Chosen capital the jewish encounter with american capitalism

Chosen Capital

᪎



Chosen Capital

᪎

The Jewish Encounter
with American Capitalism

Edited by R ebecca Kobr i n

rutgers u niversity press
new bru nswick, new jersey, and london


Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chosen capital : the Jewish encounter with American capitalism / edited by
Rebecca Kobrin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN –––– (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN ––––
(pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN –––– (e-book)
. Jews—United States—Economic conditions—Congresses. . Capitalism—United
States—History—Congresses. . Capitalism—Religious aspects—Congresses.
. Free enterprise—Religious aspects—Judaism—Congresses. . Economics—
Religious aspects—Judaism—Congresses. I. Kobrin, Rebecca.

E..EC 
.'—dc

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British
Library.
Copyright ©  by Rutgers, The State University
Individual chapters copyright ©  in the names of their authors
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written
permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press,  Somerset
Street, New Brunswick, NJ . The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as
defined by U.S. copyright law.
Visit our website:
Manufactured in the United States of America


Contents

Acknowledgments
vii
Note on Orthography and Transliteration

ix

PA R T I

Reframing the Jewish Encounter
with American Capitalism
Introduction. The Chosen People in the Chosen Land:
The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism


Rebecca Kobrin


Two Exceptionalisms: Points of Departure for Studies
of Capitalism and Jews in the United States 
Ira Katznelson
PA R T I I

Jewish Niches in the American Economy


The Evolution of the Jewish Garment Industry,
– 
Phyllis Dillon and Andrew Godley



From the Rag Trade to Riches: Abraham E. Lefcourt and
the Development of New York’s Garment District 
Andrew S. Dolkart



Success from Scrap and Secondhand Goods:
Jewish Businessmen in the Midwest, –
Jonathan Z. S. Pollack


v

vi

contents



Despised Merchandise: American Jewish
Liquor Entrepreneurs and Their Critics 
Marni Davis



Blacks, Jews, and the Business of Race Music,
–

Jonathan Karp



Jews, American Indian Curios, and the
Westward Expansion of Capitalism 
David S. Koffman
PA R T I I I

Jews and the Politics of American Capitalism


The Multicultural Front: A Yiddish Socialist

Response to Sweatshop Capitalism 
Daniel Katz



Making Peace with Capitalism? Jewish Socialism
Enters the Mainstream, –

Daniel Soyer



A Jewish “Third Way” to American
Capitalism: Isaac Rivkind and the
Conservative-Communitarian Ideal
Eli Lederhendler



PA R T I V

Selling Judaism: Capitalism and Reshaping
of Jewish Religious Culture




Sanctification of the Brand Name:
The Marketing of Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt
Jeffrey Shandler



How Matzah Became Square: Manischewitz
and the Development of Machine-Made Matzah
in the United States 
Jonathan D. Sarna

Contributors
Index





Acknowledgments

The idea of a conference to explore the ways in which Jews shaped and were
shaped by American capitalism was born on a long subway ride I shared with
Tony Michels. The subway—whose rumblings shape New York City in countless ways—served as an apt midwife to such an important and, at times, explosive topic. While it may be rarely discussed in the annals of American Jewish
life, few would deny that Jews have long served as both American capitalism’s
greatest innovators as well as its harshest critics. Jews’ encounter with this
country and its economy has fundamentally altered both the United States and
the practice of Judaism over the course of the twentieth century.
Tony Michels and I both enjoyed a wonderful year at New York University—he as a Goren-Goldstein fellow and I as an American Association for
Jewish Research fellow. There, we encountered many thoughtful colleagues,
many of whom participated in the conference. I want to thank particularly
Hasia Diner, who was a staunch supporter of the conference from the outset.
Without the financial support of New York University’s Goren-Goldstein
Center for American Jewish History and Columbia University’s Institute for

