The Chosen Wars

by Steven R Weisman

  In the final analysis, Jewish belief in the Jewish people’s own unique identity, whether as a nation or as a community of faith, has been so strong that it remains a foundation of Jewish life in the United States. Yet that identity has always been and likely always will be one of contention and dispute. The history recounted in this book must be seen as a story that continues.Perhaps the biggest lesson is that Jews should be unafraid to stand up for how they want to pursue their varied religious paths toward meaning and toward faith and worship. Doing so is not only an American tradition. It is a tradition of American Judaism.

  The lament of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow over the supposed oblivion of Judaism has long since been met by the stubbornness of Jews not to give up their identity but to fashion it to find their own path. Judaism has been “dying,” subject to internal conflicts, and persecuted for as long as there have been Jews. There is no reason to think that will change. But if the past is any guide, as long as there are forces to eradicate distinctive Jewish identities, Jews will find ways to reinforce their identities. They will cherish their heritage and simply refuse to disappear. Traditionalists may bridle at this heterodoxy, but they can take solace at the number of Jews who want to live in the modern world, retain their Judaism, and find new meanings within it. In this sense, the story of this book is the story of Jews revitalizing their religious traditions from one generation to the next and providing lessons for how contemporary American Jews may do the same.

  For American Jews, the path forward is strengthened by the path they have followed: change qualified by tradition and faith in God and in divinely ordained ethical conduct, coupled with a determination to seek and define their own way to express that faith. As they head into an uncertain future, Jews will likely continue to see themselves as Jews, defying the warnings of traditionalists and well-meaning predictions of sympathizers like Longfellow. The Orthodoxy is certain to continue to challenge that claim, but Jews have always insisted on finding their own way in the world. They can do so confidently by looking back to the courageous examples of the past as well as forward to the leadership that will surely come in the future.

  1 Gershom Mendes Seixas, spiritual leader of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, fled when British forces captured the city at the start of the Revolutionary War. He was the first Jew to become part of the early American religious establishment.

  2 President George Washington visited Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790, famously assuring its Jewish community that the government “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” The Touro Synagogue of Newport, dedicated in 1763, is the oldest surviving synagogue building in the United States.

  3 As the Revolutionary War opened, Hessian soldiers set fire to the sanctuary of Shearith Israel on Mill Street (South William Street today) in Lower Manhattan. Seixas fled with the damaged scrolls, one of which is pictured here, and returned them after the war.

  4 Congregation Mikve Israel in Savannah rebuilt its synagogue after it was destroyed in a fire in 1829, returning two fifteenth-century Torah scrolls that had been brought originally to its sanctuary in the 1730s. This one had been brought from England in 1737. The two scrolls are believed to be the oldest in the United States.

  5 In Charleston, home of the largest American Jewish population in the early 1800s, the fractious congregation at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (interior depicted here) divided over reforms demanded by younger members. After a fire destroyed the synagogue in 1838, a battle erupted over whether to install an organ in the new synagogue.

  6 Installation of an organ in the newly rebuilt Beth Elohim in Charleston, which opened its doors (flanked by Doric columns) in 1841, led to a historic court case. The judge ruled that religious institutions “cannot withstand the agitations of free, active and progressive opinion.”

  7 At the age of eighteen, Esther (Hetty) Barrett married Gustavus Poznanski, newly arrived from Poland, helping to secure his social and financial position in Charleston. Poznanski stood up to traditionalists and presided at a fateful debate over whether a messiah will one day redeem the Jews and return them to Palestine.

  8 Abraham Rice, the first ordained rabbi to settle in the United States, arrived from Bavaria in 1840. “I dwell in complete darkness,” he bitterly complained to a friend, referring to Jews abandoning traditional practices.

  9 Combative and self-confident, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise sought to forge a distinctly American Judaism, modifying traditional teachings over the Messiah, the Talmud, and the role of Jewish law. His fistfight with his congregation president in Albany led to a brawl that had to be quelled by the police. Wise became the most consequential Jewish leader of the nineteenth century.

  10 Isaac Leeser, the foremost American advocate of traditional Judaism in the nineteenth century, was a friend but also a stubborn rival to Wise. By opposing Wise’s “reforms,” he became the father of modern Orthodoxy and Conservative Judaism. But he was a prophet without honor at his own congregation in Philadelphia.

  11 Jewish immigrant peddlers crisscrossed the countryside on horse-driven wagons, on horseback, with mules, and on foot, often with packs of 150 pounds on their backs. They struggled to keep Jewish practices, including kosher laws. Many storied Jewish families were founded by peddlers—Seligman, Lehman, Goldman, Loeb, Guggenheim, Filene, Straus, Gimbel, and on and on.

  12 Isaac Bernheim, a German Jewish immigrant, peddled goods in the Pennsylvania countryside before establishing the I. W. Harper brand of bourbon whiskey in Kentucky.

  13 Rebecca Gratz was the most influential Jewish feminist pioneer of the nineteenth century, contributing to the important role of women in Jewish communities. She established a women’s benevolent association and the first Jewish Sunday school, in Philadelphia.

