“U.S. Presidents and the Jews: Fillmore and Garfield”

  During my last live-streamed Shabbat service I spoke about U.S. Presidents and the Jews “in joyous anticipation of the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden.” I didn’t mention all the presidents; we’d still be livestreaming if I had…and I’d be turning off the lights.

  I figured that while I spoke about Washington, Madison and Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant, Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman, my curiosity pushed me to see how other presidents related to Jews. I just picked two for no particular reason.

  What about that great model of irrelevance, Millard Fillmore? As a candidate of the Know-Nothing Party who miraculously won the election, he opposed non-Protestant immigration to these shores. That political party was viciously anti-Catholic and could care less about Jews in this country to the point where we were discriminated against if we traveled to Europe. Despite our protestations Fillmore ignored us. Well, let’s ignore him as well, say I!

   Now there are some who believe that James Abram Garfield was himself Jewish. His middle name was that of our patriarch Abraham before he became our patriarch; and there was one of the most famous actors in American history named John Garfield whose birth name was Jacob Julius Garfinkle. Maybe the president’s real name was also Garfinkle!!

   Let me say before I tell you what a schlemiel he was, that had he lived after being shot and manipulated by physicians who used his still-alive body for “scientific” purposes, he could have been the greatest of all our president; some say he was definitely the smartest, going from being the janitor in a college to its president. I highly recommend a book entitled Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard. It was hard to put down.

   Garfield appointed Selah Merrill, a theologian and archaeologist, and virulent anti-Semite, as Consul in Jerusalem, a post he held for three decades. He must have been obnoxious in general as those in the American colony loathed the guy; the experts said he was a third-rate archaeologist; and the Jews who were there made him a sworn enemy in that he believed and voiced, “1. Palestine is not ready for the Jews. 2. The Jews are not ready for Palestine.” As a source said, he believed what we wanted was not land to colonize, but cities “where they can live on the fortunes or the misfortunes of other people.” Nice guy.