OPENING DOORS

How newcomers rose together in America.

Diner, former director of the Goren Center for American Jewish History and author of We Remember With Reverence and Love, draws on memoirs, newspapers, novels, plays, and popular culture to offer a fresh perspective on the relationship between the Irish and the Jews from the end of the 19th century through the 1930s. Irish Catholics, who had come in the 1840s, and Eastern European Jews, who came in the 1880s, realized that they needed each other to defend against anti-immigration Protestants, who thought they would “replace the true Americans.” Because the Irish had come earlier, they “held the knobs,” Diner asserts, that opened doors, allowing Jews “to cross over so many thresholds.” The author focuses on four areas where Irish influence particularly helped Jews: public advocacy against antisemitism; urban politics, where the Irish held key positions; the labor front, where the Irish had been particularly successful organizers; and education. Although each group held some negative stereotypes about the other, in daily life, they “carved out shared spaces to pursue common goals.” Anecdotes and capsule biographies enliven Diner’s history as she portrays the many men and women who championed Jews and the Jews who benefited from their support. Education, not surprisingly, proved vital for Jewish children, who were taught by a large contingent of Irish schoolteachers; many joined the teaching profession themselves. Moreover, with a Jewish quota in private colleges, Jews were welcome in Catholic universities—e.g., Fordham, Notre Dame, DePaul—which were founded to help the sons of the Irish working class. In the 1930s, despite pockets of Irish antisemitism, there was strong Irish support of the Jewish campaign against Nazism. The vital cross-cultural alliance, Diner shows, created a capacious, embracing redefinition of what it means to be American.

A timely history to rebut anti-immigration rhetoric.