Who Is American?: Belonging and the Question of Jewish Citizenship

A groundbreaking history of how modern American citizenship has worked-and not worked-for Jews in the United StatesThe history of Jews in the United States is often told as if they immigrated, gained citizenship, and almost immediately achieved full legal rights.Yet this story fundamentally misses how citizenship rights worked for Jews and countless others who arrived on American shores.In Who Is American? Lila Corwin Berman draws on case law, statutes, and debates to argue that both the laws of American citizenship and Jews’ position in them changed repeatedly across the twentieth century.Courts, policymakers, and the public persistently asked what it meant to be Jewish under the law.Were Jews a race, a nationality, a religion-or some combination of each?The answer carried profound legal consequences. Not only did it determine Jews’ citizenship status, but it also affected the rights they could exercise.Just as significantly, the meaning of the categories under law changed over time,