The battle over religion in American public schools has deep roots. In the nineteenth century it was an intramural struggle between Protestants and later-arriving Catholics. But at Christmastime in 1905, when the Presbyterian principal of a Brooklyn elementary school urged his Jewish students to be more like Jesus Christ, Jews entered the fray in a big way. It was just the trigger Jewish activist Albert Lucas had been waiting for. Fresh from battling Christian settlement houses brazen about their intent to convert Jewish children, Lucas accused the public schools of illegal proselytizing and demanded limits on religious content in the schools.
The Great Christmas Boycott of 1906 describes how this moment shaped the Jewish community’s long-term efforts to challenge Christian influence in public life and traces the school Christmas celebration dispute to the present day.
Register before 5 p.m. the Sunday before for in-person lunch ($10) or by the next evening for the Zoom link.
About the Speaker
Scott D. Seligman is a national award-winning writer of narrative non-fiction and biography with an interest in the history of hyphenated Americans. He holds an undergraduate degree in American history from Princeton and a master’s degree from Harvard. He has written three books on American Jewish history, including The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902, which was a finalist in the 2020 National Jewish Book Awards and won gold medals in history in the Independent Publisher Book Awards and Reader Views Literary Awards, and The Chief Rabbi’s Funeral, which tells the story of the largest antisemitic riot in American history. Visit his website at www.seligmanonline.com.
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