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Historian sheds new light on a famous story about Abraham Lincoln and a New York cantor
(New York Jewish Week) — A new book untangles one of the best known incidents involving Jews in the American Civil War — and suggests the real version is both more complicated and more interesting than the legend.
In “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army,” historian Adam D. Mendelsohn recalls the story of Arnold Fischel, the Dutch-born hazan, or cantor, at New York’s Shearith Israel Congregation, and how he persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to support the idea of allowing Jews to serve as military chaplains.
That much is true, as Mendelsohn explained in an online talk Tuesday sponsored by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Under a congressional statute, only Christian ministers could be chaplains, so in December 1861 Fischel traveled to Washington to argue his case directly to the president. Lincoln agreed to see Fischel, and a few days later wrote the cantor saying he would “try to have a new law broad enough to cover what is desired by you in behalf of the Israelites.”
On July 17, 1862, Lincoln signed the law permitting Jews to serve as chaplains.
And yet, in research for his new book — which relied in large part on a vast database of Civil War soldiers known as the Shapell Roster — other parts of the story don’t hold together, Mendelsohn explained. According to a frequently retold version of the story, Fischel had been nominated to replace a Jewish layman named Michael Allen who had been forced out as chaplain of the Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry, allegedly at the request of a visiting delegation from the YMCA. Horace Greeley’s crusading New-York Tribune and other papers picked up the story and made a hero of the Jewish officer who had mustered the cavalry, Colonel Max Friedman, supposedly for “leading the charge against the unjust law.”
In fact, writes Mendelsohn, Allen was not kicked out as chaplain but probably resigned because he wasn’t enjoying his army service far from home. As for the colonel, “There is no evidence of a coordinated campaign by Friedman and his fellow Jews to elect Arnold Fischel in place of Allen.” Instead, Fischel’s contract with Shearith Israel was about to expire, and he sought the cavalry job because was in “urgent need” of the army’s relatively generous pay for chaplains.
Friedman, meanwhile, vigorously denied press reports that his 700-man cavalry, which had fewer than 20 Jewish soldiers, needed a Jewish chaplain. Mendelsohn found evidence that Friedman shrank from the attention, in part because he was a bit of a scammer: Like many officers in his day, he charged the government for no-show recruits, sold commissions to officers and got a cut of the profits from government contractors, known as “sutlers.” Even Michael Allen — who sold liquor — might have been in on the grift.
“It is a much more tangled tale than originally thought, but the outcome is the same,” Mendelsohn, director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of History at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, said Tuesday. “In fact, the Jewish community does lobby Lincoln to change the law, and there is a considerable effort to do so.”
Mendelsohn said the story of Fischel and Lincoln underscores the need to dig more deeply into American Jewish history, and how the Shapell Roster helped him do just that. His book about the 1,700 Jewish soldiers who served in the Union Army is, he writes, “a story of ordinary men in extraordinary times, as fine and as flawed as their fellow soldiers, and Jewish too.”
As for Fischel, he served for a time as sort of a chaplain-at-large to the Army of the Potomac, but never got the lucrative appointment he sought. Lincoln appeared skeptical of his request that a Jewish clergyman was needed as a hospital chaplain in Washington, where Jews were but a tiny fraction of the dead and wounded. Denied that commission, a disappointed Fischel returned to Europe.
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How would Jews fleeing Europe have fared under Trump’s anti-immigration policies?
Donald Trump’s vision of foreigners worthy of emigrating to the United States appears to boil down to this: white, Nordic, Christian, politically conservative, not obese, and not a potential drain on public services. It’s a fantasy that’s reminiscent of Nazi values, and one that is being rejected by many Americans.
Trump’s Thanksgiving Day responses to the Washington, D.C. shooting of two National Guard members — one of whom has died — are among the most overtly racist statements he has ever made in public. Trump said he would stop migration from “all Third World Countries” and deport foreign nationals who are “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”
Trump has faced accusations of racism since he was a young real estate developer working with his father. During his first term as president, Trump said America should welcome more immigrants from places like Norway, rather than from Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations — which he dismissed as ‘shithole countries.” Trump, during his second term, has been enacting something like a purity code: Hispanics guilty of nothing more than being in the country illegally get deported; right-wing extremists who tried to carry out a coup in his name get pardons.
About 66,000 migrants are currently locked up under Trump’s immigration crackdown — the largest detention population in U.S. history. Many have no criminal record. Social media is flooded daily with videos of ICE agents smashing car windows, masked men in battle gear dragging immigrants from vehicles, and children left crying as parents are hauled away in handcuffs. Each outrage carries the same message: You are not wanted here.
More than 250 Venezuelan migrants were sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, branded by critics as a ‘black hole of humanity.”
