The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews

The book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews , written by the The Historical Research Department of the Nation of Islam, formulates a solid thesis based on authoritative Jewish sources to document the disproportionate involvement of Jews in the African slave trade. Every claim is supported by citations "from the most respected of the Jewish authorities and whose works appear in established historical journals or are published by authoritative Jewish publishing houses." The book has completely changed my view of slavery. It certainly disarms the victim mentality promulgated by the Zionist press, which operates on the false premise of white supremacy. This is an unmitigated fact and not a racist assertion. Any serious student of history will attest to the fact that we live in the era of White supremacy, of which whites are also the victims.

And now here is a sample of the book:



Quotes from The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews , Volume One

Published by The Nation of Islam, Chicago, Illinois 1991.

{p. vii} Throughout history Jews have faced charges of economic exploitation of Gentile communities around the world. Indeed, no single group of people have faced blanket expulsion in so many places around the world as frequently as have the Jews. The pattern and the charges are familiar: monopolization, usury, "sharp practices," selling "cheap" goods, frequent bankruptcies, etc.. All such claims seem to preface the expulsion orders and are vigorously denied both by those charged and by the Jewish writers of history. But this is not the only charge that is made against Jews. Jews have been conclusively linked to the greatest criminal endeavor ever undertaken against an entire race of people - a crime against humanity - the Black African Holocaust. They were participants in the entrapment and forcible exportation of millions of Black African citizens into the wretched and inhuman life of bondage for the financial benefit of Jews. The effects of this unspeakable tragedy are still being felt among the peoples of the world at this very hour. Deep within the recesses of the Jewish historical record is the irrefutable evidence that the most prominent of the Jewish pilgrim fathers used kidnapped Black Africans disproportionately more than any other ethnic or religious group in New World history and participated in every aspect of the international slave trade. The immense wealth of Jews, as with most of the White colonial fathers, was acquired by the brutal subjugation of Black Africans purely on the basis of skin color - a concept unfamiliar to Moses. Now, compiled for the first time, the Jewish sources reveal the extent of their complicity in Black slavery in the most graphic of terms.
{p. viii} Until now, the facts herein were known only to a few. Most have always assumed that the relationship between Blacks and Jews has been mutually supportive, friendly and fruitful - two suffering people bonding to overcome hatred and bigotry to achieve success. But history tells an altogether different story. This report will focus on the hidden history of Blacks and Jews from the Jewish historical record.

{p. 9} Jews and the African Slave Trade

Throughout the history of the practice, Jews have been involved in the purchase and sale of human beings. This fact is confirmed by their own scholars and historians. In his book, A History of the Jews, Solomon Grayzel states that "Jews were among the most important slave dealers" in European society.3 Lady Magnus writes that in the Middle Ages, "The principal purchasers of slaves were found among the Jews....[T]hey seemed to be always and everywhere at hand to buy, and to have the means equally ready to pay."4 Henry L. Feingold stated that "Jews who were frequently found at the heart of commerce could not have failed to contribute a proportionate share to the [slave] trade directly or indirectly. In 1460, when Jews were the masters of the nautical sciences in Portugal, that nation was importing 700-800 slaves yearly."5 The success of these medieval merchants was enhanced by their supreme linguistic abilities. They spoke Arabic, Persian, Roman, Frankish, Spanish and Slavonic and "displayed a business acumen far in advance of the times."6
3Solomon Grayzel, A History of the Jew: From Babylonian Exile to the End of World War 11 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1948), p. 312.
4Lady Magnus, Outlines of Jewish History, revised by M. Friedlander (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amenca, 1890), p. 107; Jewish Encyclopaedia (New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1905 -1916), vol. 11, p. 402: "At the time of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) Jews had become the chief traders in this class of traffic."
5Henry L. Feingold, Zion in America: The Jewish Experience from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Twayne Publishing, Inc., 1974), pp. 42-3.
6Marcus Arkin, author of Aspects of Jewish Economic History (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1975), pp. 44-5, reveals that in some European provinces, Jewish traders "appear to have held almost a monopoly of international commerce - so much so that the words 'Judaeus' and 'mercator' appear as synonyms in Carolingian documents." See S. D. Goitein, Jewish Letters of Medieval Traders (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 6, 16, 17, 18. Also, Magnus, p. 152, confirms the samc. Notice the juxtaposition of the first two sentences of the Magnus passage:
They accepted the state of things, and so long as they were let alone, commerce, too, became in Jewish hands a dignified, a useful, and an honourable calling. They dealt in slaves, as was the necessity of the time, and these slaves were the better off for having Jewish masters; their trading fleets sailed on the Mediterranean, and their ready-tongued cravellers brought the products of the East to the markets of the West.

