What was the Jewish record on slavery? It’s (very) complicated.
Richard Kreitner's 'Fear No Pharaoh" unpacks the myths surrounding Jews and slavery in and around the Civil War and its aftermath
Judah Benjamin
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Books Why Jews were like everyone else — only more so — during slavery and the Civil War
Richard Kreitner’s ‘Fear No Pharoah’ takes an unflinching look at how Jews reckoned with America’s founding sin
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News The first Jewish senators were slaveowners. How should we reckon with their legacy?
After the Washington Post released the first complete accounting of members of Congress who owned enslaved people, the Forward ran all nine Jews who entered Congress before the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, through the database. What we found: Only two Jews on the list of more than 1,700 congresspeople — David…
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Culture Meet Jon Ossoff’s Jewish predecessors from the South
Jon Ossoff is the first Jew to be elected to the Senate from the Deep South since before the Reconstruction. But who were these Civil War era Jews who came before him? They’re so far in the past, I was surprised to hear there had ever been a Jewish senator from the South; I had…
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Fast Forward A synagogue memorialized Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy’s most prominent Jew. Here’s how that changed.
(JTA) — About 15 years ago, a large synagogue in Northern California installed a set of windows in the religious school engraved with the names of some 175 prominent Jews, from biblical figures to famous actors. One of them, sandwiched between Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, was Judah Benjamin,…
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News Ruth Bader Ginsburg In Her Own Words
On Judah Benjamin, who was the first Jew nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court but declined and instead became a leader of the Confederacy: “Jews come in all sizes and shapes, and some are very good and some are not so good.” On the need for the Equal Rights Amendment: “I have three granddaughters. I…
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News My Quest To Find Roy Moore’s ‘Jewish Attorney’ (If There Is One)
When Kayla Moore said that she and husband Roy Moore, lately defeated but un-conceded in Alabama’s special senate election, had a Jewish lawyer, I was intrigued. As a Jewish New Jersey transplant who graduated from high school and college in Alabama, and who still lives here, I found myself surprisingly eager to suspend my disbelief….
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Fast Forward 5 Presidential Scandals With Jews In The Hot Seat
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Among the Jewish men and women with a front-row seat to America’s executive branch, there are Jews who would be president, Jews who are indispensable to presidents and, less happily, Jews who help mire presidents in scandal. Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is a definite category 2, with rumored ambitions of…
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