11/19/2025 02:36:37 PM
Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews and the Civil War
By Robin Jacobson
In 1860, there were 150,000 Jews living in the United States. How did this small minority, comprised mostly of recent immigrants, react to the fierce national debate over slavery? Richard Kreitner explores this question in his excellent and engrossing book, Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, The Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery.
Kreitner profiles six American Jewish immigrants to illuminate a spectrum of political and religious views. Three of the six are rabbis, described below. The other three are secular public figures – Ernestine Rose, a powerful orator, who argued for the emancipation of both women and slaves; August Bondi, who joined abolitionist John Brown to fight against slavery in Kansas; and Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy’s Secretary of State.
Three Rabbis – Three Opinions
Following Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union. Everyone expected that other southern states would follow. In this time of crisis, outgoing President James Buchanan designated January 4, 1861, as a National Day of Prayer.
From his New York City pulpit, Orthodox Rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall proclaimed that the Hebrew Bible endorsed slavery. Moreover, he declared, any abolitionist who called slaveholding a sin was “guilty of something very little short of blasphemy.” Raphall acknowledged, however, that the Bible saw a slave as “a person” with “rights” whereas the South “reduces the slave to a thing,” subject to abuse.
New York City had strong business ties to the South. Kreitner suggests that Raphall may have intended his sermon as a “last-minute peace proposal.” Perhaps the rabbi hoped that the North would tolerate slaveholding if the South committed to more humane treatment of enslaved persons.
From Baltimore, Reform Rabbi David Einhorn denounced Raphall’s sermon, calling it a “profanation of God’s name” and a betrayal of the Torah’s core ethical principles. Einhorn could not fathom how a rabbi who “praises the Lord daily for the deliverance out of [the] Egyptian yoke of slavery, undertook to defend slavery.” Two months later, Einhorn was forced to flee Maryland, a slave state, to escape a violent mob angered by his views.
In Cincinnati, situated on the border between the free state of Ohio and the slave state of Kentucky, Reform Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise responded to Raphall and Einhorn’s dueling sermons by advocating for a third approach. In his Israelite newspaper, Wise published an editorial titled, “Silence Our Policy.” He urged Jews to remain quiet about the bitter North-South conflict, as his newspaper did throughout the war.
Why Weren’t All Jews Abolitionists?
Like other Americans during the Civil War, Jews divided largely along geographic lines. Approximately 3,000 southern Jews fought for the Confederacy, and approximately 7,000 northern Jews fought for the Union.
Nonetheless, it is hard to understand why American Jews did not uniformly condemn slavery. Many had personally experienced oppression in Europe. Even more, the Exodus liberation-from-slavery story is central in Jewish tradition.
According to Kreitner, Jews who were complicit in or silent about slavery had a variety of motives – financial self-interest, gratitude for acceptance in their new communities, and/or fear of retribution if they criticized a long-established institution. Moreover, abolitionist organizations were hostile to Jews. Anti-slavery societies tended to be fervently Christian, anti-Jewish, and sometimes anti-immigrant.
Feeling vulnerable in their tumultuous times, some Jews made choices that felt prudent to them, if disappointing to Jews of today. Their caution, however, only underscores the boldness and bravery of other Jews, like Rabbi Einhorn, who risked his life to argue for the human rights of enslaved Blacks.