{p. 11} Columbus, Jews and the Slave Trade

"Not jewels, but Jews, were the real financial basis of the first expedition of Columbus."
On August 2,1492, more than 300,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, ending their five century involvement in the Black hostage trade in that region. In fact, the Spanish Jews amassed large fortunes dealing in Christian slaves and became quite prominent within Spain's hierarchy. They had obtained the most important offices and positions of trust in the cabinets and counting houses of the rulers and had maintained great influence over the regional trade causing many to believe that the Jews exercised an unhealthy domination over the economy of the region. The rulers were convinced enough to order all Jews to either convert to Christianity or leave Spain.

The Marranos: The Secret Jews

The Marranos were those compulsorily converted Jews and their descendants who outwardly became Christians but secretly continued to meet in the synagogue, celebrated feast days and observed the Jewish Sabbath. The name marrano may be derived
{p. 12} from the old Castilian marrano (swine) or perhaps from the Arabic mahran (forbidden). In 1350, Spain began a series of conversion drives to convert all Jews in Spain to Christianity (See the section entitled, "The Spanish Inquisition"), and in unprecedented numbers and with little resistance, the Jews converted.' This rush to mass conversion, an event, unparalleled in Jewish history, is perhaps best summed up by Cecil Roth: "It was not difficult for insincere temporizing Jews to become insincere temporizing Christians."
The "Marranos," also called conversos (the converted), or nefiti (the neophytes), or "New Christians," were simply charged with not being Catholic. The same applied to the Muslims, who were expelled in like manner and in greater numbers than the Jews. Some fifty thousand Jews chose to convert rather than leave their land and their riches. Contrary to popular notions, those who left were not refugees searching for religious freedom, but entrepreneurs looking for cconomic opportunities. When they fled, they brought few Torah scrolls and even fewer copies of the Jewish holy book Talmud with them. When asked what he thought most Marranos knew of Judaism after their flight from Spain and Portugal, Roth answered in one word - "Nothing." The majority fled south and eastward to North Africa and to centers like Salonika, Constantinople, Aleppo and Damascus; while others sought and found refuge in the Netherlands where they "established synagogues, schools, cemeteries and a high level of wealth and culture." Most escaped "with considerable sums of money." Though scattered throughout the globe by political,
{p. 13} economic and religious circumstances, they would reunite later in an unholy coalition of kidnappers and slave makers. The day after the Spanish expulsion, Christopher Columbus, whose actual name was Cristobol Colon, took a group of Jewish refugees with him to the New World.22 Queen Isabella signed the expulsion decree and Columbus' voyage order the very same day. But it was not the queen or the king who funded the voyage. George Cohen, among many Jewish historians, proclaims that wealthy Jews financed the expeditions of Columbus, and adds That the story of Isabella's jewels "is not founded on facts," but rather it was an invention "intended to glorify the Queen."23 Three Marranos, Luis de Santagel (or Santangelo),24 a wealthy merchant, Gabriel Sanchez,25 the royal treasurer and his assistant, Juan Cabrero, influenced Queen Isabella to help them finance the voyage. Cabrero and Santagel invested 17,000 ducats, which would be well over $100,000 today.26 Alfonso de la Caballeria and Diego de Deza also provided funds; Abraham Ben Samuel Zacuto provided astronomy and navigation equipment and Isaac Abravanel also assisted. Six prominent Jews accompanied Columbus including Mastre Bernal, a physician; Marco, a surgeon; Roderigo Sanchez, an
22Max J. Kohler, "Luis De Santangel and Columbus,"PAJHS, vol. 10 (1902), p. 162: Columbus himself, in his journal, calls attention to the "coincidence" of his first voyage of discovery with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, in the following passage: "So, after having expelled the Jews from your dominions, your Highness, in the same month of January, ordered me to prooeed with a sufficient armament, to the said regions of India." For further clarification see Kayserling Christopher Columbus, p. 85 and p. 85 note.
23G. Cohen, p. 37, Kayserling, Christopher Columbus, p. 74, states the same: "This story.. has recently been relegated to the realm of fable."
24Cecil Roth, History of the Marranos (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1932), pp. 272-73: "The first royal grant to export grain and horses to America was made in favor of Luis de Santangel, who may thus be reckoned the founder of two of the greatest American industries." Kohler, "Columbus,"p. 159: "In Emilio Castelar's 'Life of Columbus,' Century Magazine, vol. 44 auly, 1892), p. 364, an interesting passage concerning Columbus' indebtedness to the Jews reads as follows: "It is a histoncal fact that one day Ferdinand V, on his way from Aragon to Castile, and needing some ready cash, as often happened, owing to the impoverishment of those kingdoms, halted his horse at the door of Santangelo's house in Calatayud, and, clismounting, entered and obtained a considerable sum from the latter's inexhaustible private coffers." Also, Kayserling, Christopher Columbus, shows that this same Luis de Santangel, who was then chancellor of the royal household and comptroller general of Aragon, personally advanced nearly all this money (pp. 55-79). He says (p. 75): At that time "neither Ferdinand nor Isabella, had at their disposal enough money to equip a fleet." See Kohler, "Columbus," p. 160.
25Roth, Marranos, p. 272: "Gabriel Sanchez, the I ligh Treasurer of Aragon, who was another of the explorer's most fervent patrons, was of full Jewish blood, being a son of a converso couple..."
26Two hundred years later a fully equipped sailing vessel might have cost $30,000.
{p. 14} inspector; Luis de Torres, an interpreter; and sailors Alfonso de la Calle,27and Roderigo de Triana, who is claimed to be "the first white man ever to see the new world."28 Torres settled in Cuba and has been credited with introducing tobacco to Europe from his vast tobacco plantations.29 Cecil Roth's History of the Marranos:
The connection between the Jews and the discovery of America was not, however, merely a question of fortuitous coincidence. The epoch-making expedition of 1492 was as a matter of fact very largely a Jewish, or rather a Marrano, enterprise.3

