Antisemitism, an American Tradition with Pamela S. Nadell (Norton, 2025)
September 25, 2026
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5 min readAntisemitism, an American Tradition
In 1790, George Washington wrote to the Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, promising a country that "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." What most people don't know, historian Pamela S. Nadell points out, is that the Jewish community didn't send Washington one letter—they sent him three different ones, from three different congregations. That early disunity is a clue to a larger story: American antisemitism is not a recent anomaly or a European import that briefly flared up. It is, Nadell argues in her 2025 book Antisemitism, an American Tradition, a deep-rooted, recurring feature of American life from colonial times to the present.
The Biological Stain That Wouldn't Wash
The story begins not in America but in Iberia, where late 14th-century violence against Jews led to mass conversions. These "conversos"—technically Catholic—were never seen as fully Christian by Spanish authorities, who believed Jewish identity had a biological component. This perception persisted across generations and oceans. When descendants of conversos arrived in the New World, some threw off their Catholic identity to return to Judaism, but the underlying logic remained: Jewishness was something indelible, transmitted through blood.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:35) **Book Introduction and Core Argument** - Host introduces Pamela S. Nadell and her book *Antisemitism, an American Tradition*, which argues anti-Semitism is a deep-rooted, recurring American feature, not a recent anomaly.
- 2 (06:07) **The Converso Legacy and Biological Anti-Semitism** - Discussion of how Spanish and Portuguese conversos (baptized Jews) were seen as biologically distinct, a perception that traveled to the New World.
- 3 (10:00) **Cemeteries and Sacred Spaces as Targets** - Nadell explains why Jewish cemeteries and funeral rituals were repeatedly attacked in colonial and early Republican America.
- 4 (13:11) **The Stories of Failed Jewish Peddlers** - Nadell highlights the importance of stories of Jewish peddlers who did not achieve success, countering the stereotype of universal Jewish wealth.
- 5 (16:04) **Judah Benjamin: Navigating Anti-Semitism in the Confederacy** - Examination of how the highest-ranking Jew in the Confederacy faced anti-Jewish animus despite not practicing Judaism.
- 6 (21:37) **Selective Discrimination: The "Silken Curtain"** - Nadell explains how some individual Jews avoided discrimination while most faced deep-seated prejudice in early 1900s America.
- 7 (28:30) **Name Changing and Coded Language** - Jews in the early-to-mid 20th century used coded language in name change petitions to avoid admitting they faced anti-Semitic discrimination.
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Show Notes
Pamela S. Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History and is Director of the Jewish Studies Program. A specialist in American Jewish history and women’s history, she teaches a variety of courses in Jewish civilization. Pamela Nadell’s books include America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today (W.W. Norton, 2019), named Jewish Book of the Year by the Jewish Book Council. Reviewed in the New York Times, America’s Jewish Women was praised as “a welcome addition to the American historical canon.”
A past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, Nadell’s other titles include Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination, 1889–1985 (Beacon Press, 1998).
She consults for museums including the Weizman National Museum of American Jewish History and the Tree of Life Humanity Center.
She lectures widely, frequently appears on podcasts, and has written for, among others, the Washington Post, The Conversation, and Hadassah Magazine. She has testified before Congress about antisemitism on college campuses several times, most recently in the December 2023 hearing with the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Pamela S. Nadell’s Antisemitism, an American Tradition (2025) argues that antisemitism is not a recent anomaly in the United States but a deep-rooted, recurring feature of American life from colonial times to the present. Nadell traces nearly four centuries of anti-Jewish hatred—from 17th‑century colonial prejudices and religious test oaths, through 19th‑century exclusion, the “high tide” of the 1930s, and into today’s surge—showing how old tropes about “evil Jews” keep reappearing in new forms. She foregrounds the experiences and voices of Jewish men, women, and children, documenting how antisemitism shaped everyday life, opportunities, and communal strategies.
The book stresses that antisemitism cuts across politics, race, and religion; it is not confined to one party or movement but has appeared on multiple sides of American society. Alongside chronicling hate, Nadell highlights how Jews fought back—through advocacy, legal action, institution-building, and solidarity with other groups. Rather than treating U.S. antisemitism as a side note to European history, Nadell makes it the central subject across 400 years, insisting it is an “American tradition” in its own right. She explicitly aims to tell the story “through the eyes of its victims,” using personal and communal memories to show impact, not just ideology. The book connects classic Christian anti-Judaism and older stereotypes to
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