, to which he supplied dating, from over 1,500 ancient sites. His

Samuel Greengus


pioneering and foundational volumes are still being consulted and used today in guiding historians and archaeologists. Glueck also collected written inscriptions and recorded remains of ancient buildings on the sites. He managed as well during those years to excavate two important sites: one illuminating the civilization established by the Nabateans and the other attributed to the Judeans or Edomites.4

With World War II beginning in Europe, and Italy joining Germany and invading North Africa in 1940, it became impossible to maintain archaeological work. Dr. Glueck returned to Cincinnati. When the U.S. entered the war in December 1941, Glueck wrote to the State Department, offering his services to serve in the Near East or anywhere else where he might be needed. In early 1942, he received an assignment from the OSS— the Office of Strategic Services, which after the war became the CIA; he was being sent to the Near East. Dr. Glueck never discussed his work with anyone; even Helen did not know until fifty years later, with the release of declassified documents. Glueck’s assignment was to continue his archaeological survey and study of ancient sites including the Negev; but he was also to use his knowledge of topography and water resources in order to map out possible routes of retreat for the British army, in the event that the Nazi army under Field Marshall Rommel, who invaded North Africa in 1941, succeeded in their drive to conquer Egypt and seize the Suez Canal. The British army would then need to retreat into Iraq to protect their vital supply of oil. Happily, the retreat never happened; the British were able to stop Rommel’s advance into Egypt at the second battle of El Alamein in late 1942; Glueck was able to return to Cincinnati in 1943 and remained as director of the American School in Jerusalem until 1947.

After the war was over, Glueck’s life and career took a new turn. President Morgenstern was in poor health and was seriously thinking of retiring. He wanted Dr. Glueck to become his successor. Morgenstern had also been involved in serious negotiation with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, founder and president of the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City, discussing a merger of their two schools. Morgenstern felt

4 The sites are Khirbet Tannur and Tell el‑Kheleifah, which are both now in Jordan.



that he was not up to taking on the task of running the merged HUC‑JIR. There was, in addition, also the challenge in helping the postwar Jewish community build strong, new foundations in America. This was now imperative in view of the tragic losses and destruction of the Jewish communities in Europe. There was also looming violence between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, with partition and the British Mandate ending. So world Jewry was now looking to America. Glueck was by no means eager to take on this new role, but he was persuaded by Morgenstern, Magnes, and many others telling him that the College needed him at this time in its history. Thus, in May 1947, Dr. Glueck became president of HUC; and in 1948 Rabbi Stephen Wise retired and JIR made Glueck its president. And so Glueck became the first president of of the now‑merged HUC‑JIR.

Although Dr. Glueck had served student pulpits in Henderson, Kentucky, and Saginaw, Michigan, he had never led a major congrega‑tion. Some raised questions about his fitness to lead the College. But Dr. Glueck did not hesitate and went quickly to work: an $8 million fund‑raising campaign; a new department of human relations, which, in his words, would supply “the insights and techniques of the growing sciences of human relationships”; a Department of Education and a new School of Sacred Music in New York; a summer institute for rabbis; recruitment of future students from Reform‑sponsored camping programs. He also pro‑posed new fellowships, both for young rabbis and for Christian ministers and theological students, who would be invited to study at HUC‑JIR. Glueck’s vigorous moves to build a graduate school followed up on one of President Morgenstern’s last official actions, which was to establish the interfaith fellowship program in 1947 in order to foster deeper under‑standing and respect between Jews and non‑Jews at the highest levels of religious study and knowledge. Glueck believed that salvation and heal‑ing would come to mankind through the agency of religious faiths that upheld the moral and spiritual laws taught in our mutual traditions. In 1949 the State of Ohio granted HUC‑JIR a license to award the Ph.D. degree in “Hebraic and Cognate Studies.” Not long afterward, the first Ph.D.s were granted: in 1951 to three rabbinic graduates and in 1953 and 1955 to two of our first Christian graduates. All of these graduates went on to distinguished careers in scholarship and teaching. Dr. Glueck

Samuel Greengus


helped Professor Jacob Rader Marcus start the American Jewish Archives in 1947 and, because of its rapid growth, gave it a new home in the old Bernheim Library in 1948. In order to house our school’s expanding library resources, he built the new Klau Library building in 1960. He also renovated the Sisterhood Dormitory and added air conditioning. The classroom building did not receive AC until many years later, with the Herman family gift. In 1968, Glueck planned but was unable at that time to build a new building for the New York school. Funds were not yet raised, and the CCAR raised concerns about starting this project until and unless the actual funds were in hand.

With the expanding Jewish population in the West Coast, there was a call from members of the Board of Governors for HUC‑JIR to establish a branch of the rabbinical program in Los Angeles. The pro‑gram grew from its first location, in the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, to a repurposed institutional building in the Hollywood Hills in 1956, to its present site, adjacent to USC. Dr. Glueck approved the first purchase of land in 1964, and construction began in 1970; but he did not live to attend the dedication of the new site in 1971. Establishment of the State of Israel and the War of Independence re‑sulted in Jewish archaeologists’ being denied access to the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, now in Jordanian hands. Dr. Glueck, as well as a new generation of Israeli archaeologists, were cut off from the archaeological work that was done in the West Bank and Jordan. Glueck wanted to create a comparable archaeological center within Israel. At that time, the Israeli government and universities had no funds to spare; so Glueck went about raising funds from museums, universities, and seminaries in the U.S. He wanted to build what was to be the Hebrew Union College Biblical Archaeology School in Jerusalem. It was also to be the site of a branch of HUC‑JIR in Jerusalem, which would serve as a base for our students and alumni to spend time in Israel. Dr. Avraham Biran, who had also been trained in archaeology and received his Ph.D. under Albright at Johns Hopkins, was then serving as the district governor for Jerusalem; and he helped set up an agreement to make land available. In 1952 Glueck presented to the board a plan to erect a building, housing both the archaeological school and the College; it also included some dormitory rooms, a library, a



small lecture hall, and a synagogue charging no dues that would serve Americans and Israelis who wished to attend. In 1953 the board was of‑fered and accepted a parcel of land adjacent to the King David Hotel and overlooking the barbed wire in the no‑man’s land separating Israeli and Jordanian Jerusalem. The College later also received some supplementary funds from the Israeli and the U.S. governments, and the Jerusalem school was finally built and dedicated in 1963. But already in 1952, Dr. Glueck was able to resume his archaeological survey work in the Negev; he now abandoned camels for jeeps and planes. In this work he received strong encouragement from David Ben‑Gurion, who believed that the Negev was the future of Israel. Ben‑Gurion was especially interested in Glueck’s findings concerning how the ancient Nabateans, through water conservation, had been able to support surprisingly large populations. Glueck published many of his findings in his book Rivers in the Desert.5

HUC‑JIR was the first American Jewish seminary to establish a permanent home in Israel. For the first few years, individual rabbini‑cal students would arrange to spend a year of study at the Hebrew University; the school assisted them, but they did this on their own. In 1970, however, a mandatory year in Israel became part of the rabbinical program and continues to this day and of course was later expanded to include students in the School of Education. A new rabbinical program for Israeli and non‑American students was started; the graduates of this Israeli program are slowly changing the religious landscape of Israel despite the political machinations of the Orthodox political parties.

The College encountered Orthodox opposition from the beginning, mostly then against our school’s having a synagogue in Jerusalem. Dr. Glueck had also encountered some ambivalence about the Israel venture from his Reform constituency in the U.S. They had given support to Jewish refugees and resettlement in Palestine, but their political nation-ality was “American.” Israel was unfamiliar; while in Cincinnati and at other Reform congregations, men worshipped with uncovered heads and the prayers were largely in English, the prayers in our Jerusalem

5 Rivers in the Desert: The Exploration of the Negev, An Adventure in Archaeology (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1959). This book was reprinted several times and also translated.

Samuel Greengus


synagogue were read in Hebrew and men—even Dr. Glueck—wore kippot. Dr. Glueck, who himself was a classical Reform Jew, explained that in Reform Judaism, the idea was to pray in a language that people understood. Hebrew was the everyday language in Israel. It was like‑wise customary for Israelis to wear a kippah in order to distinguish the synagogue from the secular street. The student‑led worship services at the College were always important to Dr. Glueck. While he traveled frequently, Dr. Glueck as president took pains to attend worship services at the College. Attendance by faculty was mandatory, and he took note of absences. Students were not required to attend, but Dr. Glueck was known to have told students, “It is true that you don’t have to attend worship services; but you should know that I am not required to ordain you.” Dr. Glueck always made his wishes clear.

Maybe the most far‑reaching achievement of Dr. Glueck was to en‑courage women to apply to our rabbinical program. This was not a new idea, but Rabbi Sally Priesand pioneered as the first to enroll; she paved the not‑always‑easy road to become the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi in the Reform movement. Sadly, Dr. Glueck died a few months before she finished her studies. Rabbi Priesand is here with us today, and I salute her for her quiet determination, resilience, and courage.

All in all, I believe that it can be said that the HUC‑JIR that we know today rests upon the foundations put into place by President Nelson Glueck. We have good reason to remember him on this Founders’ Day, and we celebrate with feelings of gratitude his strong leadership and outstanding contributions to the College that we know and love.

Samuel Greengus is Julian Morgenstern Emeritus Professor of Bible and Near Eastern Literature at HUC-JIR in Cincinnati. He earned an M.A. in Judaic Studies and a Ph.D. in Assyriology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. He began teaching at HUC-JIR in Cincinnati in 1963 and was appointed Professor of Semitic Languages in 1970. He also served as Dean of the Rabbinical School (1979–1984); Director of the School of Graduate Studies (1985–1990; 2007–2010); and Vice-President for Academic Affairs (1990–1996). He retired in 2010. He served as a men-tor to over fifty doctoral students during his distinguished teaching career.

In Memory of Nelson Glueck


Nelson Glueck (Courtesy American Jewish Archives)

Sally J. Priesand


In Memory of Nelson GlueckHUC-JIR Founders’ Day, 28 March 2018

Sally J. Priesand

Thank you for that gracious introduction and for welcoming me back to the campus that has played such an important role in my life. I love coming home to Cincinnati, and today I am grateful for the opportunity to learn once again from our teacher Dr. Greengus, to celebrate with my colleagues as we thank them for their dedicated service to the Jewish people, and to share some reflections about Dr. Nelson Glueck, the man most responsible for my ordination and the ordination of women as rabbis.

We know that the destiny of a people is shaped by its leaders and fashioned by those who dare to dream. Dr. Glueck was such a leader, a commanding personality who possessed both the opportunity and the ability to make a real difference in the Jewish world. He was first and foremost a college president, the one who merged HUC with the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, opened a campus in Los Angeles and a Biblical and Archaeological School in Jerusalem. Under his leader‑ship, HUC‑JIR became an international seminary, a liberal institution of higher learning dedicated to academic freedom and the survival of Jewish tradition.

He was an efficient and proficient college president, but at heart I suspect he always considered himself an archaeologist, perhaps an in‑terest that came to him in childhood, when he would accompany his father to Cincinnati’s “Fossil Hill” to examine fossils from a prehistoric sea that once covered Ohio. I remember doing something similar as a requirement for my geology class at the University of Cincinnati; the whole experience gave me a greater understanding of his joy at finding pieces of antiquity that could and would illuminate life in a modern world. That he had a profound belief in the accuracy of the Bible and



always looked to its words for guidance enriched and enhanced the work he was doing.

He considered himself a spiritual son of Jerusalem, and one of his fondest dreams for the College‑Institute was the establishment of a program in which every rabbinic student would be required to spend a year in Israel. Back in the sixties, some considered this to be a fanciful dream, but he said: “We shall labor quietly but determinedly for com‑plete freedom of religious practice here in Israel in all phases of life and are confident that such freedom will eventually be established here, for all Jews to exercise their religious feelings in accordance with their own traditions and judgment.” Only a person of Nelson Glueck’s stature, drive, and influence could have made real the dream of a year in Israel for our students.

A college president, an archaeologist, a lover of Israel—he was all these and more. I remember the first time I saw him. I was a young woman, just starting college, and I thought he was quite handsome. He had a deep suntan from spending time in the desert of the land he so loved, big bushy eyebrows, a telling smile, and eyes that left nothing unsaid. His bearing was regal, and he always seemed a little bit larger than life. He was passionate about those things that were important to him, and he had a certain charm that inspired others to dream bigger and do more. As someone once said, “He brushed away the ruts that others were prone to stumble in. He stepped right over them. He didn’t even see them. He had a higher horizon.”

That horizon enabled him to envision a day when women would serve the Jewish people as rabbis. I knew that to be true when I arrived in Cincinnati as an undergraduate student, and it was not long before I came to understand that Nelson Glueck believed in me and was watch‑ing my progress from year to year. I do not remember ever really discuss‑ing my ordination with him, but his eyes always showed his approval, and he took care of a lot of little problems in the background that I probably never even heard about. Whenever the Board of Governors was in town, he made certain that its members became aware of my presence. Once he called me out of class to come to the board meet‑ing and deliver the opening prayer. Another time I was the student in charge of conducting the service on the day that the board was meeting

Sally J. Priesand


in Cincinnati, and I still remember reading Torah here in this chapel with Nelson Glueck looking over my shoulder. I think the experience prepared me for the many times I have had the honor of reading Torah at the CCAR convention, a privilege that I love but one that never fails to produce anxiety. At the very least, I learned early on the importance of practice and preparation.

When I was in the third year of the rabbinic program, Dr. Glueck be‑gan arranging speaking engagements for me around the country. It was his way of preparing the Jewish community for the fact that a woman would soon be ordained as rabbi. After all, this was a decision that was being made by the College‑Institute under his leadership—the Union and the CCAR had nothing to do with it—and he wanted synagogues to be aware, to make it easier for me when the time came to find a congregational position.

