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Jewish merchants created a niche economy in the United States’ most important industry—cotton—which positioned them at the forefront of capitalist expansion for much of the second half of the nineteenth century. This book analyzes that niche economy and asks how it came to be. It argues that timing mattered, alongside a host of other structural factors, which created the conditions that allowed Jewish merchants to succeed in this particular capitalism. But it also argues that, within this milieu, the Jewish merchants’ status as a minority fueled their niche economy by fostering ethnic networks of trust. Trust served as the cornerstone of financial relationships, and it was frequently cultivated by shared ethnicity. While this book investigates the ways in which both structural factors and ethnic networks mattered in the emergence of this particular niche economy, it also acts as a case study that explores how ethnicity mattered in the development of global capitalism. The story of these American Jewish merchants is far more than the story of American Jewish success and integration—it is the story of how ethnicity mattered in the development of global capitalism.

Jews on the Frontier is a religious history of the United States that begins in an unexpected place: on the road with mobile Jews. It follows them out of eastern cities and into the American frontier, where they found unprecedented economic opportunity but also anonymity, loneliness, instability, mistrust, scarcity, and diversity, all of which complicated the many legal obligations of traditional Jewish life. Against the backdrop of Manifest Destiny, ordinary Jews created religious life from scratch, expanding and transforming Jewish thought and practice within and outside newly developed networks, markets, and institutions. The inconsistency and eclecticism of these efforts were a central concern of well-known leaders like Isaac Mayer Wise and Isaac Leeser, who worked to establish greater order and standardization. While they failed in their most ambitious projects, however, they succeeded in establishing the institutional and intellectual infrastructure of American Judaism. Jews on the Frontier vividly recounts these stories of a neglected era in American Jewish history, taking the reader far from the well-trodden ground of New York City. In the process, it offers a new interpretation of American religions, rooted not in congregations or denominations, but in the politics and experiences of mobility. Today’s unafilliated Jews—and the much-heralded “nones” of all stripes—are not the first Americans to practice religion through family, social ties, print culture, and unauthorized forms of knowledge. Rather, American religions have long been constituted by diverse individuals and groups assembling resources for stability, certainty, and identity in a nation where there was little to be found.