A hybrid fellow’s forum with historian Paul Finkelman from December 14, 2023. Recording available.
About the Presentation
At the time of the Revolution there were only about 2,500 to 3,000 Jews in the new nation. Some, but not many would arrive in the next half century, during the remainder of Jefferson's life. Most Jews were urban, with communities concentrated in Philadelphia, New York, Newport, Charleston, and Savannah. There were a small number of Jews in Richmond, Charlottesville, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The United States was overwhelmingly Protestant, with Catholics, another tiny population, the largest non-Protestant group among Whites. By this time most slaves were also Protestants, although some retained their African faiths. Across the Atlantic world Jews faced significant discrimination. In Great Britain they could not be barristers, attend universities, votes, hold public office, be military officers, engage in many forms of commerce on the same basis as their Protestant neighbors. If immigrants, they could not naturalize. In the United States they were the "canary in the coal mine" for emerging notions of liberty and political equality. Ten of the first twelve state constitutions barred them from public office. Most states had official churches or faiths which naturally discriminated against Jews. South Carolina for example declared itself a "Protestant" state. New Hampshire provided state funding for Protestant teachers. Jefferson deplored such discrimination. Finkelman's research explores his proposals for Jewish equality, his relations with some Jews, and his endorsement of Jewish participation in public life.
About Paul Finkelman
Paul Finkelman has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago and was a Fellow in Law and Humanities at Harvard Law School. He has taught at many institutions, held tenured endowed chairs at two law schools and visiting chairs in both History and Law. He has also been the scholar-in-residence at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Finkelman currently holds the Rydell Visiting Chair at Gustavus Adolphus College. In Spring 2024 he will hold the Boden Chair at Marquette Law School. He has taught in history, political science, and law, at among other places, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Texas, and Virginia Tech. Finkelman has published more than 100 scholarly articles and book chapters in history and related fields and another 100 or so law review articles, including law journals at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Vanderbilt, and Texas. His next law review article will be in William and Mary Law Review. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of about 50 books, with such presses as Harvard, Oxford, UNC, and UVA. Finkelman's most recent major book was Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court (Harvard, 2018). He has been on PBS, C-Span, NBC, CBS, and this History Channel, and in a few movies, and He has published many op-eds, reviews, and essays in, among others, the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Washington Monthly, Huffington Post, New York Times.Com, The Los Angeles Review of Books, TheRoot.Com, USA Today, and the Baltimore Sun. The United States Supreme Court has quoted and cited his work in six decisions as have numerous other federal and state courts. Finkelman has lectured on human trafficking and on human rights issues at the United Nations, throughout the United States, and in more than a dozen other countries. In 2017 he held the Fulbright Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice at the University of Ottawa.