"#TheodoreRoosevelt had a thing about the #Jews. Not just the uptown #Manhattan Jews whose families had immigrated from Germany and Austria-Hungary in the middle years of the 19th century, people whose Reform #Judaism was tidier to the gentile eye than were the shuls of the #LowerEastSide. These were Jews whose prosperity made many of them business colleagues and political bedfellows of #Roosevelt and his Republican Party.
But Roosevelt’s #philosemitism extended deeper, into the Lower East Side itself and its #Yiddish-speaking, tenement-dwelling Jews whose crowded apartments and sweatshops drew the concern of social reformers such as the Danish-born pioneer photojournalist Jacob Riis.
Roosevelt befriended Riis, and as #NewYork’s head police commissioner from 1895 to 1897, he spoke to downtown #Jewish audiences, advocating the progressive cause of hiring by merit."
https://momentmag.com/book-review-american-maccabee-theodore-roosevelt-and-the-jews/
