Past Presidents, Jewish Precedents: Inaugurations and the Jewish Electorate

On Monday, January 20, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States. After a presidential campaign fraught with appeals to the “Jewish vote”—with Trump going so far as to say Jews would be responsible for the annihilation of Israel if they didn’t vote for him—many American Jews anxiously await how they might be affected post-inauguration. This wouldn’t be the first time.

For centuries, Jews have served as both a source of inspiration and a reminder of moral obligation for incoming presidents. As America stands at a crossroads, with President Joe Biden passing the torch to Trump, it can be both helpful and revealing to look back on how the Jewish community has shaped the priorities of past presidents—setting a precedent for what lies ahead.

Abraham Lincoln

When you think of “Honest Abe,” Jews likely aren’t the first thing to come to mind…and understandably so. When Lincoln took office in 1861, he had one main concern, says Harold Holzer, author of Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration —keeping the country together. As president, Lincoln inherited a divided country in which seven southern states had already seceded from the union, and his chief task was to keep the nation whole. 

What you might not have known, however, is that by the time Lincoln was inaugurated, the Jewish population in America had risen to about 150,000 from some 3,000 in 1809, when Lincoln was born, writes Brandeis professor Jonathan Sarna in Jews and the Civil War. Unlike most presidents before him, Lincoln witnessed the large-scale immigration of European Jews to the United States. He was also the first to embrace them. “He had Jewish friends and allies. With Lincoln, he banned no one who supported him and the anti-slavery movement,” says Holzer. This was a very different perspective from that of Lincoln’s presidential predecessors, several of whom were openly prejudiced against Jews, Sarna explains in his book Lincoln and the Jews: A History, coauthored with Benjamin Shapell. 

The Jews in Lincoln’s circle proved influential. Figures such as Abraham Jonas, a Jewish lawyer in Quincy, Illinois, and Issachar Zacharie, Lincoln’s British podiatrist, encouraged Lincoln to organize the Jewish vote in his first and second campaigns. Until that point, it was unprecedented to consider Jews as valuable voters in an election. 

Yet having Jews in his life did more than help Lincoln win his campaigns. His exposure to Jewish values and special interest in the Old Testament (which he quoted significantly more than the New Testament) proved impactful on his political perspective. “He was fascinated by Jews—the Israelites, as he later called them when he was in the White House—and Judaism,” says Holzer. His respect for Judaism extended into his presidency. In 1862 Lincoln made it legal for people outside Christian denominations to become military chaplains and in 1863 he overturned Ulysses S. Grant’s order to expel Jews, as a class, from areas under his command, as detailed in Lincoln and the Jews. 

Lincoln continued to consider Jews in his policies before his second inauguration, particularly regarding immigration. After Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg address in 1863, “He became probably the most ardent and proactive immigration champion in American history,” notes Holzer. Lincoln recognized how foreign Jews could contribute to a more advanced America by working in the army, factories and mines. He even helped arrange a system of private companies to fund migration voyages to get them here, Holzer adds. 

This is not to say Lincoln was in admiration of all Jews, or that all Jews admired Lincoln. He clashed with Jewish political opponents like Rabbi Isaac Wise, a Democrat and newspaper owner from Cincinnati. There were also many Jewish Southerners who supported the Confederacy and opposed Lincoln, such as Louisiana senator and lawyer Judah P. Benjamin. Nonetheless, despite instances of political disagreement, Lincoln’s overall acceptance and advocacy towards the Jewish community, which began before he took office, set a bar for future interactions between presidents and American Jews.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt  

As the only president to be inaugurated four times, each time facing some of the country’s hardest historical challenges, FDR’s pre-inaugural outlooks were often changing, especially when it came to issues concerning Jewish Americans.

Roosevelt’s attitudes toward American Jews were somewhat confusing. On one hand, he is remembered for appointing more Jewish individuals to government positions than any previous president. “There were a lot of appointments he made that reflected his value for Jewish talent,” says Richard Breitman, co-author of FDR and the Jews and author of the forthcoming book A Calculated Restraint: What Allied Leaders Said About the Holocaust. These appointments included Henry Morgenthau Jr. as secretary of the Treasury and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. However, Roosevelt often showed signs of prejudice against Jews in years prior to his first inauguration. For example, in 1923 he supported a quota to limit the number of Jews admitted to Harvard University. He also made several antisemitic statements throughout his four terms in office. In 1938, he suggested Jews’ control of the economy in Poland was to blame for antisemitism there. Even so, largely due to his liberal policies, FDR had the support of most American Jews during all of his presidential campaigns. 

With his first inauguration on March 4, 1933, FDR became president just after Adolf Hitler was made chancellor of Germany on January 30. However, like Lincoln, FDR’s focus was preoccupied, with his main concern being to stop the Great Depression. As Breitman explains, there had already been protests in the United States against Nazi persecution in Germany, but the issue took a back seat to the domestic economic crisis. Inheriting a depression economy also led Roosevelt to continue the harsh limits on immigration instituted by his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt decided to continue Hoover’s system of denying visas to anyone labeled a “public charge,” which ultimately meant anyone who had to work for a living, according to Breitman. So, although there was a quota of 25,957 immigrants permitted from Germany, only around 3,500 to 4,000 were accepted in 1933, a measly 500 more than under Hoover—a significant obstacle for Jews attempting to escape Nazi persecution before the events of the Holocaust. 