Israel and Jewish Studies, the international conference Tony and I organized
could have never taken place. The logistics of travel and food for the conference were aptly taken care of by Shayne Figueroa, Malka Gold, Kiley Lambert,
and Tamara Mann. The conversations that took place at the conference were
provocative and engrossing. All who participated agreed that our debates
marked the beginning of a larger conversation and that our insights and
reflections could spark further critical research and must be made available
to the larger world. That task of rethinking Jews’ relationship to America’s
economic development became more pressing, and more difficult, following
the fall of Lehman Brothers and the financial crisis of . I thank Marlie
Wasserman and Allyson Fields for their appreciation of the importance of this
vii


viii

ack now l e d gm e n ts

volume and for patiently seeing it through the process, particularly after the
unexpected early arrival of my son.
For me, the completion of this volume represents the culmination of a long
journey, during which I have been fortunate to have the support of a number
of individuals and institutions. Columbia University provided me with both
a stimulating environment and the time to transform these proceedings into
a book. Conversations with Ira Katznelson, Ken Jackson, and Betsy Blackmar
on American capitalism as well as the encouragement of Michael Stanislawski
and Jeremy Dauber, directors of the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, provided the support to make the proceedings available to a wider public. A book
subvention grant from the Harriman Institute helped move this book through
the final stages of production. I thank each author for working with me to
hone his or her individual piece so that the larger message of the volume would
be a cohesive one. Jerry Muller’s thoughtful comments and incisive questions

transformed each of the essays in this volume. Eric Wakin, Columbia’s curator
for American history, provided speedy and instrumental help in procuring an
image for the cover of this volume.
Finally, I would like to thank my family. My parents, Ruth and Lawrence
Kobrin, continue to inspire me with their dedication to both their family and
the life of the mind. The countless hours of babysitting they provided for my
editing made this volume possible. I am profoundly indebted to my husband,
Kevin Feinblum, whose unflagging support and patience helped me through
the ups and downs of such an editorial project. Indeed, his expertise in finance
helped me sort through many of the more technical descriptions and charts in
the volume. My daughters, Ariela and Simone, and my son, Eitan, whose early
arrival forced all the contributors to follow my strict deadlines, were always
understanding of my need to work on weekends. It is to them that I dedicate
this book, as their giggles and smiles enrich my life every day.


Note on Orthography
and Transliteration

In transliterating Russian and Hebrew words, the authors in this volume
have generally followed the systems used by the Library of Congress, with the
exception of certain well-known names for which other transliterations are
commonly used. In general, Yiddish words, phrases, titles, and names of organizations, places, and persons have been rendered according to the transliteration scheme of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, except that no attempt
has been made to standardize nonstandard orthography. All translations have
been made by the authors unless otherwise indicated.

ix

PA R T I

᪎

Reframing the
Jewish Encounter with
American Capitalism



introduction

᪎

The Chosen People
in the Chosen Land
t h e j e w i s h e n c ou n t e r
w i t h a m e r ic a n c a p i ta l i s m
Rebecca Kobrin

More than a century ago, German sociologist and economist Werner Sombart
(–) marveled at two remarkable economic “exceptionalisms” in the
world.1 First, he focused on the exceptionality of the United States, a nation
that in just a few short decades had emerged as an industrial juggernaut, replete
with huge mills, transcontinental railroads, and large cities. Writing in 
Sombart pondered why, despite this new nation’s rapid growth and expanding economic inequality, the United States and its capitalist system did not
nurture a mass socialist movement among its working class like its counterparts in Europe.2 What exceptional forces made workers in the United States,
imagined by some as a “chosen nation,” seem more content and less inclined
to protest their condition? Equally as exceptional, argued Sombart, was the
unique role played by the Jews, or the self-proclaimed “chosen people,” in the

development and expansion of capitalism in Europe.3 Revising Max Weber’s
vision of capitalism as linked to Protestant ethics, Sombart contended that
Jews’ intrinsic proclivities made them central provocateurs in the creation of
modern capitalism. Indeed, as historian Jonathan Karp points out, Sombart’s
portrayal of Jews as “capitalist pioneers”—rooted in his vision of Judaism as
a rational, law-oriented and acquisitive religion—molded the ways in which
interwar intellectuals, anti-Semitic writers, and politicians discussed the Jews.4
Sombart’s summoning of the idea of exceptionalism to describe both America’s and the Jews’ engagement with the developing economic system known as
capitalism hints at the complex set of charged ideas, questions, and reflections





r ebecca kobr i n

that undergird this volume. During the long century in which industrialization
and mass migration reshaped the United States, Jews, like many immigrant
groups, were transformed by their encounter with America’s ever-expanding
and ever-evolving system of capitalism. 5 The essays in this collection, most
of which were adapted from presentations first delivered at a conference at
Columbia University and New York University in March , try to assess
these encounters, but they all remain cognizant of the looming ghost of Sombart, who was the first to argue for the alleged economic exceptionalism of the
Jews and the United States. As discussions of American capitalism have become
commonplace in the past two decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, we
often forget, as historian Howard Brick aptly points out, that American “capitalism has a history.”6 And Jews, some posit, were central to this history, just
as they are alleged to have been in Europe.7 But we cannot assess this claim
because the study of Jews and their relationship to American capitalism has
remained anecdotal. In fact, we know very little about the real or imagined role
of Jews in the creation, expansion, and maintenance of American capitalism,

