Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery

Shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Awards (History)

“Despite their own legacy of torment in Egypt, Jews in the U.S. varied in their attitudes toward the slave system, even after it provoked secession and rebellion in their new promised land. This discomfiting anomaly has been probed by scholars . . . but the topic has never been dissected with the depth, panache and feel for character that animate Mr. Kreitner’s revelatory Fear No Pharaoh . . . [An] engrossing book.” —Harold Holzer, The Wall Street Journal

A dramatic history of how American Jews reckoned with slavery—and fought the Civil War.

Since ancient times, the Jewish people have recalled the story of Exodus and reflected on the implications of having been slaves. Did the tradition teach that Jews should speak out against slavery and oppression everywhere, or act cautiously to protect themselves in a hostile world?

In Fear No Pharaoh, the journalist and historian Richard Kreitner sets this question at the heart of the Civil War era. Using original sources, he tells the intertwined stories of six American Jews who helped to shape a tumultuous time, including Judah Benjamin, the brilliant, secretive lawyer who became Jefferson Davis’s trusted confidante; Morris Raphall, a Swedish-born rabbi who defended slavery as biblically justified; and Raphall’s rival rabbis—the celebrated Isaac Mayer Wise, who urged Jews to stay out of the slavery controversy to avoid attracting attention, and David Einhorn, whose fiery sermons condemning bondage led to a pro-slavery mob threatening his life. We also meet August Bondi, a veteran of Europe’s 1848 revolutions, who fought with John Brown in “Bleeding Kansas” and later in the Union Army, and the Polish émigré Ernestine Rose, a feminist, atheist, and abolitionist who championed “emancipation of all kinds.”

As he tracks these characters, Kreitner illuminates the shifting dynamics of Jewish life in America—and the debates about religion, morality, and politics that endure to this day.