Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery

by Richard Kreitner

A dramatic history of how American Jews reckoned with slavery—and fought the Civil War.

Since ancient times, the Jewish people have recalled the story of Exodus and reflected on the implications of having been slaves. Did the tradition teach that Jews should speak out against slavery and oppression everywhere, or act cautiously to protect themselves in a hostile world?

In Fear No Pharaoh, the journalist and historian Richard Kreitner sets this question at the heart of the Civil War era. Using original sources, he tells the intertwined stories of six American Jews who helped to shape a tumultuous time, including Judah Benjamin, the brilliant, secretive lawyer who became Jefferson Davis’s trusted confidante; Morris Raphall, a Swedish-born rabbi who defended slavery as biblically justified; and Raphall's rival rabbis—the celebrated Isaac Mayer Wise, who urged Jews to stay out of the slavery controversy to avoid attracting attention, and David Einhorn, whose fiery sermons condemning bondage led to a pro-slavery mob threatening his life. We also meet August Bondi, a veteran of Europe’s 1848 revolutions, who fought with John Brown in “Bleeding Kansas” and later in the Union Army, and the Polish émigré Ernestine Rose, a feminist, atheist, and abolitionist who championed “emancipation of all kinds.”

As he tracks these characters, Kreitner illuminates the shifting dynamics of Jewish life in America—and the debates about religion, morality, and politics that endure to this day.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Jewish, Religion, American History, Civil War, Judaism

418 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2025

Reviews

[Fran Hawthorne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I confess that I intentionally didn't read the entire book: I had picked it up only for the sections on the little-known, 19th century abolitionist and women's rights activist Ernestine Rose, as part of my research for the novel I'm currently writing. (PS I've finished the second draft of that book--my 4th novel!!)

But the information was so compelling, and the writing so easily readable, that I found myself reading far beyond the pages I needed. So, I figured that those qualities, plus the overall topic itself, made this book worth recommending.

The small community of American Jews was sliced and diced along with the larger divisions between North and South, farm and city, nativist and immigrant, anti-slavery and women's rights. There were activists who cited the Hebrew Bible to defend slavery, and then those who compared the enslaved black people in the US with the enslaved Hebrews in Egypt. There were the ones who wanted the vote only for native-born Americans, or white Americans, or Christian Americans. There were the abolitionists who supported Southern secession on the theory of "Good riddance!"

Very readable and worth reading. Oh, and you'll learn about how Ernestine Rose -- daughter of a rabbi, born in Poland, an amazing orator in her adopted language, a feminist who refused to wear radical bloomers -- pulled her own uniquely atheist, uncompromising way.

[spoko · Rating 5 out of 5]

A broad, substantive examination of the ways that Jewish Americans participated in and influenced the racial dynamics surrounding the Civil War. The decision to frame the book around six individuals is an effective one. Rather than generalize, Kreitner lets biographical details reveal layers of compromise, conviction, and contradiction. It’s not a dramatic approach, but it gives shape to a period where ideology and identity were constantly in motion.

The book’s narrative provides a thorough and occasionally surprising chronicle of facts. I guess I wasn’t too shocked to learn that Jewish Americans were not disproportionately abolitionist, contrary to my assumptions. But the book reveals in detail how regional allegiance, fear of standing out, and sheer attachment to the status quo often overrode a heritage of suffering and persecution, and the mercy that one might expect to follow from it. Still, it’s utterly shocking to learn that certain individual Jews were among the supporters of the Klan at its start. Another equally shocking detail is that the Confederate battle flag was altered from a regular cross to a diagonal, in order to be more inclusive of Jews & non-Christians. (So woke!) Such details say so much, not just about those individuals or moments, but about the history of bigotry in America itself. Having read the book, I do feel like I have a much fuller sense of that.

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 4 out of 5]

"As she picked her way through the smoldering, glass-strewn streets [of Richmond], a huge eruption of celebratory gunfire signaled the arrival of Abraham Lincoln on his triumphant tour of the former den of treason. Disgusted, Emma turned for home. On the road out of town, she was stopped by another soldier with the United States Colored Troops, “the blackest man I ever saw.” When Emma brazenly ignored his orders to halt, then cursed under her breath, the soldier pointed his rifle at her and cocked the hammer. “You haven’t got things here no longer as you have had them,” he told her. “Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that?” Mortified, Emma scurried back to the farm, where she faced the unpleasant task of preparing for Passover, for the first time in her life, without the help of her slaves."-- (From the book. For any who don't know, Passover is the commemoration of the ancient Hebrews' escape from bondage in Egypt. Whether it is fact-based or not, it plays a huge role in Judaism).

In 2013 as a non-practicing Jewish communist reading tons of books on the Civil War (or Second American Revolution), I looked for a book on Jews and the Civil War. I didn't find much and ended up buying and reading The journey : the first full-length documented biography of the American-Jewish freedom fighter who rode with John Brown in Kansas by Marvin Litwin, who mistakenly thinks that being Jewish and from Kansas gives him a lot in common with Bondi; it doesn't. He feels obligated to twice excoriate John Brown's terrorist actions against civilian pro-slavery forces in the Pottawatomie Massacre (which Bondi wasn't part of) but doesn't manage to write anything so hostile against slavery! While writing a good first chapter on the 1848 Revolution in Austria, which Bondi took an active part in while just a teenager, the best other parts of the book are the long excerpts from Bondi's Kansas memoires and Civil War diary.