a lacuna that must be filled if we ever hope to fully understand the economic
forces shaping the fateful encounter of Jews and the United States.
This lacuna is nothing particular to American Jewish history. In general,
the larger field of economic history does not see the subject of Jewish history as
particularly urgent, and the overwhelming bias of modern Jewish history has
been toward the life of the mind rather than the toil of the hand. The forebearers of modern Jewish history may have pondered how economic thought intersected with intellectual discussions of emancipation, but they rarely assessed
the actual day-to-day business practices of Jews throughout the modern world.8
As Polish Jewish historian Ignacy Schipper pointed out in :
Thanks to them [the nineteenth-century leaders of Jewish historiography],
we possess an impressive picture of the spiritual directors of Diaspora Jewry.
But what is completely lacking is the history of hundreds of thousands of Jews
who have left few traces for the future, not of the spiritual riches [of their
world] but of their toil and drudgery as well as of their speculative abilities.
In short, we know about the Sabbath Jew and his extra [Sabbath] soul. But it
is time we got to know the history of the weekday Jews . . . [and] the history
of Jewish working life.9

This volume follows Schipper’s programmatic call to map out the daily business activities, economic strategies, and fiscal mechanisms deployed by Jews
as they strove to succeed economically and to adapt their religious practices to
the American marketplace.10 American economic historians and sociologists
have long focused on the ways in which specific individuals engineered innovations in American business, and this volume will allow those interested in
the world of business to see how Jews, as one exemplary ethnic and religious


the chosen people in the chosen land



group, adapted, took advantage of, and expanded particular niches of the
American economy.11

So how does this volume tackle its examination of Jews’ and Judaism’s
encounter with American capitalism? Perhaps it was the anti-Semitic overtones
of Sombart’s writings that initially discouraged economists, business historians, and scholars of Jewish history from analyzing the patterns and strategies
utilized by Jews in their economic encounter with the United States.12 Indeed, it
has been decades since scholars seriously considered these topics, as the economists Arcadius Kahan and Simon Kuznets did in their pioneering studies of
American Jewish immigrant economic mobility.13 So little scholarship exists on
American Jewish economic life that the beautifully realized portraits of Jews in
specific industries, unions, and political parties presented in this volume enter
a virtually uncharted scholarly terrain. Approaching the Jewish encounter with
American capitalism from “the bottom up,” the essays in this volume demonstrate the power of well-crafted case studies, as they bring the fields of American
economic and business history (fields that rarely consider questions of ethnicity
or religion) and American Jewish history (a field more interested in culture than
economics) into direct dialogue with on another.
While the essays in this volume fill many lacunae, they do not constitute a history of the encounter of Jews with American capitalism. Rather, they highlight
the “selective involvement” of Jews in the ambit of American capitalism through
niches they created in specific cities, regions, industries, and occupations.14 A
wealth of literature exists around the study of contemporary immigrant groups’
involvement in America’s capitalist society, but we know far too little on the
spatial and occupational niches that served as safe launching pads for immigrant
Jews into the American economy at the turn of the twentieth century, even
though these niches were abundantly clear to most contemporary observers.15
A prime example of such contemporary observations is a  Fortune magazine issue focused on the “Jews in America.” Penned to assess and to refute the
“charge that Jews have monopolized or are monopolizing economic opportunity,” this expansive and problematic survey of Jewish economic activity in the
United States was geared toward proving that “there is no basis whatever for
the suggestion that Jews monopolize U.S. business and industry”; in fact, Jews’
participation in peak capitalist roles was limited to the margins—to industries
such as clothing manufacturing and scrap-metal collection. To be sure, Fortune
acknowledged that in their marginal niches Jews “were highly visible” if not
dominating presences: for example, Jews constituted just under  percent of the
population of the United States in , but they remarkably composed  percent of participants in the scrap-iron industry;  percent of the entrepreneurs

in waste management of nonferrous scrap metal, paper, cotton rag, and rubber;
 percent of the owners of factories specializing in the manufacture of men’s
clothing; and  percent of women’s clothing manufacture.16




