The Chosen Wars

by Steven R Weisman

Katz, Michael, and Gershon Schwartz. Swimming in the Sea of Talmud: Lessons for Everyday Living. Philadelphia and Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1998.

  Kirsch, Adam. The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 2016.

  Kohut, Alexander. The Ethics of the Fathers. New York: private printing, 1920. Reprinted by Forgotten Books, 2015.

  Kohler, Kaufmann. A Living Faith: Selected Sermons and Addresses from the Literary Remains of Dr. Kaufmann Kohler. Edited by Samuel S. Cohon. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1948.

  Kugel, James L. On Being a Jew. New York: Harper San Francisco (Harper Collins), 1990.

  ———. The Bible as It Was. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

  ———. The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.

  ———. How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now. New York: Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2007.

  Laytner, Anson. Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1990.

  Meyer, Michael A., and David N. Myers, eds. Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity: Rethinking an Old Opposition. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014.

  Miles, Jack. God: A Biography. New York: Vintage Books/Random House, 1995.

  Miles, Jack, gen. ed., and David Biale. The Norton Anthology of World Religions, vol. 2. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Co., 2015.

  Neusner, Jacob. From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Pharisaic Judaism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973.

  Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

  Oz, Amos, and Fania Oz-Salzberger. Jews and Words. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012.

  Petuchowski, Jakob J. Prayerbook Reform in Europe: The Liturgy of European Liberal and Reform Judaism. New York: World Union for Progressive Judaism, 1968.

  Parry, Aaron. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Talmud. New York: Penguin Group, 2004.

  Pianko, Noam. Jewish Peoplehood: An American Innovation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015.

  Sacks, Jonathan. The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilization. London and New York: Continuum, 2002.

  ———. The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning. New York: Schocken Books, 2011.

  Satlow, Michael L. Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

  Satlow, Michael L. How the Bible Became Holy. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014.

  Stanislawski, Michael. A Murder in Lemberg: Politics, Religion, and Violence in Modern Jewish History. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007.

  Walzer, Michael. In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012.

  Wieseltier, Leon. Kaddish. New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1998.

  Wright, Robert. The Evolution of God. New York, Boston, London: Little, Brown and Company, 2009.

  THE CIVIL WAR

  Ash, Stephen V. “Civil War Exodus,” in Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn, eds., Jews and the Civil War. New York and London: New York University Press, 2010.

  Bunker, Gary L., and John J. Appel. “ ‘Shoddy’ Antisemitism and the Civil War,” in Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn, eds., Jews and the Civil War. New York and London: New York University Press, 2010.

  Drescher, Seymour. “Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn, Jews and the Civil War. New York: New York University Press, 2010.

  Einhorn, David. “David Einhorn’s Response to ‘A Biblical View of Slavery,’ ” translated from the German, in Sinai, vol. 6, 2–22, Baltimore, 1861, by Mrs. Kaufmann Kohler; published by Jewish-American Historical Society: http://www.jewish-history.com/civilwar/einhorn.html.

  Evans, Eli N. “Overview: The War Between Jewish Brothers in America,” in Jonathan Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn, eds., Jews and the Civil War: A Reader. New York and London: New York University Press, 2010.

  Fein, Isaac M. “Baltimore Rabbis During the Civil War,” in Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn, eds., Jews and the Civil War. New York and London: New York University Press, 2010.

  Ferris, Marcie Cohen and Mark I. Greenberg, eds. Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006.

  Heilprin, Michael. “Michael Heilprin’s Anti-Slavery Editorial,” New York, January 11, 1861, published by Jewish-American Historical Society: http://www.jewish-history.com/civilwar/heilprin.htm.l

  Hertz, Emanuel, ed. Abraham Lincoln: The Tribute of the Synagogue. New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1927.

  Holzer, Harold. Lincoln and the Jews: The Last Best Hope of Earth. Los Angeles: Skirball Cultural Center, 2002.

  Korn, Bertram W. American Jewry and the Civil War. Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books, World Publishing Co., and Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961.

  ———. “Revolution and Reform: The Antebellum Jewish Abolitionists,” in Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn, eds., Jews and the Civil War. New York and London: New York University Press, 2010.

  Mendelsohn, Adam. “Introduction: Before Korn: A Century of Jewish Historical Writing About the Civil War,” in Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn, eds., Jews and the Civil War. New York and London: New York University Press, 2010.

  Raphall, M. J. “The Bible View of Slavery,” January 15, 1861, published by Jewish-American Historical Society: http://www.jewish-history.com/civilwar/raphall.html.

  Rock, Howard B. “Upheaval, Innovation, and Transformation: New York City Jews and the Civil War.” American Jewish Archives Journal, LXIV (2012), no. 1 & 2.

  ———. “Jewish Confederates,” in Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn, eds., Jews and the Civil War. New York: New York University Press, 2010.

  Ruchames, Louis, “The Abolitionists and the Jews: Some Further Thoughts,” in Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn, eds., Jews and the Civil War. New York and London: New York University Press, 2010.

  Sarna, Jonathan D., and Benjamin Shapell, eds. Lincoln and the Jews: A History. New York: St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne Books, 2015.

