Louis Marshall and the Rise of Jewish Ethnicity in America

by Matthew Silver

Overview

A milestone in modern Jewish history and American ethnic history, the sweeping influence of Louis Marshall's career through the 1920s is unprecedented. A tireless advocate for and leader of an array of notable American Jewish organizations and institutions, Marshall also spearheaded civil rights campaigns for other ethnic groups, blazing the trail for the NAACP, Native American groups, and environmental protection causes in the early twentieth century. No comprehensive biography has been published that does justice to Marshall's richly diverse life as an impassioned defender of Jewish communal interests and as a prominent attorney who reportedly argued more cases before the Supreme Court than any other attorney of his era.

Silver eloquently fills that gap, tracing Marshall's career in detail to reveal how Jewish subgroups of Eastern European immigrants and established Central European elites interacted in New York City and elsewhere to fuse distinctive communal perspectives on specific Jewish issues and broad American affairs. Through the chronicle of Marshall's life, Silver sheds light on immigration policies, Jewish organizational and social history, environmental activism, and minority politics during World War I, and he bears witness to the rise of American Jewish ethnicity in pre-Holocaust America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815610007
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	12/15/2012
Pages:	616
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 10.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Matthew Silver is a Middle East history scholar at Max Stern College of Emek Yezreel in Israel. He is the author of several books and articles, including Our Exodus: Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel's Founding Story.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Introduction xi

Part 1 From Upstate to Uptown

1 Syracuse 3

2 Manhattan and Moral Reform 25

Part 2 A National Organization for the Jews

3 The Origins of Organized Activism 79

4 Abrogation 135

5 Avoiding the Guillotine of Immigration Restriction 222

Part 3 War and Peace

6 World War I 249

7 Paris and Haiti 345

Part 4 Marshall Law

8 Ford 381

9 Jews arid Birds 402

10 Ethnic Affairs in the 1920s 444

11 Crimea and Eretz Israel 490

12 Epilogue: Massena, Zurich, Emanu-El 526

Acknowledgments 537

Notes 541

Bibliography 675

Index 529