In the introduction the author compares early Italian immigrants to the U.S. with early immigrant Jews, declaring that it was typical that Italians immigrants strove for family comfort in their labors, while Jews worked more for their children’s schooling and investment in their small retail stores. That comparison is rendered to explain the outstanding achievements of Jews in America, by comparison to presumably more sybaritic Italians and other Gentiles

The first chapter of Part I describes the seventeenth and eighteenth century history of Jews in the Dutch colonies in Brazil and the West Indies. This description became a foot-noted source for the book by the Nation of Islam: “The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews”, in reference to the slave trade, especially in Brazil. That book, in turn, became the basis for attacks upon the late Professor Tony Martin of Wellesley College when he included it in a syllabus for a course on United States black history. There is a book in refutation of “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” by Harold Brackman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, entitled “Ministry of Lies, theTruth Behind ‘The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews’ “. The 17th and 18th Century slavery is a distant prospect for historians to write books about. Today, the Black community sympathizes with the plight of the Palestinians. Black political figures, like Andrew Young, Earl Hilliard, Cynthia McKinney, and Jesse Jackson have spoken out for Palestinian human rights.

Part I, chapter 2, covering the nineteenth century, contains engaging descriptions about the economic and social life of Jews in the US up through the Twentieth Century. It is like every immigrant family’s story of immigration, tribulations and assimilation into the “great melting pot”, over two or three generations in the US.

Of particular interest is a presentation of excerpts from an R. G. Dun and Bradstreet credit report on Jewish businesses in the Columbus and Cleveland Ohio area. The author presents it as an example of negative stereotyping, anti-Semitism. It may instead be reflective of reality in the 19th Century; Mssrs. Dun and Bradstreet are are still in business, notwithstanding the derivatives scandal of 2008.

Part II describes the Jewish social and religious organizations in the United States, their development and status at the time of writing. I particularly appreciated the descriptions of Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Orthodoxy to gain an understanding of the trends in Judaism. The decentralizing, small group movement, Havurot, developed in the 1970’s, from the Reconstructionist movement, is not visible today. Now we have also the “Modern Orthodox” development.

Part III is entitled “Antisemitism”, giving examples of anti-Jewish expression and Jewish responses to antisemitism. One example cited was when the Hilton hotels began to refuse accommodations to Jews in the latter 1880’s, and the change of policy in 1877 at the Grand Hotel in Saratoga Springs to reject Jews, including their earlier guest, Joseph Seligman, the banker. In view of the situation where the Jews were initially accepted in the hotels, and rejected after the passage some years, we would need to hear the hoteliers’ story to know if it were capricious animosity, or if the action was caused by the behavior of a relatively few Jewish guests. There is a background book that helps to explain the anti-jewish feelings in the United States that emerged after the Civil War: “When General Grant Expelled the Jews”, by Jonathan D. Sarna, 2012. It’s available on Amazon. Mr. Sarna’s book gives an insight into what was going on during and immediately after the Civil War, that could have caused adverse reaction to the Jews in the US. It was during the Grant Administration, according to professor Sarna’s book that US foreign policy began to be directed toward Jewish interests abroad, in the example of the U.S. reaction to the Russian expulsion of resident Jews from newly-acquired territories on its western border. The borders were moved by the 1856 Treaty of Paris ending the Crimean war.

This book contains much interesting detail. I recommend it as an inside look at the history of Judaism in the United States.