All We Have Standing Between Us

In this special bonus episode to end our first season, AJHS Executive Director Gemma R. Birnbaum sat down with Franklin Foer of The Atlantic and Johns Hopkins University professor and author James Loeffler to talk about the intersections of American Jewish history and democracy. Episode Image: Teenagers at Camp Wakitan, Hebrew Orphan Asylum of the City of New York Records (I-42) All We Have Standi...

Throughout the 2010s, political polarization fueled antisemitic conspiracy theories and helped bring violent white supremacist rhetoric into the mainstream. The 2017 Unite the Right rally, attacks on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting heightened fears and concerns within Jewish communities. This episode traces the history and forces that contributed to t...

On September 11, 2001, New Yorkers on their morning commutes were stunned as a commercial jet flew into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Morning television shows immediately switched their coverage to the towers, and seventeen minutes later, a second plane hit as millions around the world watched. News of additional deliberate crashes at the Pentagon in Virginia, and a field in Pennsyl...

The Women's Liberation movement demanded a fundamental rethinking of gender, family, and social life. Jews were prominent on both sides of the debate, and many Jewish women were among the movement's leading theorists and thinkers. Others, especially neoconservatives, became its sharpest critics, arguing that second-wave feminism threatened traditional social norms.  Delve into the lives and politi...

In the summer of 1964, college students from the northern United States bused down to Mississippi to help Black activists with a voter registration drive known as "Freedom Summer." The drive was meant to combat entrenched voter suppression practices, a hallmark of Jim Crow segregation found throughout the American south. On June 21, 1964, young volunteers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael...

Following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, Americans struggled against the devastating realities of the Great Depression. Hoping to alleviate poverty, unemployment, and desperation, Jews embraced Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his promise of a "New Deal." The advent of World War II brought the Depression to an end, but sparked global fascism and antisemitism at an unprecedented scale. Over 550,000 J...

Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, approximately two million Jews fled Eastern Europe for the United States. After entering through Ellis Island, many made their new homes in the tenement buildings of New York's Lower East Side, where they contended with dire living conditions, strenuous factory jobs, and linguistic and cultural challenges. Several Jewish philanthropists, i...

During the American Civil War, the majority of Jews supported the Union, due to larger populations living in the North. Much like the American population at large, however, Jews in America were divided in their allegiances, representing a small but significant minority in the South as the Confederacy waged its war. Jews fiercely fought on both sides of the conflict, but not without facing the same...

In 1654, the first Jews arrived in New Amsterdam. Sephardic refugees from Recife, Brazil, they came to the Dutch-controlled colony to escape the Spanish/Portuguese Inquisition. These 23 individuals became the anchor of a fledging Jewish community in the colonies, and over the next century and beyond, American Jews found their place in society, commerce, and soon, revolution. From patriots to loyal...

All We Have Standing Between Us is a compelling narrative series from the American Jewish Historical Society. Featuring untold stories from the archives and a slate of special guests, listeners will be taken on a journey through the history of the United States and the Great Democratic Experiment, told through the lives of the American Jews who not just lived through it, but helped shape it. Narra...