American Jewish History by Zola Gary Phillip; Dollinger Marc;

Author:Zola, Gary Phillip; Dollinger, Marc;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brandeis University Press

ANTISEMITISM

6.20—RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE, “HENRY FORD’S CHALLENGE AND A JEW’S REPLY,” OCTOBER 10, 1920

In May of 1920, automobile mogul Henry Ford (1863–1947) began attacking Jews in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. These attacks appalled and frightened American Jews, and a number of prominent Jewish leaders tried their best to combat the onslaught. One early response came from Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, whose sermon titled “Henry Ford’s Challenge and a Jew’s Reply” was delivered Sunday October 10, 1920, at Carnegie Hall before his congregation, the Free Synagogue.

In the ensuing decade, Ford’s paper published excerpts from the notorious antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols falsely asserted that there existed an international Jewish conspiracy that sought to control the world through the manipulation of the economy as well as the mass media and banking industries.

Another antisemitic text published by Ford, “The Scope of Jewish Dictatorship in the U.S.,” appears as follows. In 1927, Ford’s paper accused Jewish bankers and merchants of seeking to gain economic control over the nation’s wheat farms. The articles specifically attacked a prominent Jewish agricultural organizer, Aaron Sapiro (1884–1959), who subsequently sued Ford for defamation of character. Ultimately, Ford agreed to an out-of-court settlement with Sapiro and was also compelled to issue public apologies to various individuals and to Jews as a group. From this point on, Ford ceased publishing antisemitic materials.

It is the special shame of Christendom in America today that that tissue of lies and forgeries known as the Protocols or the “Jewish peril” is being given circulation by a confessedly nearly illiterate multi-millionaire, who has taken upon himself the onus of filing the gravest charges that have ever been uttered against Jews in this or any land. In America it is not enough for Christians to say that they have no part therein, that they place no credence in the charge. It is their business and above all in their Christian churches it is their duty to cry out against these hideous falsehoods uttered against a whole people.

[ . . . ]

Henry Ford’s series of articles in “The Dearborn Independent” now reprinted in pamphlet form under the heading, “The World’s Foremost Problem: The International Jew,” is not so much a challenge to the Jew as an affront to public opinion, as an insult to every public decency. Before the war and the state of psychic disturbance which it has brought about, not even a Henry Ford would have dared to publish material resting for the most part upon the so-called Protocols, a forgery so clumsy, so stupid, so obvious, that none save Henry Ford could be deceived thereby.

The very title of the pamphlet, “The World’s Foremost Problem: The International Jew,” is a direct libel against the Jewish people at a time when the world is beset by problems national and international, and is by indirection an attempt to seize hold of the Jew as the scapegoat solvent of all its problems; the Ford screed is the most insidious of appeals to

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