Jewish Americans and Political Participation

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.SIsrael 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 KentuckyTennesseeMississippi region and the 1974 Jackson Amendment, which pressured the Soviet Union to permit the emigration of its Jewish citizens