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JEWS

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Although they constituted a small percentage of the population prior to 1870, Jews occupied a significant place in the American imagination from the time of the founding of the New England colonies. This can largely be attributed to the centrality of Hebrew scripture to seventeenth-century Puritan colonists, an importance reflected by the choice of a translation of biblical psalms from Hebrew as the first book to be published in New England. On a more abstract and enduring level, the discourse of Puritans suggested identification between themselves and biblical Israelites. Typical of this analogy is an assertion in John Winthrop's sermon "A Model of Christian Charity" (1630) that if fellow colonists act properly, "We shall find that the God of Israel is among us." This sense of identification recurs in subsequent literature, such as Timothy Dwight's epic poem of the American Revolution, The Conquest of Canaan (1785), which features George Washington as an American version of the biblical Joshua. Herman Melville would later observe in White-Jacket (1850) more equivocally, "we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people—the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world" (p. 506). Such symbolic resonance between biblical Jews and antebellum Americans rarely seems to have been affected by interactions with contemporary Jews.

JEWISH LIFE BEFORE 1870

Jews had lived in the colonies from the seventeenth century onward, yet by 1820 there were fewer than three thousand American Jews, most of whom traced their ancestry to Spain and Portugal. These Sephardic Jews would soon become a minority within the Jewish community as increasing numbers of Jews from northern and central Europe arrived despite the prevalent attitude in their native countries that the United States was a place where traditional Jewish religious customs, study, and institutions were minimal. By 1850 the American Jewish population was approximately fifty thousand, and by 1870 it approached a quarter of a million, still less than 1 percent of the overall population. American Jewish practices differed markedly from European observances as new arrivals settled in a variety of areas and established their own institutions. Many of these institutions were less religious in nature than they were community oriented, such as B'nai B'rith, or religious in a nontraditional manner, as was the case with congregations that adhered to the tenets of Reform Judaism. The range of Jewish life in the United States forms the basis of Three Years in America, 1859–1862 (1862; English translation, 1956), an account of travels in the United States by a German-Jewish writer, Israel Joseph Benjamin (1818–1864).

The American response to the Jewish presence was complex. Legal restrictions against Jews holding office and voting were maintained in a few states and Christian missionary societies devoted to proselytizing among Jews reflected a degree of intolerance. Yet in general the civil and economic rights enjoyed by Jews surpassed conditions they encountered in Europe, where state-sponsored discriminatory practices were common and organized violence against Jews recurred. Moreover, the political successes of some Jews in both the North and the South, which included election to seats in Congress, attests to a level of acceptance. Historians have argued that the relative freedoms of the United States were a major appeal to young immigrants, yet the consensus is that economic opportunity, which was often associated at the time with prospects for marriage, was the primary attraction. This explanation accounts for the continued growth of Jewish immigration even after 1870, a period of increased racial and ethnic tension throughout the nation, when restrictions against Jews expanded.

Antebellum Jews produced a range of journalistic pieces, essays, letters, and other occasional works, but few Jews devoted themselves to more sustained liter-ary projects. Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785–1851), the most prominent American Jewish personage of his era, built a reputation as a politician, diplomat, playwright, and essayist, although he is largely remembered for his unsuccessful attempt in 1825 to create a Jewish colony called Ararat near Buffalo, New York. Another notable Jewish figure whose influence was more enduring, Isaac Leeser (1806–1868), disseminated translations and textbooks on religion and in 1843 founded The Occident, an important periodical that gave voice to traditional religious attitudes. A weekly newspaper devoted to Reform Judaism, The Israelite, was established in 1854 by Isaac Mayer Wise (1819–1900), who also wrote novels, plays, and poetry. Other Jewish newspapers and periodicals of the era attest to the spread of the Jewish population from northeastern cities as far west and south as California and Florida. In addition to these publications, poetry by such Sephardic women writers as Penina Moïse (1797–1880) and the actress Adah Isaacs Menken (c. 1835–1868) attained a degree of popularity, albeit not as great as that later achieved by Emma Lazarus (1849–1887), the most famous nineteenth-century American Jewish poet.

JEWS AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE

The association between Jews and biblical writings remained strong within the literature of the period. Passing references may be found in works by James Fenimore Cooper, such as The Oak Openings; or, The Bee-Hunter (1848), and others alluding to the legend that Native Americans were descended from the ten lost tribes of Israelites, a connection that had been pursued through comparative analysis of Hebrew and Indian languages by the eighteenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards. Biblical settings were also a staple of the religious novel, a popular genre throughout the nineteenth century that presented Jews in remote, romanticized settings. The most successful writer of religious novels during this era, Joseph Holt Ingraham (1809–1860), depicted biblical Jews with some degree of sympathy, although his enormously popular The Prince of the House of David (1855) was dedicated to the hope that American Jews would convert to Christianity.