Richard Kreitner in this book relies on an autobiography Bondi wrote late in life, using these sources but with the later views Bondi adopted during the period of Thermidorean Reaction (see Racism, Revolution, Reaction, 1861-1877: The Rise and Fall of RadicalvReconstruction). I never read Bondi's autobiography.

The other book I read was Jews and the Civil War: A Reader, which has a few decent essays, but didn't do much for me. THIS is essentially the book I was looking for, which didn't exist when I first looked. I recommend it to everyone, Jewish or not, who has a genuine interest in the subject and is tolerant enough to be able to read stories of Jews on both sides in the conflict (Wokes need not bother).

Jews are the perfect scapegoat for almost anything that goes wrong and there are plenty of examples of that here. For an understanding of why this is, see The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation and The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch.

For the best overall book on the Civil War, see Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson. And complement it with Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deeply researched history of the Jewish experience in America before and during the Civil War with special attention the Jewish reaction to slavery. To me this was very scholarly so not so easy to read. I don’t mean this to be critical of the author but more a statement of what I like (or don’t like) to read. Fascinating exploration of the antebellum Jewish experience.

[Alan Kaplan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fear No Pharaoh is one of the best books I have read in a long time, but it is really for a niche audience, Jews who are interested in how Jews responded to the American Civil War. At the time of the Civil War there were about 150,000 Jews in America and they were on both sides on the issue of slavery. Some were abolitionists and others such as Judah Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of State, were passionate supporters of the Confederacy. The author finds this amazing that Jews would support slavery due to their history of being slaves in Egypt and their freedom from bondage is celebrated every year on the Jewish holiday, Passover. Kreitner makes the point that some Jews celebrated Passover while being served by their slaves.
The book is filled with amazing trivia. Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan are wrong. Jews owned 2% of slave ships, which is too many but not the blood libel that Farrakhan repeats.
David Isaacs, who started the first synagogue in Charlottesville, was a good friend of Thomas Jefferson in Charlottesville, Virginia. Isaacs ran a small business, and he sold meat, cheese, and butter to Jefferson. He was married to a free black woman, and their daughter, Julia Ann Isaacs married Easton Hemings, one of Sally Hemings children and as now been proven the son of Thomas Jefferson. Whether the Jefferson family realizes it or not, there is Jewish blood running through many of his descendents.
August Biondi, a Jewish immigrant from Austria, was part of John Brown’s group in bleeding Kansas when that state was voting to become a free or a slave state. Shockingly he joined the Confederacy during the war.
At the 1860 Republican convention in Chicago, Lewis Dembitz, the uncle of the future Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, formally nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency.
On the other side, Benjamin Mordecai, a Charleston, South Carolina merchant, donated $10,000 to the newly suceeded South Carolina government, and he offered his slaves for use by the government.
Even Larry David, the liberal actor, had a relative who owned slaves in Mobile, Alabama.
On the Union side, General Ulysses S. Grant decreed Order no.11. This order stated that as of December 17, 1862, all Jews, traders, and residents alike would be deported from Grant’s military district. “The Jews, as a class, violating every regulation 0f trade established by the Treasury Department, and also Department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department.”
Anti semitism never changes. Jews are blamed for everything even when they are a tiny minority.
Thankfully, Lincoln rescinded the order 2 weeks later.
Kreitner relates that the themes and images of the Biblical Exodus even influenced the Founding Fathers.
Benjamin Franklin recommended that the seal of the US displayed Moses lifting his rod as the Pharaoh troops drowned in the Nile. Jefferson lobbied instead for a band of wandering Israelites following a pillar of fire through the desert.
The Hebrew Ladies Association of Richmond raised funds for a Jewish cemetery in Richmond for 30 Jewish Confederate soldiers. The wrought iron fence displayed stacked rifles and the furled Stars and Bars, topped by rebel soldiers caps. It is still there. It is the only Jewish military graveyard outside of Israel.
My take home message of this book is that Jews have a long and complicated history in America.
Read this book for a fuller understanding of the long and amazing Jewish history in this the greatest of all countries.

[Book Club of One · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like any religious faith, what it means to belong in that faith can embrace a spectrum of tenants and practices. In the 19th century, German Jewish immigrants to the U.S. were faced with many questions of assimilation, but one with the greatest import was the question of slavery. Should it be supported? Or should one join the growing ranks of abolitionists? This is the central question in Richard Kreitner's Fear no Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery..

