A primer to understand and fight the ‘oldest hatred’
Antisemitism, An American Tradition. By Professor Pamela S. Nadell
In her timely – and unfortunately timeless – new book, “Antisemitism, An American Tradition, Professor Pamela Nadell asserts that until recently, American Jews believed that the worst antisemitism was behind us.
In 1999, over 50% of American Jews did not foresee the new millennium’s increase in antisemitism. Ten percent foresaw a decrease. One book proclaimed, “The Death of Antisemitism.”
Catapulted into the worst period of American antisemitism, many are now romanticizing a tranquil pre-October 7, 2023, past that was anything but.
Nadell, a distinguished professor of Jewish and Women’s History at The American University, captures that dynamic, explaining, “Golden ages appear in retrospect when turmoil in the current moment propels longing for an imagined idyllic past.”
Her 250 pages, covering 370 years, detail how, from the very beginning, Jews have experienced antisemitism. In all its vicissitudes. From its theological, racial, and economic sources to its violent, discriminatory, and legal manifestations. Those sources and manifestations both evolved and remained constant.
Her revealing examples are sobering:
1. In 1654, the first Jews to arrive on America’s shores were turned away, told that their “deceitful race [should not] infect this new colony.” Foreshadowing the role that American Jews would later take upon themselves, it was the forceful advocacy of Dutch Jews that secured their right to settle in New Amsterdam.
2. Once settled, Jews faced political and economic prejudice: 11 of the original 13 colonies prohibited their voting. Once Jews could vote, they needed to accept a Christian oath to hold office. “Blue laws” prohibiting commerce on Sundays placed burdens on Shabbat-observers.
3. Counter-intuitively, antisemitism often worsened over time, losing an earlier genteel veneer and becoming shamelessly explicit. In 1820, America’s upper crust saw fit to innocuously label their proselytizing organization the “American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews.” Yet fifty years later, the less tactfully named “American Society for the Suppression of the Jews” was formed.
4. In the 1920s, 75% of Chicago Tribune want ads for female employment insisted “no Jews.” Today, it is campus and “social justice” groups that specify “Zionists need not apply.”
5. In the 1930s, 25% of all Americans tuned in weekly for Father Coughlin’s antisemitic “sermons.” It was not poor ratings that forced him off the air, but his Catholic elders, who, belatedly, had heard enough. Coughlin, like today’s anti-Zionists, had his own token Jew – a pulpit rabbi no less – vouching for him.
6. Incredibly, as Jews powerlessly watched the destruction of European Jewry unfold, Americans became increasingly convinced that we wielded too much power: In 1938, 35% thought so. In 1945, after the Holocaust, 67% did!
7. In the 1950s, to counter the influx of Jewish dentists, 65% of all Jewish dental students began failing their tests. In contrast, only 15% of all others failed. At Johns Hopkins University, which previously imposed no quotas limiting Jewish enrollment, one was initiated by its Jewish president!
8. While deadly antisemitic attacks were rare before the 21st Century, the frequency of firebombing synagogues was much higher. Three such synagogue firebombings happened in Chicago alone between 1961 and 1962.
9. While the post 10/7 explosion of anti-Zionism is often called the “new antisemitism,” ADL first invoked the phrase in 1974.
10. The phenomenon of blaming Jews/Zionists for the misdeeds of their enemies is a constant. An Arab American leader, in the aftermath of Robert Kennedy’s 1968 assassination by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan, called Kennedy “… an indirect victim of Zionism.”
Nadell – who, years ago, was a professor of mine and with whom I maintain an episodic correspondence –has authored significant books on American Jewish history, most notably on Jewish women. In this book, she appropriately highlights the outsized role American Jewish women have played in countering antisemitism.
Nadell herself entered the public spotlight last year when she was the expert witness on antisemitism, sitting alongside the three female Ivy League presidents during their infamous Congressional hearing that led to each of their ousters.
Despite her prolific publishing and speaking appearances, Nadell first visibly burst onto the public scene in late 2023. She served as the expert witness on antisemitism while sitting aside the three female Ivy League presidents during their infamous Congressional hearing that led to each of their ousters.
Her book renders convincing verdicts on successful and failed efforts to combat American antisemitism. In the latter category, Nadell cites a failed 1892 campaign premised on the conviction that if everyone only knew of the contributions Jews made to Christopher Columbus’s journey four hundred years earlier, antisemitism would diminish. Comparable misplaced hopes linger today among many of us.
Just as “everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it,” the same largely applies to complaints about today’s antisemitism. Too few are actively engaged in fighting back and preventing it, and fewer still do the necessary work of further educating themselves on how best to do so.
Six-hundred-word op-eds, blogs, and social media rants (and book reviews like this) about antisemitism are ubiquitous but fleeting. For those who have not yet entered the fray and for those who have, reading Antisemitism, An American Tradition is a necessary step to doing so more smartly and impactfully.
Antisemitism, an American Tradition, will be published on October 14, 2025 (W.W. Norton).