Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Preface
- Contents
- Note on Editorial Practice
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction: Modern Jewish Preaching
- Part I The Wars of the Napoleonic Era
- Part II The Wars of the Mid-Nineteenth Century
- Part III The Wars of the Late Nineteenth Century
- Part IV The First World War
- Part V The Second World War
- Part VI Wars of the Later Twentieth Century
- Part VII Responses to 9/11
- Source Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Index of Passages Cited
- General Index
11 - Sabato Morais, ‘Thanksgiving Day Sermon’, 24 November 1870, Philadelphia
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Preface
- Contents
- Note on Editorial Practice
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction: Modern Jewish Preaching
- Part I The Wars of the Napoleonic Era
- Part II The Wars of the Mid-Nineteenth Century
- Part III The Wars of the Late Nineteenth Century
- Part IV The First World War
- Part V The Second World War
- Part VI Wars of the Later Twentieth Century
- Part VII Responses to 9/11
- Source Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Index of Passages Cited
- General Index
Summary
ON 5 SEPTEMBER 1870, following the French debacle at Sedan and the capture of Napoleon III, but before the declaration of the French Republic, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote on its editorial page:
It is not unfair to say that the sympathies of the people of this country are almost entirely with the Prussians, and that they are so arises in a great measure from the regard which the people have for our German citizens. It is true that the intelligent mind of America saw that this present war was forced upon Prussia, that she would have avoided it if avoidance had been possible, and that all the suffering, pain and death which are to be its fruits are traceable to the overweening ambition of the adventurer Napoleon.
Our sympathy for Prussia is only another evidence of the hatred of tyranny and injustice which fills the American mind. We had no quarrel with France any more than we had with Prussia, but our regard for the Germanic element here led us to esteem it there at home, and our natural love of liberty made us rejoice in the defeat of the man who had ruled France with despotic wrong.
This statement reflects a community with a large population of German immigrants (both Jewish and Christian). The editorial projects positive attitudes towards the ‘intelligence, thrift, industry’ of the German Americans— ‘Honest, educated, energetic and genial, they made good citizens, and their advent was helpful to the Republic’—back on the Fatherland, and Prussia is identified with the ‘hatred of tyranny and injustice’ that characterizes the American sensibility. France is identified almost entirely with the capricious rule of Napoleon III. This represents the dominant trend of American public opinion even in areas without a significant German American population: decidedly pro-Prussian, for various reasons.
Speaking on Thanksgiving Day two and a half months later, Morais takes a very different tack. Prussia is now presented as an awesome military power that has not only humiliated its opponent but threatens to destroy its capital city. Like Isaac Mayer Wise and the editorialist cited above, he evinces disdain for Napoleon III; however, he identifies France not with the Emperor but with Paris, the centre of science and the arts, a place of magnificence and beauty, the very survival of which is in peril.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Jewish Preaching in Times of War, 1800–2001 , pp. 250 - 258Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2012