A mesmerizing statesman whose complex bond with the Jewish people
forever shaped their lives—and his legacy
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A scion of the Protestant elite, Theodore Roosevelt was an unlikely ally of the waves of impoverished Jewish newcomers who crowded the docks at Ellis Island. Yet from his earliest years he forged ties with Jews never before witnessed in a president. American Maccabee traces Roosevelt’s deep connection with the Jewish people at every step of his dazzling ascent. But it also reveals a man of contradictions whose checkered approach to Jewish issues was no less conflicted than the nation he led.
As a rising political figure in New York, Roosevelt barnstormed the Lower East Side, giving speeches to packed halls of Jewish immigrants. He rallied for reform of the sweatshops where Jewish laborers toiled for pitiful wages in perilous conditions. And Roosevelt repeatedly venerated the heroism of the Maccabee warriors, upholding those storied rebels as a model for the American Jewish community. Yet little could have prepared him for the blood-soaked persecution of Eastern European Jews that brought a deluge of refugees to American shores during his presidency. Andrew Porwancher uncovers the vexing challenges for Roosevelt as he confronted Jewish suffering abroad and antisemitic xenophobia at home.
Drawing on new archival research to paint a richly nuanced portrait of an iconic figure, American Maccabee chronicles the complicated relationship between the leader of a youthful nation and the people of an ancient faith.
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Andrew Porwancher
A native of Princeton, Andrew Porwancher earned degrees from Brown and Northwestern before completing his PhD in history at Cambridge. Currently, he serves as a Professor of History at Arizona State University (SCETL).
His books include The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton (Princeton University Press, 2021), winner of the Journal of the American Revolution Book-of-the-Year Award; and The Devil Himself (Oxford University Press, 2016), which was adapted for the stage at Dublin’s historic Smock Alley Theatre. Porwancher’s fifth book is American Maccabee: Theodore Roosevelt and the Jews (Princeton University Press, 2025).
He previously served as the May Fellow at Harvard, the Horne Fellow at Oxford, and the Garwood Fellow at Princeton. In 2023, Porwancher won a national prize for mentorship—the Craig L. Brians Award—from the American Political Science Association.
His writing has appeared in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
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