Presented by Scott D. Seligman, Author
Discover how an early protest against Christian nationalism shaped the Jewish community’s long-term efforts to challenge religious influence in public life.
Today’s battle over Christianity in American public schools has deep roots. In the nineteenth century it was an intramural struggle between Protestants and later-arriving Catholics. But at Christmastime in 1905, when the Presbyterian principal of a Brooklyn elementary school urged his Jewish students to be more like Jesus Christ, Jews entered the fray in a big way. It was just the trigger Jewish activist Albert Lucas had been waiting for. Fresh from battling Christian settlement houses brazen about their intent to convert Jewish children, Lucas accused the public schools of illegal proselytizing and demanded limits on religious content in the schools.
After the Board of Education declined to clarify the rules governing religion in schools, the New York Jewish community staged a boycott of the 1906 school Christmas pageants, prompting widespread student absences. The protest spurred policy changes, but the board’s concessions generated an enormous antisemitic public backlash.
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Scott D. Seligman is a national award-winning writer of historical narrative non-fiction and biography with a focus on the stories of “hyphenated Americans.” He specializes in bringing overlooked lives, forgotten conflicts and surprising episodes in American history to life with drama and meaning. A former corporate executive who holds an undergraduate degree in American history from Princeton and a master’s degree from Harvard, he has written twelve books, including three on American Jewish history, including The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902, which 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. He lives in Washington, DC. Visit his website at www.seligmanonline.com.
We extend a special thank you to Andrew R. Ammerman for sponsoring our 2026 program lineup. He dedicates the semester’s learning in loving memory of Josephine and H. Max Ammerman and Stephen C. Ammerman.