This program was held in person and was livestreamed from the Center for Jewish History on September 29th, 2025 at 7:00pm Eastern. The discussion was presented by the American Jewish Historical Society and sponsored by Tulane University’s Stuart and Suzanne Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience.
Author Pamela S. Nadell was joined by Franklin Foer of The Atlantic to discuss her new book, Antisemitism, an American Tradition. The period from the mid 20th century to the early 2000s is considered the “Golden Age of American Jewry,” during this time popular opinion held that society as a whole had moved past antisemitism or was beyond it. When white supremacists held the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA in 2017, many Jewish community leaders were shocked by the visible prominence of what they had previously considered a fringe movement. Nadell’s book examines the scope of antisemitism in American history leading up to our contemporary moment. She finds that antisemitism courses through the American Jewish experience and is constitutive to what it means to be a Jew. From the Colonial era, through the 19th century, spiking in the 1930s, and onto the present day – American antisemitism’s persistent presence makes it one of America’s darker traditions.
Topics covered in this discussion:
- The debate in American life if the United States is exclusively a Christian nation began early in it’s inception and continues to today.
- An evergreen perceived solution to the “Jewish problem” is that Jewish people should become Christian. In the Colonial era of the United States conversion societies formed, along with proposals for segregated conversion colonies.
- American antisemitism must be understood in a global context. The nature of American society as one that comprises a vast number of immigrants and children of immigrants, means that the society is influenced by the ideas, faith, culture, and traditions that immigrants bring with them. This sometimes can also include negative and discriminatory ideas such as antisemitism.
- The late 19th century saw a significant spike in antisemitism, the strongest warnings came from two women Emma Lazarus and Nina Morais Cohen.
- Historian’s commonly call the 1930s the “high tide of antisemitism” in American history. Pamela Nadell believes that the United States is currently in another high tide of intense antisemitism.
- High profile individual such as Henry Food and Charles Coughlin disseminated materials and loudly voiced their antisemitic beliefs to their followers.
- Antisemitic employment practices meant that many Jews were forced to go into business for themselves. Practices such as discrimination in higher education such as enforced low admission quotas continued well into the 20th century.
- Nadell discusses when Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and Martin Luther King split ideologically in 1967, with Ture moving to the Black Power movement. She addressed the antisemitic language used by Black Power when they denounced Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. That language became pervasive and increased tensions between Black and Jewish groups.
- Currently, Nadell finds that antisemitism is coming from both sides of the American political spectrum at a rate that rivals the previous spike of the 1930s.
