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Felix Cohen, the lawyer and scholar who wrote TheHandbook of Federal Indian Law (1942), was enormously influential in American Indian policy making. Yet histories of the Indian New Deal, a 1934 program of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, neglect Cohen and instead focus on John Collier, commissioner of Indian affairs within the Department of the Interior (DOI). Alice Beck Kehoe examines why Cohen, who, as DOI assistant solicitor, wrote the legislation for the Indian Reorganization Act (1934) and Indian Claims Commission Act (1946), has received less attention. Even more neglected was the contribution that Cohen’s wife, Lucy Kramer Cohen, an anthropologist trained by Franz Boas, made to the process.

Kehoe argues that, due to anti-Semitism in 1930s America, Cohen could not speak for his legislation before Congress, and that Collier, an upper-class WASP, became the spokesman as well as the administrator. According to the author, historians of the Indian New Deal have not given due weight to Cohen’s work, nor have they recognized its foundation in his liberal secular Jewish culture. Both Felix and Lucy Cohen shared a belief in the moral duty of mitzvah, creating a commitment to the “true and the just” that was rooted in their Jewish intellectual and moral heritage, and their Social Democrat principles.

A Passion for the True and Just takes a fresh look at the Indian New Deal and the radical reversal of US Indian policies it caused, moving from ethnocide to retention of Indian homelands. Shifting attention to the Jewish tradition of moral obligation that served as a foundation for Felix and Lucy Kramer Cohen (and her professor Franz Boas), the book discusses Cohen’s landmark contributions to the principle of sovereignty that so significantly influenced American legal philosophy.

This groundbreaking anthology addresses the history and challenges of using “antisemitism” and related terms as tools for historical analysis and public discourse. Drawing together seventeen chapters by prominent scholars from Europe, Israel, and the United States, the volume encourages readers to rethink assumptions regarding the nature and meaning of Jewish history and the history of relations between Jews and non-Jews.

The book begins with a revised and updated version of David Engel’s seminal essay “Away from a Definition of Antisemitism.” Subsequent contributions by renowned specialists in ancient, medieval, and modern history, religious studies, and other fields explore the various and changing definitions and uses of the term “antisemitism” in a range of contexts, including ancient Rome and Greece, the Byzantine Empire, medieval Europe, early modern and modern Europe, North America, and the United Kingdom. The volume also includes a section that focuses on the Second World War, including the Holocaust and its memory. Engel offers a contemporary response to conclude the book.

First published in Hebrew in 2020 as a special issue of the journal Zion: A Quarterly for Research in Jewish History in cooperation with the Zalman Shazar Center in Jerusalem, this compelling collection has already had an impact on the study of antisemitism in Israel. It is certain to become a critical resource for scholars, policymakers, and journalists researching antisemitism, Holocaust studies, and related fields.