"As the scion of the Protestant elite that dominated American life in his era, Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth President of the United States, was an unlikely friend and ally to the waves of impoverished Jewish immigrants pouring into his native New York in the last decades of the nineteenth century. And yet, from his earliest years, he formed a bond with the Jewish people never before seen among American presidents-a bond that, the author argues, can be traced throughout his career in public life and informed his vision of governance as well as his understanding of American society. This book traces the story of Theodore Roosevelts relationship with Jews both in America and abroad, exploring his early fascination with imagined "virile," warrior Jews of biblical times; his tenure as the youthful, reform-minded New York City Police Commissioner, when he integrated Jews into the force at a time of rising nativist antisemitism; his military career, in which he hand-picked Jews-as well as Italian-Americans and Native Americans-for his famed "Rough Rider" regiment in the Spanish-American War; and his terms as U.S. President, when he relied on a close circle of Jewish confidantes to help him navigate issues such as the infamous Kishinev pogrom of 1903 and rising nativist opposition in the U.S. to Jewish immigration. The Roosevelt who emerges from this story is not, however, an uncomplicated hero.

TR was riddled with contradictions, and was a man who flitted between philosemitism and antisemitism without wholly embracing either. He publicly and privately repudiated Jew-hatred, yet occasionally peddled the same slurs he condemned in others. Reckoning with Roosevelts complex bond with the Jewish people, Porwancher argues, helps us see that the Jewish issues that preoccupied Roosevelt were also of broad significance for Americas self-understanding at the start of the last century"--"A major biography of a mesmerizing statesman whose complex bond with the Jewish people forever shaped their lives-and his legacy. A scion of the Protestant elite, Theodore Roosevelt was an unlikely ally of the waves of impoverished Jewish newcomers who crowded the docks at Ellis Island. Yet from his earliest years he forged ties with Jews never before witnessed in a president. American Maccabee traces Roosevelts deep connection with the Jewish people at every step of his dazzling ascent. But it also reveals a man of contradictions whose checkered approach to Jewish issues was no less conflicted than the nation he led. As a rising political figure in New York, Roosevelt barnstormed the Lower East Side, giving speeches to packed halls of Jewish immigrants.

He rallied for reform of the sweatshops where Jewish laborers toiled for pitiful wages in perilous conditions. And Roosevelt repeatedly venerated the heroism of the Maccabee warriors, upholding those storied rebels as a model for the American Jewish community. Yet little could have prepared him for the blood-soaked persecution of Eastern European Jews that brought a deluge of refugees to American shores during his presidency. Andrew Porwancher uncovers the vexing challenges for Roosevelt as he confronted Jewish suffering abroad and antisemitic xenophobia at home. Drawing on new archival research to paint a richly nuanced portrait of an iconic figure, American Maccabee chronicles the complicated relationship between the leader of a youthful nation and the people of an ancient faith"--.