The Chief Rabbi's Funeral: The Untold Story of America's Largest Antisemitic Riot

Speaker: Scott Seligman 

Reader Views 2024-25 Literary Awards, Gold Medal Winner
American Bookfest 21st Annual Best Book Awards, Finalist
2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, Finalist

On July 30, 1902, tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets of New York’s Lower East Side to bid farewell to the city’s chief rabbi, the eminent Talmudist Jacob Joseph. All went well until the funeral procession reached the Grand and Sheriff Streets, where the six-story R. Hoe and Company printing press factory towered over the intersection Without warning, scraps of steel, iron bolts and scalding water rained down and injured hundreds of mourners, courtesy of antisemitic factory workers on the upper floors. But worse, the police compounded the attack when they arrived on the scene. Under orders from the inspector in charge, who made no effort to distinguish aggressors from victims or issue orders to disperse, officers began beating up Jews. It became the single largest violent antisemitic incident in American history, measured in sheer numbers of people attacked and injured.

To the Yiddish-language daily Forverts (Forward), the bloody attack was not unlike the pogroms many Russian Jews remembered bitterly from the old country. But this was America, and the Jewish community wasn’t going to stand for such treatment. Fed up with being persecuted, New York’s Jews, whose numbers and political influence had been growing, set a pattern for the future by deftly pursuing justice for the victims. They forced trials and disciplinary hearings, accelerated retirements and transfers within the corrupt police department, and engineered the resignation of the police commissioner. Scott D. Seligman’s The Chief Rabbi’s Funeral is the first book-length account of this event and its aftermath.

Scott D. Seligman is a national award-winning writer and historian with a special interest in the history of hyphenated Americans. He is a former corporate executive who holds an undergraduate degree in American history from Princeton and a master’s degree from Harvard. His first Jewish-themed book, The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902, won gold medals in history in the Independent Publisher Book Awards and Reader Views Literary Awards and was a finalist in the 2020 National Jewish Book Awards. His website is viewable at www.seligmanonline.com He lives in Washington, DC.

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