There are many other stories I could tell. I remember having dinner at his home and watching him proudly talk about his archaeological finds that were on display. During the Vietnam War, after Kent State, the student body wanted to shut down the school. He sat with us on the grass out front, listened to our ideas, and helped us plan a trip to Washington, DC, to protest.

Throughout the eight years I was in Cincinnati, I attended every ordination, watched Dr. Glueck place his hands on the shoulders of every candidate, and dreamed of the day he would ordain me. It was an image I carried with me through the difficult times—no life is free of difficulty, but sometimes being the first of something carries unique challenges—and just being able to imagine the day when Nelson Glueck was going to place his hands on my shoulders and ordain me as a rabbi in Israel helped make things easier.

Unfortunately, that never happened; Dr. Glueck died a year and a half before my ordination. I was devastated, but his wife Helen, a dis‑tinguished physician here in Cincinnati, told me that before he died, he said there were three things he wanted to live to do: attend his grandson’s bar mitzvah, spend time in their Jerusalem apartment, and ordain me.

Throughout my career, I have had this picture of Dr. Glueck hanging above my desk, together with a letter from his wife dated March 19, 1971. The letter ends this way: “I have already told you how meaningful



your ordination would have been for him and how he would have loved to have seen that day. I am sure when I see you ordained, in my mind’s eye I will see his hands on your shoulders, for no matter whose hands are there the meaning will be clear, the continuity of Jewish life and his immortality of spirit.”

Dr. Glueck’s memory has been a blessing for me in so many different ways, and I know it has been a blessing for his family and our College‑Institute family, for the Reform movement, and for the world Jewish community of which we are a part. May it continue to be so, and may we never forget his leadership and his courage in bringing equality to Jewish life.

Sally J. Priesand, America’s first female rabbi, was ordained in June 1972 by Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio. From 1981 to 2006 she served as rabbi of Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, NJ becoming rabbi emerita upon her retirement. She continues to serve as president of Interfaith Neighbors, a local organization that assists the working poor. She is also a contributor to The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate.

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Book Reviews

Bonnie S. Anderson, The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), 231 pp.

“Emancipation from every kind of bondage is my principle. I go for the recognition of human rights, without distinction of sect, party, sex, or color” — Ernestine Rose (1853, p.22)

“[In the United States] it is almost a settled fact that woman is a human being” — Ernestine Rose (1870, p. 143)

In The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter, Bonnie S. Anderson provides fresh in‑sight into the life and activism of Ernestine L. Rose, a brilliant radical reformer who braved ridicule, condemnation, and threats of violence as she advocated free thought, abolition, and women’s rights through‑out nineteenth century United States and Europe. As author of two prior works of international feminist history—Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830–1860 and Women in Early Modern and Modern Europe—Anderson is well positioned to overcome the critical challenge of her subject: writing about an international figure for whom few official records exist and who left behind no private col‑lection of letters and papers. Committed to including “every scrap of personal history” (10) she could find, Anderson has pieced together a lively and engaging volume about a feminist pioneer whose words and deeds are every bit as compelling and relevant today as they were when Ernestine Rose first stepped upon the world stage.

Anderson introduces Rose at the peak of her career, at the Second National Women’s Rights Convention in 1851. By this time, Rose was a seasoned public speaker, having engaged in debates and addressed audi‑ences on free thought and abolition for more than a decade. We learn how Rose, despite having been “born into three oppressive situations” (11) as a Polish female Jew, came to this moment an acknowledged

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leader and star of the women’s rights campaign and the only foreigner, atheist, and international traveler among nineteenth‑century abolition‑ists and women’s rights activists. Both allies and enemies respected Rose for her incisive wit and brilliant oratory, yet they reviled her as an atheist and Jew. Rose, ever uncompromising in her insistence on human rights, became increasingly isolated with the outbreak of the Civil War. “It is … all free or all slave,” Anderson quotes Rose, “and as we are not all free, we are all slaves and all slaveholders … unless we raise our voice against it” (116). The object of increasing intolerance, antisemitism, and nativism, exhausted by her travels and dismayed by dissension within the women’s movement as the United States enfranchised freedmen and excluded women with the Fifteenth Amendment, Rose, the “heroine of a hundred battles,” (141) left the United States with her husband to spend most of the rest of her life in England and continental Europe.

Ernestine Rose’s story is one that, more than other portraits of famous figures, reflects the constructed nature of history. “I have nothing to refer to. I have never spoken from notes ... [and] I made no memorandum of places, dates or names,” Rose responded when Susan B. Anthony asked her for a contribution to The History of Woman Suffrage (Vol. 1, p. 98).

If sources for Rose’s story are so few, of what value is a new biogra‑phy? The very absence of primary material creates the need for different scholarly points of view. Tapping international research and literature, drawing on her expertise in international women’s history and emphasiz‑ing the transatlantic nature of Rose’s life and work, Anderson creates new context for understanding Ernestine Rose’s life, work, and words. The timing could not be more appropriate: More than ever, we need to learn from Rose’s example how to welcome civil debate with our opponents, to disarm hatred with reason and humor, and to persist despite decades of intractable opposition. Rose’s voice is needed as much today as it was when, inspired by the Declaration of Independence, she dedicated her life to arguing fearlessly for free thought, racial equality, and women’s rights.

Katherine Durack is the Ohio representative on the National Board for the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association, a member of the 2020 Women’s Vote Centennial Initiative task force, and a contributor to the Votes for Women National Trail. A former college professor, Katherine has been

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researching and sharing stories about woman suffrage since 2015, when she launched her Suffrage In Stitches project, for which she creates original crochet designs inspired by the women, events, and artifacts of the U.S. woman suffrage movement.

Eric L. Goldstein and Deborah R. Weiner, On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of Baltimore (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), 385 pp.

Eric Goldstein and Deborah Weiner’s On Middle Ground provides a fresh approach to capturing the history of the Jewish community of Baltimore. Building on Issac Fein’s The Making of an American Jewish Community: The History of Baltimore Jewry from 1773 to 1920, On Middle Ground explores Baltimore’s unique location at a “geographical crossroads” in Maryland, America’s oldest border state. From the outset, Goldstein and Weiner acknowledge the challenges that have precluded historians from producing a comprehensive history of Baltimore Jewry. Scholars who have endeavored to produce any kind of social history of Maryland have had to come to the task with not only the state’s geographical positioning but also its unique demographics, which have embodied characteristics that aligned with, as well as diverged from the culture and social practices of the Deep South.

Goldstein and Weiner frame their work the same way that Barbara Jean Fields’s Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century (1985) contextualizes black freedom in Maryland during the nineteenth century. Their analysis also is similar to Robert Brugger’s Maryland, A Middle Temperament: 1634–1980 (1996), especially his examination of Maryland’s history of political and social heritage. On Middle Ground examines how Baltimore’s “geographical settings, economic conditions, and ethnic and racial landscapes have influenced American Jewish life” (3); and it does so through the lens‑es of border state geography and urban demographics, especially the large African American population that has done much to characterize Baltimore’s history.

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Taking this framework into consideration, Goldstein and Weiner chronicle the advent, evolution, and upward mobility of Jewish life throughout the various phases of Baltimore City, as well as Maryland’s history from the 1760s to the present. Each chapter centers around the experiences of Jews from every socioeconomic status—from immigrants to successful capitalists. It is in this vein that the authors chronicle Jewish economic and religious life, examining both ideals and practices in five distinct timeframes.

The first two chapters focus on early Jewish life in Baltimore during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here, the focus is on the lives of the first Jews to arrive in Baltimore, particularly those who came as convict laborers when Baltimore was in its infancy and who were key in slowly developing the tobacco economy of colonial Maryland. Those knowledgeable about Reform Judaism would likely be familiar with Rabbi David Einhorn, whose vocal antislavery stance foreshadowed the relationship between blacks and Jews nationally. What may be less known is that Einhorn first took that stance in Baltimore and that the unique culture of the city presumably factored into his worldview. Goldstein and Weiner shed light not only on what Einhorn’s position meant to his relationship with his congregation but on the opposi‑tion that would come from rabbis of other Baltimore congregations: “Although these Jewish liberals were also animated by an aversion to the hateful legacy of the Know‑Nothings, they differed from the vast majority of their coreligionists in viewing anti‑black racism as an evil equal to anti‑immigrant prejudice” (89). This dissent in Baltimore would foreshadow the dissent that would emerge in the Deep South.

Moreover, Goldstein and Weiner trace this dueling relationship—Jews who deplored Southern racism and Jews who were apologists for it—into the post‑1880s. “Baltimore’s ongoing transition to an industrial economy,” the authors write, “offered opportunities to new immigrants, but it also produced many social and economic hardships that had not afflicted Jewish settlers of previous generations” (104). As the massive wave of Jewish immigrants continued to flood Baltimore, the “Golden Door to the South,” the city’s acculturated Jews doubled down, closing ranks in their community, hoping to maintain their social standing and community resources. Baltimore’s economic shift toward the industrial

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sector, however—specifically manufacturing—created a niche for Jewish immigrants in the garment trades, one that would evolve into a booming industry. On Middle Ground points to the human side of this shift, high‑lighting figures such as Israel Denaburg and his brother‑in‑law Harry Feldman, who encapsulated such experiences. Natives of Russia, they eventually made their way to Baltimore and by 1905 had set up a shop as tailors and pressers.

Although Baltimore Jews attained some measure of economic success, a vast majority of Baltimore’s Jewish community found themselves at the bottom of Baltimore’s capitalist and industrial enterprise. Poor Jewish immigrants worked in the sweatshops of the Jewish‑owned factories. It may seem that African Americans would have identified with the suf‑fering of Jewish immigrants who worked in these inhumane conditions. However, as Goldstein and Weiner point out,

compared with the discourse of middle‑class whites, articles and editori‑als in the Afro-American were more likely to portray Jews as economic competitors and to express anger at how they exercised white privilege, edged African Americans out of business opportunities, and adopted the racist outlook of the majority culture (122).

The last two chapters chronicle the establishment of distinct Jewish communities, which emerged throughout the twentieth century, as Jews began to settle in northwest Baltimore. In examining this movement, the authors provide insight into the workings and utility of such neigh‑borhoods, which “offered a safe space for the children of immigrants to experiment with becoming American” (180). Nonetheless, Goldstein and Weiner argue that these new neighborhoods served as a springboard for entrepreneurs who capitalized on the consumerism of the 1920s. In spite of the social and economic success that Jews began seeing, however, they still became more and more segregated, just as it had been during the interwar era. This segregation would continue into the twenty‑first century and is still present today.

On Middle Ground provides a holistic approach to chronicling Baltimore’s Jewish community. Drawing upon rich sources spanning over 250 years—including manuscript collections, oral histories, and newspaper accounts—this history is told in concert with the history of

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Baltimore’s Jewish institutions, and its diverse ethnic community bring‑ing them to life in a way that is unique to Baltimore. On Middle Ground is a foundational work that uses Baltimore as a historical case study to analyze some of the influential culminations of American Jewish life.

Charles L. Chavis Jr. is a visiting scholar at the Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum. He received his doctorate in history from Morgan State University in 2018. Chavis was a Rabbi Joachim Prinz Fellow at the American Jewish Archives. He is the author of the forthcoming book ‘Maryland, My Maryland’: The Lynching of Matthew Williams and the Politics of Racism in the Free State and is currently working on a biographical history of Rabbi Edward Israel of Har Sinai Congregation in Baltimore.

Adi Gordon, Toward Nationalism’s End: An Intellectual Biography of Hans Kohn (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2017), 328 pp.

Toward the end of Toward Nationalism’s End, Adi Gordon’s new intel‑lectual biography of the pioneering scholar of nationalism, Hans Kohn (1891–1971), Gordon muses about how different Kohn’s legacy can look in the light of different historical circumstances. Had this book been released in the early‑ to mid‑1990s, Kohn might have been seen as a prophet of the triumph of the liberal‑democratic West. He would also have been a seer of the inevitability of the accommodation of Zionism and the State of Israel to Palestinian human rights and national claims, an early champion of European economic and political unity, and a forerunner of the then‑contemporary boom in “nationalism studies,” taking for granted the historically constructed nature of all national identities. Fast forward one generation, however, and the picture looks quite different. Liberal democracies have again lost confidence, threat‑ened from within and without by renewed attempts to redefine the rights of citizenship as privileges of ethno‑national majorities. Israeli‑Palestinian peace talks have repeatedly broken down, with maximalists

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feeling emboldened. Europe is in danger of fragmenting in the wake of Brexit, as right‑wing populist campaigns capitalize on the migrant crisis and on the failures of free‑trade regimes to deliver shared prosperity. And scholars of nationalism are skeptical of the power and even the validity of Kohn’s World War II‑era category of “civic nationalism,” intended to name a rational, Enlightenment‑oriented tendency to root national identity in a galvanizing political idea of liberty and equality, rather than in blood and soil.

This brief, compelling thought experiment is very much in the spirit of the biography as a whole, throughout which Gordon deftly explicates Kohn’s changing political views against the background of his tumul‑tuous times. Gordon has written a true intellectual biography: This is the story of Kohn’s ideas, far more than of his personal life. Gordon traces those ideas closely and carefully throughout Kohn’s many publica‑tions, showing how some are dropped while others are newly embraced; some are transformed into their opposites, while others remain a steady through‑line in Kohn’s long career. Yet the real value of Gordon’s work lies not just in its contribution to Kohn scholarship but in its ability to maintain focus on the fluid interaction of ideas, personality, and circumstances. As such, it should be of interest to any intellectual histo‑rians, and not only to those with special interests in interwar Habsburg thought, Zionism, or U.S. Cold War ideology.