  ———. When General Grant Expelled the Jews. New York: Schocken Books, 2012.

  Sarna, Jonathan D., and Adam Neldesohn, eds., Jews and the Civil War: A Reader. New York and London: New York University Press, 2010.

  Sokolow, Jayme A. “Revolution and Reform: The Antebellum Jewish Abolitionists,” Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn, eds., Jews and the Civil War (New York and London: New York University Press, 2010).

  Zola, Gary Phillip, ed. We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry—A Documentary History. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2014.

  MESSIANISM

  Katz, Jacob, “Israel and the Messiah,” in Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History, ed. Marc Saperstein. New York: New York University Press, 1992.

  Klausner, Joseph. The Messianic Idea in Israel: From Its Beginning to the Completion of the Mishnah. New York: Macmillan Company, 1955.

  Levenson, Jon D. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006.

  Saperstein, Marc, ed. Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History. New York and London: New York University Press, 1992.

  Scholem, Gershom. The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. New York: Schocken Books, 1971, 1972.

  Silver, Abba Hillel. A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel: From the First Through the Seventeenth Centuries. With a new introduction: 1959. Boston: Beacon Hill Press, 1927.

  Wieseltier, Leon. “A Passion for Waiting: Liberal Notes on Messianism and the Jews.” In a privately publish
ed book in honor of Daniel Bell.

  CHARLESTON

  Breitbart, Solomon, compiled by Harlan Greene. Explorations in Charleston’s Jewish History. Charleston and London: History Press, 2005.

  Elzas, Barnett A. The Jews of South Carolina: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1905. Digitized by Internet Archive 2007.

  Hagy, James William. This Happy Land: The Jews of Colonial and Antebellum Charleston. Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 1993.

  Harby, Lee C. “Penina Moïse: Woman and Writer,” in The American Jewish Year Book, vol. 7, September 30, 1905, to September 19, 1906, 17–31.

  Holz, Anthony D. and other authors. Pocket Guide to Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim and Charleston Jewish History. Charleston: Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, 2005.

  Liberles, Robert, “Conflict Over Reforms in Charleston,” in Jack Wertheimer, ed., The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1987).

  Moïse, L. C. Biography of Isaac Harby, with an Account of the Reformed Society of Israelites of Charleston, S.C. 1824–1833. Macon, GA: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1930.

  Reznikoff, Charles, with Uriah Z. Engelman. The Jews of Charleston: A History of an American Jewish Community. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1950.

  Silberman, Lou H. “American Impact: Judaism in the United States in the Early Nineteenth Century,” in B .G. Rudolph Lectures in Judaic Studies. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1964.

  Tarshish, Allan. “The Charleston Organ Case,” in American Jewish Historical Quarterly. Johns Hopkins University Press, vol. 54 (June 1965), no. 4, 411–449.

  Zola, Gary Phillip. Isaac Harby of Charleston, 1788–1828: Jewish Reformer and Intellectual. Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 1994.

  ———. Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities—Charleston, South Carolina. Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, 2017 (accessed online September 3, 2017).

  ———. A Guided Tour of Jewish Community Life: 300 Years of South Carolina History. Publication of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina. Undated.

  ARTICLES AND LECTURES

  Appel, John J. “The Trefa Banquet,” Commentary, February 1, 1966, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-trefa-banquet/ (accessed August 9, 2017).

  Ashton, Susanna, “Slaves of Charleston: Beyond the Beauty and Wealth of Jewish South Carolina Lies a Troubled and Troubling History,” Forward, September 19, 2014.

  Baer, Yitzhak F. “From the Ancient Faith to a New Historical Consciousness,” excerpt from Galut, Robert Warshow, trans. New York: Schocken Books, 1947. Republished in Goldin, Judah, ed., The Jewish Expression. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976.

  Bickerman, Elias. “The Maccabean Uprising: An Interpretation,” trans. from the German by Krishna Winston. Berlin: Schocken Books, 1937. Republished in Judah Goldin, ed. The Jewish Expression. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976, 66–86.

  Borowitz, Eugene B. “What Do We Expect in the Messianic Age?” Liberal Judaism. New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1984.

  Brook, Daniel. “The Forgotten Confederate Jew: How History Lost Judah P. Benjamin, the Most Prominent American Jew of the Nineteenth Century.” Tablet, July 17, 2012.

  Goodman, Abraham Vossen. “A Jewish Peddler’s Diary.” American Jewish Archives, June 1951.

  Gurock, Jeffrey S. “Resisters and Accommodators: Varieties of Orthodox Rabbis in America, 1886–1983.” American Jewish Archives, November 1983, 100–187.

  Harby, Lee C. “Penina Moïse: Woman and Writer,” American Jewish Committee Archives, http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1905_1906_3_Biographies.pdf (accessed July 21, 2016).

  Hirsch, Emil G. “Reform Judaism: A Discourse at the Celebration of Dr. Samuel Hirsch’s 70th Anniversary, delivered by his son, the Rabbi of Chicago Sinai Congregation.” Philadelphia: Edward Hirsch & Co. 1885.

