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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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Antisemitism and ‘The End of History’ That Never Came to Pass
Roses are placed on a sculpture of Mikhail Gorbachev in memory of the final leader of the Soviet Union, at the “Fathers of Unity” memorial in Berlin, Germany August 31, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
In the summer of 1989, a few months before the Berlin Wall fell, a political scientist named Francis Fukuyama published an essay that came to define a new understanding in the West.
Titled simply “The End of History?”, the piece described the defeat of fascism in World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its socialist ideology. It appeared that Western liberal democracy and free-market capitalism had won the ultimate battle of ideas — at least for the moment.
Events in recent years have proven this thesis false. History didn’t end — and Fukuyama probably knew it never would. The battle of ideas will always return, and in many ways, it never went away.
During the last 40 years, Western civilization, capitalism, and nationalism have been under attack. Likewise, bigotry against Jewish people never went away. There is nothing new under the sun about Jew hatred except the delivery system. The traditional engines of antisemitism have largely been supplanted by a new engine: the social media algorithm.
The stark, un-sugar coated reality is that the Jewish people have been abandoned, and the illusion of modern safety is quickly eroding.
What stings the most is the profound sense of betrayal from communities that the Jewish people poured their hearts, souls, and resources into elevating.
Over the last century and a half, the Jewish community played an outsized, foundational role in championing civil rights, fighting alongside the African American community, the feminist movement, driving progress within academia and LGBTQ rights.
To watch significant factions of those exact same groups turn their backs, stay silent, or actively fuel hostility today is a heartbreaking reality to reckon with. It sends a crystal-clear message that must be internalized immediately: there ought to be a stricter balance between “fixing the world” and tending to the survival of one’s own community.
One cannot control what is outside one’s control, but one can focus on what is in their control.
The era of relying on the world’s collective conscience is officially over, and the path forward must be primarily inward, focused on self-reliance, self-defense, and resilience. It requires an unrelenting effort to tell our story and win the war for hearts and minds. We must unflinchingly call out the blatant hypocrisy of institutional and communal betrayal, as difficult as that may be.
It is no longer sufficient to excel exclusively in the boardroom or the classroom. True self-preservation demands a willingness to face physical reality. Security cannot be guaranteed by others, and protecting families and institutions means prioritizing physical fitness and the practical readiness to defend oneself on the streets, in schoolyards, and at the workplace.
With traditional institutions increasingly failing to offer protection, self-reliance becomes an absolute necessity. We must look at past fair-weather allies and actively seek new partners who offer mutual respect and reciprocal support. Survival and resilience demand that the Jewish community adapt, unite, and lead from a position of strength.
The peaceful illusion of “The End of History” never arrived; the battle of ideas has returned, and we must be ready for the fight.
Daniel M. Rosen is the chairman and Co-founder of IMPACT, a 501c3 dedicated to organizing, empowering and mobilizing individuals to combat Jew hatred on social media and beyond. He is a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post, JNS, Times of Israel, Israel National News, The Algemeiner, and other publications. Follow us at @joinimpactnow
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Why Do We Read the Book of Ruth on Shavuot?
Shavuot. Ruth in Boaz’s Field by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, oil on canvas, 1828; National Gallery, London. Photo: Wikipedia.
All Biblical festivals and special days relate to time — whether it is daily, monthly, annually, or seasonally. Awareness of the natural world comes with awareness of oneself, our transience, and the ups and downs of life. Who are we? Where do we belong? All of this is the core of religious life, which helps us to live in the world in the best way that we can.
Shavuot started as a harvest festival. There are three. Pesach is the first, with the earliest barley crop. Shavuot celebrates the beginning of the wheat and fruit harvests. And Sukkot is the culmination of the agricultural year and the celebration of water and rain, which are essential for a successful agricultural year.
But as we became less and less of an agricultural society, other themes emerged to add to the message of Shavuot specifically. The rabbis added the theme of Torah. But why, then, did the rabbis choose the Book of Ruth to be read on Shavuot?
It is set against a background of harvests — and how unpredictable they can be. The failed harvest caused the emigration of Elimelech’s family from Israel. Then the cycle turned, and rich harvests in Israel enabled Naomi to come back. Ruth decides to stay with Naomi and become part of the Israelite people. In Ruth’s magnificent declaration “Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people are my people, and your God, my God … only death will separate us.”
The Book of Ruth illustrates the choices people make and their consequences. To leave. To come back. To change one’s religion and nation. To act with love and care. To be charitable and kind. The goodness of a person rather than genealogy or status. It displays the redemptive powers of women. But it also recognizes the drawbacks of societies, class systems, levels of wealth, and the limitations of conventions and rules.