Of course, Toward Nationalism’s End is first and foremost a contribu‑tion to Kohn scholarship, and in that regard it tells a clear and powerful story. Gordon divides Kohn’s life and work into three major parts: youth in Prague, interrupted by service in the Great War and imprisonment in Siberia; interwar adulthood, which Kohn largely spent in Palestine in conflicted service to the Zionist movement; and later adulthood, when Kohn moved to the United States and developed his reputation as a foremost scholar of nationalism. Each of these is interesting in its own way, as Gordon places Kohn into conversation with friends, colleagues, and critics of various kinds.

In Part One, young Kohn becomes a Zionist, and Gordon vividly evokes the late‑imperial Habsburg context (a pleasant surprise given the intellectual focus: In keeping with its biographical format, Toward Nationalism’s End offers no shortage of photographic documentation of

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its protagonist, including some dapper shots of young Kohn in sailor getup and Central European finery). The constellation of influences that produced the unique spiritual Zionist orientation of the Prague Bar Kochba Society is given clear expression here, from its rejection of “Westernness” to its ambivalence about land to its valorization of the ethical and communal potential of national unity; all are accounted for as emerging from the Austrian, Czech‑German‑Jewish context in a logical manner that makes this now most distant of perspectives seem reasonable and powerful.

In Part Two, Kohn puts to the test his thesis that “Messianism and anarchist socialism will turn Palestine into Zion” (82) and finds that the Zionist movement (rather than his thesis) fails the test. The spiritual Zionism of the prewar period now had to contend with the British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration, as well as with a professionally and politically savvy Zionist leadership cadre invigorated by the new circumstances. This meant placing renewed emphasis on opposition to the nation‑state, which Kohn saw as a principle on the wane. Cuius regio, eius nato (whose realm, his nationality) was a mere doomed echo of its post‑Westphalian forebear, cuius regio, eius religio (whose realm, his religion), and Zionism had an opportunity to be the first national movement to build its common life on a different principle entirely. For Kohn, this was not only a good idea but also expressed the real essence of Judaism itself, of what he called “the political idea of Judaism” (120).

Of course, this dream was not to come true, and Kohn came to see his participation in the Zionist movement as a decades‑long mistake. Nationalism could never be spiritual, there was no way around the state, and ethno‑nationalisms in particular could only lead to barbarity and crime. Part Three tells the story, beginning in the early 1930s with Kohn’s move to the United States and continuing over the next four de‑cades, of Kohn’s transition from leftist Zionist rebel to liberal American Cold Warrior. Only America, Kohn now believed, could represent civic nationalism against the dangers of fascist and communist totalitarian‑ism. Kohn regarded fascism as a horribly exaggerated nationalism gone wrong, evidence of the folly of basing citizenship on nationality. He had a more ambivalent relationship to the Soviet regime, whose nationality policy he initially supported as cutting edge; eventually, however, he

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came to see Russian imperialism as continuous from the czarist era to the communist one. From his time among bi‑nationalist socialist Zionists like Martin Buber, Hugo Bergmann, and Robert Weltsch, Kohn now rubbed shoulders with men like George Kennan, Walter Lippmann, and Henry Kissinger. Gordon also highlights Kohn’s ambivalent relationship to the American Jewish community. On the one hand, Kohn considered the relative social mobility and cultural acceptance of American Jews to be a clear sign of the superiority of the U.S. model of civic national‑ism. On the other hand, he was frustrated by the seeming disinterest among American Jews in actually stepping up to assume leadership of the world Jewish community, as well as by what he dismissively referred to as their “Zionist fellow‑travelling” (an epithet he applied specifically to the leadership of the American Jewish Committee). Like many Yekkes, he never truly felt comfortable with American social norms and mores.

What Gordon conveys throughout this epic narrative is the consis‑tent importance of Kohn’s concerns and his willingness to learn from anyone who would think with him at the level of global order (including conservative German geopolitical thinkers and Austrian economists). “What is fascism? What does it want? What brought it about? What explains its survival, global spread, and success? How can it be stopped and ultimately eradicated” (180)? Kohn answered his questions differ‑ently as his circumstances changed, but anyone interested in them will benefit from Gordon’s incisive, sympathetic, yet critical presentation of his trajectory. Especially since, as Gordon trenchantly concludes, “His Sisyphean struggle with nationalism is now ours” (256).

Samuel Hayim Brody is assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Martin Buber’s Theopolitics.

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Arlo Haskell, The Jews of Key West: Smugglers, Cigar Makers, and Revolutionaries (1823–1969) (Key West, FL: Sand Paper Press, 2017), 200 pp.

Arlo Haskell, the executive director of the Key West Literary Seminar, has written a rich narrative of America’s southernmost Jewish community. His mission is to bring the Jewish presence of Key West into the American experi‑ence. “In all the tales of pirates, wreckers, spongers, and cigar makers collected … by folk historians, Jews were left out. This book strives to recover this lost history and reach a fuller understanding of the island’s past” (169).

Born and raised in the Florida Keys, Haskell’s DNA has been primed for the task. Filling our mind’s eye with images of weathered peddlers, robust merchants, and enterprising shopkeepers plying their wares and hustling travelers and tourists, we meet the folks who were instrumental in developing the culture and infrastructure of the city. Through family anecdotes and personal memoirs, archival photos and historical research, the Jewish evolution of Key West is revealed from the ground up, from the colonial era and the founding of the twenty‑seventh state (1845) through to the end of the 1960s.

For the most part, Haskell has provided a historical context to his narra‑tive that adds a perspective of Southern attitudes and brings a fresh under‑standing to the matter at hand. For example, the new licensing fees of 1860, which taxed every peddler, itinerant trader, and nonresident transient trader, were, in part, a reaction to the increasing conspicuousness of Jews as well as their accommodation to blacks in an environment where a racist mentality prevailed. Similarly, the reader gains insight into the 1892 invitation by lead‑ers of the Cuban Revolutionary Party for Key West Jews to establish a cell of the party (Club Abrabanel): More than just raising funds to support José Martí’s efforts for Cuban independence from Spain, it also featured promi‑nently in the nurturing of future community Zionist leaders such as Louis Fine, who, in 1898, together with R.L. Meyerson and S. Landes, launched Cheiveire Zion, a branch of the Federation of American Zionists.

These textured accounts of individuals and events would have even more bounce if a number of other themes would have been discussed in the narrative. The Sephardim, for example, are only mentioned in passing although they were present in Key West, especially after their expulsion

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from the Ottoman Empire and migration to Cuba before moving on to Miami. Also missing are discussions about the links between Jews build‑ing Jewish infrastructure and economic networks in other cities in Florida (e.g., Pensacola and Jacksonville) in the nineteenth century and Miami in the early twentieth; or how industrialism shaped Jewish growth with the coming of Flagler’s East Coast Railroad (1912) and the introduction of the car and the opening of U.S. Highway 1 in 1938.

Haskell tends toward generalizations without strong evidence‑based data to make arguments and draw conclusions. Jews never made up large numbers, and by 1930, Haskell reports, “oral histories say [that] there were only twelve Jewish families remaining” (131). Thus, like many microhistories of a place, Haskell has given visibility and shape to the contribution of Jews but has overstated their influence and understated global and regional ripples that have played an intrinsic role. It is not that Jews were not present during Prohibition, in smuggling activities, in coming to Key West as illegal immigrants, and in assisting others to come as illegal immigrants; it is rather how much weight one gives to them in these various activities. Do a few individuals represent a com‑munal effort? Scholars such as Paul George, who have plowed some of the field before Haskell, have come to a different conclusion.

The strength of the book are the verbatim accounts by Jewish witness‑es, the illustrative images accompanying the text, the treatment of how Jewish institutions developed and by whom, and how Judaism and Jewish life grew and thrived in spite of natural disasters (hurricanes), economic downturns (government policies and the Depression), and antisemitism (KKK). Arlo Haskell’s chronicling of the story of Key West Jews has opened new doors for researchers and for those who visit Key West. It is a valuable template for all who seek to learn about local Jewish history and mine the materials around them with a forensic eye to bring to life the experiences and stories of those who forged American Jewish life.

Henry Green is the former director of Judaic/Sephardic Studies at the University of Miami, Florida, is the founding director of MOSAIC: the Jewish Museum of Florida, and is the executive director of Sephardi Voices, an audio-visual project to collect and archive the testimonies of Jews dis-placed from the Arab world post-World War II.

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Jenna Weissman Joselit, Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 160 pp.

Most of America’s foundational texts—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—are readily accessible in origi‑nal form, housed in archives and digitally reproduced so Americans can study both form and content. That is, with at least one glaring omission: the Ten Commandments. Theories and speculation about their existence and fate abound, but Jenna Weisman Joselit argues compellingly that, for Americans, their physical absence has largely been irrelevant. In Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments, Joselit sets out to explain how the commandments came to be “an expansive American phenomenon rather than a strictly denominational one” (6). The Ten Commandments, Joselit suggests, “furnished America with a pedigree. The Old World had its castles and coats of arms. The New World had the Ten Commandments.” The commandments, and the biblical covenant they signified, bestowed on the nation a “sense of election, buttressing its claim to be a latter‑day Promised Land” (159).

To make this argument, Joselit chronicles how Americans have fash‑ioned their own versions of the Ten Commandments just about every‑where, and in a dazzling array of mediums. Americans literalized the commandments, and thus Joselit organizes her chapters around the physical elements they used: stone, paper, stained glass, and film. Rather than focusing on the well‑tread ground of theological, philosophical, and judicial dimensions of the ancient text, Joselit seeks to explain how and why “tangible, visual expressions of the biblical prescriptions opened a can of worms—over and over again” (6). Thus, the reader encounters seemingly endless iterations of the Decalogue: bookends, bookmarks, illustrated versions, cake toppers, bumper stickers, bracelets, and more.

The first three chapters of Set in Stone explore “how Americans imagined the Ten Commandments into being, positioned them above and below the earth’s surface, translated them into the vernacular, and rendered them common ground” (8). Joselit begins in the summer of 1860 in Newark, Ohio, where a local resident claimed to have exca‑vated two ancient stone versions of the Ten Commandments from a

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Native American burial mound. Controversy ensued not only as to their authenticity but also their origins; the resident claimed that they must have been brought to North America by members of one of the ancient tribes of Israel. Joselit plumbs the controversy to demonstrate the extent to which Americans throughout the country had embraced the commandments, “rooting them as much in the American psyche as in its landscape” (23). Such excavations to recover versions of the Ten Commandments have continued into the twenty‑first century. Amateur archeologists have turned their attention to recovering another version of the commandments buried in the sand dunes just north of Santa Barbara, California: the set of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 film The Ten Commandments. More easily accessible than DeMille’s buried set, how‑ever, are the more than one hundred stone monolithic monuments erected by Paramount Pictures and the Fraternal Order of Eagles around the country to mark the release of DeMille’s second version of The Ten Commandments in 1956. Again, controversy abounded. The American Jewish Congress (AJC) found fault with the Eagles’ monument text, written by a representative from each of the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish communities of Minnesota (where the Eagles were headquar‑tered). The text combined elements of each religion’s slightly different versions of the commandments. As Joselit argues, the AJC believed that the reworked text was “less a demonstration of goodwill and brother‑hood or an expression of fidelity to a common set of biblical values than a sleight of hand, a strategic move to render the biblical commandments nonsectarian and hence noncontroversial,” thus smoothing their place‑ment on public land (37–39). Opposition to the monuments was un‑derstood to be a Jewish issue, one that neither Protestants nor Catholics took up. Ultimately, neither did the AJC. Not only were they unable to muster external support, but Joselit suggests that the AJC did not want to inhibit efforts of Jews to fit in. In doing so, they contributed to the construction of the Ten Commandments as the “stuff of common ground and consensus, or what would increasingly become known as the ‘Judeo‑Christian tradition’” (43). Joselit reminds scholars that be‑neath the discourse of midcentury religious pluralism lurked nuanced disagreements and dissent.

In Chapter Two, Joselit recounts a series of readjustments—a

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“collective change of heart”—toward the Decalogue beginning in the late‑nineteenth century. Joselit argues that the commandments under‑went a “subtle dethroning that would generate increasingly insistent questions about their role in modern society” (55). Growing fields of biblical criticism and archeology raised questions about truth that did not entirely displace the commandments, but Joselit sees a “chipping away of the commandments’ moral suasion, a weakening of their hold on the American body politic” (62). Instead, Joselit argues that the Ten Commandments were reframed “as a series of gentle cautions and help‑ful hints. Brought down from on high and thrust into the center of daily life, where compliance was encouraged rather than mandated,” the Ten Commandments were reworked into advice and self‑help books (64). The structure, language, and sensibility of the commandments were applied to arenas as diverse as love, gardening, citizenship, and beauty in an increasingly messy and unpredictable modern world. Thus, the Ten Commandments became more commonplace and colloquial. Joselit avoids a narrative of declension, however, by arguing that the “vernacular embrace of the divine commandments” represented an expansion of their reach into the crevices of modern American life (76).

In the second half of the book, Joselit turns her attention to the ways American Jews embraced the Ten Commandments as visual markers of the compatibility of their dual identities. In San Francisco in 1905, Shearith Israel installed a stained‑glass window that depicted Moses descending from El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, surrounded by the flora and fauna indigenous to California. As Joselit describes it, by situating the Ten Commandments in the American landscape, the stained‑glass window became a “visual declaration of American Jewry’s commitment to the New World” (92). By the post‑World War II era, the commandments “functioned much like an oversized mezuzah, or better yet, as a giant explanation point – we belong!” and signaled to Protestants, Catholics, and Jews their shared values. The command‑ments, now recognized as an American symbol, acted as the “visual companion” to Will Herberg’s tri‑faith civil religion of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews (99).

