Goldstein, Eric L., and Deborah R. Weiner

On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of Baltimore

Johns Hopkins (Baltimore)

2018

OUR SYNOPSIS: Deborah R. Weiner and Eric L. Goldstein tell the stories of Jewish Baltimoreans through an evocative narrative history stretching back to the 1760s. The city’s economic landscape attracted Jewish migrants, and its ensuing strong Jewish community drew additional new arrivals. This population further increased starting in 1867, when the B&O Railroad established a direct shipping line connection with Bremen, Germany. Throughout this narrative, a Jewish Baltimorean lens provides unique insights into Baltimore’s major historical developments. The authors also emphasize the complex historical relationships between Jewish Baltimoreans and Black Baltimorean communities.

BIG QUESTIONS:

What factors convinced Jewish migrants to remain in Baltimore and call it home?
What do the historical relationships between Jewish Baltimoreans and Black Baltimorean communities reveal about the role of race in Baltimore histories?

FEATURE QUOTES:

“In many respects, the story of Baltimore Jewry—with its dramas of immigration, acculturation, and assimilation—is the story of American Jews in microcosm, but its contours also reflect the city’s special locale and culture. Baltimore’s status as a commercial gateway to the South; the unique way it experienced the wars of the nineteenth century (as a flash point in the War of 1812 and under federal occupation during the Civil War); the role of its port as a major entryway for German migration to the United States; its demographic profile in the early twentieth century as the only American city with sizable populations of both Jews and African Americans—these are but some of the local circumstances that influenced Jewish life.” (2-3)

PRIMARY SOURCES:

Jacob I. Cohen, Jr., “Jacob I. Cohen to Ebenzer S. Thomas, December 16, 1818,” in The Jews of the United States, 1790-1840: A Documentary History, eds. Joseph L. Blau and Salo W. Baron, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 33-37, https://archive.org/details/lccn_64-10108_z5r9.

BALTIMORE CONNECTIONS:

Most of the book directly.