Smoothing the Jew: Abie the Agent and Ethnic Caricature in the Progressive Era

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.

JEFFREY A. MARX is an independent scholar, the Rabbi Emeritus of The Santa Monica Synagogue in Los Angeles, 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.