Both of DeMille’s iterations of The Ten Commandments contribut‑ed to the transformation of the Decalogue from Jewish to American,

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“reclassif[iying] the covenant between God and the Israelites as a cov‑enant between God and the American people” (124–125). This reclassi‑fication, in turn, reframed American Jews as the “latter‑day descendants” of the Israelites to “feel at home in America, to see themselves as progeni‑tors of the national narrative rather than as interlopers or johnny‑come‑latelies” (124–125). The annual showing of The Ten Commandments on ABC on the Sunday between Passover and Easter has carried this legacy forward, ritually marking ecumenical understanding and underscoring the relationship between faith and freedom.

Joselit’s style and prose are accessible and engaging, especially for popular audiences and undergraduate classrooms. Yet her analytical ar‑gument is almost buried, obscuring the links between her work and the voluminous literature on American Jewish identity negotiations and, especially, post–World War II interfaith efforts. Joselit is also notably silent on the larger American and global contexts for the transformation of the commandments into American symbols, most notably the emer‑gence of the Cold War and the establishment of the State of Israel. This is, at least in part, a casualty of Joselit’s decision to organize her material thematically, which forces her to jump around in time and obscures the nuanced historical context for all the iterations she so deftly describes. Joselit’s tour of the Ten Commandments is, nevertheless, notable for bridging the wide gap between academic and general audiences, and it is exemplary in its attempt to tell a series of “tautly told tales” in which physical manifestations of the Ten Commandments provoked immense discussion and controversy.

Katherine Rosenblatt is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Religion and the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. Her book, Cooperative Battlegrounds, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

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Rachel Kranson, Ambivalent Embrace: Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 216 pp.

Rachel Kranson’s Ambivalent Embrace: Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar America tells an often‑surprising story of American Jewish life in the 1950s. Typically understood as a time of Jewish accommodation to larger trends in American social, cultural, and political life, the early postwar years, as chronicled by Kranson, offer instead a deep, rich, and sometimes counterintuitive narrative of Jewish America. In both their engagements in predominately non‑Jewish communities as well as their understandings of what it meant to be Jewish, postwar Jews followed pathways at odds with our historical and historiographical understand‑ings of the era. In a volume full of wonderful surprises that make perfect sense, Kranson succeeds in redefining the American Jewish 1950s and its impact on later decades.

Kranson argues a number of provocative theses. While the 1950s marked a rapid Jewish climb up the social mobility ladder, Ambivalent Embrace documents the ways that Jews “continued to identify with the Jewish history of poverty, even as their fortunes grew” (3). As Kranson explains, postwar Jews grew anxious as a result of “dissonance between the financial and social successes of midcentury American Jews and their deeply felt histories of exclusion and want” (3). With this, the volume explores an area of thin historiographic interest: the ways in which post‑war Jews flinched in the face of seemingly unqualified American success. As Kranson concludes, her “intention is neither to celebrate Jewish financial success nor to echo the critics of the era who condemned post‑war Jewish culture as shallow, inauthentic, or destined for decline” (16).

Ambivalent Embrace offers six chapters as well as a conclusion. It opens with “Materially Poor, Spiritually Rich: Poverty in the Postwar Jewish Imagination,” which adds to recent historical work on the nos‑talgic power of the shtetl and the Lower East Side. Kranson describes the search for a Jewish authenticity, informed as well by the creation of the State of Israel and its impact on American Jews. Chapter Two, an exploration of Jewish liberalism and postwar politics, chronicles Jewish concern that material prosperity would pressure a political move to the

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right. Kranson finds that Jewish voting “showed that instead of ‘convert‑ing’ to the Republican party, new suburbanites tended to retain the po‑litical affiliations that they had known in the city” (48). The religious im‑pact of suburbanization, the subject of Chapter Three, applies Kranson’s dialectic to Judaism and specifically to the ways postwar Jews sought to maintain a sense of faith. She focuses on synagogue models, telling the story of rabbis who navigated their desire to bring congregants closer to Judaism even as suburban life offered challenges to their work.

This book gifts its readers with deeper insights into a variety of important historiographic themes. Chapters Four and Five, covering masculinity in postwar Jewish America as well as middle‑class Jewish femininity, apply research and approaches from gender studies to men and women in 1950s Jewish America. Kranson tells the stories of (male) rabbis and the ways in which the rapid economic mobility of their con‑gregants threatened to undermine their own sense of masculinity. In a chapter focused on the impact of Hadassah, the author describes how “the gender patterns of suburbia … offered unprecedented opportunities for women to become leaders in religious and civic life” (116–117). The last chapter sets up the Jewish 1950s as the antecedent to the counter‑cultural protests of the 1960s and beyond.

Ambivalent Embrace undermines much that scholars have accepted as fact about the early postwar years. It forces a re‑evaluation of many academic assumptions just as it, with great deft, weaves the field’s latest historiographic insights into this era. Kudos to Kranson for taking a subject that seemed, on the surface, flat, and injecting it with complex‑ity and deeper meaning.

Marc Dollinger holds the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Social Responsibility at San Francisco State University. He is the author of Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America; California Jews, co-edited with Ava Kahn; American Jewish History: A Primary Source Reader, co-edited with Gary Zola; and Black Power/Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s.

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James Loeffler, Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 384 pp.

Over the past decade, the historiography on Zionism has undergone something of a renaissance. Where older studies focused mostly on orga‑nizational histories, regional developments, and individual biographies, the latest works have attempted to situate Zionism within international political, cultural, and intellectual contexts. These new histories have jettisoned the assumption that, from its inception, Zionists sought an independent state, illustrating instead how Zionist political thought on the question of sovereignty evolved considerably. Recent works have transcended ubiquitous Zionist rhetoric about the pitfalls of living in dispersion by illuminating how Zionists advocated not just for a Jewish center in Palestine but also embraced visions of a Jewish collective that would span the Middle East, Europe, and America. They have added contingency, finally, to the unlikely history of Israel’s founding by show‑ing how Zionism in the early twentieth century operated within a larger universe of Jewish nationalism and internationalism populated by non‑ or anti‑Zionists, such as socialists, autonomists, and territorialists, who competed with Zionist visions of Jewish politics.

James Loeffler’s remarkable new book, Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, deepens these interpretive tracks, offering new insight into the interface between Zionism and Jewish internationalism. Written in stimulating prose and bringing to light exciting archival research, this prosopography tells the story of how five Zionist and non‑Zionist Jewish‑rights defenders pursued varying understandings of human rights before and following World War II.

The book begins by exploring the legal scholarship and political activ‑ism of three men, Herschel Lauterpacht, Jacob Robinson, and Maurice Perlzweig, all of whom made the case for a Zionist internationalism that merged support for a Jewish national home in Palestine with collective rights. These collective rights for Jews and the many other minorities of interwar Europe would be guaranteed, the three men hoped, by the force of international law vested in the League of Nations. The book then turns to the conceptual world and political lobbying of Jacob Blaustein

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and his confreres in the American Jewish Committee (AJC) who, during and after World War II, sought an “anti‑nationalist gospel of human rights” via the United Nations (UN) that would ensure individual—not collective—liberties for all, much to the consternation of the Zionist internationalists. The final section of the book chronicles how a third iteration of human rights, one that privileged anticolonial self‑deter‑mination over collective minority as well as individual human rights, gained credence in the halls of the UN, marking the defeat of Zionist internationalism and leading to the ostracizing of Jewish NGOs and Israel at the UN through the 1960s and 1970s. The book pays particu‑lar attention to how the conflict between old and new understandings of human rights played out in Amnesty International, a human rights NGO founded by one‑time Zionist and Perlzweig pupil Peter Benenson.

Loeffler succeeds at telling a fascinating story of how the biogra‑phies of his protagonists intersected, all while advancing compelling arguments and recovering untold episodes concerning the overlapping histories of Zionism, internationalism, and human rights. One of the book’s chief contentions is that the origins of the human rights move‑ment lay not in the horrors of the Holocaust, nor in the universalist imperatives of a putative Judeo‑Christian tradition, but rather in the interwar Zionist goal of securing collective rights for Jews and other minorities living in the newly founded states of Central and Eastern Europe even as Zionists had been granted a national home as part of the British Mandate over Palestine. The distinctly European political and intellectual conditions that fostered Robinson’s, Lauterpacht’s, and Perlzweig’s merging of a particular minority’s collective rights within a universalist program of international law sets the stage for Loeffler to juxtapose the Zionists’ views with those of Jacob Blaustein. Loeffler ex‑plains how Blaustein’s individualist conception of human rights that so befuddled the Zionist internationalists drew from American iterations of liberalism, idiosyncratic American Jewish political needs, and larger American Cold War foreign policy imperatives. Rooted Cosmopolitans’s incorporation of the AJC’s human rights vision within a wider story of Jewish internationalism will therefore be of special interest to American Jewish historians committed to comprehending familiar historical nar‑ratives within a broader transnational optic.

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The centering of interwar Zionism in the history of Jewish interna‑tionalism, minority rights, and human rights, however, can sometimes obscure as much as it reveals. Rooted Cosmopolitans gives the impres‑sion that Zionists were the leading theorizers and proponents of Jewish internationalism in the interwar years. This elides the rich history of the fusion between Yiddish socialism and nationalist autonomy that percolated in the early twentieth century. Such was manifested, for in‑stance, in the career of the peripatetic intellectual Chaim Zhitlowsky, a transnational figure in his own right whom Loeffler mentions in pass‑ing but whose views on Yiddish culture, nationalist autonomy, and geopolitics do not receive the airing they deserve. The book neglects to probe, moreover, how the stalwarts of interwar Zionist international‑ism grappled with the challenges of statehood—and the existence of a substantial Arab minority within the state of Israel—after 1948. As one example, it is not at all clear how someone like Robinson, who served as an esteemed Israeli diplomat following the state’s founding, reconciled his longstanding commitment to collective minority rights during the interwar period with the state’s unwillingness to extend the same to Arabs.

Nevertheless, these are minor quibbles with a first‑rate history of Jewish internationalism in the twentieth century that, in its claim that Zionism and human rights at one time complemented rather than con‑tradicted one another, will be sure to challenge contemporary partisans on the left and the right alike. It should command the serious attention of generalists and specialists in the fields of modern Jewish history, American Jewish history, the history of Israel, international legal history, and twentieth‑century geopolitics.

Judah Bernstein recently completed his doctorate at New York University in the Departments of History and Hebrew & Judaic Studies. He wrote on the history of Zionism in the United States in the early twentieth century. He was a Joseph and Eva R. Dave Fellow at the American Jewish Archives.

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Rafael Medoff, ed., Too Little, and Almost Too Late: The War Refugee Board and America’s Response to the Holocaust (Washington, D.C.: The David S. Wyman Institute For Holocaust Studies, 2017), 314 pp.

Rafael Medoff’s edited book incisively shares a number of stories and thoughts about the War Refugee Board (WRB) and, more generally, the U.S. government response to the plight of Jews trapped in Europe dur‑ing the Holocaust. Some of the material is not new, as the articles borrow substantively from previously published works. What is new, however, are many questions that are both implicitly and explicitly raised about the Roosevelt administration’s—and America’s—conflicted response to European Jewish refugees. The book also looks at various organizations that strove valiantly but futilely to help those caught in Hitler’s desires to destroy Europe’s Jews. Sadly, Medoff’s work is particularly timely today, given the many questions and critical thoughts offered about current American policies toward immigrants at its southern borders.

This collection of articles makes little effort to allow the main ac‑tors of U.S. government policy to escape withering judgments about their failures to help European Jews survive the Holocaust. For exam‑ple, Sharon Lowenstein’s “A New Deal for Refugees,” first offered in 1982, is reprinted to offer a history of some of the efforts of the War Refugee Board, which was created in 1944 by the ever politically sensi‑tive Franklin Roosevelt to counteract “Zionist” outrage at his failures to do little to bomb Auschwitz, to follow through on directives to support partisan efforts to help Jews, and most important, to view Jewish needs as valuable or important beyond “winning the war.”

Throughout this volume, other writers—Medoff, Laurel Leff, and Karen Sutton, in particular—mete out written wrath toward Breckinridge Long and fellow workers in the State Department, includ‑ing Carlton J.H. Hayes, for “slowing down” and “refusing” directives to save Jews; toward various American newspapers, such as The New York Times, for not taking seriously reports of mass murders forwarded to them by Jewish agencies and European partisans; toward the British government for its cold and calculated unconcern with European Jewish lives in Nazi‑dominated countries as well as Palestine; and even toward

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Jewish leaders in the United States, such as Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who put their own narcissistic needs for stature against other Jewish leaders who had hoped to save European Jews.

But primary source interviews with Josiah DuBois and John Pehle, heads of the WRB, and articles about the WRB and U.S. institutional policies are terribly important to address issues from the past as well as issues today. Searing questions such as, “Why did Roosevelt respond so politically to the Nazi atrocities?” or, “What prompted certain agen‑cies and leaders to help spearhead efforts to move beyond antisemitic or tepid responses to the fate of European Jewish refugees?” also force students to think about, “What does this say about American response to immigration crises that are so prevalent today?” The answers carefully parse a series of factors: white Anglo‑Saxon American and British refusal to respond empathetically to “other” refugee needs outside the United States; potential class concerns among haves and have‑nots in America that promote xenophobic responses to new immigration; the sacrifice of ethical concerns to political prerogatives of sitting presidents; as well as internecine warfare within government branches and agencies that prevent thoughtful but necessary efforts to solve refugee problems that plague wealthier societies throughout the world.

This is an important and well‑researched book for many reasons—but most of all for its insistence that students of Holocaust, American immigration policy, and American military and social history grapple with questions and answers that are intensely complex and sometimes very unsatisfying. It is, particularly, a must‑read today to provide some historical perspective on present‑day heated discussions over American values.

