On her book A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America
Cover Interview of June 12, 2019
In a nutshell
Despite the prevalence of name changing in American Jewish culture,
few historians have studied the actual practice of name changing in the United
States. A Rosenberg by Any Other Name – the first book to explore the
phenomenon – relies on research into thousands of previously unexplored name change
petitions submitted to the New York City Civil Court throughout the twentieth century.
Using these petitions, I argue that name changing was a distinctive American
Jewish practice in the middle of the century. Although many New Yorkers of
different backgrounds changed their names, Jews did so at rates that were far
disproportionate to their numbers in the city. They also changed their names together
with family members in ways that historians have not considered before.
Jews’ middle-class status helps to explain these high rates
of family name changing, as does the rising antisemitism of the era. Jews
reached the middle class in the United States earlier than other immigrant
groups in the early twentieth century, and they sought to maintain that status
through education and white-collar work. By the 1920s, however, universities
and employers were developing application forms, specifically, to weed out
Jewish candidates by asking questions about birthplace, religion, and,
importantly, name-changing. This institutionalized antisemitism formed the
context for Jewish name changing in the first half of the twentieth century. Petitioners
sought to erase the names that marked them as Jewish and thus exposed their
families to discrimination.
The growth of the state during World War II further shaped
the context within which Jews changed their names. As the government penetrated
individuals’ daily lives to a greater extent, more Jews found it necessary to
change their names officially to avoid discrimination and participate in the
war effort.
During the war, Jewish communal groups understood name
changing as a response to antisemitism, but after the war, the Jewish community
became sharply divided over the phenomenon. Some Jewish leaders accused name
changers of being “self-hating Jews” who were abandoning the community. A
closer look at name change petitions, as well as contemporary literature,
however, suggests that the majority of name changers remained members of the
Jewish community, using their new names only to make it easier to work in the
non-Jewish world. Jewish civil rights organizations understood this complicated
balance, and defended name changers’ right to change their names as part of
civil rights legislation in the 1940s.
Jews stopped changing their names in large numbers by the
1970s, and just as they did, negative representations of name changing flourished
in popular culture. Misleading images of Jewish men betraying their families by
changing their names or Ellis Island officials changing immigrant names circulated
widely in the last quarter of the twentieth century. And since 2001, new ethnic
groups have been changing their names in Civil Court for very different reasons
than did Jews 75 years ago. Our culture has mostly forgotten the history of Jewish
name changing in the United States. My book attempts to reconstruct that story.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
In a nutshell
Despite the prevalence of name changing in American Jewish culture, few historians have studied the actual practice of name changing in the United States. A Rosenberg by Any Other Name – the first book to explore the phenomenon – relies on research into thousands of previously unexplored name change petitions submitted to the New York City Civil Court throughout the twentieth century. Using these petitions, I argue that name changing was a distinctive American Jewish practice in the middle of the century. Although many New Yorkers of different backgrounds changed their names, Jews did so at rates that were far disproportionate to their numbers in the city. They also changed their names together with family members in ways that historians have not considered before.
Jews’ middle-class status helps to explain these high rates of family name changing, as does the rising antisemitism of the era. Jews reached the middle class in the United States earlier than other immigrant groups in the early twentieth century, and they sought to maintain that status through education and white-collar work. By the 1920s, however, universities and employers were developing application forms, specifically, to weed out Jewish candidates by asking questions about birthplace, religion, and, importantly, name-changing. This institutionalized antisemitism formed the context for Jewish name changing in the first half of the twentieth century. Petitioners sought to erase the names that marked them as Jewish and thus exposed their families to discrimination.
The growth of the state during World War II further shaped the context within which Jews changed their names. As the government penetrated individuals’ daily lives to a greater extent, more Jews found it necessary to change their names officially to avoid discrimination and participate in the war effort.
During the war, Jewish communal groups understood name changing as a response to antisemitism, but after the war, the Jewish community became sharply divided over the phenomenon. Some Jewish leaders accused name changers of being “self-hating Jews” who were abandoning the community. A closer look at name change petitions, as well as contemporary literature, however, suggests that the majority of name changers remained members of the Jewish community, using their new names only to make it easier to work in the non-Jewish world. Jewish civil rights organizations understood this complicated balance, and defended name changers’ right to change their names as part of civil rights legislation in the 1940s.
Jews stopped changing their names in large numbers by the 1970s, and just as they did, negative representations of name changing flourished in popular culture. Misleading images of Jewish men betraying their families by changing their names or Ellis Island officials changing immigrant names circulated widely in the last quarter of the twentieth century. And since 2001, new ethnic groups have been changing their names in Civil Court for very different reasons than did Jews 75 years ago. Our culture has mostly forgotten the history of Jewish name changing in the United States. My book attempts to reconstruct that story.