r ebecca kobr i n

Since Fortune conducted this survey more than seventy years ago, few others have ventured to survey or analyze Jews’ business endeavors, how these
businesses may have altered the course of American capitalist development, or
how life in this capitalist system may have molded the contours of Jewish life.17
This volume begins to fill these lacunae by asking three simple questions. First,
through which specific niches, and at which specific moments, did Jews play a
role in the evolution of America’s brand of capitalism? To be sure, economists
have considered some aspects of this question, but far more writers have commented on the astonishing speed and fascinating paths through which Jews
ascended into America’s middle and upper classes without considering the larger
economic context.18 Second, how and through what methods did Jewish workers, entrepreneurs, and businesspeople achieve this mobility? As historian David
Hollinger points out, the failure to conduct a “straight-forward historical and
social-scientific study” of what enabled immigrant Jews to succeed economically
so quickly in the United States “perpetuates the mystification of Jewish history
and subtly reinforces invidious distinctions between descent groups in American society.”19 Third, how and in what ways did capitalism alter the practice and
experience of Judaism itself? The growing scholarly appreciation of American
Jews’ distinct material culture is integrally linked to Judaism’s encounter with
American capitalism.20 This volume, through straightforward historical analysis, answers some questions while raising many more for those interested in
American Jewish history, immigration history, and economic history.
Immigration and entrepreneurship are two central themes in the history
of the Jews in the United States. To be sure, there is a wealth of literature on
late twentieth-century Asian and Latin American immigrant entrepreneurs,
but we know far less about their Jewish predecessors. The curio dealers, liquor

distributors, and scrap-metal dealers discussed in the following pages were
the “forgotten siblings”—to use the term coined for the discussion of German
immigrant entrepreneurship—of the much-chronicled Jewish banker and
garment worker.21 Was immigrant Jews’ outsider status, to use the words of
sociologist Charles Hirschman, “an asset that spark[ed] creativity,” creating
“new possibilities for entrepreneurship”?22 Or was, as Andrew Godley found
in his comparative analysis of Jewish immigrants in London and New York,
American society’s value system the reason why so many Jews pursued entrepreneurial endeavors?23
While focused on North America in its examination of such diverse topics
as Jewish developers in the world of New York real estate or Jewish executives
in the rhythm and blues recording industry, since many of the historical actors
discussed were immigrants, this volume situates the American Jewish past in a
transnational framework. Was there a specific predisposition for entrepreneurship among Jews as a result of selective immigration? What political ideologies
and knowledge did Jewish immigrants bring with them that led some to pursue


the chosen people in the chosen land



entrepreneurial endeavors and others to pursue radical politics? Or did Jews
simply seize on opportunities presented to them in the United States, obtaining
the skills and forming the political parties they needed here? The case studies
on the following pages concerning Jews’ engagement with American capitalism
deepens our knowledge of the American Jewish past, providing a new prism
through which to understand the intersection of immigration and ethnic history and the development of the larger American economy.
This volume also brings to the forefront how Jewishness as a category of
analysis is useful in the study of American business. As Ron Chernow observes,
“Political, ethnic, and religious differences among bankers permeated Wall
Street in the early s. The Yankee-Jewish banking split was the most important fault line in American high finance.” If Jewishness was an engine driving

“the saga of American finance” in the United States, as Chernow argues, it was
also a key factor in defining the boundaries in a host of other industries as
well.24 The attention devoted to the careers and family connections of German
Jewish bankers by scholars of American Jewish history needs to be expanded
to other areas of economic activity.25 While Jews have moved from the margins
of the United States to its mainstream in the arenas of social, political, and
cultural life, we know relatively little about the economic underpinnings that
enabled Jews to make this shift and conversely how their monumental progress
may have affected the course of American capitalist development.
The volume opens with Ira Katznelson’s sweeping overview of the empirical,
theoretical, and methodological questions facing those interested in assessing
the Jewish encounter with American capitalism. Reflecting on the “exceptionalist” strands that have shaped the field thus far, Katznelson calls for more
descriptive information “about the position of Jews in the United States at different moments, regions, cities, and sites of trade and industry.” Such empirical
studies, he believes, will help scholars address whether Jews were absent from
certain niches in the American economy because of formal and informal exclusions or from self-denial. Indeed, Katznelson charges all interested in the fateful encounter of Jews and American capitalism to consider the following key
questions: “in explaining outcomes, how much causal weight should be credited to preferences—that is, to the habits, ideas, practices, beliefs, values, interests, and cultural assets of persons as agents—and how much to the structure
of the situations in which they are found? Irrespective of the relative emphasis
given to each, how should agents [specifically the Jews] and structures [such as
capitalism and industry] be conceptualized and analyzed?”
Identifying, exploring, and analyzing the specific niches created and occupied by Jews in the American economy is the goal of the second section of the
volume. Jews, like other arriving immigrants a century ago, participated in
new areas of economic distribution and production that opened up to them
as a result of America’s industrial revolution and the virtual end of various