Columbus, the Jew?

A few scholars, including Roth, present strong evidence that Columbus was himself a Jew. He hid his Jewishness, they say, because "no Spanish Jew could ever have expected aid from the king and queen of Spain, so the explorer claimed to be an Italian Catholic."31 Tina Levitan, author of Jews in Amencan Life, found the first reference to Columbus' Jewishness in print in a diplomatic document dated fifty-eight years after the discoverer's death. The French ambassador to Spain, she reveals, refers to "Columbus the
27Roth, Marranos, p. 272-73: "Mestre Bernal, who had been reconciled in 1490 for Judaizing."; "Rodrigo Sanches, a relative of the I Iigh Treasurer, joined the party as Superintendent at the personal request of the Queen."; Luis de Torres, the interpreter was, according to Golden and Rywell, the first European to set foot in the new land. Alonso de la Calle, whose very name denoted that he was born in the Jewish quarter."
28According to Golden and Rywell, p. 9: "lt was two o'clock in the morning when he shouted 'Land, Land.' The sails were shortened and at daybreak Friday, October 12,1492, a new world was before them." Columbus claimed that it was he who first slghted land in order to claim the royal gratuity of ten thousand maravedis and a silk waistecoat promised to the one who made the first sighting. See Kayserling Christopher Columbus, pp. 91,110.
29Levitan, p. 4; Golden and Rywell, p. 9, claim that Torres "acquired great tracts of land from the Indians." A family member, Antonio de Torres, later commanded twelve of Columbus' fleet (Golden and Ryw~ll, p. 7); Israel Abrahams, lewish Life in the Middle Ages (New York: Atheneum, 1969), p. 138: "Tobacco, so far as its use in Europe is concemed, was also discovered by a Jew, Luis de Torres, a companion of Columbus. The Church, as is well known, raised many objections to the use of tobacco, and King James l's pedantic treatise only voiced general prejudice. Jewish Rabbis, on the other hand, hailed the use of tobacco as an aid to sobriety." Abrahams, p. 139, "It is worth noting that Jews early took to the trade in tobacco, a trade which they almost monopolize in England today." Torres is also claimed to have named the turkey calling it "tukh," the Hebrew word for peacock. See Jack Wolfe, A Century with lowa Jewry, 1833 - 1940 (Des Moines: Iowa Printing, 1941), p. 10.
30 Roth, Marranos, p. 271.
31 Tina Levitan, Jews in American Life (New York: Hebrew Publishing Co., 1969), p. 4 See also Cecil Roth, Personalities and Events in lewish llistory (Philadelphia: Jewish Publlcation Society of America, 1953), pp. 192-211.
{p. 15} Jew."32 Furthermore she states:
From him we learn that Cristobal Colon (who never called himself Christopher Columbus and never spoke or wrote Italian) was the son of Susanna Fontanarossa [also spelled Fonterosa] and Domingo Colon of Pontevedra, Spain, where those bearing such surnames were Jews, some of whom had been brought before the Spanish Inquisition....Letters written by him to strangers have the customary X at the top to indicate the faith of the writer, but of the thirteen letters written to his son only one bears an X, and that letter was meant to be shown to the King of Spain. The others have in the place of the X a sign that looks like the Hebrew characters B and H, initials used by religious Jews meaning in Hebrew, "With the Help of God."33
Harry L. Golden and Martin Rywell, authors of Jews in American History: Their Contribution to the United States of America, are quite insistent about the Jewishness of Columbus. They cite where Ferdinand, Columbus' son, writes that his father's "progenitors were of the blood royal of Jerusalem..."3q In Columbus' words, "for when all is done, David, that most prudent king was first a shepherd and after wards chosen King of Jerusalem, and I am a servant of that same Lord who raised him to such a dignity."35 One Jewish author insists that "all existing portraits of the discoverer gave him a Jewish cast of countenance." Another claimed that a "certain softheartedness in Columbus is a Jewish trait."36 His lineage also pointed to Jewish roots - his mother's maiden name was Suzanna Fonterosa, "daughter of Jacob, granddaughter of Abraham and a Jewess. His father, Domingo Colon, was a map-seller. Did not Columbus write the King of Spain that his ancestors were interested in maps?"30
32Levitan, p. 5.
33Levitan, p. 5
34Golden and Rywell, p. 7; Friedrich Heer, God's First Love: Christians and Jews over Two Thousand Years (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1967), pp. 104-6c: Heer discusses Columbus' interest in the messianic implications of his western explorations and his repeated references to prophecy as well as other indications of his Jewish descent.
35Golden and Rywell, p. 7.
36Lee M. Friedman, Jewish Pioneers and Patriots (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1942), pp. 62-3.
37Golden and Rywell, p. 7, cite the works of Celso G. de la Riega (Geographical Societv of Madrid, 1898) Henry Vignaud (American Historical Review, n.d.).

{p. 16} Columbus, the Slave Dealing Jew?

