Imagining Early American Jews

Popular representations of history tend to meet the moral demands of the present. Before the social crises of the postwar era began to influence Jews' thinking and at a time when global antisemitism posed the most obvious threat to their continuity and survival, Jews in America were relatively untroubled by the nation's legacy of colonialism. Popular representations of early Jewish American history unabashedly highlighted Jewish conformity to the pioneer myth. The civil rights era and its aftermath, however, brought a new and conflicting awareness to an increasingly affluent population of Jewish Americans. Jews realized that they were beneficiaries of American plenitude and began to reckon with the fact that some of their ancestors had been complicit in the nation's greatest transgressions of racial justice. From the 1960s onward, a growing awareness of how Jews, as racial whites, may have benefitted from the colonization of the New World inspired new efforts to grapple with the legacy of early Jewish American history. Michael Hoberman examines how the Jewish experiences of the American Revolution, slaveholding in the early republic and antebellum period, and westward migration have been imagined, commemorated, and frequently mythologized. Focusing on how historical relationships between Jews and Native Americans and Jews and Blacks are interpreted in light of current political developments, he suggests that the stories Americans tell about early American Jews help to shape their views about the racial and cultural complexities of the American present. He analyzes current-day popular representations of Jewish history in the United States, including historical novels and the curation of early synagogues and house museums. Finally, he introduces several current-day descendants of early American Jews whose genealogical backgrounds inform their sense of identity. Timely and original, Imagining Early American Jews shows how non-specialists' interpretations and representations of the past are key to understanding Jewish American history and identity.