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What I learned about antisemitism from a remarkable new archive about Jewish Civil War soldiers
(JTA) — Max Glass, a recent immigrant from Hungary, had an unhappy Civil War.
Tricked out of his enlistment bonus when he joined the Eighth Connecticut Infantry — recent arrivals were soft touches for scam artists — Glass was then “abused for reason [sic] that I never understand” by men in his regiment. “It may have been,” he speculated,
becaus I did not make them my companions in drinking, or as I am a Jew. If I went in the street or any wher I was called Jew. Christh Killer & such names. I also had stones, dirt thrown at me.
He complained to his commanding officer, begging to be transferred, because “no man that had feeling could stand such treatment,” but to no avail. Finally, Glass fled his regiment, hoping to receive better treatment if he enlisted in the Navy. Instead he was tried as a deserter and sentenced to hard labor.
Glass was not the only Jewish soldier to be cruelly mistreated when serving in the Union Army. But as the new Shapell Roster of Jewish Service in the Civil War demonstrates, his experience was far from typical.
I explored the Shapell Roster while working on my new book, on the experience of Jewish soldiers in the Union army. What I learned from the vast collection of documents and data was that indifference, benign curiosity and comradeship appear to have been much more common than conflict for the majority of Jewish soldiers in the Union army.
For every Max Glass there was a Louis Gratz. Born in Posen, Prussia, Gratz scraped by as a peddler before the war. Enlisting in April 1861 — just days after the war started — he took to military life. By August he had become an officer. As he proudly wrote to his family,
I have now become a respected man in a respected position, one filled by very few Jews. I have been sent by my general to enlist new recruits so I am today in Scranton, a city in Pennsylvania only twenty miles from Carbondale, where I had peddled before. Before this no one paid any attention to me here; now I move in the best and richest circles and am treated with utmost consideration by Jews and Christians.
In contrast to Max Glass, his letters whisper not a word about prejudice. As my new book on the experience of Jewish soldiers in the Union army demonstrates, Gratz’s experience was not unusual.
Max Glass ultimately escaped his sorry start in the army through the intercession of General Benjamin Butler. After reading Glass’ tale of woe, the general pardoned the hapless Hungarian. In doing so, Butler seemingly followed Abraham Lincoln’s lead when confronted by antisemitism within the Union army. The president, after all, had quickly countermanded Ulysses S. Grant’s General Orders Number 11 expelling Jews from the districts under his command, the “most notorious anti-Jewish official order in American history,”
But alas this story does not have a redemptive ending. Beyond the rank and file, Jews felt the sting of prejudice. The damage done in wartime left a legacy of antisemitism that continues to this day.
For even as General Butler was pardoning Max Glass, he was locked in a heated public exchange that reveals how wartime warped attitudes towards Jews. The imbroglio began when Butler took special note of the fact that a small group of smugglers, recently detained by the Union army, were Jewish. When challenged, the combative general refused to apologize. Instead, he countered that deceit and disloyalty were among the defining characteristics of Jews, and that avarice was a particularly Jewish avocation. According to his logic, Jews could never become loyal Americans because they preferred profit to patriotism.
An 1877 cartoon from the satirical newspaper Puck illustrates the antisemitic practices of the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, New York. The cartoon compares the corrupt gentile clients favored by the hotel, center, with respectable (albeit stereotypical) Jewish figures, including Jesus. (Library of Congress)
Butler’s corrosive claims reflected a steady drip of acid on the home-front that began in 1861. In the first year of the war, Jews felt the sting of prejudice as the “shoddy” scandals captured the public imagination. Military contractors were publicly accused of fleecing the army by supplying substandard uniforms and gear, even as soldiers shivered in the field for want of decent clothing.
In seeking to explain the profiteering and corruption that attended the rush to war, the press summoned the specter of the venal and disloyal Jew. Cartoonists delighted in identifying Jews as the archetypal cunning contractors, who not only refused to enlist but also actively undermined the war effort. Jews were also imagined as the speculators who profited at the expense of the common good and as smugglers who traded with the enemy. Butler, in other words, was drawing on calumnies that became common currency during wartime.