Christopher Columbus was an experienced sailor long before his infamous voyage west. Sir Arthur Helps writes that, "In the course of [his] letters, [Columbus] speaks after the fashion of a practised slave dealer." In fact, in 1498, his five ship expedition brought 600 Indians to Spain as slaves. Two hundred were given to the masters of the ships and four hundred sold in Spain.38 Columbus employed slave labor in gold mining even before sailing for the New World. He helped to start the Portuguese West African settlement of San Jorge El Mina (St. George of the Mines) in present-day Ghana, formerly known as the Gold Coast.39 When the Spaniards found gold in the New World, reports Eric Rosenthal in his book, Gold! Gold! Gold!: The Johannesburg Gold Rush, they started
on a gold hunt of such intensity that the natives came to believe the white men suffered from some disease curable only by the limitless application of this metal....[When] Columbus discovered that, apart from some poor alluvial deposits, the gold simply did not exist, he forced the harmless Indian aborigines into slavery....The entire importation of gold from the New World for the first 20 years after 1492 represented in cash only $300,000 a year, and the total then recovered, worth about $5 million, cost at least 1 1/2 million Indian lives.40
Columbus was anything but a blessing to the New World population. The Europeans, led by Columbus, brought
38Golden and Rywell p. 18 note; Sir Arthur Helps, The Spanish Conquest in America (New York, 1900), vol. 1, pp. 113-14.
39Eric Rosenthal, Gold! Gold! Gold!: The Johannesburg Gold Rush (Johannesburg: MacMillan Company, 1970), p. 71 note. 40Humboldt is paraphrased in Rosenthal, p. 71; According to a translation of the Spanish-Jewish historian Joseph ben Joshua Hakkohen found in Richard J H GottheilÕs, "Columbus in Jewish Literature,"PAJHS, vol. 2 (1894), p. 136, upon Columbus' arnval in the "New World": Columbus rejoiced when he saw that the natives had much gold, and that they were disposed to be fnendly....He placed [among the Indians] thirty eight men in order that they might learn the language of the people and the hidden places of the country, until the tirne when he should return to them....Colurnbus took with hirn ten Indians...
Columbus' chief aim was to find gold, writes M. Kayserling, Christopher Columbus, p. 86:
[l]n a letter to the queen he frankly declared that this gold might even be the means of purifying the souls of men and of securing their entrance into Paradise. Thus he stipulated that he was to have a tenth of all pearls, precious stones, gold, silver spices, and other wares, in short, a tenth of everything found, bought, bartered, or otherwise obtained in the newly discovered lands...
{p. 17} unprecedented brutality to the West leaving the remains of whole communities of Red people in their wake. On Hispaniola Columbus found gold and a docile Arawak population. He lavished praise on the natives and gained their trust and affection and then proceeded to enslave them. According to Columbus: "They are without arms, all naked, and without skill at arms and great cowards, a thousand running away from three, and thus they are good to be ordered about, to be made to work, plant, and do whatever is wanted, to build towns and bc taught to go clothed and accept our customs."42 Cities began to spring up all over the island of Hispanola. The traffic in slaves - African and Indian - grew rapidly, and some Jews were engaged in this trade as agents for the royal families of Spain and Portugal.
Whether or not Columbus was a Jew, as so many Jewish historians now claim, has not been definitively proven. It is clear that his brutality against and enslavement of the native population was financed by Jewish investors. The history books appear to have confused the word Jews for the word jewels. Queen Isabella's jewels had no part in the finance of Columbus' expedition, but her Jews did.