The most forceful evocation of biblical Judaism, however, may be found in abolitionist writings, which often referred to biblical episodes or reflected the ominous rhetoric of the prophetic books. For example, the staunchly abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier in "The Cities of the Plain" (1831) used a biblical tale of God's wrath to warn that "vengeance shall gather the harvest of crime!" (p. 76), and the prophetic tone permeating the closing chapter of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) likewise foretells disaster as a result of slavery. Frederick Douglass's "The Meaning of July Fourth to the Negro" (1852), which castigates Northerners for tolerating slavery, most explicitly relates the cause of abolition to the emancipation of biblical Israelites from Egypt, a thematic association found in the lyrics of some spirituals.

Treatments of contemporary Jews tended toward the stereotypical, particularly in the popular literature of the period. Some positive images of exotic Jewish women or benevolent Jewish men may be found, but negative associations between Jews and money prevailed. The enduring influence of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, which features the merciless usurer Shylock, is indicated by the fact that it was among the most frequently performed plays in the United States before 1900. George Lippard's The Quaker City (1845), a sensationalistic novel of urban corruption, alludes to Shylock with the villainous Gabriel Von Gelt. Von Gelt, whose name incorporates the Yiddish word gelt (money), is a humpbacked southern forger who speaks with a heavy accent and is introduced with the phrase, "'Jew' was written on his face clearly and distinctly" (p. 175). Depiction of the stereotypical money-mongering and physically distinct Jew would recur in Lippard's novels and elsewhere. For example, John Beauchamp Jones, author of novels about life on the frontier, would depict Jews as unscrupulous in their business dealings in The Western Merchant (1849) and in The Winkles (1855).

More positive images of contemporary Jews, however, may also be found in antebellum literature. The novelist Charles Brockden Brown presented in Arthur Mervyn (1799–1800) a wealthy young Jewish widow who is sufficiently decorous to seem a suitable mate for the virtuous title character. Brown's approving characterization lacks nuance, which is not the case for the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun (1860), Miriam. An exotic character with Jewish ancestry who carries a burden of guilt, Miriam also conveys an awareness of moral obligation, evidence of a more highly developed consciousness than that present, according to Hawthorne, among the Jews of the Rome ghetto, who are described in subhuman terms. Hawthorne also refers to Jews occasionally in terms of the Christian legend of the Wandering Jew, a figure of guilt who appears in the short story "Ethan Brand" (1850). Ambiguity is likewise conveyed in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport" (1852), a curiously elegiac poem that recalls ancient glory and "the grand dialect the Prophets spake" before concluding, "the dead nations never rise again" (pp. 61–62). All of these works suggest the authors had little if any familiarity with living Jews.

The most exceptional treatment of Jews may be found in Melville's book-length poem Clarel (1876). Based on Melville's 1856–1857 journey to the Levant, the poem portrays a young American divinity student's search for religious knowledge. Melville depicts the hardships faced by Jews living in Palestine as well as their customs, but what is most striking is the range of Jewish characters, for they do not conform to existing stereotypes. Instead both major and minor characters create a sense of Jewish humanity unique to the period. Although Clarel would remain relatively obscure, it presaged the more complex treatments of Jews that would follow in later American literature.

See also Abolitionist Writing; The Bible; Catholics; Immigration; Urbanization

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Works

Benjamin, Israel Joseph. Three Years in America, 1859–1862. 2 vols. Translated by Charles Reznikoff. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1956.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Novels: Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun. New York: Literary Classics of America, 1983.

Lippard, George. The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall: A Romance of Philadelpha Life, Mystery, and Crime. 1845. Edited by David S. Reynolds. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport." 1850. In Nineteenth-Century American Poetry, edited by William C. Spengemann, pp. 60–62. New York: Penguin, 1996.

Melville, Herman. Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. 1876. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1991.

Melville, Herman. Redburn, His First Voyage; White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War; Moby-Dick, or, The Whale. New York: Literary Classics of America, 1983.

Whittier, John Greenleaf. "The Cities of the Plain." 1831. In Nineteenth-Century American Poetry, edited by William C. Spengemann, pp. 76–77. New York: Penguin, 1996.

Secondary Works

Borden, Morton. Jews, Turks, and Infidels. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

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

Harap, Louis. The Image of the Jew in American Literature: From Early Republic to Mass Immigration. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1974.

Marcus, Jacob Rader. United States Jewry, 1776–1985. 4 vols. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989–1993.

Mayo, Louise A. The Ambivalent Image: Nineteenth-Century America's Perception of the Jew. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988.

Sarna, Jonathan D. American Judaism: A History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004.

Joseph Alkana