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The Courageous Jewish Abolitionists We Forgot

JL;DR SUMMARY Marking the 150th anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment's passage, Richard Kreitner's piece examines the overlooked contributions of Jewish abolitionists in the fight against slavery in America. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

American JewsCivil WarJudah P. BenjaminEmancipationRace RelationsMordecai Manuel NoahAbolitionismJudaism And SlaveryJewish AbolitionistsThirteenth Amendment

Places mentioned

New York, United States
"On the appointed day, the congregation of Bnei Jeshurun in New York saw Morris Jacob Raphall, a Swedish-born rabbi, rise to the bima."
Brooklyn, New York, United States
"How dare you, in the face of the sanction and protection afforded to slave property in the Ten Commandmentshow dare you denounce slaveholding as a sin? Raphall asked of Brooklyn minister Henry Ward Beecher, brother of the author of Uncle Toms Cabin."
Charleston, South Carolina, United States
"Abraham Lincoln had won every state in the North and none in the South. South Carolina had just elected delegates to a secession convention and the other Southern states seemed poised to follow."
Newport, Rhode Island, United States
"Jews in New Amsterdam owned slaves within a decade of their 1654 arrival, and their brethren in Newport, Rhode Island, were involved in the slave trade right up until the War of Independence, in which several slaves of the city’s Jews were forced to fight."
Mobile, Alabama, United States
"Bernard Felsenthal of Chicago, later one of the first Zionists in America, who once rejected a job as rabbi in Mobile, Alabama, because it would have required acquiescence to slavery."
Baltimore, Maryland, United States
"The most courageous Jewish response to Raphalls sermon came neither from Europe nor the North, but from the dais of a synagogue in Baltimore, Maryland, a slave state."
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
"A week after the war began, he and his family exiled themselves to Philadelphia."

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Retrieved 2025-09-16 05:31:33 UTC
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