Mark Cowett has published previously on Jacob Billikopf; Rabbi Morris Newfield; Birmingham, Alabama; and Southern Jews. Now retired after forty years of teaching, he is currently researching Jewish social welfare in Cincinnati.

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Shari Rabin, Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: New York University Press 2017), 192 pp.

Scholars of immigration have toiled for years on the question of how mobility affects nationalities and group identities alike. In Jews on the Frontier, Shari Rabin gives this framework an interesting twist by inves‑tigating mobility’s influence on religion. By relying on personal letters, published articles, and other first‑hand testimonies, Rabin argues that the expanding United States created a uniquely American religion.

Whereas travel throughout Europe for Jews in the late eighteenth century was impeded by bureaucratic states (e.g., Russia, [19–20]), Jews in the United States traveled relatively freely. Such unencumbered mo‑bility caused a strain for the Jewish faith (and for other organizations, as well), which sought to standardize practices of its believers. As Rabin notes, “the mobility that inspired them also challenged their cohesion and consistency” (32).

Opportunities for personal renewal or adventure lured many European Jews to distant locations in today’s West or Midwest. In re‑sponse to the scarcity of formalized traditions there, Jewishness some‑times adapted local circumstances, constituting itself through civic or‑ganizations and bending to economic demands like working on the Sabbath, for example. Culture also shifted, and here the study is espe‑cially intriguing. “Seeking stability and identity in the face of logistical challenges,” Rabin writes, “Jews embraced ideals like romantic love, the nurture of children, and sentimentalized death, which could serve the fulfillment of traditional Jewish strictures but could also hinder, redirect, or expand them.” Often, they were without “the materials of traditional Judaism,” such as kosher meat or Torah scrolls (59, 78).

The evidence illuminates this study’s arguments, but the author might have presented a table of all informants and sources to give the reader a sense of how representative, or exhaustive, the study claims to be. Without it, we are left with intriguing but sometimes frustrating pas‑sages, like, “Indeed, American Jews belonged—and sort of belonged, and didn’t belong—to a range of social groupings, of which congrega‑tions seem to have been one of the less popular options,” or, “Amidst this

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chaos, some Jews would join congregations and others would not; some would marry Jews and others would not; some would keep kosher and others would not; and some would perceive God as mandating halakhic observance, while others would see divine will as requiring only good behavior” (53, 98). We see the points on the graph here, but what is the overall trend? This frustration is, perhaps, a critique applicable to most studies reliant upon cultural history, a frustration impossible to resolve definitively, but an important issue nevertheless. Despite this, one does come away from the study with a sense of the ad hoc nature of American Jewishness and how it was influenced by U.S. expansionism.

Finally, an unresolved historical dilemma suffuses the text: Is this study restricted to “the frontier,” or is it arguing for a unique Jewish tradition nationwide in scope? Some evidence presented—coming from The Occident and American Jewish Advocate, published in Philadelphia, and with passages originating in Newark, New Jersey (42) and Mobile, Alabama (43)—creates a productive tension between frontier and na‑tion. Other evidence clearly comes from Jews on the fringes of American settlements further west and adheres to the titular framework. This push and pull might have been addressed more systematically, but the ques‑tions that arise from it (e.g., what was the relationship between frontier and nation?) make the topic all the more relevant and important, espe‑cially for the nineteenth century.

Andrew Offenburger is assistant professor of history at Miami University.

Acquisitions


Select Acquisitions 2017

Anshe Chesed Congregation (Vicksburg, MS)Records including bylaws, correspondence, building plans, scrapbooks, and rabbis’ papers, 1940–2004.

Received from Anshe Chesed Congregation, Vicksburg, MS

Aron, IsaPapers of Professor Isa Aron related to the Experiment in Congregation Education, 1978–2008.

Received from Isa Aron, Los Angeles, CA

Association of Holocaust OrganizationsRecords including correspondence, conference materials, publications, and member lists; records and publications of member organizations, 1984–2017.

Received from William Schulman, Hollis, NY

Bennett, AllenPersonal papers and correspondence of Rabbi Allen Bennett, 1990–1997.

Received from Allen Bennett, San Francisco, CA

Beth-El Congregation (Fort Worth, TX)Records and papers of Beth‑El Congregation and Congregation Ahavath Sholom (Fort Worth, TX), including membership lists, anniversary books, prayer services, and bulletins, 1932–2016.

Received from Hollace Weiner, Fort Worth, TX

Brant, NancyPapers including personal records, correspondence, genealogical research files, and writings, 1910–2003.

Received from Joseph A. Brant, Cincinnati, OH

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Cohen, Stephen P. Papers of Middle East scholar Stephen P. Cohen, including correspon‑dence, writings, recorded interviews, and research material, 1980–2017.

Received from Stephen and Elaine Cohen, Teaneck, NJ

Congregation Beth Israel (West Hartford, CT)Minute book of annual meetings including clippings about the congre‑gation and its rabbis, along with an English translation of early German entries, 1870–1919.

Received from Congregation Beth Israel, West Hartford, CT

Congregation Beth Israel (Springfield, MA)Records including correspondence, Men’s Club files, and cemetery re‑cords, 1950–1960.

Received from Elliot Gertel, Chicago, IL

Congregation B’nai Israel (Petoskey, MI)Records including bulletins, sermons, Sisterhood papers, and congrega‑tional histories, 1955–2004.

Received from Congregation B’nai Israel, Petoskey, MI

Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (Short Hills, NJ)Records and papers including correspondence, news clippings, and board and committee meeting minutes, 1947–1967.

Received from Alice Lutwak, Executive Director, Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, Short Hills, NJ

Eisendrath, MauriceManuscripts and typescripts of sermons written by Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, together with scans of the sermons, and published sermons in “Holy Blossom Pulpit,” 1927–1941, undated.

Received from Holy Blossom Temple, Toronto, ON, Canada

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Frishman, ElysePapers of Rabbi Elyse Frishman pertaining to her work on the Mishkan T’filah project, including correspondence, notes, and drafts, 1990–2003.

Received from Elyse Frishman, Franklin Lakes, NJ

Hallo, William W.Student papers, research files, teaching material, and records of Professor William Hallo’s tenure as professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale University, c. 1951–2014.

Received from Ralph E. Hallo and Jacqueline Hallo, Hamden, CT

Heller, MeyerSermons of Rabbi Meyer Heller, 1970–1983.

Received from Temple Emanuel, Beverly Hills, CA

Jewish Lights PublishingRecords including administrative files, catalogs, and book reviews, 1990–2016.

Received from Stuart Matlins, Woodstock, VT

Kohn, SharonPersonal papers including files from Cantor Sharon Kohn’s service at HUC‑JIR Cincinnati and Congregation B’nai Jehudah (Kansas City, MO), and records of the American Conference of Cantors, 1985–2014.

Received from Sharon Kohn, Kansas City, MO

Langer-Winer familyPapers of Hajnalka Langer Winer, Herman Leo Winer, and their fam‑ily, including correspondence, genealogical records, writings, and oral history interviews, 1905–2006.

Received from Lise Winer, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Lee, Barton G.Prayer services prepared by Rabbi Barton Lee for Hillel at Arizona State University.

Received from Barton G. Lee, Tempe, AZ

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Manuel D. & Rhoda Mayerson Jewish Community Center (Cincinnati, OH)Records including board minutes, correspondence, programming mate‑rial, and photographs, 1950–2017.

Received from Manuel D. & Rhoda Mayerson Jewish Community Center, Cincinnati, OH

Miles, Stanley R.Papers and correspondence of Rabbi Stanley Miles, along with records of Temple Sinai (Lake Charles, LA) and Temple Shalom (Louisville, KY), 1975–2016.

Received from Stanley R. Miles, Louisville, KY

Neshama: Association of Jewish ChaplainsRecords including correspondence, committee reports, conference ma‑terials, and papers of former director Robert Tabak, 1990–2017.

Received from Rafael Goldstein, Executive Director, Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains, Davie, FL

Ostfeld, Barbara J.Papers of Cantor Barbara Ostfeld including correspondence, writings, student papers, audio recordings, and photographs, 1971–2010.

Received from Barbara J. Ostfeld, Amherst, NY

Roth, Harry A. Correspondence, sermons, writings, and other personal papers of Rabbi Harry Roth and family, 1928–2011.

Received from Harry A. Roth, Los Angeles, CA, and Max Roth, Lennox, MA

Rudin, Jacob PhilipLetters between Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Rabbi Jacob Rudin, together with other correspondence of Rabbi Wise, 1910–1948.

Received from Stephen Rudin, Manhasset, NY

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Shapiro, Mark DovShabbat and Holy Day prayer services by Rabbi Mark Shapiro, along with records of Sinai Temple (Springfield, MA).

Received from Mark Dov Shapiro, Springfield, MA

Silver, Abba HillelDigitized audio recordings of sermons delivered by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, along with his program, “What is Judaism?” 1956–1962.

Received from Gail Malevan LeBauer, Greensboro, NC

Sokobin, Alan M. and Miriam L.Personal papers including correspondence and memorials for Miriam L. Sokobin; National Federation of Temple Youth records including letters from students and programming material; biographical film “Rabbi Sokobin: Senior Rabbi, Temple, Congregation Shome Emunim”; 1970–2017.

Received from Alan Sokobin, Toledo, OH

Spicehandler, EzraAudio recordings of a series of oral history interviews with Rabbi Ezra Spicehandler conducted by Dr. Barry Kogan, 2004–2009.

Received from Barry Kogan, Cincinnati, OH

Stix, CharlesPhoto album containing photographs of Charles Stix and family, as well as family members’ gravestones, and photographs of historic Cincinnati, OH, 1862–2008.

Received from Charles Stix, Cincinnati, OH

Tabak, Robert P.Personal and professional papers of Rabbi Robert Tabak including corre‑spondence, sermons, and files related to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, 1970–2017.

Received from Robert P. Tabak, Melrose Park, PA

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Temple Emanuel (Baltimore, MD)Congregational records including board minutes, constitution and by‑laws, Sisterhood files, and temple bulletins, 1955–2016.

Received from Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, Baltimore, MD

Temple Emanu-El of West Essex (Livingston, NJ)Congregational records including board minutes, membership files, bul‑letins, commemorative anniversary books, and audio‑visual recordings of temple events, 1960–2016.

Received from Temple Emanu-El of West Essex, Livingston, NJ

Temple Israel (Dayton, OH)Phonograph records and audiocassettes with recordings of services, per‑formances, and lectures given at Temple Israel, 1947–2001.

Received from Temple Israel, Dayton, OH

Waranch, HeleneFiles of Helene Waranch from her tenure as President of Women of Reform Judaism, 2001–2005; together with creative services she col‑lected for Shabbat, Havdalah, and installations, 1981–2006.

Received from Helene Waranch, Baltimore, MD

Windmueller, StevenPapers of Professor Steven Windmueller, including correspondence, writings, lectures, and teaching material, 1989–2012.

Received from HUC-JIR, Los Angeles, CA

Wise, Isaac MayerCollection of items belonging to Isaac Mayer Wise and family including photographs and portraits; inscribed pewter and silver flatware; pendu‑lum clock with marble base, presented to Wise by B’nai B’rith Mount Carmel Lodge No. 20, 1881–1934.

Received from Nancy Blase, Seattle, WA

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Women’s Rabbinic NetworkRecords including presidents’ files, correspondence, minutes, newslet‑ters, conference materials, and audio recordings, 1977–2012.

Received from Jacqueline Koch Ellenson, New York, NY

Young JudeaRecords of Young Judea including programming material and periodi‑cals, 1959–1993.

Received from Zoe Boniface, Cincinnati, OH

Zelizer, GeraldCorrespondence, sermons, and writings of Rabbi Gerald Zelizer, along with records relating to the Rabbinical Assembly and Temple Neve Shalom (Metuchen, NJ), 1970–2010.

Received from Gerald Zelizer, Metuchen, NJ

Zoberman, IsraelBook reviews by Rabbi Israel Zoberman, and records of his statements read before Congress, 2017.

Received from Israel Zoberman, Virginia Beach, VA

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Engaging TorahModern Perspectives on the Hebrew Bibleedited by Walter Homolka and Aaron PankenEminent Jewish scholars from around the world present introductions to the different parts of the Bible. The essays

encompass a general introduction to the Torah in Jewish life, and include specific essays on each of the Five Books of Moses, as well as on the Haftarot, Neviim, and Ketuvim. The contributions provide an overview of the core content of each book as well as highlight central themes and the reception and relevance of these themes in Jewish life. 131pp (Hebrew Union College Press, April 2018) paperback, 9780878201594, $26.95PDF e-book, 9780822983033, $26.95

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Agony in the PulpitJewish Preaching in Response to Nazi Persecution and Mass Murder 1933–1945by Marc SapersteinMany scholars have focused on contemporary sources pertaining to the Nazi

persecution and mass murder of Jews between 1933 and 1945, but the sermons delivered by rabbis describing and protesting against the ever-growing oppression of European Jews have been largely neglected. Agony in the Pulpit is a response to this neglect, and to the accusations made by respected figures that Jewish leaders remained silent in the wake of catastrophe. 1200pp (Hebrew Union College Press, June 2018)hardcover, 9780822945178, $99.00PDF e-book, 9780822983088, $99.00

On the Surface of SilenceThe Last Poems of Lea Goldbergtranslated by Rachel Tzvia BackOn the Surface of Silence

offers for the first time in English the final poems of Lea Goldberg, pre-eminent and central figure of modern Hebrew poetry. These extraordinary texts exhibit a level of lyrical distillation and formal boldness that mark them as distinctive in the poet's oeuvre, enacting and manifesting a poetics of intrepid truth-telling. Bilingual edition.192pp (Hebrew Union College Press, May 2017)paperback, 9780822964902, $24.95PDF e-book, 9780822982869, $24.95

Defining IsraelThe Jewish State, Democracy, and the Lawedited by Simon RabinovitchDefining Israel brings together influential scholars, journalists, and politicians, observers and participants, opponents and proponents, Jews and Arabs,

all debating the merits and meaning of Israel’s proposed nation-state laws. Together with translations of each draft law and other key documents, the essays and sources in this book are essential to understand the ongoing debate over what it means for Israel to be a Jewish and democratic state.c.300pp (Hebrew Union College Press, July 2018) paperback, 9780878201624, $35.95PDF e-book, 9780878201631, $35.95

2018-2019 Fellows


2018–2019 Fellows

The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives welcomes the following twenty‑two scholars as 2018–2019 Fellows to the Barrows‑Loebelson Family Reading Room located on the historic Cincinnati campus of the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion.

