Antisemitism in America

Is antisemitism on the rise in America? A glance at the daily newspapers suggests a resurgence of animosity yet Leonard Dinnerstein, in this provocative and in-depth study, categorically states that there is less bigotry in this country than ever before. He also argues in this provocative analysis that Jews have never been more at home in America. What we are seeing today, he writes, is media hype. A long tradition of prejudice, suspicion, and hatred against the Jews, the direct product of Christian teachings, has, in fact, finally begun to wane. In Antisemitism in America, Dinnerstein provides a landmark work - the first comprehensive history of prejudice against Jews in the United States, ranging from its foundations in European Christian culture to the present day. Dinnerstein's richly detailed and thoroughly documented book reveals how Christians carried their religious prejudices with them to the New World and how they manifested themselves, albeit in muted form, in the colonial wilderness and in the developing American society thereafter. Jews could not vote, for example, in Rhode Island or New Hampshire until 1842, and in North Carolina until 1868. The Civil War witnessed th