Judeo–Christian Nationalism? American Jewry, Judaism, and the Religious Right in the Early Cold War

This paper explores the curious entry of American Jews and Judaism into the Religious Right during the first two decades of the Cold War. In particular, it focuses on the American Jewish League Against Communism, an organization founded in the 1950s to expose and combat communism in American life. Composed primarily of conservative American rabbis and penitent ex-communists, the AJLAC was politically influential during the McCarthy era, as its members supplied witnesses and testimonies to the exposure and blacklisting of American communists. Following the Red Scare, members of the AJLAC would go on to become prominent figures in the rise of postwar conservatism, whether uniting with Christian groups in defense of religious freedom and traditionalism, contributing to and shaping the conservative intellectual movement, or becoming key figures in the rise of libertarianism. In the process of mounting an attack on communism, American Jews associated with the AJLAC developed a particular conservative American Jewish identity, one that blended the traditionalism and intellectualism of Jewish life with the postwar commitment to spreading and defending American freedoms and liberty. As a result, the AJLAC helped to shape a postwar conservativism that celebrated individual achievement, social mobility, and religious values against what its members saw as an increasingly collectivist and anti-religious American liberalism.