A 1903 illustration in London’s Daily Graphic of actor Ivan Berlyn as Fagin, one of the “weird and eccentric parts” he was said to specialize in. Descended from German Jewish immigrants, Berlyn (born Isaac Berlin) played Fagin on stage and in silent films. He seems to have made some effort to obscure his ethnicity and religion, but the artist did not: in this drawing, Berlyn has a pronounced, hooked nose and a threatening expression, in contrast to the depiction of the other actors’ more delicate and Anglicized features. Image credit: S A H Robinson/Wikimedia Commons.
That was the trailer for the award-winning 1947 movie, “Gentleman’s Agreement.” If you watch the whole thing, you will find out that it starred Gregory Peck. You will also learn that in 1948, it was nominated for eight Oscars, and won three, including Best Picture. But what you will never learn is what the “taboo topic” that forms the basis of the plot is. That story is so taboo that movie audiences would not know what Gentleman’s Agreement was about unless they went to see it.
It's about antisemitism. That’s right—a topic that was apparently unspeakable in the United States, even two years after American and Soviet soldiers liberated the first Nazi death camps.
But antisemitism was unspeakable—although not as much so as homosexuality. Crossfire, another 1947 movie, was originally about a homophobic murder and rewritten as a story about antisemitism. It seems significant, for example, that Hobson’s novel, which is not about women, was first published in a women’s magazine. Did publishers of serious literary fare not want to touch the manuscript initially? It seems so.
And yet, there is a reason that a movie about antisemitism could be both taboo and rewarded in 1948. The previous year, the Truman administration launched the Voice of America (now shuttered by Donald Trump) to broadcast the virtues of democracy into Soviet-controlled eastern Europe. In April, Jackie Robinson would become the first Black player since the 19th century to take the field for a major league baseball team. In May, President Truman signed an Act of Congress that promised aid to Turkey, Greece, and any other nation under siege from communism—and launched almost four decades of what we now call the Cold War. In October, the House Un-American Activities Committee launched an investigation into communism in Hollywood.
We know that by 1947 the United States was grappling with an enormous contradiction: that it sought to be a beacon of democracy around the globe—and that it was a cesspool of racial inequality at home. U.S. federal courts heard a series of cases—Mendez v. Westminster, Delgado v. Bastrop, and Shelley v. Kraemer—that began the process of breaking the back of Jim Crow. The separation of white and Black was public, well-known, and defended robustly by white Southern politicians.
But the nation’s dirty little secret was antisemitism. The Roosevelt administration knew what was happening to Europe’s Jews under Nazi rule and did nothing. American colleges and universities had, for decades, worked to ensure that their campuses did not become—too Jewish. While Black home buyers were steered away from all white neighborhoods, Jews were steered by agents away from some of them, a fact that became even more uncomfortably clear when home ownership was supported by new banking policies and federal subsidies after World War II. Parallel spaces grew up to serve Jews—hotels, resorts, country clubs, and golf courses—because they were barred from others.
That’s the America I grew up in, and it didn’t start to change until the 1970s. This is why I have been astonished and angry about how so many non-Jewish Americans today want to dismiss the history, and contemporary pervasiveness, of antisemitism in this country. If it is possible, I have been even angrier at how Donald Trump and the Republican party have deployed cynical, fake concern about the eruptions of antisemitism since October 7—when their own movement springs out of antisemitic conservatives like Henry Ford, Father Charles Coughlin, and Ron Paul; and they continue to embrace antisemitic, proto-Nazi groups today.
But it’s also important to remember that antisemitism, its tropes and stereotypes, are something we all need to grapple with. Hatred and contempt for Jews is baked into Western culture and our literary canon; we cannot simply wall off the past when it is convenient. This is why I asked historical novelist Allison Epstein to come on the show to talk about her rewriting of the Oliver Twist story, in which the hero is not a darling blonde English child, but Jacob Fagin—a tutor in crime, and a Charles Dickens character cobbled out of every 19th century antisemitic stereotype available to him.
Listeners will remember Allison from Episode 38 and some of you will know her from her Substack, Dirtbags through the Ages, where she profiles saints who were sinners, and sinners who are…just dirtbags. Fagin is a legendary dirtbag, but in Epstein’s hands, he is something else: a man who survives not by exploiting people, but by holding them close and teaching them; an orphan who yearns for connection but knows it can never last. Freed from Dickens’ antisemitism, Epstein’s Fagin also gives us a gift: insight into how antisemitism works, how it burns the soul, and how it drips into our present.
Join Allison and me for this episode of “Why Now?” where history and politics meet the challenge of today. And I’m your host, Claire Potter, Professor of History emeritus at the New School for Social Research, a contributing editor at Public Seminar, and the author of the Political Junkie Substack.
This is Episode 70, “Fagin!”
Show notes:
Claire mentions Christine Stansell’s history of early national New York, and the need for working-class children to earn their own keep on the street, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (University of Illinois Press, 1987).
In our conversation about the importance of voluminous Victorian women’s fashions to female shoplifting, Claire reminds listeners about Elaine Abelson’s When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (Oxford, 1992.).
Allison learned the ins and outs of how to pick pockets from Henry Mayhew, The London Underworld in the Victorian Period: Authentic First-Person Accounts by Beggars, Thieves and Prostitutes (Dover, 2005. Orig. 1852).
Claire and Allison declare their mutual dislike for “As Long As He Needs Me,” the most covered song from the movie, Oliver! as an example that rewritings of the Dickens novel failed to grapple with its misogyny as well as its antisemitism.
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If you enjoyed this episode, why not try:
Episode 31, Haunted By History: A conversation with historian Tiya Miles about her novel, "The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts."
Episode 23, Creative Fictions: A conversation with historian Sam Franklin about "The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History."
Episode 4, Bringing the War Home: A conversation with writer Zayd Ayres Dohrn about the Weather Underground, a generation raised in its shadow, and the search for answers in his podcast, "Mother Country Radicals."
And here’s a bonus: all new annual paid subscriptions include a free copy of my book about political media, Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020.)
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