Antisemitism, an American Tradition

Jews experienced antisemitism the moment they landed on what would become the United States. When they first arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654, Peter Stuyvesant tried but failed to deport them. As historian Pamela S. Nadell tells in Antisemitism, an American Tradition, this was only antisemitism’s beginning on our shores, as negative European stereotypes about Jews rooted into American soil.

Compared with the Old World, with its expulsions, Inquisition, ghettos, and Holocaust, America’s Jews have a different history-but one where antisemitism, even if it has had fewer dramatic eruptions, is deeply embedded. Jews in America faced restrictions on holding office and getting financial credit. Universities set quotas to limit the number of Jews attending and businesses refused to hire them. Jews endured verbal and physical attacks, and their synagogues and cemeteries, continuing to this day, were vandalized and desecrated.

Antisemitism, an American Tradition investigates the depths of this fraught history and its recent manifestations: white nationalists chanting “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a gunman murdering eleven worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue building.

Nadell also shows Jews responding to prejudice and hate. America’s Jews created advocacy organizations. They turned to the courts to safeguard their constitutional rights. They made common cause with allies to confront all types of hate. They even used their fists when needed.

At a time when prejudice, discrimination, and hate against Jews is flaring across the country, Antisemitism, an American Tradition argues that we must understand the past. This momentous work reveals how antisemitism-and resistance to that hatred-endures, representing not a rupture from America’s history, but a centuries-old legacy.

Author Biography

Pamela S. Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History and directs the Jewish Studies Program at American University. Her works include America’s Jewish Women, winner of the 2019 National Jewish Book Award’s Jewish Book of the Year, and Women Who Would Be Rabbis. Past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, she lives in North Bethesda, Maryland.