Abstract
The history of American antisemitism was, for many years, a taboo subject. The Jewish lay leader and scholar Cyrus Adler, longtime president of the American Jewish Historical Society, insisted in 1898 that he did "not believe it exists" and had "entire confidence in the impossibility of its ever existing on the soil of the United States."1 The word "antisemitism" did not even appear in the index to the Historical Society's first 20 years of publications. Koppel Pinson's path-breaking volume entitled Essays on Antisemitism (1946) likewise excluded America. Revealingly, in 1947, a scholarly article dealing with antisemitism that did appear in the Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, by Rabbi Leonard A. Greenberg, opened with an elaborate justification. "We can," it explained,
no longer dismiss anti-Semitism with a wave of the hand or a flourish of the pen. As an influence in American Jewish life -- although a negative one to be sure-its study comes within the scope of this Society's activities.2