The contractor, smuggler, speculator and shirker, however, were more than just figures of scorn. Jews and other “shoddy aristocrats” came to be seen as the creators and beneficiaries of the new economic and social order produced by the war. This “shoddy aristocracy” — whose morals and manners marked them as undesirable, whose profits were ill gained, and whose power derived from money alone — was imagined to lord it over a new and unjust social heap summoned into being by the chaos and disruption of war.
Even as the heated rhetoric of the war years receded after 1865, these ideas remained primed for action. They were returned to service in the Gilded Age.
It was no coincidence that the episode traditionally identified as initiating modern antisemitism in America — the exclusion of Joseph Seligman by Henry Hilton from the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs on May 31, 1877 — had at its center a man who had made a fortune as a contractor and banker during the Civil War. Seligman, a friend of President Grant, was viewed as an exemplar of the new capitalism that was remaking America.
Henry Hilton slandered Seligman as “shoddy—false—squeezing—unmanly,” a social climber who “has to push himself upon the polite.” Hilton drew upon themes familiar from wartime antisemitism: the Jew as speculator who trafficked in credit and debt; the Jew as obsequious ingratiator who attached himself to the powerful; the Jew as profiteer who advanced by improper means; the Jew as vulgarian who flaunted his (and her) obscene wealth and did not know his (or her) place; and the Jew as overlord whose money allowed him (or her) to displace others. In short, the “Seligman Jew” was the “shoddy aristocrat” by another name.
In an age of inequality and excess, the antisemite imagined the Jew as embodying all that was wrong with American capitalism. And during an age of mass immigration from Romania and the Russian Empire, they soon added another theme familiar from General Butler’s wartime diatribe: The Jew could not be trusted to become fully American.
Sadly, even as Louis Gratz, Max Glass and many other Jewish soldiers became American by serving in the Union army, the Civil War produced a range of pernicious ideas about Jews that have proven remarkably durable. We have escaped the everyday torments that afflicted Max Glass, but are still haunted in the present by the fantasies of Benjamin Butler and Henry Hilton.
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The post What I learned about antisemitism from a remarkable new archive about Jewish Civil War soldiers appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Condemns Far-Right Podcasters Carlson, Kelly, Owens, Jones: ‘They’re Stupid People, and They Know It’
US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump on Thursday dropped a nuclear-level social media bomb to explode on the growing contingent of far-right podcasters who have now emerged as some of his most vehement and volatile critics, especially over the war with Iran.
“I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years, especially by the fact that they think it is wonderful for Iran, the Number One State Sponsor of Terror, to have a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump posted on Truth Social, opening a 482-word broadside.
The president then revisited his assessment from earlier this week that Carlson is a “low-IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on,” offering his theory that all four prominent podcasters “have one thing in common: Low IQs.”
“They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!” Trump wrote. “Look at their past, look at their record. They don’t have what it takes, and they never did!”
The president then took aim at his critics’ professional setbacks, writing, “They’ve all been thrown off Television, lost their Shows, and aren’t even invited on TV because nobody cares about them, they’re NUT JOBS, TROUBLEMAKERS, and will say anything necessary for some ‘free’ and cheap publicity.”
Carlson left his influential perch at Fox News in April 2023, shortly after the network settled a lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million, partially in response to his on-camera statements. Kelly left Fox in January 2017 and pivoted to NBC News, which she left in 2019 following the cancellation of her program “Megyn Kelly Today” after outcry over her statements on the alleged acceptability of blackface in Halloween costumes during her youth. In March 2024, The Daily Wire announced that the conservative entertainment company and Owens “ended their relationship,” following the host’s decision to embrace the example of her friend, rapper Kanye West (now known as Ye) in promoting a variety of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Trump took a moment to level personal insults at Carlson, Owens, and Jones.
Labeling Carlson a “hand flailing fool,” Trump blasted the broadcaster “who couldn’t even finish College,” calling him “a broken man when he got fired from Fox” and lamenting that “he’s never been the same.” The president further taunted Carlson, suggesting that “perhaps he should see a good psychiatrist!”
Trump also took a side in the defamation lawsuit filed in July against Owens by French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, following the podcaster’s unwillingness to stop accusing France’s first lady of secretly being male.
