Shmoozing with Priests and Cops: Covering Catholic Fascism in the Yiddish Press

media release: Tobias Lecture in Jewish Studies, given by Klaus C. Yoder, Vassar College. Zoom option available, RSVP here.

In the summer of 1939, dozens of concerned citizens wrote to the mayor of New York City expressing their suspicions that the New York Police Department had a Christian Front problem. The Front was a Catholic-dominated political formation inspired by the radio personality Father Coughlin, whose antisemitic vision of “social justice” included purging the nation of leftists, bankers, and other perceived Jewish influences. In January 1940, a survey of the NYPD revealed that 407 officers admitted to being members of the Christian Front.



During this period, the New York Yiddish press printed extensive coverage of these events along with editorials and investigative series that interpreted the nexus of Catholicism, policing, and right-wing politics. Drawing on this Yiddish-language journalism, this presentation situates these events and discourses in the broader religious and political history of the NYPD and asks what they signify for interpreting the ongoing relationship between religion, race, and state violence.