March 5: Jacob Rader Marcus

Rabbi Jacob Rader Marcus, the dean of American Jewish historians, outspoken in his opinions and unbiased in his research, was born on this date in 1896. In 1942, he taught the first American Jewish history course ever offered at a U.S. university (at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where he enjoyed a seventy-year tenure). Marcus also founded the American Jewish Archives at HUC, a major resource for scholars of Jewish history. He published over twenty-five books, including the three-volume The Colonial American Jew and the four-volume United States Jewry, 1776-1984, while living to 99.

“If American Jewry survives, it may be the only large Jewry in the world. I have no confidence that Israel will survive. . . . not because of any inherent problem in Israel, but Israel is surrounded by almost fifty million Arabs . . . They hate the Jews the way a Mississippi white hates a nigger. I do not say Negro or Black but a nigger. They have absolute contempt for us.” —Jacob Rader Marcus