Description:
A unique collection revealing the experience of Jewish soldiers and civilians during the Civil War
At least 8,000 Jewish soldiers fought for the Union and Confederacy during the Civil War. A few served together in Jewish companies while most fought alongside Christian comrades. Yet even as they stood "shoulder-to-shoulder" on the front lines, they encountered unique challenges. In Jews and the Civil War, Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn assemble for the first time the foremost scholarship on Jews and the Civil War, little known even to specialists in the field. These accessible and far-ranging essays from top scholars are grouped into seven thematic sections--Jews and Slavery, Jews and Abolition, Rabbis and the March to War, Jewish Soldiers during the Civil War, The Home Front, Jews as a Class, and Aftermath--each with an introduction by the editors. Together they reappraise the impact of the war on Jews in the North and the South, offering a rich and fascinating portrait of the experience of Jewish soldiers and civilians from the home front to the battle front.Brief description: Jonathan D. Sarna is the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History in the department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. He has written, edited or co-edited more than twenty-five books, including When General Grant Expelled the Jews (Schoken, 2012; Finalist for the 2012 National Jewish Book Award); American Judaism: A History (Yale, 2005, winner of the "Jewish Book of the Year" award from the Jewish Book Council), our Lincoln and the Jews (paperback edition, 2025; HB St. Martins, 2015), as well as our Civil War: A Reader (NYU Press, 2011).
Review Quotes: ""'The Jews thus became for Grant and his harassed officers a convenient symbol of all the frustrations and annoyances with which they were contending, ' Stephen Ash writes in an essay in New York University Press' intriguing new anthology."-- "America's Civil War"