Dinnerstein (History/Univ. of Arizona), who has written extensively
on areas of American Jewish history (Uneasy at Home, not reviewed),
offers the first comprehensive scholarly survey of American
anti-Semitism, tracing its development from the colonial period to
the present. Dinnerstein shows how at the heart of most
anti-Semitism lies the old European Christian belief that the Jews
killed Christ and rejected his teachings. On the other hand,
Dinnerstein asserts that from the earliest days of the colonies,
the physical openness of the land and the desire to establish new
traditions worked to mitigate some of the viciousness of
anti-Semitism. Indeed, American anti-Semitism, even at its most
virulent, has never approached the violence of its European
counterpart. What has obtained, says the author, has been a mixture
of "tolerance, ambivalence and rejection." However, as the book
points out, when Christian Americans faced an economic, political,
or social crisis, it was usually the Jews who became scapegoats.
Major outbursts of anti-Semitic feeling occurred during the Civil
War, the depressions of 1873 and 1893, WW I, the Red Scare of 1919,
the Great Depression, and WW II, with blame for these upheavals
falling on alleged conspiracies of Jewish bankers and media moguls
or on filthy foreigners. After WW II, a sudden downswing in
anti-Semitism occurred, one that has for the most part continued up
to the present, with overtly anti-Jewish behavior and expression at
an all-time low in the past decade. Still, Dinnerstein readily
admits, anti-Semitism may have faded to a negligible factor in
American political life, but it cannot be eradicated completely,
and as his chapter on African-American anti-Semitism notes, it
remains a forceful and occasionally fashionable sentiment in some
communities. Dinnerstein's book is indeed comprehensive, but it is
also rather dry. A useful work, but not for casual reading. (Kirkus
Reviews)
This is the first comprehensive history of antisemitism in America. Dinnerstein draws on an extraordinary number of sources and provides a cogently argued yet complex narrative for the history of this prejudice from its roots in Colonial America to the rantings of Henry Ford and present day prejudices.
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