  14 The Congressional Medal of Honor was awarded to David Urbansky, a Union soldier who had emigrated from Prussia, for his heroism at the battles of Shiloh and Vicksburg. He was the first American Jew to be so honored.

  15 Rabbi Morris Raphall, an ardent traditionalist during the Civil War, proclaimed that the Bible legitimized slavery, though not necessarily the way it was practiced in the South. His defense of the concept of a human messiah to redeem the Jewish people led to a rupture with Rabbi Wise.

  16 Rabbi David Einhorn attacked slavery as antithetical to Judaism and had to flee death threats in Baltimore during the Civil War. From his pulpit in Philadelphia, he accused Isaac Mayer Wise of timidity as a reformer and paved the way for “classical” Reform Judaism.

  17 Secretary of State of the Confederacy Judah P. Benjamin was the target of anti-Semitic attacks in both North and South. He escaped to London as the war ended, avoiding possible prosecution by the victorious Union. He was a slaveholder but is little remembered today in the pantheon of Confederate luminaries in the South.

  18 A poem by Penina Moïse, a prominent educator and woman of letters, celebrated the reopening of Beth Elohim in Charleston by calling for “choral harmony.” But her plea fell on deaf ears amid discord over the contentious decision to install an organ.

  19 Dedicated in 1866, the Plum Street Synagogue in Cincinnati symbolized a confident new American Judaism in the Gilded Age. Its minarets and arched entrances were meant to evoke the Alhambra and the Golden Age of Judaism in Spain.

  20 A celebration for the first ordained rabbis in America in 1883 in Cincinnati produced a faux pas heard around the Jewish world: the feast included shellfish and frog legs—foods considered trefa or nonkosher. Shocked traditionalists stormed out of the banquet hall.

  21 Felix Adler broke with his father, a prominent rabbi at Temple Emanu-El, to embrace atheism and renounce Judaism. He founded the New York Society for Ethical Culture, and his ascension as head of the nondenominational Free Religious Association caused Reform Jews to break away from his organization.

  22 Ralph Waldo Emerson, the eminent essayist, lecturer, and founder of the Transcendental movement, addressed the opening of the Free Religious Association in 1867, attended by
Rabbi Wise. But Wise turned against the association when Felix Adler became president and renounced Judaism.

  23 Rabbi Wise, toward the end of his career, took pride in the creation of the major institutions of Reform Judaism. But in reality, he rushed to the front of a parade that was largely led and defined by other more radical reformers.

  24 Patriarch of one of the most established Jewish families in America, Joseph Seligman was refused admittance to the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1877. The incident revived fears of anti-Semitism throughout the American Jewish community.

  25 Alexander Kohut, an ardent traditionalist and Talmudist, squared off with the reformist Kaufmann Kohler in competing sermons in the 1880s. He declared that anyone who abandoned Judaism’s Oral Law “has banished himself from the camp of Israel.”

  26 Kaufmann Kohler, a protégé of German Jewish scholars, championed reforms in America in the tradition of his passionate father-in-law, David Einhorn. He brought the Pittsburgh Platform into fruition and succeeded his archrival, Isaac Mayer Wise, as head of Hebrew Union College.

  27 Starting in the 1880s, 2 million Jews from the shtetls of Russia and Eastern Europe immigrated to the United States, depicted here arriving in New York Harbor. They engulfed the existing Jewish population of 250,000 but were welcomed with an array of charity organizations. Some reform leaders were wary of their Old World practices, however. Most of their descendants eventually embraced reforms established in the nineteenth century.

  Acknowledgments

  This book is the result of many years of reading, thinking, and learning from teachers and friends, far and wide, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. In the early 1970s, for example, I stayed for several days with a childhood friend, Geoffrey Greenfield, who had abruptly transplanted himself after Harvard to an Orthodox seminary in Jerusalem. There I was exposed to a feverish and daunting culture of Talmudic learning the likes of which I had never experienced. It was the beginning of a journey to understand the history and meaning of Judaism, and then to try to write about what I learned.

  On that same trip, I traveled across Israel—from the West Bank to Galilee, the Golan Heights, and across to Tel Aviv—in a rented car with another observant friend, James Kugel, who had been a fellow literature major at Yale. Forty-five years later, Jim Kugel, now a renowned biblical scholar, patiently read the manuscript of this book and corrected more errors and omissions than I care to think about. Rabbi Gary Phillip Zola, executive director of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, was another careful reader. He has been a north star for this book project. Erica Brown, the brilliant and prolific author, teacher, counselor, and director of the Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership at the George Washington University, has been still another tough-minded reader. None is of course responsible for the errors and misinterpretations that may remain.

  Several other learned friends contributed to my education. Leon Wieseltier has taught me about these subjects over many decades of friendship. Rabbi Daniel Zemel of Temple Micah in Washington, DC, has been a mentor and friend who has illuminated the great narrative of Judaism for me. Rabbi James Ponet invited me to discuss the early research for this book at a seminar at the Slifka Center at Yale, where he was the Jewish chaplain at the time. The historian John Morton Blum, whose course on American history I took in the 1960s, attended that session and encouraged me to proceed, just as he had with my earlier book on the history of American taxes. It was at Yale, after all, that I learned how to read literature and history—from great teachers like Blum, Bart Giamatti, George Fayen, Michael Cooke, Michael Holahan, and Leo Braudy.