“‘Crazy’ Candace Owens, who accuses the Highly Respected First Lady of France of being a man, when she is not, and will hopefully win lots of money in the ongoing lawsuit,” Trump wrote.
The former beauty pageant promoter who married a Slovenian model in 2005 then offered his unapologetic assessment of the two women’s physical appearances, expressing his preference that “Actually, to me, the First Lady of France is a far more beautiful woman than Candace, in fact, it’s not even close!”
Owens responded to the Truth Social post, sharing a screenshot with various lines highlighted in red and writing Thursday to her 7.8 million followers on X that “it may be time to put Grandpa up in a home.”
Trump next turned his ire toward the host of Info Wars. He wrote that “Bankrupt” Jones — who currently owes $1.4 billion following his losses in a series of colossal 2021 and 2022 defamation judgments — says “some of the dumbest things, and lost his entire fortune, as he should have, for his horrendous attack on the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, ridiculously claiming it was a hoax.”
Jones also responded on X, accusing anti-Trump Republicans and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of putting hum under a spell.
“We Hope and Pray That President Trump Wakes Up From The Mind Control Spell That The Never Trumper Neo-Cons and Netanyahu Have Put Him Under,” Jones wrote.
In an accompanying 24-minute video, a confused and dejected Jones spoke in front of a black and green digital map of the United States. He sat at a desk with a printed-out copy of the Truth Social statement, describing incredulously how the president’s posting “demonized the living hell out of us for challenging him saying he would destroy an entire civilization in one night never to come back, the definition of genocide.”
In addition to defending himself, Jones on X also re-posted a video of white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes saying, “I love Alex, I’ll always love Alex. And I’ll always be loyal to him as well.”
Holding up his hands and gesturing, Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and fellow conpsiracy theorist, said, “That’s my guy, that’s my GOAT [greatest of all time] … And that’s a real n***er, OK? Alex Jones is our motherf**king n***er and always will be … That is the blueprint, that is the archetype.”
The recent promotion in mainstream media outlets of criticism from Carlson, Kelly, Owens, Jones, and others appears to have motivated Trump’s post.
“These so-called ‘pundits’ are LOSERS, and they always will be! Now Fake News CNN, The Failing New York Times, and all of the other Radical Left ‘News’ Organizations, are ‘hailing’ them, and giving them ‘positive’ press for the first time in their lives,” Trump wrote.
“They’re not ‘MAGA,’” he added, referring to his “Make America Great Again” movement. “They’re losers, just trying to latch on to MAGA.”
Trump asserted that if he wanted to persuade the rogue podcasters to return to his MAGA movement he could do so but had more important things to do with his time.
“As President, I could get them on my side anytime I want to, but when they call, I don’t return their calls because I’m too busy on World and Country Affairs and, after a few times, they go ‘nasty,’ just like Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown, but I no longer care about that stuff, I only care about doing right for our Country,” Trump wrote.
On Tuesday, former US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) joined numerous former supporters of the president in calling for his removal through the procedures outlined in the 25th amendment of the US Constitution, a call backed by Owens and Jones.
Greene shared Trump’s post, writing on Thursday in response that he “has gone mad as he wages war against Iran, a broken campaign promise.” The former lawmaker added that she “fought alongside Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones to help get Trump elected. And now he goes off on a rambling rant attacking all of us in one post.”
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Israeli Restaurant in Munich Targeted in Suspected Antisemitic Attack
Broken glass and shattered storefront windows mark the façade of an Israeli restaurant in Munich after assailants smashed the windows and threw pyrotechnic devices inside during an overnight attack. Photo: Screenshot
An Israeli restaurant in the German city of Munich was attacked on Thursday night when assailants smashed multiple windows and threw pyrotechnic devices inside in what authorities suspected was an antisemitic assault — the latest in a series of incidents unfolding against a backdrop of rising hostility toward Jews and Israelis nationwide.
As of Friday morning, local law enforcement had opened a criminal investigation into the attack in southern Germany, with authorities probing a possible antisemitic motive and reviewing security footage and witness accounts as part of the ongoing inquiry.
The restaurant was closed at the time of the attack, and no one was injured, though the perpetrators caused damage estimated at several thousand euros.
Police said the assailants had not yet been identified, and it remained unclear how many people were involved in the attack.
