The Jews’ Indian: Colonialism, Pluralism, and Belonging in America

David S. Koffman

Published by Rutgers University Press 2019

The Jews’ Indian

Colonialism, Pluralism, and Belonging in America

David S. Koffman

https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978800908

Overview
Contents

About this book

Winner of the 2020 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore
Honorable Mention, 2021 Saul Viener Book Prize

The Jews’ Indian investigates the history of American Jewish relationships with Native Americans, both in the realm of cultural imagination and in face-to-face encounters. These two groups’ exchanges were numerous and diverse, proving at times harmonious when Jews’ and Natives people’s economic and social interests aligned, but discordant and fraught at other times. American Jews could be as exploitative of Native cultural, social, and political issues as other American settlers, and historian David Koffman argues that these interactions both unsettle and historicize the often triumphant consensus history of American Jewish life. Focusing on the ways Jewish class mobility and civic belonging were wrapped up in the dynamics of power and myth making that so severely impacted Native Americans, this books is provocative and timely, the first history to critically analyze Jewish participation in, and Jews’ grappling with the legacies of Native American history and the colonial project upon which America rests.

Author / Editor information

DAVID S. KOFFMAN is an assistant professor of history at York University in Toronto, Canada. He is also the editor-in-chief of the journal Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes.

Reviews

"Koffman’s excellent book serves as invitation for Jews and Native peoples to dialogue in both Canada and the United States, to find common ground but also appreciate differences, not only in terms of culture but also in communal objectives, contrasting pluralism with sovereignty."

— Canadian Jewish Studies

"An important contribution to both the study of encounter, perception and transformation by Jewish Americans as they participated in the westward expansion of the United States."

— Australian Journal of Jewish Studies

"The Jews’ Indian examines these scenarios of cultural exchange, borrowing, and appropriation with sensitivity and a researcher’s skill and patience."

— Canadian Jewish News

"A groundbreaking study revealing the tensions of identifying with marginalized peoples while participating in the colonial work of empires, The Jews’ Indian has implications for nearly all arenas of Jewish history."

— Michael Alexander, Maimonides Chair in Jewish Studies, University of California, Riverside

"America’s Jewish Colonizers," a conversation with David S. Koffman by Hadas Binyamini

— Jewish Currents

"The Jews’ Indian represents a significant achievement in American Jewish history that addresses a serious gap in prior scholarship and should hold broad appeal for readers in ethnic studies and modern Jewish history. As a bridge between “the literatures on white-Indian relations and Black-Jewish relations,” it deserves consideration for inclusion on graduate and advanced undergraduate syllabi in Jewish identity studies, American Jewish history, and modern Jewish historiography."

— American Jewish Archives Journal

"A major scholarly contribution, The Jews' Indian is endlessly fascinating and truly original. Koffman’s book is complex, distinctive, and—refreshingly—free of abstract polemics and sterile judgmentalism."

— Robert D. Johnston, professor of history, University of Illinois at Chicago

"A fascinating account…Koffman masterfully reveals the complexities and contradictions in American Jewish inter-ethnic relations. The Jews’ Indian raises important questions about Jews’ relationships to the project of American colonialism and the politics of race."

— Eliyahu Stern, Yale University

"Koffman’s book offers readers, scholars, and students a powerful chance to remember the insidious workings of white supremacy on American Jewish communities, and how those Jewish communities then affect other people."

— Journal of Jewish Identities

"Throughout, Koffman’s deep and original work in the archive is in abundant evidence, and the moral thrust of his argument is crystalline."

— The Great Plains Quarterly

"The Jews' Indian bristles with original insights and suggests new ways of thinking about whiteness, and encounters between settlers and natives, in American history."

— Derek Penslar, Harvard University

“The Jews’ Indian represents the best scholarship to date on the complex historical relationship between these two tribal peoples about which little has been written.”

— Walter C. Fleming, Professor and Department Head for Native American Studies, Montana State University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
INTRODUCTION: EXILE AND ABORIGINALITY, KINSHIP AND DISTANCE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
INVENTING PIONEER JEWS IN THE NEW NATION’S NEW WEST Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	20
LAND AND THE VIOLENT EXPANSION OF THE IMMIGRANTS’ EMPIRE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
JEWISH MIDDLEMEN MERCHANTS, INDIAN CURIOS, AND THE EXTENSIONS OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	82
JEWISH RHETORICAL USES OF INDIANS IN AN ERA OF NATIVIST ANXIETIES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	112
JEWISH ADVOCACY FOR NATIVE AMERICANS ON AND OFF CAPITOL HILL Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
ANTHROPOLOGICAL VENTRILOQUISM AND DOVETAILING INTELLECTUAL AND POLITICAL ADVANCEMENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	174
PATHS OF PERSECUTION, STAKES OF COLONIAL MODERNITY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277

Language: English
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 286
Illustrations
- Other: 24 b-w
Keywords: Jew; Jewish; Jews; American Indians; Native American; Indigenous; American; America; American West; cultural; pluralism; minority; race; ethnic; migration

eBook

Published: February 8, 2019
ISBN: 9781978800908