  Hoffman, Lawrence A. “Limits, Truth and Meaning: A Foundation for Dialogue.” Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, NY, 1988.

  Karff, Samuel E. “The Theology of the Pittsburgh Platform,” in The Pittsburgh Platform in Retrospect, Walter Jacob, ed. Pittsburgh: Rodef Shalom Congregation Press, 1985.

  LaGrone, Matthew. “Disagreement and Denominationalism: The Kohut-Kohler Debate of 1885.” Conservative Judaism, vol. 64 (Summer 2013), no. 4.

  Leeser, Isaac, “Letter to the Rev. G. Poznanski.” The Occident and American Jewish Advocate, vol. 1 (August 1843), no. 5.

  Mooney, James E. “Seixas, Gershom Mendes,” in Kenneth T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995.

  Plaut, W. Gunther, “The Pittsburgh Platform in the Light of European Antecedents,” in The Pittsburgh Platform in Retrospect, Walter Jacob, ed. Pittsburgh: Rodef Shalom Congregation Press, 1985.

  Rock, Howard B. “Upheaval, Innovation, and Transformation: New York City Jews and the Civil War.” American Jewish Archives Journal, vol. LXIV (2012), nos. 1 and 2.

  Ruben, Bruce L. “Max Lilienthal and Isaac M. Wise: Architects of American Reform Judaism.” American Jewish Archives Journal, vol. LV (2003), no. 2, 1–29.

  Rubinger, Naphtali J. “Dismissal in Albany,” American Jewish Archives Journal, vol. XXIV (April 1972), no. 1.

  Sarna, Jonathan D. “The Debate Over Mixed Seating in the American Synagogue,” in Jack Wertheimer, ed., The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed. Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 1987.

  Shalev, Eran. “Revive, Renew, and Reestablish: Mordecai Noah’s Ararat and the Limits of Biblical Imagination in the Early American Republic.” American Jewish Archives, vol. LXII (2010), no. 1, 1–20.

  Singer, Isidore, George Alexander, and Cyrus Adler. “Alexander Kohut,” Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9436-kohut-alexander.

  Sperling, S. David, “Major Developments in Jewish Biblical Scholarship,” in Magne Sæbø, ed., Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. III, From Modernism to Post-Modernism (The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015.

  Strum, Harvey. “Albany,” in Encyclopedia Judaica 2008. Republished by Jewish Virtual Library; American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.

  Sussman, Lance J. “The Myth of the Trefa Banquet: American Culinary Culture and the Radicalization of Food Policy in American Reform Judaism.” American Jewish Archives Journal, vol. 57 (2005), nos. 1–2, http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/2005_57_01_02_sussman.pdf (accessed August 9, 2017).

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION: JEWS IN AMERICA: A PART BUT APART

  1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated with a preface and introductory notice by Henry Reeve, C. B., edited by Bruce Frohnen (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2002), 241.

  2. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 569.

  3. Abraham J. Karp, Haven and Home: A History of the Jews in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1985), 7–8.

  4. Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University University Press, 1988), 42.

  5. Arnold M. Eisen, 1983, The Chosen People in America: A Study in Jewish Religious Ideology, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1983), 3. Quoted in David Philipson, “The Jewish Pioneers of the Ohio Valley,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 8 (1900), 45.

  6. Eisen, The Chosen People in America, 14.

  ONE: COMING TO AMERICA

  1. Sydney Ahlstrom, A Religious History, 569.

  2. Simon Scharna, The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC–1491 AD (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), 306–406.

  3. Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews in America: Four Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter (New York: Simon & S
chuster, 1989), 19. See also Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 43 ff.

  4. Martin E. Marty, Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), viii–ix.

  5. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 278.

  6. Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 2.

  7. Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism, xv.

  8. Jacob Rader Marcus, Early American Jewry: The Jews of New York, New England and Canada 1694–1794, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1951), 39.

  9. Paul Johnson, History of the Jews, 283–287.

  10. Paul Johnson, History of the Jews, 281.

  11. Nathan Glazer, American Judaism, 2d ed., with a new introduction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957, 1972, 1989), 16.

  12. Abraham J. Karp, Haven and Home: A History of the Jews in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1985), 18.

  13. Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism, 26.

  14. Abraham J. Karp, Haven and Home, 39.

  15. Hasia R. Diner, The Jews of the United States 1654 to 2000 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2004), 16.

  16. Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism, 27–28.

  17. Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism, 44–45.

  18. Leon A. Jick, The Americanization of the Synagogue, 1820–1870 (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 1976, 1992), 6.

  19. Jacob Rader Marcus, Memoirs of American Jews 1775–1865, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1955), 67–68 and 107.

  20. Abraham J. Karp, Haven and Home, 15.

  21. Leon A. Jick, Americanization of the Synagogue, 7.

  22. Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism, 16.

  23. Jacob Rader Marcus, Early American Jewry, 73–74 and 94–99. Also Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism, 36.

  24. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, 573.

  25. James E. Mooney, “Seixas, Gershom Mendes,” in Kenneth T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 1058. Also Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism, 40–41, and Leon A. Jick, Americanization of the Synagogue, 10.