Through the known biographies of six representative figures, Kreitner traces the Jewish discourse around this issue. Three of the figures were Rabbis, each with a different viewpoint. One support slavery, one abolition and the third urged silence for the sake of social security. The other three were secular Jews with a wide variation in experience. One was a European Revolutionary who fought with John Brown in Kansas. Another, Ernestine Rose, was born to a religious family but instead spent her life speaking and actively working for women's rights and the abolition of slavery.
The last figure was Judah Benjamin, slave owner, Senator and member of Jefferson Davis' cabinet. All of this is framed by the yearly observance of Passover, with its focus of the Jews being freed from Egyptian slavery. As with much of Jewish history and tradition what the true meaning of Passover is could be debated and interpreted many different ways. For African Americans however, the iconography of Passover made for compelling songs and hopes.

Kreitner moves chronologically, beginning the in the mid 1800s showing the rising tensions of the two opposed American ideologies. As the nation grew more divided, so too did the American Jewish community, though the closest it would come to any sort of national unification would not occur until after the Civil War.

In the conclusion Kreitner speaks of writing this book due to the one he wanted to read not existing. And there are several points where he challenges or proves false some notable quotes or claims about Jews in various positions during the Civil War. Kreitner also demonstrates there was no one, clear viewpoint, there were many and of the six figures who spoke publicly took a stand and position, even if we consider them differently for it both then and now.

A compelling Jewish American historical examination.

Recommended to readers or researchers of American History, the American Civil War or Jewish Studies.

I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.

[Larkin Tackett · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle summarizes this book well -- a detailed account of Jewish American history in and around the Civil War and the institution of slavery, a much closer relationship than I understood. "...the experience of living as Jews in America has been shaped by the legacy of slavery and by the ideas and laws devised to defend and then replace it." I'd heard of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, and LA Senator and Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin, but not the other figures. There are so many interesting nuggets:

- Roughly one-fourth of Southern Jews owned at least one slave, about even with the overall Southern population.
- in the 1850s. All three Jewish men elected to the House of Representatives that decade were strong supporters of human bondage.
- Judaism has itself reabsorbed the Black interpretation of Exodus, an appropriation of an appropriation.
- By the late eighteenth century, as many as one in ten Jews in the Americas were people of color. In some communities, such as the Dutch colony of Suriname, they may have been up to half of the Jewish population.
- Some Jewish masters converted their female slaves to Judaism in order to marry them as Jews.
- 1826 passage of Maryland’s “Jew Bill,” which finally—a half-century after the adoption of the Constitution—granted Jews in the state political and civil rights.
- six thousand Jewish men would serve in the Union forces, about half that number in the Confederate ranks
- The South had never been an especially hostile place for Jews. Because they were generally seen as white and had not made themselves odious by criticizing slavery, Jews had been accepted, more or less, as equals. Outnumbered, in many areas, by the Black people they enslaved, white Southern Christians needed all the allies they could get.

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highlights the fact that for many American Jews at the time of the American Civil War, the Exodus story was a nationalistic story, not a universalist one, and thus wealthy Southern Jews could sit down to a Pesach dinner waited on by their own slaves, and Jews generally could accept the bargain offered them by the surrounding society: be silent about the slavery question and we’ll accept you as belonging here and give you freedom and safety. For a people that had fled a long history of oppression and violence in Europe, it was a tempting deal indeed.

Yet I wonder how unbalanced an overall picture is provided by this focus; as a near throwaway sentence in the book tells us, more than twice as many Jews fought for the Union as for the Confederacy, though it was small numbers all around: over 6,000 Jews in the Union Army and about 3,000 Jews in the Confederate out of over 3 million soldiers overall, or somewhere around 0.3%.

If the participation of Jews made little difference in the history of American slavery and Civil War, as their numbers were entirely too small at this time, it might be more interesting to take a sociological or theological approach to the question. The book does provide some good sociology amidst all the detailing of history. I wish though it had provided more theology. The most interesting, to me, point raised in the book is the claim that Judaism eventually adopted the African-American interpretation of Exodus, “an appropriation of an appropriation”, making it universalistic rather than particular. Michael Walzer’s book on Exodus might provide that story.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before the Civil War, what were the varying beliefs held by American Jews concerning slavery? How did the fact that Jews were generally considered white affect those beliefs? Did the American Jewish population support the North or South during the war? As Richard Kreitner notes in his “Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), the answers to these questions are far more complex than one might expect because there was no one reaction that describes the thoughts, beliefs and actions of all American Jews.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...

[David A. Koch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written. Identifies and analysis a significant time in the history of American Jews. Does a good job of separating fact from fiction. Makes you wonder if history is repeating itself for American Jews.

[Rebekkah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abandoned this for months because of the audiobook narrator—is it really that hard to hire a Jewish narrator for a book about Jewish history? I can still hear his mispronunciations echoing in my head. But I’m glad I picked up a hard copy and persevered until the end.

[Gwen Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the content of the book, but at times it was hard to follow.

The topic has long fascinated me and I liked that this was told through the stories of several historical figures - many of them people I had never heard of and enjoyed learning about.

[Bob T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough account of the lives of several American Jews, revealing what may be some of the surprising viewpoints they had about the issues of that era.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

A disturbing but enlightening history of injustice and inequality shared and enabled.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written deeply researched very informative

[Joelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

essential reading for every Jewish person

[Elizabeth Fretz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gotta talk to Dr. R about this one!!