Oksana BaigentKyiv‑Mohyla Academy, Ukraine

The American Council for Judaism FellowshipHistory of Travel and Identity Among German Jews in Nineteenth-

Century America

Elazar Ben LuluBen‑Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

The American Council for Judaism FellowshipRitual, Gender, Performance, and Recognition in Israeli Reform

Congregations

Hagit Cohen, PhDOpen University, Israel

The Joseph and Eva R. Dave FellowshipJewish Women in the American Communist Party, 1923–1954

Max DanielUCLA

The Rabbi Joachim Prinz Memorial FellowshipThe Sephardic Century: Ethnic Formation and Sephardic Jews in 20th

Century America

Matthew Dougherty, PhDRyerson University, Canada

The Rabbi Joachim Prinz Memorial FellowshipLand of the Jewish Indians: Religion and the Struggle for Territory in

Early America

2018-2019 Fellows


Joshua Furman, PhDRice University

The Rabbi Theodore S. Levy Tribute FellowshipA History of the Jews in Houston

Eric Goldstein, PhDEmory University

The Loewenstein-Wiener FellowshipTurning a Page: How Reading Transformed Jewish Life in America and

Eastern Europe

Martin JostDubnow Institute, Leipzig

The Loewenstein-Wiener FellowshipThe Évian Conference, 1938: History and Memory

Omer LachmanHebrew University, Israel

The Loewenstein-Wiener FellowshipAmerican Jewish Organizations and Jewish Immigrants Outside the U.S.,

1921–1929

Yael LeviHebrew University, Israel

The Bernard and Audre Rapoport FellowshipThe Emergence of Hebrew and Yiddish Print in the United States During

the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

Danny LuzonUC Berkeley

The Sherry Levy-Reiner FellowshipJewish American Multilingual Literature During the Mass Migration Era

2018-2019 Fellows


Samira Mehta, PhDAlbright University

The Rabbi Theodore S. Levy Tribute FellowshipReligion and Contraception, 1955–Present

Andreas PfuetznerUniversity of Vienna, Austria

The Loewenstein-Wiener FellowshipThe Romanian-Jewish Question, 1856–1919

Shari Rabin, PhDCollege of Charleston

The Herbert R. Bloch Jr. Memorial FellowshipAged and Infirm: Life and Death in a Jewish Home, 1881–1935

Carlota Matesanz SanchioliUniversity of Madrid, Spain

The Bernard and Audre Rapoport FellowshipUnderstanding and Confronting Antisemitism in the United States: The

Role of the Anti-Defamation League, 1945–2000

Esther Schor, PhDPrinceton University

The Bernard and Audre Rapoport FellowshipThe Life and Times of Horace Kallen

Yitzchak SchwartzNew York University

The Bernard and Audre Rapoport FellowshipLiberalism, Secularization, and American Religion, 1843–1900

Dana Smith, PhDCenter for Jewish History

The Rabbi Harold D. Hahn Memorial FellowshipHistory of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 1920–2020

2018-2019 Fellows


Benjamin SteinerBrandeis University

The Starkoff FellowshipThe Fight for the Soul of Indian Jewry, 1959–1960

Hilit Surowitz-Israel, PhDRutgers University

The Frankel Family FellowshipAmerican Diasporas: The Creolization of Religion in the Colonial

Atlantic World

Lucas WilsonFlorida Atlantic University

The Rabbi Ferdinand Isserman Memorial FellowshipThe Structures of Postmemory: Portraits of the Post-Holocaust Home in

Second-Generation Holocaust Literature

Melissa YoungUniversity of Alabama

The Rabbi Joachim Prinz Memorial FellowshipThe Development and Memory of Birmingham’s Jewish Community,

1871–1950

Boards and Councils


Academic Advisory & Editorial Board

Dr. Jonathan D. Sarna, Co-ChairBrandeis University, Waltham, MA

Gary P. Zola, Co-ChairThe Marcus Center, Cincinnati, OH

Dr. Martin A. CohenHUC-JIR, New York, NYDr. Norman J. CohenHUC-JIR, New York, NY

Dr. David DalinBrandeis University, Waltham, MA

Ms. Lisa B. FrankelThe Marcus Center, Cincinnati, OH

Dr. Dana HermanThe Marcus Center, Cincinnati, OH

Dr. Jeffrey S. GurockYeshiva University, New York, NY

Dr. Jonathan KrasnerBrandeis University, Waltham, MA

Professor Sara S. LeeWellesley, MA

Dr. Pamela S. NadellAmerican University, Washington, DC

Dr. Mark A. RaiderUniversity of Cincinnati,

Cincinnati, OHDr. Marc Lee Raphael

College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA

Dr. Shuly Rubin SchwartzThe Jewish Theological Seminary,

New York, NYDr. Robert M. Seltzer

Hunter College, New York, NYDr. Lance J. Sussman

Congregation Keneseth Israel, Elkins Park, PA

Educational Advisory Council

Professor Sara S. Lee, Co-ChairWellesley, MA

Dr. Jane West Walsh, Co-ChairRogers Early Childhood Center, Baltimore, MD

Ms. Jeanna Francis Temple Beth Israel, Fresno, CA

Ms. Lisa B. FrankelThe Marcus Center,

Cincinnati, OHDr. Dana Herman

The Marcus Center, Cincinnati,OHRabbi Samuel K. JosephHUC-JIR, Cincinnati, OH

Dr. Jan KatzewHUC-JIR, Cincinnati, OH

Dr. Jonathan KrasnerBrandeis University, Waltham, MA

Ms. Nachama Skolnick MoskowitzJewish Education Center of Cleveland,

Cleveland, OHDr. Janet MossCherry Hill, NJ

Dr. Jonathan D. SarnaBrandeis University, Waltham, MA

Dr. Gary P. ZolaThe Marcus Center, Cincinnati, OH

Boards and Councils


The Ezra Consortium

Mr. Michael M. Lorge, ChairSkokie, IL

Ms. Karen & Mr. Fred AbelCincinnati, OH

Dr. Mary Davidson CohenLeawood, KS

Ms. Joan & Mr. Ron CohenRye, NY

Ms. Barbara DaveAsheville, NC

Mr. Bernard DaveCincinnati, OH

Ms. Susan DickmanHighland Park, ILMs. Lori Fenner

Mason, OHMs. Penina Frankel

Cincinnati, OHDr. Penina Frankel

Highland Park, ILMs. Toby & Mr. Peter Ganz

Cincinnati, OHMs. Shelly Gerson

Cincinnati, OHMr. Scott Golinkin

Chicago, ILMs. Marilyn & Mr. Joseph

HirschhornCincinnati, OH

Mr. Jon HoffheimerCincinnati, OH

Ms. Judith & Mr. Clive KaminsChicago, IL

Mr. Fred KanterCincinnati, OH

Ms. Kathy & Dr. Lawrence KanterJacksonville, FL

Mr. Mark KanterLoveland, OH

Ms. Deanne & Mr. Arnold KaplanLakewood Ranch, FL

Ms. Mona & Dr. Richard KerstineCincinnati, OH

Ms. Nancy & Mr. Jerry KleinCincinnati, OH

Ms. Roberta & Mr. Marshall KrolickWeston, FL

Ms. Robin Kaplan & Dr. Abram Kronsberg

Baltimore, MDMs. Deborah Krupp

Northbrook, ILMs. Judy LucasCincinnati, OH

Ms. Helene & Mr. Millard MackCincinnati, OH

Mr. Brian MeyersCincinnati, OH

Ms. Anne MolloyPittsburgh, PA

Dr. Janet MossCherry Hill, NJ

Mr. Gary PerlinFairfax Station, VAMs. Joan PinesHighland Park, ILMs. Joan Porat

Chicago, ILMr. Daniel Randolph

Cincinnati, OHMs. Alice & Mr. Elliott Rosenberg

Buffalo Grove, ILMs. Deborah & Mr. Alex Saharovich

Memphis, TNDr. Ronna G. & Dr. John Schneider

Cincinnati, OH

Boards and Councils


Ms. Betsy ShapiroCincinnati, OH

Ms. Jackie & Mr. Richard SnyderCincinnati, OH

Ms. Jean Powers SomanPinecrest, FL

Dr. David TuckerWestport, CT

Ms. Georgie & Mr. Joel WagmanToronto, CanadaMr. Dan WolfNorthbrook, IL

The B’nai Ya’akov Council

Rabbi Micah D. Greenstein, ChairTemple Israel, Memphis, TN

Rabbi Sally J. Priesand, Vice-ChairOcean Township, NJ

Rabbi Peter S. Berg, Vice-ChairThe Temple, Atlanta, GA

Rabbi Ronald B. Sobel, Honorary ChairNew York, NY

Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman, Honorary ChairCongregation Shaare Emeth, St. Louis, MO

Rabbi Robert A. AlperEast Dorset, VT

Rabbi Rachel BearmanTemple B’nai Chaim, Georgetown, CT

Rabbi Martin P. Beifield, Jr.Richmond, VA

Rabbi Jonathan E. BlakeWestchester Reform Temple

Scarsdale, NYRabbi Brad L. BloomCongregation Beth Yam,

Hilton Head, SCRabbi P. Irving Bloom

Brookhaven, GARabbi Steven M. Bob

Glen Ellyn, ILRabbi Herbert N. Brockman

Congregation Mishkan Israel, Hamden, CT

Rabbi Lee BycelCongregation Beth Shalom, Napa, CARabbi Beth Jacowitz Chottiner

Temple Shalom, Louisville, KY

Rabbi Norman M. CohenBet Shalom Congregation,

Minnetonka, MNRabbi Paul F. Cohen

Temple Jeremiah, Northfield, ILRabbi Shoshanah H. Conover

Temple Sholom, Chicago, ILRabbi Andrea Cosnowsky

Congregation Etz Chaim Lombard, IL

Rabbi Harry K. DanzigerMemphis, TN

Rabbi Jerome P. DavidTemple Emanuel, Cherry Hill, NJ

Rabbi Joshua M. DavidsonCongregation Emanu-El

New York, NYRabbi Lucy H.F. DinnerTemple Beth Or, Raleigh, NC

Rabbi Rebecca L. DuboweMoses Montefiore Congregation,

Bloomington, IL

Boards and Councils


Rabbi Amy B. EhrlichCongregation Emanu-El,

New York, NYRabbi Steven W. Engel

Congregation of Reform Judaism, Orlando, FL

Rabbi Dena A. FeingoldTemple Beth Hillel,

Kenosha, WIRabbi Marla J. FeldmanWomen of Reform Judaism,

New York, NYRabbi Daniel J. FellmanTemple Society of Concord,

Syracuse, NYRabbi Steven M. Fink

Temple Oheb Shalom, Baltimore, MD

Rabbi Karen L. FoxWilshire Boulevard Temple,

Los Angeles, CARabbi Anthony B. Fratello

Temple Shaarei Shalom, Boynton Beach, FL

Rabbi Ronne FriedmanTemple Israel, Boston, MARabbi James S. Glazier

Congregation of Temple Sinai, South Burlington, VT

Rabbi Edwin C. GoldbergTemple Sholom, Chicago, ILRabbi Jay B. Goldburg

St. Louis, MORabbi Mark N. Goldman

Sarasota, FLRabbi Samuel N. GordonCongregation Sukkat Shalom,

Wilmette, ILRabbi Adam B. Grossman

University of Florida Hillel, Gainsville, FL

Rabbi Rosette Barron HaimThe Temple Tifereth Israel,

Beachwood, OH

Rabbi Stephen A. HartTemple Chai, Long Grove, ILRabbi Michael E. Harvey

Temple Israel, West Lafayette, INRabbi Lisa Hochberg-MillerTemple Beth Torah, Ventura, CA

