If you're anything like me (and this has little, if anything, to do with personal politics), you will probably have assumed that most US Jews, like their European counterparts, are largely liberal, whatever political party they vote for. Given that all survey findings show that the higher the level of formal education, the greater the degree of "liberalness", this is a no brainer.
However, are you in for a surprise. According to The Tablet, the Rabbi of what is now one of the most (socially and politically) liberal congregations in both New York ad the US was, back in the 1850s and 60s, a strident proponent of slavery.
The Congregation ("shul", for the European Ashkenazim among us) is B'nai Jeshurun, on 88th Street (of course, those of us who regularly visit NY would wish to know whether that's 88th St East or West, but you can't have everything, even from know-it-all New Yorkers), and the Rabbi in question is Morris Raphall. In early 1861 (after Lincoln was elected, but before he took office), Raphall justified slavery with reference to biblical statements concerning slavery and Talmudic disquisitions on the subject. He also opined on the probable mental abilities of African Americans, when compared with White Americans, and not to the advantage of the former. After the Civil War broke out, he condemned the Southern break-away. Too little, too late, I'd say, for the liberal reputation of 19th Century New York Jews.
All, of course, a million miles away from what the current congregation would be likely to say or do.
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Ah, but the rabbi was not alone. Not only were there Jewish slave holders in the South (as well as the usual peddlers and factors), but there was Judah Benjamin of New Orleans, who was the first secretary of war and later secretary of state for the Confederacy. His critics referred to him as the "pet Jew" of President Jefferson Davis.
After the war, Benjamin fled to London where he became a successful barrister. Speculation by his most recent biographer is that he was a homosexual, but it's just as likely he was merely cuckolded by his years-younger Louisiana wife. She had fled to Paris years before the war where he helped pay her considerable living expenses. Her slave-holding family back in NOLA was quite wealthy.
Yeah. Well, no one says that Jooz cornered the market on pure goodness.
I am actually familiar with some of these facts. The Nation of Islam has been disseminating a big crazy book for years blaming the Jews for slavery. It is called "The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews." I think one of things it screams about is Jews who opposed abolition or who didn't support it. The author called himself "lhl" and used to write snarling posts to soc.culture.jewish, my old online haunt. I was teaching at a black college around the year the book came out or the year it sparked the most controversy.
There were Jewish slaveholders, but they were very few compared to the Christian ones, at a time very different from ours. And they had no noticeable (i.e. not recorded) influence over the trade. I wonder how the Nation reconciles modern Muslims (as in Saudi) still holding slaves, virtual or actual, many of them from the Phillipines?
It is not too surprising that a Rabbi in New York City would have such pro-slavery views. New York City did a lot of trade with the South. The promenient merchants and businessmen had many ties to the South both commerical and personal. The mostly Irish working class was afraid that the Abolition of Slavery would liead to free blacks coming North and being willing to work for less pay than their white counterparts. At the same time as Rabbi Raphall's statement, the pro-Tammney Hall Mayor of New York City, Fernando Wood was proposing that in event of civil war, New York City should declare itself neutral!
Latter on in July 1863 after the Emancipation Proclaimation, these attiudes, along with forced military service by the Draft, would result in the New York City Draft Riots that would be the bloodiest Urban riots in U.S. History with more than one hundred dead.
There's an even better connection between 1850s NYC and slavery. Slave ships, financed by New Yorkers and operating from their port, regularly made runs to West Africa to buy slaves and thence across to the Caribbean where they sold them, then hosed down their below decks and sailed back to NY to refit for the next run. It actually continued right up through the early years of the Civil War, though it was illegal under federal law. Once the war was underway and there were soldiers all over the city it was easier to enforce the law.
Yeah, and don't forget David Duke, the Grand Lizard or whatever his title was... it is one of his fave subjects.
Interesting piece of history, thanks David.
So it appears that everyone was doing it at the time...
Here's the book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wanderer-American-Slave-Conspiracy/dp/0312343485/ref=cm_cr-mr-title
The title is a phony, all focused on a Southern slaver that did it once while the NYC slavers were doing it over and over again. Surprised the NYC publisher left the detail in, as it undercuts the title focus so thoroughly.
Hardly anybody did on this subject in those days. They all pointed to the slavery rules in the bible as their justification.
Yeah. One can find absolutely anything in the Book ;-)
Lincoln
was a racist, and the war wasn't about freeing slaves, it was money, besides
that, he couldn't have been much of a rabbi since Judaism abolished slavery
3000 years ago, but that's okay since most ultra orthodox haven't got a clue as
to what Judaism is actually about.
That is very interesting, Dick; thanks for the post and link. Had no idea that slave ships ran that frequently out of New York City right through the early years of the Civil War, more than a half century after the US Congress had abolished the slave trade.
Jekyll Island, where the slaves were unloaded is now a state park. In 1989, the Fort Wagner sequences of the movie "Glory" about the famous black regiment, the 54th Massachusetts was filmed there.
About American Jews and the Civil War. Most Jews, primarily German Jews, lived in the Northern states and supported the Union. Most of them opposed slavery as well. Thousands of Jews served in the Union Army, four won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Two Jewish Colonels commanded German-American regiments, one from Ohio and the other from New York. Lincoln commissioned ten Rabbis to be the first Jewish Chaplains in the U.S. Army.
BBC America is currently showing on Sunday nights at 10 PM, a fine new series, "Copper" set in New York City in 1864. Its lead charecter is an Irish-American New York Police detective who is a Union Army veteran. In last week's episode, the detective talks bitterly to his old commander about how after Gettysburg, their regiment was one of the units sent to supress the Draft Riots, which meant firing on their fellow Irish immigrants.
The neo-Confederate apologists never give up.
That could be true, however I know too little about teh American civil war, so I shall leave it for experts.
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