Melting Pots of Various Sizes: Jewish and Catholic Approaches to Americanization

When immigration from southern and eastern Europe began rising in the 1880s, many American Jews and Catholics viewed their co-religionists with a mixture of welcome, apprehension, and horror. With roots in Germany and Ireland, these religious communities had overcome prejudices and made places for themselves within a Protestant-dominated society. The sight of Italians parading hometown saints down the streets and Yiddish-speaking, bearded men peddling their wares threatened to undermine all they had achieved. While the historical narrative typically tells a story of clashing sensibilities, American Jews and Catholics had widely varying ideas of the degree to which newcomers should assimilate. This talk will reveal previously overlooked nuances within Jewish and Catholic communities and give particular attention to regional differences.

Anne Blankenship is an associate professor of religious studies a North Dakota State University’s History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies Department. Her research investigates religious responses to injustice and relationships between national, racial, and religious identities. Her book Christianity, Social Justice, and Japanese American Incarceration during World War II demonstrated how injustice transformed Asian American Christianity and challenged religious and racial boundaries in liberal American Christianity. Blankenship’s current book project is titled Religion, Race, and Immigration: How Jews, Catholics, and Protestants Faced Mass Immigration, 1882-1924. The project has received support from several institutions, including the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Academy of Religion. She received her doctoral degree in American religious history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, and is a member of the Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture’s current Young Scholars of American Religion cohort. Blankenship teaches a wide range of courses, including world religions, history of Christianity, global Islam, new religious movements, American religious history, and religion and politics.

This event is co-presented by the Center for Jewish History and Fordham’s Center for Jewish Studies.