Rabbi Abie IngberXavier University, Cincinnati, OH

Rabbi Bruce E. KahnTemple Shalom, Chevy Chase, MD

Rabbi Mark KaisermanThe Reform Temple of Forest Hills,

Forest Hills, NYRabbi Lewis H. Kamrass

Isaac M. Wise Temple, Cincinnati, OH

Rabbi Kenneth A. KanterCincinnati, OH

Rabbi Ronald W. KaplanWarren, NJ

Rabbi William I. KuhnCongregation Rodeph Shalom,

Philadelphia, PARabbi Daniel Levin

Temple Beth El, Boca Raton, FLRabbi John Linder

Temple Solel, Paradise Valley, AZRabbi David LocketzBet Shalom Congregation,

Minnetonka, MNRabbi Ari Lorge

Central Synagogue, New York, NYRabbi Steven Lowenstein

Am Sholom, Glencoe, ILRabbi Bruce Lustig

Washington Hebrew Congregation, Washington, DC

Rabbi Devorah MarcusTemple Emanu-El, San Diego, CA

Rabbi Steven S. MasonNorthbrook, IL

Boards and Councils


Rabbi Bernard H. MehlmanTemple Israel, Boston, MARabbi David J. Meyer

Temple Emanu-El, Marblehead, MARabbi Stanley R. Miles

Temple Shalom, Louisville, KYRabbi Evan Moffic

Congregation Solel, Highland Park, IL

Rabbi Jay H. MosesDirector, Wexner Heritage Program,

Columbus, OHRabbi Michael L. Moskowitz

Temple Shir Shalom, West Bloomfield, MI

Rabbi Randi MusnitskyTemple Har Shalom,

Warren, NJRabbi Howard Needleman

Temple Kol Ami Emanu-El, Plantation, FL

Rabbi Geri NewburgeTemple Beth Elohim

Wynnewood, PARabbi Jordan Ottenstein

Congregation Dor Tamid, Johns Creek, GARabbi Stephen S. Pearce

Congregation Emanu-El, San Francisco, CA

Rabbi Mark A. PeilenSouthside, AL

Rabbi Amy R. PerlinTemple B’nai Shalom, Fairfax Station, VA

Rabbi Aaron M. PetuchowskiDenver, CO

Rabbi Joe R. RapportCongregation Adath Israel Brith Sholom,

Louisville, KYRabbi Frederick Holmes Reeves

Congregation KAM Isaiah Israel, Chicago, IL

Rabbi Fred N. ReinerChevy Chase, MD

Rabbi Sarah H. ReinesNew York, NY

Rabbi Kenneth D. RosemanCorpus Christi, TX

Rabbi Joseph R. RosenbloomTemple Emanuel, St. Louis, MORabbi Donald B. Rossoff

Barnert Temple, Franklin Lakes, NJRabbi Peter J. Rubinstein92nd Street Y, New York, NY

Rabbi David SandmelAnti-Defamation League,

New York, NYRabbi Daniel A. Schwartz

Temple Shir Shalom West Bloomfield, MI

Rabbi Joshua L. SegalBennington, NH

Rabbi Jeffrey M. SegallRockville, MD

Rabbi Isaac D. SerottaLakeside Congregation for Reformed Judaism,

Highland Park, ILRabbi Mark S. Shapiro

Congregation B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim, Deerfield, IL

Rabbi Benjamin A. SharffThe Reform Temple of Rockland

Upper Nyack, NYRabbi Scott L. Shpeen

Congregation Beth Emeth, Albany, NYCantor Wayne S. Siet

Temple Shaari Emeth Manalapan, NJ

Rabbi James L. SimonTemple Israel, Tulsa, OK

Rabbi Jonathan L. SingerCongregation Emanu-El,

San Francisco, CARabbi Jeffrey J. Sirkman

Larchmont Temple, Larchmont, NYRabbi Rievan W. Slavkin

Dix Hills, NY

Boards and Councils


Rabbi Donald M. SplanskyFramingham, MA

Cantor Howard M. StahlTemple B’nai Jeshurun

Short Hills, NJRabbi Jonathan A. Stein

San Diego, CARabbi Richard M. SteinbergCongregation Shir Ha-Ma’alot,

Irvine, CARabbi Andrea C. Steinberger

UW-Madison Hillel, Madison, WI

Rabbi Shira SternTemple Rodeph Torah, Malboro, NJ

Rabbi David E. StrausMain Line Reform Temple, Wynnewood, PA

Rabbi Lance J. SussmanReform Congregation Keneseth Israel,

Elkins Park, PARabbi Susan A. Talve

Central Reform Congregation, St. Louis, MO

Rabbi Miriam P. TerlinchampTemple Sholom, Cincinnati, OHRabbi Karen Thomashow

Isaac M. Wise Temple Cincinnati, OH

Rabbi Gerry H. WalterBlue Ash, OH

Rabbi Donald A. WeberTemple Rodeph Torah,

Marlboro, NJRabbi Michael A. Weinberg

Temple Beth Israel, Skokie, IL

Rabbi Max W. WeissOak Park Temple,

Oak Park, ILRabbi Jeffrey S. Wildstein

Waltham, MARabbi Hanna G. Yerushalmi

Arnold, MD

Rabbi Benjamin J. ZeidmanTemple Mount Sinai

El Paso, TXRabbi Daniel G. Zemel

Temple Micah, Washington, DC

Rabbi Irwin A. ZeplowitzThe Community Synagogue

Port Washington, NYRabbi Sheldon Zimmerman

Plano, TX

Index


AAddams, Jane, 4Adler, Samuel, 79n24African Americans, 9–10, 21–22, 35, 66,

101, 138, 140Akam, Everett Helmut, 13Albright, William Foxwell, 121–124, 127Alexander, David, 87n45Ambivalent Embrace: Jewish Upward

Mobility in Postwar America (Rachel Kranson), reviewed, 150–151

American Association for the Advancement of Science, 66

American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, 7, 17, 85, 94, 108, 110

American Jewish Advocate, 159American Jewish Archives (AJA), x, xii,

42n10American Jewish Committee, 144, 154American Jewish Congress, 87, 148American Journal of Psychology, 101n90American Israelite, 73, 84, 89, 99n87,

100, 102, 109, 112n116American Psychological Association,

101n90American School of Oriental Research,

119, 121, 124–125,127, 129Amnesty International, 154Anderson, Bonnie S., The Rabbi’s Atheist

Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer, reviewed, 136–137

Anglo‑Protestantism, 10–12, 20Anshe Chesed Congregation (Vicksburg,

MS), 114, 160Anthony, Susan B., 137Aron, Isa, 160Assimilation, 2, 4–5, 7–9, 11–13Association of Holocaust Organizations

(AHO), 160Atlantic Monthly, 12Ayrton, Edith, 5

BB’nai B’rith, 75, 106, 165Backhouse, Constance, 59n40

Balfour Declaration, 14, 56, 88, 143Baltimore, MD, 83, 86, 93, 138–141,

165Baltimore Hebrew Congregation

(Baltimore, MD), 165Bar Kochba Society (Prague), 143Barondess, Joseph, 111n112Ben‑Gurion, David, 128Bene Israel Congregation (Cincinnati),

75, 110. See also Rockdale Temple Benenson, Peter, 153Bennett, A.B., 47–48, 58n39Bennett, Allen, 159Bercovitch, Sacvan, 12Bergman, Moise, 82Bergmann, Hugo, 143Berkowitz, Henry, 70, 81, 84n34,

87n45Bernstein, Judah, 154Beth‑El Congregation

(Fort Worth, TX), 159Beth‑El Congregation (New York, NY),

8, 76, 93n66, 109–110Bezalel School (Jerusalem), 96n76Biale, David, 15n26Billikopf, Jacob, 156Biran, Avraham, 127Blank, Sheldon, 120Blase, Nancy, 164Blaustein, Jacob, 152–153Bloom, Irving Mortimer, 112n118Boas, Franz, 59n42, 61Boniface, Zoe, 165Bourne, Randolph, 12–13Brandeis, Louis D., 14, 20–21Brandes, Georg, 34, 35n77. See also

Cohen, MorrisBrant, Joseph, 159Brant, Nancy, 159Brickner, Barnett, 41, 44British Mandate, 121–124, 126,

142, 153Brody, Samuel Hayim, 143Brugger, Robert, 137Buber, Martin, 57, 143

Index

Index


CCanadian Jewish Review, 40–41, 44,

46–48, 59, 62Central Conference of American

Rabbis (CCAR), 41, 69–71, 73–79, 82–87, 88n48, 94n68, 97n78, 98n82, 105n98–99, 106, 111n111, 113n120, 115n126, 127, 133

Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 84–85Chavis (Jr.), Charles L., 140Cheiveire Zion, 144Cleveland Plain Dealer, 99n86City College of New York, 76Cohen, Elaine, 160Cohen, Jeremy, 2Cohen, Morris, 34, 35n77. See also

Brandes, GeorgCohen, Naomi W., 15–16Cohen, Richard I., 2Cohen, Simon, 70–71Cohen, Stephen P., 160Cole, Michael, ix, 39, 67Columbia University, 79Congregation Bene Israel

(Baton Rouge, LA), 112n117Congregation Beth Israel

(Springfield, MA), 160Congregation Beth Israel

(West Hartford, CT), 160Congregation B’nai Israel

(Charleston, WV), 39Congregation B’nai Israel

(Petoskey, MI), 160Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (Cincinnati,

OH), 97n79. See also Wise TempleCongregation B’nai Jeshurun

(Newark, NJ), 113n122Congregation B’nai Jeshurun

(Short Hills, NJ), 160Congregation Gates of Prayer

(New Orleans), 82Congregation Sh’erith Israel‑Ahavath

Achim, 100n88Contributionism, viii, 1–5, 9–13Cosmopolitanism, viii, 1, 3, 11–13,

32–36, 60, 152–154Cowett, Mark, 156

Cronbach, Abraham, 112n116Cuba, 144–145Cultural pluralism, viii, 1, 3, 9–13, 15,

18, 27–28, 30–32, 34–36

Dde Haas, Jacob, 5n7, 9n13, 17, 30–31,

99n87, 100Delaware Valley University, 112n114DeMille, Cecil B., 147–149Denaburg, Israel, 139Dollinger, Marc, 151Dorsey, George Amos, 61n46Du Bois, W.E.B., 27, 35DuBois (Jr.), Josiah E., 156Dubnow, Simon, xii, 20Durack, Katherine, 136

EEastern Council of Reform Rabbis

(ECRR), 83, 83n32, 84, 84n34, 98n82, 106n100

Einhorn, David, 76, 78, 138Eisen, Arnold, 28n57Eisendrath, Maurice N., viii–x, 39–67,

160Eisendrath, Rosa, 40Elkus, Abram, 84Ellenson, Jacqueline Koch, 165Emanuel Congregation (Chicago), 52Emanu‑El Theological Seminary (Temple

Emanu‑El, New York City), 79n24Enelow, Hyman, 87n45, 89n52, 89,

93n67, 95n71, 96, 111n112, 113n121Evans, Hiram Wesley, 59

FFaïtlovitch, Jacques, 111n111–112Falashas, 111n111–112Federal League, 95n71, 96n74Federation of American Zionists (FAZ),

iii, viii, 1, 15, 17, 18n31, 32n66, 33, 75, 99n87, 101n91, 102, 105n99, 113n120, 145

Fein, Isaac, 137Feinberg, Abraham, 43Feldman, Harry, 139

Index


Felsenthal, Bernhard, 33, 74Fields, Barbara Jean, 137Fine, Louis, 144Flegg, Edmond, 64n57Fleischer, Charles, 79–80, 83Ford, Madox Ford, 7n9Forum on the Air, ix, Foster, Solomon R., 84–85, 86n41,

87n45, 113n122Franklin, Leo, 85, 87n45,Freehof, Solomon B., 70n3, 72, 96n75,

116Friedlaender, Israel, 18–20Friedman, Joan S., x, 116Frishman, Elyse, 161Fromenson, A.H., 28, 33

GGaster, Moses, 113n119George, Paul, 145Gertel, Elliot, 160Ginsburg, Asher. See Ahad Ha’AmGleason, Arthur, 20–21Gleason, Philip, 4n5, 20–21Glueck, Charles, 122Glueck, Helen (née Iglauer), 122, 133Glueck, Nelson, xi, 119–129, 131–134Goldenweiser, Alexander, 61n46 Goldstein, Eric L., 21Goldstein, Eric L. and Deborah R.

Weiner, On Middle Ground: A History of Baltimore, reviewed, 137–140

Goldstein, Sidney E., 115n127Gompers, Samuel, 113n122Gordon, Adi, Toward Nationalism’s End:

An Intellectual Biography of Hans Kohn, reviewed, 140–143

Goren, Arthur, 10, 18, 18n32Gottschalk, Alfred, 121, 129Graetz, Heinrich, xiiGreat Depression, 52Green, Henry, 145Greenberg, Erik, 4Greenburg, William H., 113n119Greene, Daniel, 2Greengus, Samuel, xi, 129, 131Gries, Moses, 73, 92n57, 111n113

Grossman, Louis, 70, 73, 79, 82, 86, 87n45–46, 88, 90n54, 97n79, 98n83, 102n95, 114n123

Gutheim, James, 83n31

HHa’Am, Ahad, 13–14, 26, 29, 56–57,

66, 72Hachen, Debra, 115n125Hadassah, 151Haddon, Alfred C., 61n46HaLevi, Yehuda, 63Hall, Granville Stanley, 101n90Hallo, Ralph E., 161Hallo, William W., 161Hansen, Jonathan M., 13Hanukkah, 15Har Sinai Congregation (Baltimore),

83n31, 93n61, 141 Har Sinai Congregation (Chicago), Harlem Renaissance, 9. See also New

Negro MovementHarris, Maurice H., viii, 34, 79, 79n24,

80, 82–83, 85, 111n112Haskell, Arlo, The Jews of Key West:

Smugglers, Cigar Makers, and Revolutionaries (1823–1969), reviewed, 144–145

Hattam, Victoria, 22Haupt, Paul, 93n61Hayes, Carlton J. H., 155 Hebraism, 2, 10Hebrew Union College (HUC), 69–71,

73–76, 79n24, 80n25, 86, 86n42, 89n51, 96n75, 97n78, 98n83, 100n88, 103n97, 106n100, 108n103, 111n113, 112n114–116, 115n127, 119, 131. See also Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC‑JIR)

Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC‑JIR), 119–120, 125–129, 131, 134

Hebrew University, 101n91, 123Hebron massacre, 44, 56Heller, James, 69, 71–74, 86–87, 87n43,

88, 97n79, 112n115

Index


Heller, Max, 70–71, 73–75, 79–83, 83n31, 84–87, 87n43, 87n45, 88, 97n78, 98n82, 102n94, 105n99, 106n100, 111n113, 113n120, 114n125, 115n126

Heller, Meyer, 161Herberg, William, 148Herzl, Theodor, 5, 107n101Higham, John, 12Hirsch, Emil G., 78–83, 105n99Hirsch, Samuel, 78History of Ideas Journal, viiHitler, Adolf, 58Hochman, Joseph, 31 Hochshule für die Wissenschaft des

Judentums, 76Hollinger, David, 11–13, 28, 33Holmes, John Haynes, 66, 78Holy Blossom Temple (Toronto), iii, ix,

39–44, 47–48, 52–53, 55, 58, 62, 67, 160

Holy Blossom Temple Brotherhood (Toronto), 39

IIbn Gabirol, Solomon, 63 Ihud, 56Intercollegiate Menorah Association, 2,

23Interfaith Neighbors, 134Intermarriage, 4, 7–9, 17, 25–26,

109n107Isaac M. Wise Temple (Cincinnati), 70.