Munich’s State Security Service, which handles politically motivated crimes, took over the case, as authorities worked to determine the circumstances and identify those involved.
“According to the current state of investigations, the display windows were forcibly damaged, and pyrotechnic devices were thrown into the restaurant,” police said in a statement, adding that the origin and type of the devices had yet to be determined and remained a key line of inquiry.
Opened in 2007, the restaurant is located on Hessstrasse in the Maxvorstadt district, Munich’s central university quarter near the Old Town and the main railway station, an area known for its cultural institutions, student life, and busy pedestrian streets.
Restaurant employee Grigori Dratva, the owner’s brother-in-law, told the German DPA news agency that there had been “no direct threats” ahead of the incident.
“We don’t want to make accusations, but we are a visible Israeli restaurant, so the assumption is obvious,” Dratva said.
Despite the attack, Dratva said the restaurant planned to reopen later the same day after the damaged windows were temporarily secured and scheduled for replacement, adding, “We won’t be intimidated.”
The Munich-based Conference of European Rabbis (CER) strongly denounced the attack, warning it reflected a troubling and escalating pattern of antisemitic incidents, while calling for swift measures to strengthen protections for Jews and prevent further violence.
“This attack is not a one-off, but rather part of a dangerous trend that we have been seeing since Oct. 7, 2023,” CER’s General Secretary Gady Gronich said in a statement, referring to the ongoing surge in antisemitic incidents following Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel over two years ago.
“Until now, Munich was a safe place for Jews, and it must stay that way. What’s needed is a clear line: zero tolerance against antisemitism, with harsh punishments that do not lead to repeat incidents, and no room for those who sow hate in our society,” he continued.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Germany has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre.
According to recently released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in the country reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials have warned that the real number of antisemitic crimes is likely much higher, as many incidents go unreported.
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The Pentagon fears the Vatican’s authority in a battle over Christianity’s power
The Vatican has not been a major player on the geopolitical stage in, well, at least a few centuries. The Catholic state is tiny, and has not had a real army or ruled land since, give or take a century, the days of Machiavelli.
Nevertheless, in January the Pentagon summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, then the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S., to a meeting, according to reporting from The Free Press. There, Elbridge Colby, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, sparred with the Catholic diplomat in light of Pope Leo XIV’s outspoken opposition to the war in Iran, and to wars in general.
According to the report, which cited anonymous sources, the Pentagon told the cardinal, has the military might to do “whatever it wants” and that the pope “better take its side.” NBC reported its own Vatican sources calling the meeting “most unpleasant and confrontational,” and Catholic outlet The Pillar reported a senior Vatican official describing the meeting as “tense” and “aggressive” though not overtly threatening.
Then, one of the Pentagon reps reportedly referenced the Avignon papacy, a niche bit of church history that the official transformed into a cudgel. During this period, from 1309 until 1376, the papacy moved to France, where seven different popes lived in the territory of Avignon, under the influence of the control and influence of the French crown.
Since the reporting broke, both Pierre and Pentagon representatives have rejected the framing of the meeting as a threatening one. Vatican representative Mateo Bruni said that the meeting “provided the opportunity for an exchange of views on matters of mutual interest.”
The Department of War’s X account posted that the meeting was a “substantive, respectful, and professional” one in which the participants discussed “morality in foreign policy, the logic of the U.S. National Security Strategy, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and other topics.” The department denied any mention of the Avignon papacy.
Still, the fact that the Pentagon met with the Vatican ambassador at all is a first, and notable for demonstrating the impact of the pope’s moral leadership and the importance of Christianity in driving and justifying U.S. military actions — in particular, the war with Iran. And the public’s engagement in the debate over the specifics of the meeting proves that the U.S. government is right to care what the church says about its wars; people take it seriously. Military might is not the only force for influence.
Pivotal to understanding what the meeting meant is the disputed reference to the Avignon papacy, a historical moment in which a country’s secular government clashed with the church over symbolic and moral authority. The fact that there is even uproar and debate over whether an esoteric piece of history was mentioned in the meeting is proof enough of the stakes of the meeting.