Other migrants have been spirited away to South Sudan and countries where they had never set foot — their destinies left unknown.
The Trump administration’s unequal treatment of white South Africans and Palestinian survivors of Gaza is an infuriating display of heartlessness and racism. Even though Afrikaners were the architects and beneficiaries of apartheid’s cruelty, they have been promised the lion’s share of America’s drastically reduced refugee slots. Meanwhile, Gazan Palestinians — whose homes have been destroyed, whose loved ones have been killed by the tens of thousands, and who have endured famine for months — are excluded entirely. In Trump’s America, whiteness and ideological alignment matter more than human suffering.
I can’t help but think of the plight of refugees in postwar Europe after Nazi Germany’s defeat. Up to 60 million people were uprooted across the continent. Some 11 million refugees crowded into Allied‑run displaced persons camps, including hundreds of thousands of Jews, Roma, and other survivors of Nazi camps.
Most of these souls would not pass muster in Trump’s America. His new guidance to embassies and consulates instructs visa officers to screen out applicants who are overweight, elderly, or suffering from chronic conditions — diabetes, heart disease, depression. Applicants must prove financial self‑sufficiency, English proficiency, and the ability to work without reliance on public benefits. Yet multitudes of Europe’s postwar refugees were sick, stripped of education, and dependent on government support just to survive. Compassion has no place in Trump’s transactional brain; these are not the kind of people he would deem worthy of America’s embrace.
What Trump apparently did not see coming was the backlash against his terror campaign against foreigners. In towns and cities across the country, neighbors have rallied as immigrant friends, business owners, and longtime contributors to their communities were hunted down and disappeared. Vigils, marches, and local resolutions have sprung up, with ordinary citizens insisting that their communities will not be defined by terror.
Charlotte offers one example: when ICE launched Operation Charlotte’s Web in November, agents stormed immigrant neighborhoods and even a church, prompting pastors to prepare sanctuaries and residents to organize vigils and rapid‑response patrols. In St. Paul, Minn., rapid‑response networks sprang up to protect immigrant families, alerting neighbors when ICE vans appeared and mobilizing lawyers to defend detainees. During Trump’s first major sweep, in Los Angeles, mass protests turned the city into a showcase of resistance rather than submission.
Community members have demonstrated an incredible fearlessness in their efforts to protect immigrants from federal agents — shouting at them to identify themselves, to show a warrant, and that they’re not welcome in the neighborhood. Sometimes the agents have retreated, getting back into their van or SUV without making an arrest.
ICE agents’ attempts to arrest a 16‑year‑old high school student in Rhode Island this month offers a stirring example of community compassion in action. The teen, interning for Superior Court Judge Joseph J. McBurney in Providence, was misidentified by agents who surrounded the judge’s car and threatened to smash the windows. McBurney stood firm, insisting they had the wrong person. Only after confirming his words did the agents back down, and the boy was freed.
In several communities, high school students, peers and teachers have stepped in to defend migrant classmates against ICE and Border Patrol agents prowling neighborhoods, often accused of racial profiling based on skin color or accents.
In Oregon, nearly 300 students walked out of McMinnville High School to protest the ICE arrest of a classmate during lunch break and demanded school administrators create protocols to alert migrant students whenever ICE agents are spotted nearby.
“Honestly, after what happened to that kid, the 17-year-old, I don’t feel safe going to school,” fellow student Alexis Hernandez Flores told KOIN 6 News.
As depressing and alarming as the past several months have been — as Trump has brought the United States to the abyss of autocracy — I have found reason for hope in ordinary citizens’ bold actions to protect foreigners in their midst from illegal and racist roundups. From Chicago to Charlotte, from Los Angeles to Providence, neighbors, churches, and even judges have refused to be silent. Their defiance recalls what was missing in Nazi Germany: a public willing to stand up, to insist that fear and violence will not define their communities.
If Trump sends federal agents into neighborhoods to arrest and deport foreign nationals who are deemed “non-compatible with Western Civilization,” as he has threatened, the backlash will surely become louder, and the resistance against him stronger.
The post How would Jews fleeing Europe have fared under Trump’s anti-immigration policies? appeared first on The Forward.
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Most American Jews believe Zohran Mamdani will make NYC Jews less safe, Israeli poll finds
(JTA) — More than two-thirds of American Jews believe that New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will make the city’s Jews less safe, according to a new survey by a nonpartisan Israeli research institute.
The finding came in the Jewish People Policy Institute’s latest Voice of the Jewish People Index, which surveyed 745 American Jews about a range of topics last month, just 10 days after Mamdani was elected. It offers the latest insight into Jewish sentiments about Mamdani, whose staunch criticism of Israel has drawn attention, and at times allegations of antisemitism, from Jews around the world.
