Few topics have been as sensitive in the American Jewish community as the seemingly large number of Jews in such radical or revolutionary groups as the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). The reason is not hard to fathom. For many years antisemites of all varieties have linked Jews with Bolshevism or communism. Shortly after the Russian Revolution, a Brooklyn magazine entitled the Anti-Bolshevist charged that the Bolshevik was “a Jew who uses socialism, anarchy and internationalism for the sole purpose of getting possession of the Christians’ wealth and to exploit the Christian toiler. The Russian government is a government of the Jews, by Jews and for the Jews.” In the same period American diplomats routinely described the Russian Revolution as a Jewish plot, noting that Karl Marx was Jewish – albeit baptized – and that such prominent leaders of the revolution as Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev were Jews. Invariably and incorrectly Lenin was tossed in as well.

Bad enough that so many Russian Jews were Communists, but far worse for American Jews that so many revolutionaries seeking to overthrow the democratic government of the United States had Jewish origins. To many Americans radicalism was a foreign import – Andrew Carnegie once labeled radicals as “a parcel of foreign cranks whose communistic ideas were the natural outgrowth of unjust laws of their native land.” That so many American Jews had family origins in the old Russian Empire meant that the identification of Jews with Russian Communism called into question their own patriotism.

Even the Communist Party was sensitive about its image as a Jewish-dominated organization. A study I conducted many years ago showed that Jews took considerably longer to work their way up the Party ladder to the Central Committee than non-Jews because the Party was anxious to present a less “Jewish” face to the country. In 1929 the New York Young Communist League boasted of the advances it had made, noting that “the results are also good in national composition, the majority of the new recruits being young Americans and not Jewish.”

At times, other groups in the CPUSA complained about an outsized Jewish presence.