Jewish communal institutions fueled nativist suspicions of Jewish separatism

Evidence

Despite attempts by some American elites such as Nathaniel Shaler, dean of Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School (now the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences), to show that Jews were closer to Anglo-Saxons than to Negroes and Native Americans, Jews remained suspect outsiders during the first half of the twentieth century. The increase in Hebrew schools, Jewish libraries, and free legal services for immigrants fleeing from pogroms in Europe only confirmed White Americans’ suspicions of Jewish separatism. These people without a country, according to White Protestant nativists, had no loyalty to the United States or solidarity with their fellow Americans. Rather, their loyalty was presumed to be only to other Jews. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 267

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the current Islamophobic trope that Muslim American institutions signal dual loyalty and separatism — the whole chapter is drawing this structural parallel.