ABSTRACT
The history of American antisemitism was, for many years, a taboo subject. As antisemitism declined and pundits argued that Jews had become “white folks,” the historical study of American antisemitism languished. Scholars looked increasingly askance at the claim that Jews were a “persecuted minority.” Antagonism toward Jews began with Jewish communal settlement in New Amsterdam (today’s New York) back in 1654. The Dutch governor of that colony, Peter Stuyvesant, who considered all forms of religious non-conformity a threat to public order, singled out Jews as “deceitful,” “very repugnant,” and “hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ.” Ambivalence is the keyword in understanding how antebellum Americans have responded to Jews. Even as antisemitism declined outside the South, it re-emerged unexpectedly within the African American community of the North. There, for decades, Blacks and Jews had enjoyed something of a special relationship both as victims of prejudice and as allies in the battle to oppose it.
