Elizabeth Taylor as Rebecca
10.37 America and the Jews
Many of the earlier settlers in North America came to escape religious persecution in Europe. Unfortunately Europeans often brought their intolerance with them. The Hugenots who were French protestants escaped to Florida where they founded a colony near what today is Jacksonville in 1564. The Spanish, who occupied much of Florida at the time, slaughtered the Huguenots because they weren't Catholic. They may have also done so because they saw as the French as competitors for their ambitions to settle land in America.
The Puritans and Pilgrims arrived in New England in the early 1600s after suffering religious persecution in England. However, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony didn’t tolerate any opposing religious views. Catholics, Quakers and other non-Puritans were banned from the colony.
In 1635 Roger Williams, a Puritan dissident, was banned from Massachusetts. Williams then moved south and founded Rhode Island. Rhode Island became the first colony with no established church and the first to grant religious freedom to everyone, including Quakers and Jews.
America was more accepting of Jews than Europe but many Europeans brought their antisemitism with them. Antisemitism in America reached its peak between World War I and World War II. The rise of the second Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, the antisemitic works of Henry Ford, and the radio speeches of Father Coughlin in the late 1930s fed that antisemitism. Hollywood on the otherhand accepted Jews and had pro-Jewish movies such as Ivanhoe starring the Jewish actress Elizabeth Taylor as the Jewish Rebecca and Gentlemen's agreement in which Gregory Peck plays a Jew who is discriminated against.
Elizabeth Taylor as Rebecca
Antisemitism in America was probably there for the same reason that the Spanish Catholics massacred the French Hugenot Protestants. Jews did not believe in the religion of those who hated them. In fact Jews were a target of the Catholic Inquisition in Europe for that reason. Many Christians believed that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus and hated Jews for that.
The aftermath of the Holocaust during World War II, served as turning point in Catholic-Jewish relations. Rabbi Greenburg explained:
Like the rest of humanity, the Holocaust triggered much soul-searching among religious people of good will who strove mightily to understand the targeted persecution and murder of millions of people because of the faith they were identified with. These religious thinkers sought to understand and explain how a loving God could permit such unspeakable evil against millions of innocent men, women, and children. In the Christian community, religious leaders, philosophers, and thinkers started exploring how the Christian history of antagonism and hatred of Jews planted the seeds for the Shoah. This extraordinary process of self-reflection led Pope John XXIII in 1962 to convene the Second Vatican Council. The council undertook an official reexamination of the anti-Jewish history of the Church and sought a new path of understanding between Judaism and Christianity (as well as other religions). Ultimately, a groundbreaking Vatican document was drafted and approved in 1965. It called for a profound reconciliation between Catholics and Jews. The document, known as Nostra Aetate, declares anti-Semitism a sin against God at any time or place, affirms the continuing validity of God’s covenant with Moses and the Jewish people, and calls for greater respect and understanding between Catholics and Jews. Nostra Aetate rejects the false deicide claim that all Jews are responsible for the Death of Jesus.
Following the Second World War Americans became more welcoming of Jews. This was probably in part because Americans became aware of how the Nazis had treated the Jews and so became more sympathetic toward the Jews. The end of World War 2 was the beginning of the golden age for American Jewry. A Jewish pianist named Bess Myerson even won Miss America 6 days after World War 2 ended.
I couldn't find a video of her playing piano at the Miss America pageant but you can see her playing piano fifteen years later in the video below.
There still was anti-semitism though. While Myerson was on her year-long tour as Miss America, she encountered "No Jews" signs posted in places such as hotels and country clubs. Such experiences led her to conduct lectures on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League titled "You Can't Be Beautiful and Hate". Myerson became a vocal opponent of antisemitism and racism, and her speaking tour became the highlight of her Miss America reign.
In the first half of the 20th century. Jews were discriminated against in some fields of employment, they were not allowed to join some social clubs and they were also not allowed to stay in some resort areas, their enrollment at colleges was limited by quotas, and they were also not allowed to buy certain properties. In response, Jews established their own country clubs, summer resorts in the Catskills, and universities, such as Brandeis. By the early 1960s, almost all resorts and housing developments allowed Jews in, anti-Semitic college quotas had mostly ended; and professional fields like law, medicine, and banking proved more receptive to Jews than at any time in the century. Elite universities accepted large numbers of Jewish students. Jewish students accounted for about a third of enrollment several decades ago at my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. Jewish student populations at Harvard, Yale and Cornell were estimated to be between 20 and 25 percent. That is very high considering that Jews are only about 2% of the United States population.
In 1975 evangelical minister John Hagee founded Christians United For Israel (CUFI). It has grown into an organization with over 10 million people. It is the largest Zionist organization of America. Here is a video about CUFI.
The Muslim Koran portrays Jews as evil. They believe that the Jews killed Jesus but believe that Jesus was a prophet and not the son of God. Muslim immigrants to America have brought their antisemitism with them and that has spread especially among the left. One effect of that antisemitism is discrimination against Jews who apply for admission in colleges. Jews that were one third the student population at the University of Pennsylvania are only 16 percent of the 10,412 undergraduates at Penn as of January 2024. The undergraduate Jewish population of Harvard and Yale is half of what it was according to estimates on Hillel’s website.
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Antisemitism is spreading in American schools. To read about that
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