{p. 18} The Jews and Slavery in Colonial South America and the Caribbean

{p. 19} Jewish slave traders procured Black Africans by the tens of thousands and funnelled them to the plantations of South America and throughout the Caribbean.49 There remains no documented trace of protest over this behavior - it was a purely commercial venture with which Judaism did not interfere ... in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated. ... The expertise that Jews previously developed in the sugar islands of Madeira and Sao Thome, made them indispensable to the New World scheme. Daniel M. Swetschinski estimates that the Jewish share in overall trade was disproportionately large: "[They] constituted about 65-
{p. 20} 75% of the total Portuguese mercantile community while hardly totalling more than 10% of the population." This dominance of trade by the Jewish community, made them the most prominently poised of any group to exploit the slave markets.
Brazil was the anchor Jewish community from which other Western communities took root.
{p. 21} The Jewish sugar planters prospered living on large plantations and making extensive use of local Indian labor and imported Black slaves. By 1600, the plantations, the bulk of the slave trade and more than one hundred sugar mills with at least 10,000 Black Africans, and most of the exports of processed sugar "were in the hands of the Jewish settlers," ...
{p. 23} The Dutch West India Company was founded in 1621 for the sole purposc of making money. There was little concern as to how this was to be achieved. Its primary method was to establish colonies and trading posts in the New World and exploit the natural resourccs to then trade with Europe and the other colonies - an endeavor requiring many thousands of Black slaves. According to Company founder William Usselincx: "Some people were so vile and slavish by nature that they were of no use either to themselves or to others and had to be kept in servitude with all hardness." They raised capital by selling shares and by pirating Spanish and Portuguese silver ships and plundering their cargoes. Wiznitzer's Jews in Colonial Brazil, is more explicit about the Company's origins and methods: Year after year, Dutch merchants equipped privateers and captured Portuguese ships with cargoes destined for the mother country. In 1616, twenty-eight, and in l623, seventy such ships were captured. This is the context in which the East India and West India Companies were founded in Amsterdam, in 1602 and 1621 respectively. Their economic objective was the acquisition of goods in India, West Africa, and America through purchase, barter, or piracy and without Portuguese interference. Another aim was political: to divide the Spanish fleet and, in general, to weaken Spain to the greatest possible extent.
Jews invested heavily and became willing partners in the company seeking "dividends from silver, gold, furs, and [the] slave trade." At the time, Holland was the only country where Jews
{p. 24} were permitted some semblance of religious and economic liberty. The Dutch rulers, in promoting economic development, encouraged the immigration of Jews for their business expertise and international connections and Holland soon became a center of Jewish wealth and power. The Dutch had invented the doctrine of mercantilism, the notion that the state existed not to save souls hut to increase wealth and for this the Jews were reputed to he expert. Marcus Arkin writes: "Since the main industries in which [Jews] participated (silken textiles, sugar refining, diamond cutting, and tobacco blending) were dependent on colonial sources of supply, it is not surprising to find the Jews of Amsterdam concerned with Dutch commerce to the Far East and the New World....ln the eightecnth ccntury approximately one-quarter of the [Dutch East India] company's shareholders were Jews, and its ultimate decline brought ruin to many a wealthy [Jewish] family."

{p. 25} A Private Venture

