Politics, Faith, and the Making of American Judaism Peter Adams. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014.

Politics, Faith, and the Making of American Judaism Peter Adams. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014.Former journalist, now teaching English at Virginia's Old Dominion University, Peter Adams chronicles the major events from the 1840s through the turn of the twentieth century "that spurred the Jewish community to Americanize every facet of life, unify their fractious congregations, and engage more forcefully in partisan politics" (1). The drive to Americanize led to a rapid expansion of Reform Judaism seeking to erase "the foreign features of Judaism" and making it look more like American Protestantism (5). Judaism assimilated by relinquishing orthodox conceptions of God, replacing the traditional Hebrew with English in shortened Sabbath services, adding Sunday services, introducing music, and seating men and women in the same pews (4, 5). Adams finds the four hundred year Jewish diaspora in America without precedent, with Judaism early on malleable and served well by its lack of hierarchy and decentralization, this resulting in factualism at times and a continuum of positions from Orthodox to Reform, with a middle position in the Conservative moment. American Judaism, as described by Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, was "the religion of God, reason, humanity, and freedom" (7). With "a series of persecutions overseas and occasional spikes in antiSemitism at home," Adams concludes that Jews "fashioned an authentically American synagogue and a way of life that put the experience of the European ghetto forever behind them" (153).After "a particularly vicious spike in Judeophobia during the Civil War and into the Gilded Age, Jews made steady but painfully difficult advancements toward modernity" (1). They transformed themselves from fractured communities into political presence and power. The Jewish population, although tripling in population from 1848 to 1860, remained a religious minority seeking public anonymity. Following the events of the Civil War, Jews in the 1850s recovered from expulsion by Union generals to address whether they had become sufficiently American to influence the events of their own survival, this resulting in further efforts to assimilate, modernize, and become involved in partisan politics (4). Nonetheless, bitter debates over matters of faith, ritual, and observance divided Orthodox from Reform Jews and delayed compromises and bridges to union.The reader of Politics, Faith, and the Making of American Judaism learns much about both Judaism and the Civil War. General Grant, although saving the Union, gained infamy for his expulsion of Jews (General Order No. 11), who were accused of violating the Treasury Department's regulation of trade and were thought to be involved in the black market in Southern cotton, from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi. President Lincoln expressed surprise at Grant's actions and his condemnation of a class outright, voicing his own position of making no distinction between Jew and Gentile and revoking the Order within eighteen days. Grant, too, after the War, transcended his antiSemitism, actually carrying the Jewish vote in 1868 for his presidency and appointed several Jews to high office. …