I’d like to thank Victoria Saker Woeste for this thought-provoking blog post, and to build on her concerns about the progressive narrative of American Jewish history constructed by generations of scholars, and the ways that that narrative has dismissed American antisemitism. First, I think that this progressive narrative has been undergirded by a set of political and intellectual comparisons, and it’s important to make those comparisons visible.  On the one hand, American antisemitism has been far less virulent or violent than the racism directed against people of color in the United States, a racism that was baked into the founding Read more