To understand why Avignon is so pivotal — and why a Jewish publication would even be covering a piece of Catholic ancient history — it’s important to understand that, during that time period, in the 1300s, Europe was Catholic. Martin Luther wouldn’t nail his 95 Theses to the door of the church for two more centuries, and Protestantism didn’t exist. That gave the Vatican massive influence as the leader of Christendom, which encompassed all of Europe, and arguably much more. Kings were seen as vassals of the Vatican, carrying out its orders.
When the French king, Philip IV, asked for the church to fund his war against Britain, the pope refused. In 1302, Pope Boniface VII drove the point home with a papal bull stating that submitting to the pope was required for eternal salvation, placing the Vatican’s authority over all royal power. And he threatened to excommunicate Philip.
In response, the king had Boniface VII beaten to a pulp, and he died shortly thereafter. His successor, not incidentally, forgave the king and restored his religious authority. France used its power at the time to stack the church with French-allied clerics, and the move to Avignon followed shortly thereafter, with the next seven popes all of French background.
Fundamentally, the Avignon papacy was a conflict over symbolic authority. Philip IV wanted his wars to be blessed, and righteous. The Pentagon, clearly, wants the same for the war on Iran, with historically freighted roles. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has declared the war a Christian mission for the U.S., fighting alongside Israel as the world’s Jewish state — together targeting the Islamic Republic.
The idea that the Pentagon might have summoned the ghosts of the Avignon papacy shows that the U.S. still cares about the moral authority of the peace-preaching Vatican as a rival to military might. And the debate over whether anyone referenced what sounds like a nerdy piece of history is really a debate over the influence of the U.S. as a world leader, and its bona fides as what the current government purports to be a Christian nation.
Catholicism is becoming increasingly high profile in the historically Protestant U.S. Six out of nine Supreme Court justices are Catholic. Vice President JD Vance is a Catholic convert. Unsubstantiated rumors are flying online that the pope is considering excommunicating Vance. There is clearly still power in the church, at least culturally.
And Leo XIV has leaned into that cultural authority. In numerous speeches, including his Easter address, the pope has appeared to directly respond to American government officials and decisions, expressing sympathy for migrants as Trump’s deportation efforts accelerated, and critiquing “imperialist” military might as he entered into war with Iran. Despite being the first American pope, he has refused multiple invitations to the White House, including one for July 4 this year to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday; instead, he is pointedly visiting migrants on the same day.
“The Pope may well never visit the United States under this administration,” a Vatican official told The Free Press.
The particular clash between the White House and the pope also centers in large part around Hegseth, who is a member of an extremist Reformed Christian church, not a Catholic. (Though he does have a tattoo reading “Deus Volt,” a rallying cry during the Crusades — which were certainly Catholic.) After Hegseth gave a speech declaring that God had blessed the war with Iran and asking troops to pray for military victory, the pope said that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” Despite their different Christian movements, summoning a Vatican representative to the Pentagon, whatever was said, shows that Hegseth wants the pope on his side, and recognizes his speeches as a major factor in geopolitics.
The battle for Christian moral authority between the government and the pope also comes alongside a more internal Catholic clash in the U.S. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is fighting high-profile Catholic influencers such as Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes, who regularly justify their open antisemitism with Catholicism. Though the pope himself has yet to weigh in, it’s another face of an ongoing struggle to define what Christianity means.
In today’s world, it’s hard to imagine a speech from the pope or the threat of excommunication carrying real weight, among so many churches with many theologies about war, antisemitism and the Middle East. The Vatican is no longer the singular authority over the West, and the pope’s power is largely symbolic. Whether or not anyone in the Pentagon meeting said that the U.S. has the military force to do anything it wants, it’s true.
Yet the fact that the government is engaging so seriously with the Vatican is a sign of the increasing centrality of Christianity, both Catholic and otherwise, in the U.S. government, and in American society. As Christian nationalists in the Trump administration seek to go back to the imagined glory days of Western culture, when Christendom rules, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the oldest, largest and most public face of the religion, or to deny its moral authority.
In a world in which the Vatican has only soft power, the pope’s decrees carry only as much power as they are given. But however soft the pope’s power may be, that surreal Vatican visit to the Pentagon suggests that even the best-armed military in the world is afraid of it.
The post The Pentagon fears the Vatican’s authority in a battle over Christianity’s power appeared first on The Forward.