heritage 5.6 5/20/05 10:38 AM Page i American Jewish Historical Society May 2005 $2.50 RUTH BADER GINSBURG JONATHAN D. SARNA MILKEN ARCHIVE OF AMERICAN JEWISH MUSIC JEWISH HISTORY SUMMER 2005 heritage 5.6 5/20/05 10:38 AM Page ii OFFICERS SIDNEY LAPIDUS CONTENTS President KENNETH J. BIALKIN Chairman IRA A. LIPMAN LESLIE POLLACK 2 Jews and the Rule of Law JUSTIN L. WYNER Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg Vice Presidents SHELDON S. COHEN Secretary and Counsel 5 Calendar LOUISE P. ROSENFELD Assistant Treasurer PROF. DEBORAH DASH MOORE 6 Greetings from Home Chair, Academic Council MARSHA LOTSTEIN Chair, Council of Jewish Historical Organizations 14 It’s your Heritage… GEORGE BLUMENTHAL LESLIE POLLACK Co-Chairs, Sports Archive DAVID P. SOLOMON 20 Evolving American Judaism Treasurer and Executive Director Jonathan D. Sarna BERNARD WAX Director Emeritus MICHAEL FELDBERG, Ph.D. 29 To Our Donors Director of Research/Editor of Heritage LYN SLOME Director of Library and Archives CATHY KRUGMAN Director of Development HERBERT KLEIN 25 Director of Marketing/Publisher of Heritage BOARD OF TRUSTEES M. BERNARD AIDINOFF KENNETH J. BIALKIN GEORGE BLUMENTHAL SHELDON S. COHEN RONALD CURHAN ALAN M. EDELSTEIN RUTH FEIN DAVID M. GORDIS DAVID S. GOTTESMAN ROBERT D. GRIES DAVID HERSHBERG MICHAEL JESSELSON DANIEL KAPLAN HARVEY M. KRUEGER SAMUEL KARETSKY SIDNEY LAPIDUS PHILIP LAX IRA A. LIPMAN NORMAN LISS MARSHA LOTSTEIN KENNETH D. MALAMED DEBORAH DASH MOORE EDGAR J. NATHAN, III ARTHUR S. OBERMAYER STEVEN OPPENHEIM JEFFREY S. OPPENHEIM, MD NANCY T. POLEVOY LESLIE M. POLLACK ARNOLD J. RABINOR HAROLD S. ROSENBLUTH LOUISE P. ROSENFELD ZITA ROSENTHAL FAYE G. SCHAYER BRUCE SLOVIN DAVID P. SOLOMON JOSEPH S. STEINBERG MORTON M. STEINBERG LOUISE B. STERN RONALD S. TAUBER SAUL VIENER SUE R. WARBURG EFREM WEINREB 24 JUSTIN L. WYNER ROBERTA YAGERMAN heritage 5.6 5/20/05 10:38 AM Page 1 LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT The American Jewish Historical Jewish time is usually measured in millennia. By contrast, American Jewish history is only three hundred and fifty years old. However, our history on this Society collects, preserves and continent is virtually as old as that of the Pilgrims, and a century older than the American Revolution. disseminates materials that As this issue of HERITAGE goes to press, the American Jewish Historical document the Jewish experience Society is installing a wonderful exhibition, ‘Greetings from Home’: 350 Years of American Jewish Life, at the Center for Jewish History in New York. The exhibi- in America. It tells the marvelous tion will run until September 15, 2005 and then open at the Museum of National Heritage in Lexington, MA in November 2006. ‘Greetings from Home’ contains story of American Jewish life: of many unique, never-before-exhibited treasures in the Society’s vast holdings, immigration and adjustment, along with items from the American Sephardi Federation, YIVO, the Yeshiva University Museum, the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish poverty and prosperity, discrimi- Archives, the Library of Congress and the National Archives, all of whom are partners with the Society in celebrating this milestone in our national history. nation faced and overcome, The essays in this issue of HERITAGE focus on the anniversary and this exciting exhibition. achievements and contributions In 1905 and 1955, the American Jewish community celebrated the 250th and in every walk of American life. 300th anniversaries of Jewish settlement in North America with mixed emotions. The 1905 celebration took place in the shadow of increasing anti-Semitism and These themes reverberate anti-immigrant sentiment among non-Jewish Americans, as a veritable flood of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe passed through Ellis Island. In 1955, through our most recent exhibi- American Jewry was still recovering from the scourge of Nazi genocide in tion, ‘Greetings from Home’: 350 Europe, and McCarthyism at home was still in its heyday. Fortunately, we celebrate the 350th anniversary in better times for us, both Years of American Jewish Life. as Americans and Jews. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg notes in these pages, Jews have benefited from constitutional protections and entered the American This issue of HERITAGE intro- mainstream, no longer occupying token places reserved for members of disad- duces you to the exhibition. vantaged minority groups. Jonathan Sarna’s essay traces both the increasing “at homeness” of Jews in America and the constantly expanding diversity of Jewish religious observance over the course of 350 years. As Americans and Jews, we have much to be thankful for, even as we remain alert to threats to Come visit our fellow Jews at home and abroad. I hope you enjoy this issue of HERITAGE, attend the exhibition with your ‘Greetings from Home’ family and friends, and continue to support the American Jewish Historical IT’S YOUR HERITAGE Society through your membership. aJH s Sincerely, Sidney Lapidus May 2005 1 heritage 5.6 5/20/05 10:38 AM Page 2 AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY Jews and the Rule of Law Ruth Bader Ginsburg Associate Justice Supreme Court of the United States PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVEN PETTEWAY, COLLECTION OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. In 1790, President George Washington promised the Jews of Seven American Jews served on the Supreme Court of the United States, and Newport, Rhode Island that the newly formed government have thus been given the greatest oppor- would protect the religious freedom of all its citizens. tunity to seek justice on behalf of others. Washington pledged in his famous letter that the United The first Jew seated on the Court was Louis D. Brandeis, but he was not the States would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no first Jew offered the post. The man who assistance.” Washington’s pledge to Newport’s Jews still pro- might have preceded Brandeis by some tects the religious liberty and freedom of conscience of every 63 years, Judah P. Benjamin, rejected the offer. In 1853, President Millard Fillmore law-abiding American. offered to nominate Benjamin, but In August of 2004, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg presented Benjamin had just been elected U.S. remarks at Touro Synagogue in Newport to accompany that Senator from Louisiana and preferred to retain his Senate seat. (His decision sug- congregation’s annual reading of Washington’s letter. The fol- gests that the Supreme Court was not lowing is an abridged version of her remarks. then a co-equal branch of government, as I it is today.) Benjamin later served the Confederacy as Jefferson Davis’s Secretary of State. As the Confederacy In preparing my remarks for the reading of Washington’s letter, I was drawn faltered, Benjamin became the target of again to consider the significance that the rule of law has played in allowing anti-Semitism; political enemies called American Jews, and all religious minorities, to help shape our nation’s history. him “Judas Iscariot Benjamin.” There is an age-old connection between Judaism and law. For centuries, rabbis When the Confederacy was defeated, and scholars ceaselessly studied and interpreted the Talmud, producing a vast Benjamin feared being singled out for corpus of juridical writings. Jews have prized the scholarship of judges and retribution and fled to England. To prac- lawyers in their own tradition, and wherever anti-Semitic restrictions lessened tice law in England, he enrolled as a stu- Jews entered the learned professions, and especially the law. dent at Lincoln’s Inn and became an Law became and remains an avenue of social mobility in our society, one in acclaimed barrister. In his obituary, the which intellectual achievement is rewarded. In the United States, law also Times of London, alluding to Benjamin’s became a bulwark against the kind of oppression Jews encountered, and sur- Jewish ancestry, described him as having vived, throughout history. Jews in large numbers became lawyers in the United “that elastic resistance to evil fortune States, and some eventually became judges. The best of those lawyers and judges which preserved [his] ancestors through used the law not simply to earn a living, but to secure justice for others. a succession of exiles and plunderings.” 2 350 Years of American Jewish Life heritage 5.6 5/20/05 10:38 AM Page 3 Thus it fell to Louis D. Brandeis to Brandeis faced opposition, not least Brandeis served with Benjamin become the first sitting Supreme Court because he was Jewish. Once on the Cardozo, whom Hoover appointed to the Justice of Jewish birth. Brandeis was bench, Brandeis won over many of his Court in 1932. Tutored in his youth by sometimes called “the people’s attor- critics. Admirers, including Franklin D. Horatio Alger, Cardozo thrived on hard ney” in recognition of his activity in the Roosevelt, called Brandeis “Isaiah,” work; it was rightly said that he progressive social and economic turning to Scripture to find words to approached his legal responsibilities with reform movements before joining the describe his contributions to constitu- “ecstatic consecration.” Cardozo’s fine Court. Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, tional thought. At the Court itself, unfor- hand adapted the common law traditions Brandeis showed early signs of great- tunately, Brandeis encountered one to a rapidly changing industrial society. ness when he graduated from Harvard openly anti-Semitic colleague. James Before joining the U.S. Supreme Court, Law School in 1876 at age 20 with the Clark McReynolds left the room when Cardozo served with distinction on New highest scholastic average in that law Brandeis spoke in conference. There is York’s highest court – the last five as school’s history. In Boston, he became no official photograph of the Court in Chief Judge. It has been said that “genius a champion of the Progressive agenda: defending trade unions, advocating for A question, frequently stated in various ways, indicates the women’s suffrage and promoting busi- large advances our people have made: “What is the difference ness ethics.