It must be clarified that the bulk of the exploration of the West was promoted by private firms and financed for the most part with private capital. The benefits of their discoveries accrued to the investors in the firm, not necessarily to the government or the people of the nation of origin. The monarch would invest the nation's military as his or her personal investment in the enterprise.72 The expeditions of Columbus, for instance, were private ventures of Jewish financiers who received notice of his "discoveries" even before Ferdinand and Isabella.73 With the protection of the Dutch military, the principal maritime power at that time, the Dutch West India Company colonized and settled the Western Hemisphere solely to establish a steady flow of natural wealth back to its European investors, not to any national authority. This is a critical distinction and the source of much of the animosity against the Jews. The Gentiles were, for the most part, nationalists, owing their allegiance to the nation in whose territory they resided. They respected the edicts of their government particularly with regard to international relations. The Jews, on the other hand, considered themselves as Jews first, particularly in international commerce. They remained internationalists without the patriotic fervor of their Gentile countrymen. When their host country was at war with a trading partner of the Jews, and on whom an embargo had been placed, the Jews would continue trade by various methods including the changing the name of the ship and/or its owner to one suiting the law in the port where they desired entry.74 They did not see this smuggling as illegal or even harmful just business.75 These were, after all, private transactions among private businesses and individuals - not with any government
72For example, S. D. Goitein, Jewish Letters of Medieval Traders, p. 10. 73Golden and Rywell, pp. 5-9; Kohler, "Columbus," PAlHS, vol. 10 (1902), p. 162: 'Winsor, in his 'Christopher Columbus'...judges the advance of funds to have been by Santangel from his private revenues and in the interest of Castile only. And this seems to be proved by the invariable exclusion of Ferdinand's subjects from participation in the advantages of trade in the new lands..."'
74EAJA, p. 147.
75George Horowitz, in rhe Spirit of Jewish Law (New York: Central Book Company, ]963), pp. 79-80, claims that Jews always made a distinction with regard to laws they were bound to respect: "For a Jew, compliance with 'Gentile' law in [some] matters was not required....For Jews, the law of the nation, the general system of law prevailing among the people in whose midst they dwelt was not binding..."
{p. 26} agency or national authority. But as these arrangements flourished, the national interests were circumvented and the local governments taxed and restricted the Jews as the leading traders. These restrictions led to the historical application of the term "persecution," but evidence shows that the practice of subordinating the national interest in pursuit of personal profit, and not religion, per se, raised the ire of the Gentile.
{p. 27} The power of the Company's rulers rivaled that of the kings and queens of Europe ... The power to sell, and perhaps to buy, nations was in the hands of the Company's rulers, not the monarch's,
{p. 139} Jews, Slavery and the Civil War
"What sociological phenomena would lead the Southern Jew to fight so fervently for the principle of slavery? Why was he willing to sacrifice his life so readily for a cause that he knew was contrary to religious principle? In their former European lands of oppression Jews actually sought to avoid conscription by any means; yet here in the South they fought willingly and with zest."536
Author Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht saw a contradiction:
536Rabbi Leo E. Turitz and Evelyn Turitz, Jews in Early Mississippi (Jackson: University l'ress of Mississippi, 1983), p. xvii; Learsi, p. 95, concurs. He states that the Jews of the South "embraced its cause promptly and enthusiastically."
{p. 140} For all the self-righteousness of the North, slavery had been implanted and nourished by Northern merchants, Christian and Jewish. During the eighteenth century, Jews actively traded in slaves; some Jews ran slave markets.
{p. 143} Jewish Clergy and Black Slavery
The slavery debate raged across the country but no Jewish leaders of the Old South "ever expressed any reservations about the justice of slavery or the rightness of the Southern position." Jewish clergy did not even discuss Black slavery until 1860, and then primarily in support of it.

