Jewish Americans and Political Participation

Regular price €62.99
Title
A01=Rafael Medoff
Abolitionism
AIPAC
American Jewish Committee
Antisemitism
Author_Rafael Medoff
Ben-Gurion
Category=GTM
Category=JBSR
Category=JP
Central Conference of American Rabbis
Cultural Pluralism
David
Dickstein
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
German Jews
Holocast
Israel
Jewish Americans
Ku Klux Klan
Leftists
Louis
Marshall
NAACP
New York City
Palestine
Samuel

Product details

  • ISBN 9781576073148
  • Publication Date: 29 Aug 2002
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days

Our Delivery Time Frames Explained
2-4 Working Days: Available in-stock

10-20 Working Days: On Backorder

Will Deliver When Available: On Pre-Order or Reprinting

We ship your order once all items have arrived at our warehouse and are processed. Need those 2-4 day shipping items sooner? Just place a separate order for them!

This handbook addresses how the Jewish American community emerged from obscurity to play a role in behind-the-scenes power politics and finally appeared center stage.

Jewish Americans and Political Participation explores the rise of the Jewish people from hardscrabble immigrants to the highest echelons of political power. The book provides an overview of American Jewish life, including the impact of immigration, domestic antisemitism, the Holocaust, and U.S–Israel relations. A chapter is devoted to protest politics, covering such events as President Grant's Order #11 (expulsion edict), tenants and shirtwaist-makers strikes, the 1943 rabbis march on Washington, and Jewish responses to the Rosenberg case.

The book also covers participation in social movements such as abolition, Jewish defense organizations, and the New Left. A chapter is devoted to Jewish participation in electoral politics, from Jewish interest in early socialism to Jewish advisers and the emergence of Jewish conservatism. There are also biographies of Jewish American officials and political officeholders.


  • Provides an overview of Jewish Americans in office, including Leopold Morse, the first Jew elected to Congress, in 1876; a review of Jewish members of Congress in the postwar era; and the role of Jewish American women in Congress
  • Contains excerpts from key legislation impacting Jewish political participation, including Ulysses S. Grant's 1862 directive to expel all Jews from the Kentucky–Tennessee–Mississippi region and the 1974 Jackson Amendment, which pressured the Soviet Union to permit the emigration of its Jewish citizens

Rafael Medoff, PhD, is visiting scholar in Jewish studies at Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY and associate editor of American Jewish History.