See also Congregation B’nai JeshurunIsaiah Temple (Chicago), 113n120Israel (state/nation), x, 5, 14, 49, 58,

87n46, 88, 94n70, 101n91, 120–121, 123–124, 127–129, 132–133, 140, 147, 149–150, 152–154. See also Zionism

Israel, Edward L., 71, 140 Isserman, Ferdinand, 41, 43–44, 52, 55,

59n42, 62n51

JJabotinsky, Ze’ev, 55 Jaffa, 88–89n49,

James, William, 30, 90n54, 101n90Jelinek, Adolph, 78Jesus, 64, 66Jewish Comment (Baltimore), 86n42Jewish Institute of Religion (JIR),

125–126, 131. See also Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC‑JIR)

Jewish Ledger, 106n100Jewish Lights Publishing, 161Jewish Publication Society, 114n124Jewish Spectator (Memphis), 99n87Jewish Territorial Organization, 5Jews’ College, 41, 113n119The Jews of Key West: Smugglers, Cigar

Makers, and Revolutionaries (Arlo Haskell), reviewed, 144–145

Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America (Shari Rabin), reviewed, 157–158

Johns Hopkins University, vii, 30, 93n61, 121, 124, 127

Joselit, Jenna Weissman, Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments, reviewed, 146–149

KKahn, Ava, 151Kallen, Horace M., viii, 3, 9–13, 18, 22,

27–29, 32, 35–36, 72, 74n13, 86, 86n42, 101n91, 102n94

Kaplan, Jacob H., 82, 100n88, 101n89Kauff, Benjamin Michael, 95n74Kaufman, Max, 96n75Keneseth Israel (Philadelphia), 70,

114n114Kennan, George, 143Kent State University, 133Key West (Florida), 144–145 King David Hotel, 128Kissinger, Henry, 143Klau Library, 127Know‑Nothings, 138Kogan, Barry, 163Kohler, Kaufmann, 62n51, 71–72,

74n13, 76, 78, 82, 86–87, 92n57, 93n62, 93n66, 96n75, 98n83,

Index


102–103n95, 108n103, 120Kohn, Hans, 140–143Kohn, Sharon, 161Kornfeld, Joseph, 87n45Kory, Solomon, 114n125Kranson, Rachel, Ambivalent Embrace:

Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar America, reviewed, 150–151

Krauskopf, Joseph, 87n45Kronick, Joe, 58n39Kronick, Sam, 58n39Kronman, Harry, 96n75Ku Klux Klan, 58–62, 66, 145

LLandes, S., 144Landman, Isaac, 87n45 Langer‑Winer Family, 161Lauterbach, Jacob Z., 112n115Lauterpacht, Herschel, 152–153 League of Nations, 152LeBauer, Gail Malevan, 163Lee, Barton G., 161Leff, Laurel, 155Leipziger, Emil, 106n100Leucht, Isaac, 83, 83n31, 106n100Levy, Clifton H., 87n45Levy, Felix A., 52 Levy, J. Leonard, 84, 98n82, 102n94Levy, Max, 24–25Lewisohn, Ludwig, 44, 46, 66 Lippmann, Walter, 143Lipsky, Abram, 31Lipsky, Louis, 17, 23, 25, 32n66Locke, Alain LeRoy, 9–10, 12–13Loeffler, James, Rooted Cosmopolitans:

Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, reviewed, 152–154

Lovejoy, Arthur O., viiLowenstein, Sharon, 155Lutwak, Alice, 160Lyons, Alexander, 87n45

MThe Maccabaean, viii, 1–36Magnes, Judah L., 6, 18, 18n32, 20, 56–

57, 66, 89n52, 111n112, 123, 126

Mandelberg, Joseph, 110n110Manuel D. & Rhoda Mayerson Jewish

Community Center (Cincinnati), 162 Marcus, Jacob Rader, xii, 72, 120, 126Martí, José, 144Maxim, Hiram, 99n86Maxim, Hudson, 99n86Mayer, Harry, 87n45McGraw, John, 95n71Medoff, Rafael, Too Little, and Almost

Too Late: The War Refugee Board and America’s Response to the Holocaust, reviewed, 155–156

Menand, Louis, 13Mendelssohn, Moses, 2Menorah Association, 86Menorah Journal, 12, 16, 75, Meyer, Martin A., 84 Meyer, Michael A., xin5, 72n8, 78n22,

88n46, 105n98, 119n1Meyerson, R.L., 144Miles, Stanley R., 162Mirza, Sarah, 92n60Monmouth Reform Temple

(Tinton Falls, NJ), 134Morgenstern, Julian, 82, 120, 121,

125–126Muskogee, OK, 40

NNabateans, 128

Nashon, Edna, 4, 7National Farm School, 112n114Nation Magazine, 10Negev, 124Neshama: Association of Jewish

Chaplains, 162New Negro Movement, 9. See also

Harlem RenaissanceNew Palestine, 17New School for Social Research, 9New York Times, 7, 85New York Tribune, 20Newfield, Morris, 87n45 Newman, Chaim, 5Nordau, Max, 14, 17, 33, 107n101

Index


OOakville, Ontario, 58The Occident and American Jewish

Advocate (Philadelphia), 158Offenburger, Andrew, 158Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 125Oko, Adolph S., 122On Middle Ground: A History of the

Jews of Baltimore (Eric L. Goldstein and Deborah R. Weiner), reviewed, 137–140

O’Neill, Eugene, 65Ostfeld, Barbara J., 162

PPacifism, iii, 44, 46, 67Palestine, 88, 119–129Pehle, John, 156Perlzweig, Maurice, 152–153Pessels, Constance, 30Petrie, William Flinders, 123Philipson, David, 75–76, 81, 85, 86n41,

87n45, 90–91n55, 92n59, 98n83, 102–103n95, 105n98, 107n101, 108n103, 111n113, 113n121, 114n123

Phillips, William, 59Philosemitism, 23Pianko, Noam, 13The Pilgrim Rabbis, 69, 73, 88–116Pines School of Graduate Studies (HUC‑

JIR, Cincinnati), xi, 126Pittsburgh Platform, 6, 14Plaut, W. Gunther, 41Pomeranz, Rosa, 33, 33n73Poznanski, Gustav, 91n55Priesand, Sally J., xi, 129

Q“The Quest for the Holy Dagesh,” 70 Quixano, David, 3, 5, 10, 18

RThe Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter: Ernestine

Rose, International Feminist Pioneer (Bonnie S. Anderson), reviewed, 135–136

Rabin, Shari, Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America, reviewed, 157–158

Raisin, Max, 105n98Reform Judaism, ix–x, 5–9, 39–67,

69–116, 119–129, 131–134Revendal, Vera, 3, 5Robinson, Jacob, 152–153Rochelson, Meri‑Jane, 5, 9Rockdale Temple (Cincinnati),

73, 99n85, 110n110. See also Congregation Bene Israel

Roger, Howard, ix, 39, 67Roosevelt, Franklin D., 155Roosevelt, Theodore, 4Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human

Rights in the Twentieth Century (James Loeffler), reviewed, 152–154

Rose, Ernestine L., 135 Rosenau, William, 84n34, 87Rosenblatt, Katherine, 149Rosenwasser, Herman, 112n117 Ross, E.A., 27Roth, Harry A., 162Rubenstein, Charles, 87n45Rudin, Jacob Philip, 162Rudin, Stephen, 162

SSale, Samuel, 83, 83n31, 87n45Salzman, Marcus, 87n45Sampter, Jessie, 18n31, 33, 34n75 Samuel, Maurice, 44, 46, 66Sarna, Jonathan D., 110n110Schatz, Boris, 96n76 Schechter, Solomon, 85, 111n112Schiff, Jacob H., 98n83 Schulman, Samuel, 6–9, 74, 76, 78,

80–84, 84n34, 85–86, 86n41, 87n45, 99n85, 103n95–96, 109n107, 110n109, 111n111

Schulman, William, 159Seligsohn, Ezra, 115n125Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the

Ten Commandments (Jenna Weisman Joselit), reviewed, 146–149

Shapiro, Mark Dov, 163

Index


Shaw, George Bernard, 33Shumsky, Neil Larry, 4n5Silver, Abba Hillel, 163Silver, M.M., 21n39Silverman, Joseph, 80, 80n25, 87n45–46,

89n52, 97n78, 99n85, 111n112Simon, Abram, 87n45Simon, Leon, 26Simon, Maurice, 26 Sinai Congregation (Chicago), 78Sokobin, Alan M., 163Sokobin, Miriam L., 163Sollors, Werner, 4, 12–13Sombart, Werner, 85, 86n41,Spicehandler, Ezra, 163SS Amerika, 91n57Stephen Wise Free Synagogue (New York,

NY), 78–79, 115n127Stern, Harry J., 52, 55Stix, Charles, 163Stolz, Joseph, 87n45, 113n120Suez Canal, 125Suffrage, 135–136Sulzberger, Cyrus, 111n112Sulzberger, Solomon, 111n112 Sutton, Karen, 155Szold, Henrietta, 17, 18n31

TTabak, Robert P., 163Tageblat, 28 Tel Beit Mirsim, 121, 123Tel Gezer, 124Temperance Movement, 112n117Temple Adath Israel (Boston), 79n24Temple Albert (Albuquerque, NM),

100n88Temple Anshe Chesed (Vicksburg, MS),

114n125Temple Beth El (New York, NY), 99n85Temple Emanuel (Baltimore), 164Temple Emanuel (Beverly Hills, CA), 161Temple Emanu‑El (Dallas, TX), 113n119Temple Emanu‑El (Montreal), 52 Temple Emanu‑El (New York, NY), 78,

79n24, 80n25, 89n52, 97n78, 99n85Temple Emanu‑El of West Essex

(Livingston, NJ), 164Temple Israel (Dayton, OH), 164Temple Israel (New York, NY), 34, 79n24 Temple Israel (St. Louis, MO), 52Temple Sinai (New Orleans, LA), 75,

83n31, 114n125Ten Commandments, 146–149The Ten Commandments (film, see also

Cecil B. DeMille), 147–149Territorialism, 6, 8Tifereth Israel Congregation (The Temple,

Cleveland), 73, 111n113Too Little, and Almost Too Late: The War

Refugee Board and America’s Response to the Holocaust (Rafael Medoff), re‑viewed, 155–156

Toward Nationalism’s End: An Intellectual Biography of Hans Kohn (Adi Gordon), reviewed, 140–143

Toronto, Ontario, 39–40, 40n4, 44, 56Touro Synagogue (New Orleans, LA),

83n31Trumpeldor, Joseph, 57, 57n37Tulane University, 106n100

UUganda, 107n101Union of American Hebrew

Congregations (UAHC), ix, 39, 58n39, 90n55, 133

United Nations, 153University of Chicago, 119, 129University of Cincinnati, 40, 86, 89n51,

120, 122, 131University of Jena (Germany), 121University of Wisconsin, 122Urofsky, Melvin, 14n24, 16–17

WWarburg, Felix, 111n112War Refugee Board, 155–156Waranch, Helene, 164Waxman, Meyer, viii, 34–35Weiner, Deborah R. and Eric L.

Goldstein, On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of Baltimore, re‑viewed, 137–140

Index


Weiner, Hollace A., 159Weinfeld, David, viii–ix, 37Weltsch, Robert, 143Whitfield, Stephen J., 22Willard, Frances, 112n117Williams, Matthew, 140Wilshire Boulevard Temple (Los Angeles),

127Windmueller, Steven, 164Winer, Lise, 161Wise, Isaac M., 74, 77–78, 97n79, 164Wise, Louise Waterman, 64n57Wise, Stephen S., 6, 64, 64n55, 71, 73,

75, 78, 80–83, 86, 98n82, 102n95, 105n99, 106n100, 113n122, 115n127, 125–126

Wise Temple, 99n85. See also Congregation B’nai Jeshurun

Wittenberg, David H., 41n6 Women’s Rabbinic Network (WRN), 165 Woodward High School (Cincinnati),

120World War I, 14, 17World War II, 125World Zionist Organization (WZO), 16

YYod‑Kaf‑Tav (secret Zionist fraternity), 72Young Judea, 165

ZZangwill, Israel, viii, 3–5, 7–13, 18,

22–26, 36, 109n107Zelizer, Gerald, 164Zhitlowsky, Chaim, 55Zionism, iii, viii–x, 1–36, 69, 71–72,

74–77, 80, 82–83, 86–87, 89, 90n55, 92, 93n62, 95, 97n79, 99n87, 100, 101n91,103n95–96, 105n98–99, 106–110, 111n113, 113n120, 113n122, 114n124–125, 140–143, 152. See also Israel

Zoberman, Israel, 165Zola, Gary P., 42n10, 76n18, 151

Illustrations:First issue of The Maccabaean, 6Holy Blossom Confirmation Class with

Rabbi Eisendrath, 45James Heller, 68Maurice Eisendrath, 38Nelson Glueck on the cover of Time

magazine, 118Nelson Glueck, 130Page of Eisendrath’s handwritten sermon,

“The Divine Betrothal,” 54Sketching of Israel Zangwill, xii

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