Antisemitism Is Un-American

By Miles Smith IV

Sunday, November 05, 2023

 

In the aftermath of the Hamas attacks that killed 1,400 Jews, open antisemitism in the United States has never been so painfully obvious. College campuses are sites of antisemitic protest, often parading in the form of solidarity with Palestinians. Arab and Muslim groups could cite certain excesses in the policy of the Israeli government, but that’s not what’s happening right now. What’s happening now is open hatred for Jews. College students, particularly at elite colleges and universities, are not only rejecting the mere right of Jews to continue to live in their historic homeland in the Near East. They’re threatening the place of Jews in the United States.

 

Much of this sentiment on college campuses is articulated as a rejection of a supposed Western imperialism that dispossessed Arabs en masse during the aftermath of the Second World War and replaced them with Jews. A kind of winking idea that Jews are nothing more than American stooges, or, even worse, that Americans are stooges of some global Jewish conspiracy, has made its way into the mainstream of American colleges. Leave aside, for now, the ahistorical nature of these claims, and also their gutter-level vulgarity. Such antisemitism is also out of keeping with American history.

 

Americans have championed Jews and the rights of Jews to worship and live in freedom since the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. American statesmen have stood with Jews since the American Republic began its life as a constitutional union in 1789. Perhaps most disturbing for readers in 2023 would be the fact that even the American South, as brutally flawed as it was by its embrace of human bondage in the form of chattel slavery, welcomed Jews as vital members of the American republic and as good citizens who deserved that republic’s protection. That welcoming protection was a hallmark of American civil life throughout the 20th century. Americans should fight for Jews also in the 21st.

 

America’s charity to Jews was evident from the republic’s beginning. In 1790, the leaders of a synagogue in Newport, R.I., wrote a letter to President George Washington, thanking him for his service and applauding his administration. Moses Seixas, the synagogue’s warden, told Washington that, although Jews had for eons been “deprived . . . of the invaluable rights of free Citizens,” they felt a “deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events” for leading them to live under “a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People — a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance” and that generously afforded “to all Liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language equal parts of the great governmental Machine.” The federal union was, Seixas argued, based on “Philanthropy, Mutual confidence and Public Virtue.” The Newport congregation could not “but acknowledge to be the work of the Great God, who ruleth in the Armies of Heaven, and among the Inhabitants of the Earth, doing whatever seemeth him good.”

 

Washington responded appreciatively and affirmed Jews’ place in the United States’ civic life. “The Government of the United States,” he declared, “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” and required “only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” He hoped that “the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land” would “continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

 

Other presidents followed suit. Jefferson disliked religious bigotry of any sort and promoted Ruben Etting as U.S. marshal for the State of Maryland in 1801. During John Tyler’s short presidency, he made sure that his consul for Ottoman Palestine would promote Jewish interests there and help settle Jews from Europe in the United States. Warder Cresson, an American-born convert to Judaism, arrived in Palestine in 1844 and created an agrarian Zionist colony. Franklin Pierce signed into law “An Act for the Benefit of the Hebrew Congregation in the city of Washington.” Theodore Roosevelt gave money to Jewish philanthropic organizations. Calvin Coolidge hosted Zionist organizations in the White House during his presidency, well before the creation of the State of Israel in 1947. Some presidents have not been as enthusiastic as others for the de facto alliance between the United States and Israel, but they recognized that the existence of a relatively liberal democracy in the Near East remains in America’s best interests.

 

Even presidential missteps concerning Jews were redressed. As a Union general, Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews from the states of Tennessee and Kentucky when he believed they were collaborating with the Confederacy during the Civil War. During his presidency, however, he became the first president to attend synagogue services when a congregation opened in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1876. Since the Founding, American presidents have understood themselves to be champions of Jewish rights precisely because the American Republic champions the rights of Jews.

 

Acceptance of Jewish life in the United States was not limited to presidential proclamations. Jewish congregations in New England and in South Carolina during the Colonial Era and the Early Republic thrived. In Charleston, Providence, and New York, Jews served their communities by participating in philanthropic organizations. They represented important business interests and by the beginning of the 19th century had proven reliable citizens and neighbors. In 1808, Jacob Henry, a Jewish North Carolinian, was elected to the legally Protestant state’s general assembly. His neighbors happily reelected him. During his second term, one member objected to Henry’s election because he denied “the divine authority of the New Testament, and refused to take the oath prescribed by law for his qualification.” North Carolina’s lower house convened to address the objection to Henry. They rejected any potential prohibition on Henry or Jews sitting, and refused even to admit evidence against him. That Jews were good Americans was good enough even for their Protestant (and later also Roman Catholic) neighbors.

 

Although examples of antisemitism can be found in the United States, Americans by and large welcomed Jews as fellow citizens by the beginning of the 19th century. There has never been a time when wholesale protests of Jewish America or even Zionism have occurred in the United States to the degree it is happening now.  In 2023, ideological radicalism in universities threatens a 230-year tradition of protecting Jews in the United States. Unless antisemitism on campuses is brought to heel, that noble protection of Jews — from Washington to George W. Bush and beyond — will end.