I recently acquired a nice old American Haggadah, printed in New York in 1863, in the middle of the Civil war. The final leaf contains the following interesting comment: “On these nights it is customary to allow even the meanest [i.e. poorest] Hebrew servant to sit at table…as we were all equally alike in bondage.”
Jews in the United States were on both sides of the slavery debate in the decades before the Civil War. Rabbi Morris Raphall of New York’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, for example, wrote, “Slave holding is no sin” since “slave property is expressly placed under the protection of the Ten Commandments.”
Meanwhile, Rabbi David Einhorn of Baltimore’s Congregation Har Sinai was a strong proponent of the abolitionist movement. He wrote, “It is the duty of Jews to fight bigotry since, for thousands of years, Jews have consciously or unconsciously fought for freedom of conscience.”