Before his second inauguration in 1937, with more time to focus on issues other than the economy, Roosevelt’s attention shifted more to foreign policy, including the persecution of Jews abroad. This change in focus was perhaps best underscored by his second inaugural address, in which he stated, “Nearly all of us recognize that as intricacies of human relationships increase, so power to govern them also must increase—power to stop evil; power to do good.” At the start of his second term, Roosevelt adjusted the immigration laws to permit entry to German visa applicants whose relatives had signed affidavits of support. Soon the monthly quotas were being filled. However, FDR was more concerned with avoiding war than confronting Nazi persecution. “Roosevelt was a big thinker and a big talker. He didn’t always follow through well enough,” says Breitman. “He relied on other people to follow through.” 

Before his third inauguration in 1941, Roosevelt’s perspective towards catastrophe in Europe changed again. World War II had already started and Americans were filled with anxiety and speculation over foreign threats. “In 1940 and continuing into 1941, all of the progress that had been made in Roosevelt’s second term was reversed. The reason was not because applicants were likely to become public charges. The reason was that the government and the public no longer trusted taking in foreigners,” says Breitman. While FDR still faced heavy criticism for not doing enough to help Jews escape Germany, it is notable that in his fourth term, he again attempted to offer relief by implementing the War Refugee Board, which Breitman believes saved around 100,000 to 200,000 in the last year and a half of the war. “We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community,” Roosevelt stated in his fourth inaugural address. 

Although FDR’s treatment of both the American and the international Jewish community is highly controversial, the harsh political climates he entered with each of his inaugurations offer some perspective into his approach to large-scale issues complicated by war and other factors. In the words of Breitman, “Roosevelt was president for a long time. Conditions changed a lot over his four (or three-plus) terms, and his policies changed a lot according to circumstances, it’s not a straight line.”

Barack Obama 

Similar to Lincoln and Roosevelt, Obama entered office in 2009 with strong connections to the Jewish community. Going back to his early days doing community work in Chicago, starting in the late 1980s, he had ties to prominent Jewish mentors. “He was very comfortable in the Jewish community in Chicago, and the Jewish community in Chicago was very comfortable with him,” says Samuel Gordon, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Sukkat Shalom in Chicago, and co-founder of “Rabbis for Obama” in 2008. These guides included leaders such as Newton Minow, Lester Crown and Abner Mikvah along with political advisors David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel. 

Obama’s personal connections to Jews certainly influenced his views on Israel. In his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Obama details his understanding of the mutual strife between Jews—informed by his interactions with children of Holocaust survivors—and Palestinians. His wish for greater peace between Israelis and Palestinians was captured in his staunch support of a two-state solution and endorsement of democratic Zionism in his 2008 campaign. However, pursuing a two-state solution was a tall order entering office during a highly conservative Israeli political climate (furthered by the events of the Second Intifada) under the pro-settlement, Likud leadership of Ariel Sharon. 

“More than once, Obama would say at public gatherings, when he was running for office, that one could both oppose Sharon (and later Netanyahu) and not be anti-Israel,” says David Remnick, author of The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. While Obama received roughly 78 percent of the Jewish vote in the 2008 election, he faced backlash from many politically conservative Jews for his liberal approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict, “Many conservative American Jews, as well as conservative Jewish Israelis, believe that Obama was somehow anti-Israeli and, as many in the Netanyahu circle put it, had no ‘kishkes’—no gut feeling—for Israel,” says Remnick adding, “I always found this not only wrong but, at times, faintly racist.” Remnick wasn’t the only one who felt Obama was the target of prejudice on behalf of some American Jews. “There were those who wanted to demonize him in the Jewish community, and those who were trying somehow to paint him as a danger to the Jewish community, and it was important for us to fight that,” says Rabbi Gordon. This was one of the reasons he and Rabbi Steve Bob (also from Chicago) created “Rabbis for Obama.” 

And yet, Israel has never been the highest priority for most American Jewish voters. In fact, in 2008, it ranked 8th out of 15 issues of importance for the demographic, according to an NYU study. What more likely contributed to Obama’s success with the Jewish vote were his progressive stances—on issues such as ending the war in Iraq, accessible education and healthcare, immigration, etc.—that aligned with the historically liberal voting tendencies of American Jews. 

However, Obama’s inaugurations represented more than a trend in Jewish voting: They marked triumphs for the country’s marginalized communities, including Jews. To many Jews, it represented the fruits of previous generations’ labor to make America a place where they could not only fit in but make vital contributions. Speaking at a Jewish inaugural reception, White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod spoke about his father and grandparents fleeing a European pogrom and wishing they could see Obama’s inauguration and that “their son will be 20 feet from the Oval Office, and have a chief of staff named Rahm Emanuel, the son of an Israeli immigrant.”

The efforts of American Jews to carve a space for themselves in the United States often overlapped with efforts of the African American community to do the same. In many ways, Obama’s victory in 2008 acted as a celebration of a long history of joint Black and Jewish advocacy. 

“I was standing next to Rabbi David Saperstein in Denver at Obama’s acceptance speech,” Gordon remembers. “We were in Mile High Stadium, and he turned to me and said, ‘Imagine all the people who we knew, who fought so hard for civil rights and equality, who are not here to see this day.’ It was a sense of fulfillment of those values.” Obama’s inauguration not only marked a milestone for the representation of marginalized groups in American politics but also ushered in an era where diversity and social justice was central to administrative policy.

Jewish political representation and participation has indeed changed through the centuries. Today, it’s hard to imagine a president who isn’t influenced by Jewish issues and individuals when entering the presidency. The question now is: how will the incoming administration’s policies impact American Jews? We may get a hint in President-elect Trump’s speech on inauguration day, but that’s only the beginning.