(JEWISH GROUP) How the biggest antisemitic riot in America transformed Jewish history [View all]

Does America’s worst antisemitic police riot have parallels with today’s world, or should Jews feel glad that the incident was a product of the era when it occurred?

In The Chief Rabbi’s Funeral: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Antisemitic Riot, which concerns the events surrounding the New York funeral of Rabbi Jacob Joseph in July 1902, author Scott Seligman examines the evidence for both sides of the question. Seligman patiently details the debris that was thrown onto the heads of participants in the Lower East Side funeral procession by local factory workers, including “dirty cotton waste, wet overalls, scraps of steel, oil-soaked waste, blocks of wood, buckets of grease, iron nuts and bolts, flat irons, screws, tools, bricks, bottles, utensils, stones, and even a dead cat.”

The hearse itself was bombarded with stale bread, pieces of iron and screws.

Some understandably outraged Jews reciprocated by directing bricks at the windows of the printing press factory from which these items emanated. When the police arrived, they used violence to clear the area, with the result that dozens of Jews, and a scant few factory workers, were injured.

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