Ear­li­er this week, Matthew Baigell wrote about social con­cern and left pol­i­tics in Jew­ish Amer­i­can art. He is the author of a recent­ly pub­lished book on the top­ic and will be blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series.

Amer­i­can Jews or Jew­ish Amer­i­cans have had great suc­cess in this coun­try. So it is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to believe that in the late nine­teenth- and ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­turies, they were the sub­jects of hun­dreds of tru­ly vicious car­toons in Amer­i­can humor mag­a­zines. These were the decades of the Great Migra­tion from East­ern Europe that began around 1800. His­to­ri­ans have sug­gest­ed that of all immi­grant groups, Jews were the most intense­ly car­i­ca­tured and vil­i­fied and the car­toons bear out this judge­ment. Some images are as anti-Semit­ic as those in old Nazi as well as in con­tem­po­rary Arab publications.

The car­toon­ists, rather than por­tray­ing immi­grants in a wel­com­ing man­ner or at least show them inte­grat­ing into Amer­i­can soci­ety instead invari­ably showed them as Shy­locks, Fagins, social climbers, crim­i­nals, schem­ing par­venus who would take advan­tage of any sit­u­a­tion in which they found them­selves. Tai­lors gulled clients by sell­ing dam­aged and ill-fit­ting cloth­ing, Par­ents taught chil­dren that mak­ing mon­ey by what­ev­er means was the pri­ma­ry goal in life. Adults sought bar­gains wher­ev­er these could be found. Arson was encour­aged in order to col­lect insur­ance. The list goes on. Cap­tions, writ­ten in bro­ken Eng­lish as a way to dis­tance the immi­grants from native speak­ers, imi­tat­ed the speech pat­terns of those who had not yet mas­tered the Eng­lish language. 

Judged not as indi­vid­u­als but as an undif­fer­en­ti­at­ed group, Jew­ish peo­ple were con­sid­ered as the quin­tes­sen­tial Oth­er in Amer­i­can cul­ture, the com­mu­ni­ty that might be impos­si­ble to ful­ly assim­i­late, its Zion­ist impuls­es and loy­al­ties to a mys­te­ri­ous com­mu­ni­ty of inter­na­tion­al Jew­ry being not ful­ly com­pat­i­ble with patri­o­tism or 100 per­cent Amer­i­can­ism. On the oth­er hand, there was also great jeal­ousy, fear, and hatred all at once because of how quick­ly Jews had accu­mu­lat­ed wealth, had advanced social­ly, and had devel­oped a pro­fes­sion­al class of lawyers and doctors.

Instead of pos­i­tive recog­ni­tion for their accom­plish­ments, Jews were depict­ed instead as hav­ing huge noses, big bel­lies, and bowed legs engaged in non-stop heinous activ­i­ties. Protests over such demean­ing car­i­ca­tures were inef­fec­tu­al as well as few and far between. Still not cer­tain of their place in Amer­i­ca and exhibit­ing an east­ern Euro­pean ret­i­cence to stand up to pub­lic abuse, authors apol­o­gized and made excus­es for Jew­ish social and com­mer­cial mis­be­hav­iors, and hoped that in the near future, after learn­ing Amer­i­can ways, they might be accept­ed some­what more gra­cious­ly by the pub­lic. The atti­tude was more hat-in-hand than one of pride in a reli­gion that had giv­en so much to the world.

Even the great nov­el­ist Hen­ry James, whose book The Amer­i­can Scene (1906) was a record of his vis­it to Amer­i­ca after liv­ing for years abroad, found Jews to be a vir­tu­al­ly unstop­pable force. In response, on a vis­it to the Low­er East Side of New York, he likened Jews on their fire escapes and in open city squares to squir­rels, mon­keys, and ants con­stant­ly on the move. In estab­lish­ing a dis­tance between him­self and the new Amer­i­cans, Jews were not only the Oth­er, they were not even con­sid­ered ful­ly human.

A few car­toons can sug­gest the atti­tudes of the car­toon­ists. The New Trans-Atlantic Hebrew Line’ ” pub­lished in the Jan­u­ary 19, 1881 issue of the mag­a­zine, Puck, is a com­ment on the great num­ber of Jew­ish immi­grants from east­ern Europe. Even illit­er­ates who could not read the sar­cas­tic cap­tion, For the Exclu­sive Use of The Per­se­cut­ed’,” would know who the per­se­cut­ed were — the peo­ple on the ship, the sailors, the ship itself, the fish in the water, and the bird in the sky by their very hooked noses.

And in a car­toon for the May 11, 1881, of Puck, the car­toon­ist cap­tured a Coney Island-like scene includ­ing hotels, board­walk prom­e­naders, a sandy beach, bathers, those lying in the sun, and ban­ners on the hotel. The hotel is clear­ly over­loaded with big-nosed Jew­ish guests. All of those on the board­walk also have huge noses and some have pot bel­lies. The women are osten­ta­tious­ly over­dressed for a prom­e­nade, a hos­tile obser­va­tion that reg­u­lar­ly appeared in news sto­ries about Jews at resorts. Those in the water and on the beach are Chris­tians flee­ing from the Jews. A cou­ple in the fore­ground, thumb­ing their noses, wag their fin­gers at the depart­ing Chris­tians. The ban­ners on the Hotel de Jerusalem con­tain two adver­tise­ments that in the mind of the car­toon­ist were placed there by vaca­tion­ers: Buy your cloth­ing of Cohen,” and On his return from Flori­da, this floor will be occu­pied by the ISAACS HAT­TER.” Oth­er ban­ners state: Look out for the JEW,” Hebrews not WANT­ED,” and No Jews TAKEN.”

Hap­pi­ly, such car­toons large­ly dis­ap­peared by 1930. What had been red meat for car­toon­ists back then, is no longer accept­able today. That is progress of a sort.

Matthew Baigell is Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus in the Depart­ment of Art His­to­ry at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty. He is the author of numer­ous books, includ­ing Amer­i­can Artists, Jew­ish Images, and Jew­ish Art in Amer­i­ca: An Intro­duc­tion. His most recent book is Social Con­cern and Left Pol­i­tics in Jew­ish Amer­i­ca Art, 1880 – 1940.

Relat­ed Content:

Matthew Baigell is pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus in the depart­ment of art his­to­ry at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty. He is the author, edi­tor, and coed­i­tor of over twen­ty books on Amer­i­can and Jew­ish Amer­i­can art. His most recent book is The Implaca­ble Urge to Defame: Car­toon Jews in the Amer­i­can Press, 1877 – 1935.