  The small miracle of an intermittent study group led by Erica Brown in Washington has enriched my understanding of Judaism. I am indebted to her and others in the group: David Brooks, Franklin Foer, David Gregory, Jeffrey Goldberg, Martin Indyk, and Daniel Silva. I have also learned from Rabbi David Wolpe, Rabbi Steven Leder, and the late Rabbi Harvey Fields of Los Angeles, my hometown. I thank others in the Temple Micah community, especially Rabbi Josh Beraha, Meryl Weiner, Teddy Klaus, Michael Feuer, Martha and David Adler, and Betsy Broder and David Wentworth.

  Sidney Blumenthal, ardent student of Lincoln and nineteenth-century American history, has been endlessly encouraging and helpful. I owe a special thanks to Sally Quinn, who has shared her own journey of faith with me, urged me to pursue this subject, and introduced me to people who helped, including John Gray, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and the Reverend Gary Hall, former dean of the Washington National Cathedral. Peter Manseau, curator of American religion at the museum, has been most supportive and has advised me on tracking down pictures for this book. Thanks also to Elisa Ho and Joe Weber of the American Jewish Archives and Dale Rosengarten and her team at the special collections at the College of Charleston for additional help.

  Daniel Yergin, my friend and source of encouragement since high school, has heard me out on this subject and others. He sharpened the argument in this book in countless ways. Other friends lending support include Angela Stent, Ken Auletta, Evan and Oscie Thomas, Walter and Cathy Isaacson, Ellen Chesler and Matthew Mallow, Amy and Chick Entelis, Steve Rattner and Maureen White, Steve Pearlstein and Wendy Gray, Geraldine Baum and Mike Oreskes, Gahl Burt, Liaquat Ahamed, Bill Macomber, John Macomber, the late Polly Kraft Cutler, Eitan Urkowitz, Madona Devasahayam, Linda Greenhouse, Eden Rafshoon, David Makovsky, Patsy Glazer, Betsy Gotbaum, Jeffrey Garten, David Freeman, Elizabeth Moynihan, Justice Stephen Breyer, Strobe Talbott and Barbara Lazear Ascher, Caroline and Haywood Miller, Peter Osnos, Priscilla Painton, Chris and Kathy Matthews, Jill Abramson, Michael Kinsley, Hendrik Hertzberg, and Jonathan Lear. Special thanks to Alan Cooperman of the Pew Research Center for helping me understand contemporary patterns in American Judaism. I am immensely grateful to Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, for placing his confidence in me and letting me be a part of the institute’s quest for a just and sustainable world economy.

  Alice Mayhew of Simon & Schuster has been a longtime champion of this book, having waited for it over many years. True to her legendary reputation, she understood what I was trying to do better than I did, seeing this book as a study of American cultural and political history, not just Jewish history. Amanda Urban, dearest of friends, sharpest of critics, and my agent forever, has been exhorting me to finish this project for many years. When she finally said she loved the first draft, I was over the moon. I thank others at Simon & Schuster for helping me bring this book into the world: Stuart Roberts, Philip Metcalf, Ruth Lee-Mui, Lisa Erwin, Amanda Lang, and Kelley Buck.

  Finally, I thank my family, especially my children Madeleine and Teddy, who have always cheered me on with humor and love. My late mother and father, Etta and Joe Weisman, taught me that ethical conduct is at the center of Judaism. My brother and sister, Michael Weisman and Lynn Weisman, and my sister-in-law, Betsy Weisman, have traveled their own paths in the Jewish community of Los Angeles and helped me understand my roots there. My California nieces and nephew—Greg Weisman, Lisa Cope, and Annie Weisman—are the most loving friends an uncle could ask for.

  To Elisabeth Bumiller, my wife, I owe the most. Despite her success at one of the most important, demanding, and stressful jobs in journalism, she has given me the space to write a book far afield from both our day jobs. She took time to read the manuscript and made multiple editing suggestions that improved it. As an Episcopalian who grew up in Cincinnati a stone’s throw from Hebrew Union College, she delighted in this project and has enthusiastically supported my Jewish journey, while undertaking her own Jewish education as we raised our children in that tradition. This book—and my life as a whole—would not have been remotely possible without her support, strength, and love.

  Recommended Reading

  Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People, second edition. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1972, 2004.


  Birminghan, Stephen. Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Originally published by Harper & Row, 1967.

  Diner, Hasia R. A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration, 1820–1880. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

  Eisen, Arnold M. The Chosen People in America: A Study in Jewish Religious Ideology. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1983.

  Evans, Eli N. Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate. New York: Free Press, 1988.

  Glazer, Nathan. American Judaism, Second Edition with a New Introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957, 1972, 1989.

  Howe, Irving, World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976.

  Jick, Leon A. The Americanization of the Synagogue, 1820–1870. Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 1976, 1992.

  Johnson, Paul. A History of the Jews. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.

  Karp, Abraham J. Haven and Home: A History of the Jews in America. New York: Schocken Books, 1985.