The survey found that 67% of respondents believed Mamdani’s election would make New York City’s Jews less safe, while 6% believed they would be more safe and 18% believed he would make them neither more or less safe.
Among Jews identifying as politically conservative, 93% said they believed Mamdani would make New York City Jews less safe. Concerns were lower among liberal-leaning Jews, but still one third of respondents who identified as “strongly liberal” said they believed Mamdani would make Jews less safe.
Over half of respondents said they felt “worried” about the election of Mamdani, while 11% said they were “afraid.” Another 13% said they were “hopeful.”
A different poll in August found that 58% of Jewish New Yorkers believed the city would be less safe for Jews under Mamdani.
The Jewish People Policy Institute conducts regular surveys of Jewish sentiment, drawing on a pool of Jews who have agreed to be part of a survey pool. The institute notes that as a result, “the survey tends to reflect the attitudes of ‘connected’ American Jews, that is, those with a relatively strong attachment to the Jewish community and/or Israel and/or Jewish identity.”
It found that 70% of respondents identified as Zionist, while 12% identified as “not a Zionist, but a supporter of Zionism.” Additionally, 7% identified as “neither a supporter nor an opponent of Zionism,” 5% identified as a post-Zionist and 3% identified as an anti-Zionist.
Among strong liberal respondents, 52% identified as Zionists, while 79% of strong conservatives identified as Zionists.
Asked whether they believed that Zionism is racism, a charge frequently leveled by Israel’s critics, 59% of respondents said they believed that Zionism is “not at all racism.” Among strong liberal respondents, the proportion was 28%, compared to 86% of strong conservatives.
The survey also asked respondents about their perception of antisemitism coming from the political left and right in the United States. In recent months, calls to condemn right-wing antisemitism among Jewish conservatives have revealed growing rifts within the party.
Among the survey’s respondents, 62% said they were worried about antisemitism from both the left and the right, while 20% said they were more worried about antisemitism on the left and 17% were more worried about it on the right. Among strong liberals, just 5% were worried about antisemitism on the left while just 1% of conservatives were worried about antisemitism on the right.
The post Most American Jews believe Zohran Mamdani will make NYC Jews less safe, Israeli poll finds appeared first on The Forward.
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Palestinian restaurant opening near Columbia names its location to honor girl killed in Gaza, campus protesters
(JTA) — A Palestinian restaurant in New York City has named its new location “Hinds Hall” after the moniker pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University gave to a campus building they occupied last spring.
In a post on Instagram on Thursday, the restaurant, Ayat NYC, which has eight locations, announced that its new storefront in Morningside Heights would be renamed in solidarity with the protesters at Columbia.
“It stands right next to Columbia University where students stood up for Gaza and renamed Hamilton Hall, a campus building to Hinds Hall and we choose to stand with them and carry that name forward,” the post read.
Critics of Columbia’s pro-Palestinian protests at the time accused its participants of antisemitism and calling for violence against Jews. In June, a report by the Columbia University Task Force on Antisemitism found that over half of its Jewish student body had experienced discrimination and exclusion after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The new location for the restaurant, which is owned by restaurateur Abdul Elenani and his wife, Ayat Masoud, faced criticism from some of the neighborhood’s Jewish residents, who say they have been overwhelmed by pro-Palestinian symbols and sentiment since Columbia became an epicenter of the encampment movement last year.
Ayat wove pro-Palestinian advocacy into its practices throughout the war in Gaza. In January 2024, one of its locations drew a public outcry after its menu featured the phrase “From the River to the Sea,” a phrase frequently used by pro-Palestinian activists that Jewish watchdogs view as a call for Israel’s destruction. Afterwards, the location hosted a free Shabbat dinner for over 1,300 people that drew anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian Jews and others.
“Our restaurants will not only ever serve food. It will serve memory, truth, and responsibility,” the new post from Ayat NYC continued. “The least we can do is carry her name in our hearts and on our storefront so that everyone who walks by knows that Hind mattered and every single child matters.”
The location’s name, which was also adopted in a song by rapper Macklemore, pays homage to Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed in Gaza in January 2024. (The Israeli military denied responsibility for her death, but a Washington Post investigation found that Israeli armored vehicles were present in the area.)
Her heavily publicized death, and the phone call she made to paramedics with the Palestine Red Crescent Society while stranded in a vehicle, also inspired the docudrama “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which won a top prize at the Venice Film Festival in September.
“Her name carries the weight of all the children whose voices were silenced and whose blood was treated like it meant nothing,” the post by Ayat NYC continued.
An opening date has not yet been set for the Upper West Side location. A new location opened in late October in Astoria, the Queens neighborhood that is home to Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and home to a thriving pro-Palestinian activist community.
The post Palestinian restaurant opening near Columbia names its location to honor girl killed in Gaza, campus protesters appeared first on The Forward.