During the presidential administration of Theodore Roosevelt, the American Jewish population nearly doubled, to almost two million. But long before he entered the White House, Roosevelt was familiar with Jewish issues. After all, Roosevelt began his meteoric political rise in New York, America’s most Jewish city. These combined experiences have led historian Andrew Porwancher to write American Maccabee: Theodore Roosevelt and the Jews, a useful book that explores how instrumental Jewish issues were throughout Roosevelt’s presidency.
Jews were relevant to Roosevelt’s political career in three major ways. First, there was the issue of Jewish inclusion. Roosevelt welcomed Jews to the New York City Police Department when he was its commissioner. One of the Jewish officers he elevated, Otto Raphael, was a hero whom Roosevelt invited to join the force after he helped save people from a burning building. Raphael developed such a close relationship with Roosevelt that he even served as a guardian over TR’s body when the former president died in January 1919.
Roosevelt used the “Maccabee” type—his word—Jewish officers he hired to his political advantage. When Hermann Ahlwardt, an anti-Semitic German rabble-rouser, came to New York, Roosevelt made sure to give him a protective phalanx of the most Jewish-looking officers he could find. Roosevelt continued to advance Jews during his stint with the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, fighting alongside a Jewish soldier named Sam Greenwald, and helping him earn a promotion.
As president, Roosevelt had an unofficial Jewish kitchen cabinet. Members included Jacob Schiff, Oscar Straus, congressman and Harvard mate Lucius “Litt” Littauer, and Simon Wolf. Later, Roosevelt nominated Straus to be the secretary of commerce and labor—the first Jewish cabinet secretary in U.S. history. Porwancher points out in a footnote that two previous presidents—Ulysses S. Grant and Grover Cleveland—had tried to nominate Jewish cabinet secretaries, but both of them declined the honor. Unfortunately, Porwancher does not tell us who those nominees were, something readers might want to know.
Jews were also important in regard to America’s relations with Russia. Then, as now, Russia was a problematic actor on the international stage. There were multiple pogroms during the Roosevelt years, and Roosevelt was torn between condemning them—which infuriated the Russians, and also opened up accusations of American hypocrisy because of lynching in the United States—and remaining silent, which rightly infuriated American Jews. Roosevelt tried to maintain a middle line on this issue, sometimes angering the Jews and sometimes angering the Russians, but Russian malfeasance against Jews was so common and so frequent that this was a constant tension within the Roosevelt presidency. Porwancher demonstrates Roosevelt’s frustration with the Russians with the following quote, which could probably have also been said by every subsequent American president and additional ones in the future: “What I cannot understand about the Russian is the way he will lie when he knows perfectly well that you know he is lying.”
Jews were also central to issues of immigration and assimilation. This was a time of massive influx of immigrants into the country, many but by no means all of whom were Jewish. Roosevelt believed in assimilating new arrivals into American society, but he also understood the fraught politics of the issue, with many Americans in favor of putting limits on immigration. As Porwancher writes, “Certainly, Jews weren’t the only immigrant group whose inflow generated controversy. But American anti-Semitism made Jewish migration especially charged.”
The Jewish community, concerned about the mistreatment of Jews not just in Russia but elsewhere in Europe, wanted to encourage more immigration. Roosevelt’s support of a literacy test for all immigrants frustrated American Jews, who were concerned that Jews who failed the test could be doomed if they had to return to Europe.
Another point of tension was the Roosevelt-favored concept of the “melting pot.” The phrase comes from a play of that name by the British-Jewish playwright Israel Zangwill. In the play, a Jew and a gentile fall in love and wish to marry, but their union is complicated by the fact that one came from a family murdered in the deadly 1903 Kishinev pogrom, while the other came from a family that helped perpetrate the atrocities. Roosevelt met with Zangwill and attended a showing of the play in Washington, showing his support, but the melting pot concept is complicated for American Jews. It is effectively an endorsement of intermarriage, which is unacceptable to Orthodox Jews and is a significant long-term threat to Jewish sustainability. The complex politics of immigration made for what Porwancher called “two Theodore Roosevelts: one who earned the devotion of his Jewish constituents and another who elicited their distress.”
Roosevelt was not only attentive to Jewish issues but also finely attuned to how the Jewish community viewed him. A Jewish Harvard student named Joseph Lebowich wrote a piece in Menorah Magazine praising him, leading Roosevelt to tell Oscar Straus, “I like that article by Mr. Lebowich. Do you know him? If so, I wish you would tell him how much I appreciate it—and add that I wish he had been among the Harvard men in my regiment.”
On another occasion, when an American humorist—once again Porwancher does not tell us who—spelled Roosevelt’s name as a Jewish-sounding “Tiddy Rosenfelt,” Roosevelt replied, “I wish I had a little Jew in me.” This comment is reminiscent of the old joke, “a philo-Semite is just an anti-Semite who likes Jews.”
Porwancher is wise to write about this subject. Roosevelt’s relationship with the Jews is grist for lots of historical exploration. Indeed, Porwancher notes that he is planning another book on the subject, addressing Roosevelt’s relationship with the Jews after his presidency. That will be welcome, as Roosevelt’s experiences remind one of the current occupant in the White House, who gives Jewish supporters and opponents alike ammunition for both praise and complaint. As with all things related to the Jewish community, Trump’s relationship with them, like Roosevelt’s, can be summed up in the quintessentially Jewish phrase: “It’s complicated.”
American Maccabee: Theodore Roosevelt and the Jews
by Andrew Porwancher
Princeton University Press, 368 pp., $35
Tevi Troy is a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute, a Senior Scholar at Yeshiva University’s Straus Center, and a former senior White House aide. He is the author of five books on the presidency, including The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry.
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