r ebecca kobr i n

forms of social and legal discrimination. Focusing on garment production,

probably one of the most well-known Jewish niche industries, Phyllis Dillon
and Andrew Godley chronicle the development of garment production beginning in the early nineteenth century and argue that we need to look at this
industry over the longue durée and in places beyond New York if we hope to
understand Jews’ role in transforming the production of clothing in the United
States. Indeed, the emergence of New York as the center of garment manufacturing and as a Jewish niche industry was far from inevitable. The development
of the garment industry, as Andrew Dolkart discusses, led some Jewish factory
owners to experiment in the field of urban real estate development. Through
his discussion of Abraham Lefcourt’s instrumental role in the development of
the Garment District, Dolkart explores how entrepreneurial Jewish garment
shop owners made the field of commercial real estate development in New
York a niche Jewish enterprise and, at the same time, transformed this city’s
architectural landscape. While perhaps the most well known, New York was far
from the only American city transformed by niche-occupying Jewish entrepreneurs, as Jonathan Z. S. Pollack highlights in his discussion of the scrap-metal
industry. Jews’ dominant role in the development of this industry—created as a
result of Jews’ appreciation of the need for refuse removal—transformed Jewish
life in Chicago and other smaller cities throughout the Midwest.
Jewish entrepreneurs in regions spanning from the American South to the
western frontier capitalized on specific racical dynamics and divides to insert
themselves in America’s expanding system of capitalism.26 Marni Davis’s chapter on Jewish liquor distributors in the South highlights how Jewish economic
success, achieved by serving a growing African American working class, often
placed Jews at the center of heated discussions of race, religion, and morality
in America. Jonathan Karp examines Jewish entrepreneurs in the rhythm and
blues industry in the Midwest. These entrepreneurs offered African American
musicians the unprecedented opportunity to record their music and acquire fans
but also exploited these artists who had little independent capital on which they
could draw. Indeed, as Karp sums up, “the story of these business pioneers is a
morally ambiguous one . . . [but their] Jewishness cannot be ignored; if these men
and women tended to be infrequent attendees at synagogue, they nevertheless
evolved a kind of Jewish subculture” that requires recognition and analysis. A
similar Jewish subculture can be found among the figures analyzed by David S.

Koffman on the western frontier. Koffman explores the experiences of Jewish
pioneer businessmen who traded with American Indians, introducing this group
to American capitalist markets while simultaneously creating a curio market
among European and American collectors for American Indian ritual objects.
Beyond dominating specific niches of America’s economy, Jews’ formative
engagement with American capitalism also took place in the arena of American politics. As the volume’s third section explores, from the beginning of


the chosen people in the chosen land



the twentieth century, Jewish socialists served as key figures in rethinking the
relationship of capitalism to the American body politic. Through a close study
of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and other labor unions,
Daniel Katz explores how Russian Jewish socialists in New York introduced the
idea and ideal of multiculturalism to New York City politics in the s. Katz
argues that multiculturalism was a “natural extension” of Jewish radical resistance to the ethos of capitalism, as Jewish union leaders used their experiences
in Russian revolutionary movements to integrate new racial-ethnic groups into
the garment industry workforce. Beyond forming multiracial unions in New
York, socialist-minded Jews were instrumental in the reshaping of the state’s
larger political landscape. As Daniel Soyer discusses, between  and 
the American Labor Party and the Liberal Party served as crucial political
entities that helped elect progressive political figures such as Mayor Fiorello
La Guardia. Founded as a result of some peculiar New York State election
procedure laws, these parties relied on Jews for their leadership, support, and
electoral base. Through these parties, Soyer argues, Jewish socialists redefined
themselves as progressive in America’s body politic and thus entered the mainstream of postwar American liberalism.
Eli Lederhendler shifts our attention away from the realm of electoral
politics to the heated world of Jewish politics, highlighting how debates over

