Smoothing the Jew

"Abie the Agent" and Ethnic Caricature in the Progressive Era

By Jeffrey A. Marx

Rutgers University Press

The turn of the nineteenth century in the United States saw the substantial influx of immigrants and a corresponding increase in anti-immigration and nativist tendencies among longer-settled Americans. Jewish immigrants were often the object of such animosity, being at once the object of admiration and anxiety for their perceived economic and social successes. One result was their frequent depiction in derogatory caricatures on the stage and in print.

Smoothing the Jew investigates how Jewish artists of the time attempted to “smooth over” these demeaning portrayals by focusing on the first Jewish comic strip published in English, Harry Hershfield’s Abie the Agent. Jeffrey Marx demonstrates how Hershfield created a Jewish protagonist who in part reassured nativists of the Jews’ ability to assimilate into American society while also encouraging immigrants and their children that, over time, they would be able to adopt American customs without losing their distinctly Jewish identity.

A deft cultural history of Jewish comic strips in the first half of the twentieth century, Smoothing the Jew is concisely and elegantly written. Informative and rigorous, it traces aesthetic and political values in comics and related popular forms, revealing dynamics of self-creation and multiplied identities as cartoonists harnessed the thorny and productive power of image-making in an uncertain age. A significant contribution across fields. Hillary Chute, author of Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere

A lively, well-researched, and insightful exploration of a comic strip character who deserves to be better known, as he helped pave the way for Jews to join the American mainstream. Ted Merwin, author of In Their Own Image: New York Jews in Jazz Age Popular Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2

Smoothing the Jew is a fascinating, well-researched account of a narrow but impactful piece of early twentieth century Jewish American cultural history. Marx’s highly readable study will appeal to anyone interested in this complicated, pivotal moment in comics and Jewish representation. Tahneer Oksman, author of "How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?": Women and Jewish American Identity in Contempora

JEFFREY A. MARX is an independent scholar, the Rabbi Emeritus of The Santa Monica Synagogue in California, and a former visiting lecturer at Emeritus College, Hebrew Union College, and Pepperdine University. His publications appear in scholarly journals and in popular media on topics ranging from Jewish studies to New York culture.

Introduction
1 Caricatures and Smoothing Efforts
2 Censoring Attempts
3 Smoothing Abie
4 Becoming American
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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