{p. 147} Jews and Abolitionism

Even the Jewish scholars can find but a few sentences of Jewish protest over the plight of the Black slave. It is now clear, writes Dr. Marcus, "that most antebellum Jews, those in the North as well as in the South, cared little about the moral issues of human bondage."

{p. 149} God Supports Slavery?

No event caused the forces of bondage to rejoice more than when Rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall of Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in New York issued a sermon that was to become known as the "Bible Defense of Slavery." On January 4, 1861, he preached the most publicized sermon ever delivered by an American Jew up to that time. Said he: [I]t remains a fact which cannot be gainsaid that in his own native home, and generally throughout the world, the unfortunate negro is indeed the meanest of slaves. Much had been said respecting the inferiority of his intellectual powers, and that no man of his race has ever inscribed his name on the Parthenon of human excellence, either mental or moral.

{p. 153} The Jewish Press

The Jewish press weighed in with its opinion on the matter of Black slavery and of the character of the African as well. Again, the abolitionists were bitterly disappointed. The Jewish Record of January 23, 1863:
We know not how to speak in the same breath of the Negro and the Israelite. The very names have startlingly opposite sounds - one representing all that is debased and inferior in the hopeless barbarity and heathenism of six thousand years; the other, the days when Jehovah conferred on our fathers the glorious equality which led the Eternal to converse with them, and allow them to enjoy the communion of angels.

{p. 155} Jewish Public Opinion

Those Jews who took a stand stood with slavery, while other Jewish organizations vacillated, taking no forthright position in the midst of the national crisis. Rabbi Korn: The Independent Order of B'nai B'rith and other fraternal groups appear to have ignored the South-North turmoil in pre-war years, tolerated the enforced separation of the war years, and continued as before once the war had been ended

{p. 157} Jews and the Confederacy

The Jews served in disproportionately large numbers and with distinction to maintain the slavocracy from which they had grown so wealthy. ... The Confederate army had 23 Jewish staff
{p. 158} officers, including David De Leon who was Surgeon General, A. C. Meyers, who was Quartermaster General, and the Secretary of War, Judah P. Benjamin.

{p. 161} Jews and the Economics of the Civil War

The Jews became the focus of the suspicions of other White Americans when they were perceived to be profiting from the turmoil. Many Jewish merchants, it was claimed, were trading between the warring factions in violation of the laws. As the Union tried to cripple the Confederate economy, Northern Jewish merchants were allegedly trading Southern goods, such as cotton and tobacco, in exchange for much needed gold. Confederates used the gold to buy weapons and ammunition, food and medical supplies which, in addition to strengthening the rebels, fueled their economy and prolonged the war
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