Reviewing Adam Jortner’s new history of Jews in the American Revolution, Richard Kreitner writes:
Jortner’s book makes the provocative and largely convincing argument that Jews in the early United States, though few in number (there were no more than 3,000 across the thirteen colonies), were among both the most eager participants and the prime beneficiaries of the American Revolution.
Though hard numbers are impossible to come by, Jortner contends that most Jews in the colonies had more to gain than lose in joining the incipient rebellion against the Crown. Although royal officials demanded pledges of faith in Christianity from voters and officeholders, the ranks of the Patriot forces were open to colonists of any religion. Jews benefited from the social upheaval of the period, which allowed common people to have a say in public affairs for the first time. . . . The royal governor of Georgia dismissed the rebels in his province as “a Parcel of the Lowest People, chiefly Carpenters, Shoemakers, Blacksmiths, etc. with a Jew at their head.”
More about: American Jewish History, American Revolution