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About the Book

By Stephen Whit­field – July 22, 2024

In the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry and the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, Irish and Jew­ish Amer­i­cans shared an unex­pect­ed bond. Irish Amer­i­cans were the pious lega­tees of cen­turies of Catholic anti­semitism. Arriv­ing a gen­er­a­tion or two ahead of a large group of Jew­ish immi­grants, the Irish some­times tried to block Jews’ advances on the lad­der of upward mobil­i­ty. Jew­ish new­com­ers, on the oth­er hand, absorbed beliefs about Irish alco­holism and loutish­ness — stereo­types that the Protes­tant major­i­ty did lit­tle, if any­thing, to quell. Yet as the his­to­ri­an Hasia R. Din­er empha­sizes in this fresh and illu­mi­nat­ing book, the Irish effec­tive­ly eased Jews’ inte­gra­tion into Amer­i­can soci­ety. Hers is a sto­ry in which the Irish are not bul­lies but bene­fac­tors, not rivals but men­tors. They expert­ly helped Jews who came from East­ern Europe to nav­i­gate their new society.

Open­ing Doors makes its case by exam­in­ing intereth­nic coop­er­a­tion in pol­i­tics, labor, and edu­ca­tion. The author shows us how the urban boss­es, whom the Pro­gres­sives con­demned for cor­rup­tion, befriend­ed the Jew­ish poor and were reward­ed with votes. Res­olute Irish female agi­ta­tors placed the demands of union mem­bers on the agen­da of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and would become the mod­el for Jew­ish labor orga­niz­ers. In the pub­lic schools of New York, Boston, Chica­go, and oth­er cities, Irish female teach­ers taught gram­mar, pro­nun­ci­a­tion, and deport­ment — all of which served stu­dents of Yid­dish-speak­ing homes well, fuel­ing their ascent into the mid­dle class. Rather than depict­ing moments of fric­tion between the two groups, Din­er assigns her­self the more chal­leng­ing his­to­ri­o­graph­i­cal task of reveal­ing what the Jews owed to the Irish. In doing so, she plucks from the past the often obscure fig­ures — Charles F. Daly, Myra Kel­ly, and Frances Sweeney, to name a few — who worked close­ly and com­fort­ably with Jews to reduce their pover­ty, for­ti­fy their aspi­ra­tions, and defend their interests.

Skep­ti­cal read­ers might ask: but what about Father Charles E. Cough­lin? Open­ing Doors does not deny the ran­cid influ­ence of the dem­a­gogue who stirred up big­otry in the 1930s. But Din­er choos­es to focus less on the ​“radio priest” and more on the Irish Amer­i­cans who ded­i­cat­ed them­selves to denounc­ing him — at risk to their stand­ing in their church and com­mu­ni­ty. She thus presents a nuanced pic­ture of the impact of anti­semitism in that decade.

Open­ing Doors con­cludes its study in the 1930s, when the Roo­sevelt admin­is­tra­tion sought to rem­e­dy the mis­ery of the Great Depres­sion by assum­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties far beyond the pow­ers of the Irish boss­es. The wel­fare state also helped move mil­lions of work­ers into the mid­dle class, leav­ing a vac­u­um that blue-col­lar Amer­i­cans of oth­er eth­nic­i­ties filled. Gen­er­a­tional change allowed Jew­ish women to replace Irish women as teach­ers in the pub­lic schools. These two suc­cess­ful non-Protes­tant groups, Din­er writes, made ​“the cat­e­go­ry ​‘Amer­i­can’ … capacious.”

About the Author

Hasia Din­er is a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can Jew­ish His­to­ry and for­mer chair of the Irish Stud­ies pro­gram at New York Uni­ver­si­ty. She is the author of numer­ous books on Jew­ish and Irish his­to­ries in the U.S., includ­ing the Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award-win­ning We Remem­ber with Rev­er­ence and Love, which also earned the Saul Vein­er Prize for most out­stand­ing book in Amer­i­can Jew­ish his­to­ry, and the James Beard final­ist Hun­ger­ing for Amer­i­ca. Din­er has also held Guggen­heim and Ful­bright fel­low­ships and served as Direc­tor of the Goren Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Jew­ish History.

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