capitalism reshaped American Jewish communal debates in the mid-twentieth
century. Lederhendler’s discussion of the Yiddish writings of Isaac Rivkind
explores the dour appraisal of capitalism harbored by many Yiddish intellectuals. Rivkind, as Lederhendler points out, saw capitalist individualism as
undermining Jewish communal life. Grappling with the larger question of
whether the open features of capitalism could accommodate group particularity, Rivkind ruefully mused that American capitalism might even be worse for
the Jews than the former oppressive societies in which they lived.
In the fourth section of this volume, the discussion shifts from looking at the
ways in which Jews participated in, thought about, or altered American capitalism to a close examination of the innovations and changes introduced to Jewish
rituals and their observance as a result of the demands of America’s mass market. Jeffrey Shandler explores the career of the cantor Yossele Rosenblatt, who
conjoined piety and entrepreneurship. Deploying “new media and new cultural
practices . . . to promote his artistry,” Shandler argues, Rosenblatt’s life suggests
that even pious Jews, who might argue in public that the United States and
its capitalist ethos were inimical to traditional religiosity, could not resist the
opportunities offered to them by mass marketing and consumption. Rosenblatt
was not alone in linking religious rituals and entrepreneurial innovation, as evidenced by Jonathan D. Sarna’s analysis of the business of Behr Manischewitz.
“Yok[ing] modern technology to the service of religion,” Sarna points out, Behr
Manischewitz and his company transformed the process of matzah making




r ebecca kobr i n

and the character of matzah, as well as the Jews’ experience of eating this ritual
food. Passover would never be the same as a result of Manischewitz’s ingenuity
and desire to spread his matzah throughout the nation.
By focusing on the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries—when American capitalism was redefined by industrialization, war, mass migration, and
the emergence of the United States as a superpower—this volume engages how
the experiences of Jews in the United States molded and were molded by the
development of America’s particular economic system. To be sure, through its

analysis of the relationship between one specific ethno-religious group and the
development of American capitalism, this volume raises as many questions as
it answers. The fine case studies presented in the following pages illustrate not
only how much concrete, resonant, and archive-based information there is concerning the kaleidoscope of variables shaping Jews’ encounter with the United
States and its economic system but also new ways to theorize, conceptualize
and narrate the Jewish encounter with American capitalism. In the end, this
volume does not seek to offer the final word but rather invites other scholars
to further conversation, investigation, and analysis of the fateful encounter of
Sombart’s exceptionalisms: the Jews and the United States.

notes
. Werner Sombart was most famous in his time for his multivolume treatise Der moderne Kapitalismus (Leipzig, Germany: Dunker and Humblot, ).
. Werner Sombart, Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen Sozialismus?
(Tübingen: Mohr, )
. Werner Sombart, Die Juden und das Wirtshaftsleben (Leipzig, Germany: Dunker and
Humblot, ); Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism, trans. Mordechai
Epstein (; repr. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, ).
. Jonathan Karp, The Politics of Commerce: Economic Thought and Emancipation in
Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), .
. Calvin Goldscheider and Alan Zuckerman, The Transformation of the Jews (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, )
. Howard Brick, “The Postcapitalist Vision in Twentieth-Century American Social
Thought,” in American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century, ed. Nelson Lichtenstein (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
), .
. Karp, Politics of Jewish Commerce; Jerry Muller, Capitalism and the Jews (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, ).
. Karp, Politics of Jewish Commerce; Derek Penslar, Shylock’s Children: Economics and
Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, ).
. Ignacy Schipper, quoted in Raphael Mahler, “Yitzhak Schipper (–),” in Historiker un vegveizer (Tel Aviv: Farlag Israel Bukh, ), .
. Indeed, this call was part of a larger movement among Polish Jewish historians

in the interwar years who devoted themselves to building Jewish scholarship in Poland
under the guidance of Majer Bałaban (Meir Balaban) and specifically concentrated on the
economic and social history of Polish Jewry. See Natalia Aleksiun, “Ammunition in the
Struggle for National Rights: Jewish Historians in Poland between the Two World Wars”
(PhD diss., New York University, ), –.


