For most Jews in the 19th century, America, not Palestine, was the Promised Land. “Jewish immersion in the host culture was less bound by policing and social hatreds than anywhere else in the world,” Simon Schama writes in the latest volume of his epic history, The Story of the Jews. Although best known for his PBS series “Simon Schama’s Power of Art,” art history is only one facet of Schama’s broad erudition. The chapter on the Jewish experience in America is a narrative of persistence in the face of prejudice. Anti-Semitism was rampant in the U.S., but the growing nation had fewer entrenched restrictions and more opportunity than anywhere in the Old World. Ironically, some Jews became slave owners and rose to high office in the Confederacy; others fought for the Union and advocated for abolition. As in his many previous books, Schama writes with (sometimes bitter) humor and an eye for how particular stories can reveal the meaning of entire epochs.
