Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery

In this riveting study, Nation contributor Kreitner (Break It Up) profiles six American Jews who participated in antebellum debates about slavery, shedding light on how sparring over the issue shaped the history of American Judaism just as much as individual Jews influenced the outcome of the war. Kreitner describes how conservative New York rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall, who defended slavery as biblically sanctioned (because the Israelites owned slaves of their own, after fleeing bondage in Egypt), and moderate Cincinnati rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, who advised that Jews not take sides in the conflict, were both challenged by “bold dissident” David Einhorn, a Baltimore rabbi at the “leading edge” of the Reform movement who argued that “defending slavery... amounted to a betrayal” of Judaism, which he thought ought to stand for “freedom... for the whole world.” Kreitner also traces three secular Jewish political actors of the period, contrasting left-wingers Ernestine Rose, a firebrand speaker on the antislavery lecture circuit, and August Bondi, a veteran of the failed 1848 European revolutions who fought alongside John Brown, with Judah P. Benjamin, a slave owner and Louisiana senator who became Jefferson Davis’s secretary of state. While surfacing fascinating new details about these figures, especially the enigmatic Benjamin, Kreitner also points to intriguing ways in which the slavery debate spurred reflection on assimilation vs. insularity that defined the next century of Jewish American thought. Readers will be engrossed. (Apr.)