The Civil War and the Making of American Antisemitism

 

Historians often date the rise of widespread antisemitism in America to the Gilded Age, interpreting it as a reaction to large‑scale immigration of Eastern European Jews. This talk instead argues that
antisemitism during the Civil War was far more potent and pervasive than has been recognized. It suggests that wartime imagery, ideas, and narratives became deeply embedded in the American imagination and subsequently played a foundational role in shaping how Americans have understood—and continue to understand—Jews.

 

Professor Adam D. Mendelsohn holds the Isidore and Theresa Cohen Chair in Jewish Civilization at the University of Cape Town, where he serves as Director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Head of the Department of Historical Studies. Mendelsohn is the author of Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army (2022) and The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire (2014). He is also co‑editor of Jews and the Civil War: A Reader (with Jonathan D. Sarna, 2010), Transnational Traditions: New Perspectives on American Jewish History (with Ava Kahn, 2014), and Yearning to Breathe Free: Jews in Gilded‑Age America (with Jonathan D. Sarna, 2022).

 

 

 

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