But Naomi and Ruth are destitute. Biblical laws required redemption. When a family fell on hard times, and sold their property, the relatives had a legal obligation to redeem the loss and try to reinstate them. The poor also had legal rights to glean fields as they were being harvested, and landowners had to leave corners of fields to the poor, all the poor, even foreigners.
The Torah set the tone for a just society, one that guaranteed that the weakest and most disadvantaged would be helped. If the Torah imposed commandments that connected humanity with God, it also required, just as much, that humans connect with each other. As the Prophet Yeshayah said repeatedly, God wants kindness more than sacrifices or hypocritical prayers.
The most popular explanation of the link between Shavuot and Ruth is that Ruth actually chose to live a life according to Naomi’s Israelite customs and ideals. She made the commitment that the Israelites made at Sinai. As Boaz said to her when he met her, “May the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to trust, reward you.”
It does not matter where you come from as much as who you are. And this challenges us to think about what our commitments are today, and what we value and spend our time on.
Ruth’s story is of how life is unpredictable and often tragic. And yet, through human kindness — which the Bible stresses — we can find redemption and build a better world.
That’s true no matter what is happening around us; the Torah’s messages for us and our people are as important today as ever.
Happy Shavuot and Chag Sameach.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
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The Limits of Campus Solidarity: Why Are Some Issues Seemingly Ignored By Campus Activists ?
University of East Anglia in Norwich.. Photo Credit: .Martin./ Flickr
Student activism on university campuses often presents itself as part of a broader global struggle for human rights and liberation. Students organize campaigns and protests under the belief that they are standing on the side of justice. Universities themselves have also long been spaces where political movements grow, and where students engage with wider global issues.
But if campus activism is truly rooted in the goal of human rights, it is worth asking why some movements receive enormous attention while others receive little to none.
Activist movements often present themselves as universal movements for justice, but in practice they are shaped by ideology and institutional campaigns. This does not necessarily invalidate these movements, but it does challenge the idea that campus activism is merely a neutral response to injustice.
An example of this contrast can be seen through the differences between campus mobilization around Gaza, and the relative absence of sustained activism in support of issues like the situation in places like Sudan — and also in Iran, including supporting Iranian students who actively protest their own government.
At the University of East Anglia (UEA), as at campuses across the UK, the past number of years has brought visible and sustained pro-Palestine organizing with protests, encampments, and marches of more than 400 students calling for divestment. It also involves motions brought before the Students’ Union resulting in a longstanding institutional boycott policy against Israel.
Over the same period, Iranian students and civilians have protested against the political repression and government-sponsored violence in Iran, most noticeably during the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement. This past January, it’s reported that tens of thousands of innocent protestors were murdered by the regime, and many more were jailed.
Yet at UEA, as at most British universities, this did not translate into encampments, sustained protest weeks, or motions to the Students’ Union. The same is true for many other conflict areas around the world — and the contrast is difficult to ignore.
The point here is not that students should protest every global issue equally. That would be unrealistic. Student movements naturally focus on certain causes more than others. But this contrast does raise an important question: what determines which global issues become campus movements and which do not?
I believe part of the answer lies in activist infrastructure. Some causes already have established student organizations and national campaigns with clear institutional mechanisms. At UEA, campaigns related to Palestine, for example, often involve established movements such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which provide students with clear actions to take, such as lobbying student government and hosting annual protest weeks where official language is promoted. There are funding networks and experienced organizers behind the scenes who help translate political concerns into sustained campus activism.
By contrast, Iranian dissident movements do not have the same level of organized support. There are fewer established student campaigns, fewer institutional demands directed at universities and fewer organized networks translating concern into campus activism. A student at UEA who wanted to organize meaningfully around Iran would find considerably less infrastructure available to them than one organizing around the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Another factor may be related to how students interpret global politics more broadly. On many campuses, political activism tends to be framed through narrow ideas like decolonial theory and the history of Western imperialism. Within this framework student activists tend to focus on issues where Western powers are seen as solely responsible for global injustice. Whether this is introduced or sustained in classrooms or in college group meetings is a subject for another piece, but in this context it doesn’t really matter.
What this contrast suggests is that campus activism is not guided by moral principles alone, but is instead shaped in large part by the existing political frameworks.
Recognizing this does not require assuming bad intentions on the part of student activists. Many student movements are motivated by genuine concern. But like all political movements, individuals must be wary of manipulation and groupthink.
Individual action and anger become tools for someone else’s ideas, so it’s important that we are all responsible with what we choose to put our energy towards. If campus activists at UEA claim to stand for universal human rights, then they must also be willing to ask the difficult question of why some struggles seem more important than others.
Skye Phillips is a final year International Relations and Modern History student at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. She is a 2025/6 fellow for CAMERA. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CAMERA.