the chosen people in the chosen land



. Several notable studies on individuals who changed American capitalism are Alfred
Chandler, Henry Varnum Poor: Business Editor, Analyst, and Reformer (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press ); Alfred Chandler, Pierre S. du Pont and the Making of
the Modern Corporation, with Stephen Salsbury (New York: Harper and Row, ); W.
Bernard Carlson, Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General
Electric, – (New York: Cambridge University Press, ); David A. Hounshell
and John Kenly Smith Jr., Science and Corporate Strategy: Du Pont R&D, – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). Ivan Light and Steven Gold, Ethnic Economies
(San Diego: Academic Press, ), offers a stimulating discussion of the impact ethnic
business had on the United States. Also see Roger Waldinger, Howard Aldrich, and Robin
Ward, Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Immigrant Business in Industrial Societies (Newbury Park,
CA: Sage, ).
. American Jewish historians have expressed interest only in the economic success
of German Jewish bankers, paying slight attention to their actual business practices. See,
for example, Stephen Birmingham, Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, ); Barry Supple, “A Business Elite: GermanJewish Financiers in Nineteenth-Century New York,” Business History Review  (Summer ): –. American historians have similarly delved into examinations of
America’s economic expansion without ever mentioning Jews. See Alfred D. Chandler
Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, ), the classic study of the growth of capitalist enterprise
in America. Also see Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial

Capitalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ), as well as his “Organizational Capabilities and the Economic History of the Industrial Enterprise,” Journal of
Economic Perspectives  (Summer ): –; Paul Uselding, “Business History and
the History of Technology,” Business History Review  (Winter ): –; Alfred D.
Chandler Jr., Thomas K. McCraw, and Richard S. Tedlow, Management Past and Present (Cincinnati, OH: South Western College Publishers, ); Mansel G. Blackford and
K. Austin Kerr, Business Enterprise in American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, );
C. Joseph Pusateri, A History of American Business (Arlington Heights, IL: Davidson,
); Richard S. Tedlow and Richard R. John, eds., Managing Big Business: Essays from
the Business History Review (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, ); Maury Klein,
The Flowering of the Third America: The Making of an Organizational Society, –
(Chicago: Dee, ); Stuart Bruchey, Enterprise: The Dynamic Economy of a Free People
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ); Robert Sobel and David B. Sicilia, The
Entrepreneurs: An American Adventure (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ); James Oliver
Robertson, America’s Business (New York: Hill and Wang, ); Walter Licht, Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
); David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, –:
The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, ); and William G. Roy, Socializing Capital: The Rise of the
Large Industrial Corporation in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ).
. Simon Kuznets, “Immigration of Russian Jews to the United States: Background and
Structure,” Perspectives in American History  (): –. Arcadius Kahan, “Economic
Opportunities and Some Pilgrim’s Progress: Jewish Immigrants from Eastern Europe in the
United States, –,” Essays in Jewish Social and Economic History (): –
. Ira Katznelson, “Jews on the Margins of American Liberalism,” in Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, Citizenship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ), ,
–.
. The vast body of sociological literature concerning contemporary immigrant, ethnic,
and racial minorities’ relationship to American capitalism cannot be summarized here,
but a few noteworthy exemplars can be found in Ivan Light’s and Roger Waldinger’s work.




r ebecca kobr i n

See Light’s Ethnic Enterprise in America: Business and Welfare among Chinese, Japanese,
and Blacks (Berkeley: University of California Press, ); Light and Edna Bonacich,
Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles, – (Berkeley: University of California Press, ); Light, Immigration and Entrepreneurship: Culture, Capital, and Ethnic
Networks (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, ); Light and Carolyn Rosenstein, Race,
Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship in Urban America (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, );
Light and Gold’s Ethnic Economies; Waldinger, Aldrich, and Ward, Ethnic Entrepreneurs;
Waldinger, Through the Eye of the Needle: Immigrants and Enterprise in New York’s Garment Trades (New York: NYU Press, ); Waldinger, “Immigrant Enterprise: A Critique
and Reformulation,” Theory and Society  (), –.
. “Jews in America,” Fortune , no.  (February ): –. Quotations appear on
– and –.
. The general avoidance of these questions is evident on many levels. For example,
in the series Studies in Contemporary Jewry, which has overall set the topic of Jews and
capitalism aside, volume , dedicated to the subject of Jews in the United States, contains
only one brief article on “the postwar economy by American Jews.” Barry Chiswick,
“The Postwar Economy of American Jews,” in Studies in Contemporary Jewry (Jerusalem:
Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, ), –. To be sure, economic
historians such as Simon Kuznets and Arcadius Kahan have produced insightful studies
with impressive empirical analyses of the occupational structure of Jews in America, but
their work contains virtually nothing about large-scale historical issues or how Jews have
shaped the larger trajectory of American capitalism.
. Arcadius Kahan, Essays in Jewish Economic and Social History (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, ); Simon Kuznets, “Immigration of Russian Jews to the United
States: Background and Structure,” Perspectives in American History  (): –.
Among those who comment on immigrant Jews’ rapid ascent into the middle and upper
classes are such classic studies as Deborah Dash Moore’s At Home in America (New York:
Columbia University Press, ) and Jenna Weisman Joselit’s The Wonders of America:
Reinventing Jewish Culture, – (New York: Hill and Wang, ). The notable
exception is Eli Lederhendler, Jewish Immigrants and American Capitalism: From Caste

to Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).
. David Hollinger, “Rich, Powerful, and Smart: Jewish Overrepresentation Should Be
Explained Rather Than Mystified or Avoided,” Jewish Quarterly Review (Fall ): .
. Some of the most influential work on American Jewish material culture includes
Weissman Joselit, Wonders of America; Susan L. Braunstein and Jenna Weissman Joselit,
eds., Getting Comfortable in New York: The American Jewish Home, – (New
York: Jewish Museum, ); Ken Koltun-Fromm, Material Culture and Jewish Thought
in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ); and Vanessa L. Ochs, “What
Makes a Jewish Home Jewish? Stuff in a Jewish Home Is More Than Just Stuff; It’s Jewish
Stuff,” Cross Currents , no.  (–): –.
. The term “forgotten siblings” was coined by Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekermann, “Immigrant Entrepreneurship: The German-American Business Biography, –
Present Research Project,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute  (Fall ): .
Examples of literature on German Jewish bankers are Barry E. Supple, “A Business Elite:
German-Jewish Financiers in Nineteenth-Century New York,” Business History Review 
(Summer ): –; and Naomi Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish
Leadership (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, ). Several noteworthy
works on Jewish garment workers include Moses Rischin’s classic The Promised City: New
York’s Jews, – (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ); Susan Glenn,
Daughters of the Shtetl: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Generation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, ); and Hadassa Kosak, Cultures of Opposition: Jewish Immigrant
Workers, New York City, – (Albany: SUNY Press, ).


the chosen people in the chosen land



. Waldinger, “Immigrant Enterprise,” –; Charles Hirschman, “Immigration
and the American Century,” Demography  (): –.
. Andrew Godley, Jewish Immigrant Entrepreneurship in New York and London,

–: Enterprise and Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, ).
. Ron Chernow, House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of
Modern Finance (New York: Grove, ), , . See Susie Pak’s Gentlemen Bankers: The
World of J. P. Morgan and Investment Banking, – (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, forthcoming) for a discussion of how Jewishness and anti-Semitism shaped
business and investment banking practices in the United States.
. Birmingham, Our Crowd; Vincent P. Carosso, “A Financial Elite: New York’s
German-Jewish Investment Bankers,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly , no. –
(September –): –.
. In the realm of American culture, several scholars have penned fine studies that
explore the ways in which Jews identified with and engaged America’s racial outsiders.
See Michael Alexander, Jazz Age Jews (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, );
Eric Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race and Identity in America (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, ); and Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish
Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley: University of California Press, ).


chapter

᪎

1

Two Exceptionalisms
p o i n t s o f d e pa rt u r e f o r
s t u d i e s o f c a p i ta l i s m a n d j e w s
i n t h e u n i t e d s tat e s
Ira Katznelson

Even as academic Jewish studies have moved ahead by leaps and bounds in the
past half century, “the relationship of the Jews to capitalism,” as Jerry Muller

limpidly puts the point, “has received less attention than its significance merits.”1
Within American studies, the main exceptions to this rule, Arcadius Kahan’s
and Simon Kuznets’s rich scholarship, date from more than three decades ago.2
One might speculate about the reasons for this neglect. Certainly, a high degree
of caution, even skittishness, is warranted, for the charged subject of Jews and
capitalism has been marked not only by scholarly challenges but also by public
perils. Yet the cost of neglect to historical understanding has been high.
From the early Republic, Jews brought networks of trust and experience with
commerce to a country with a prominent and growing role in the development
of global capitalism. In the nineteenth century the United States became an
increasingly important economic center for the Jewish world. In the twentieth
a combination of calamity and opportunity made the United States its cultural
and demographic focal point.3 Yet we know, and understand, far too little about
how and when Jews have helped form the ethos, institutions, and trajectory
of U.S. capitalism or, in turn, how the group’s members have been affected by
the economy’s character and course. With capitalism, as Muller writes, having
“been the most important force in shaping the fate of the Jews in the modern
world,” I wish to ask how this relationship might be moved from peripheral
inattention to a more central scholarly location in American studies.4
With the recent renewal of interest in these subjects, not least by the contributors to this volume, it is timely to consider how scholarly considerations
