Research

Jacob’s current project explores the evolving nature of Jewish citizenship in the United States. His dissertation argues that Jewish citizenship was not fixed but shifted over time, shaped by changes in the American state and its Jewish constituents. Focusing on the period between the end of slavery in 1850s and the birth of the modern liberal state in the 1930s, it examines how Jews engaged politically with issues including race, religion, philanthropy, and immigration, and social welfare in their ongoing pursuit of equal citizenship.

He is also at work on two other projects. The first is a history of the American carceral state in the first half of the twentieth century, with a particular focus on how modern legal codes, police forces, and penal institutions like parole and probation developed in tandem with private philanthropic agencies to systemically control immigrant populations. He is also working on a Jewish political history of the U.S. South in the long nineteenth century. This project seeks to re-examine commonly held assumptions about American Jewish liberalism, memory, and racial alliances.

Publications and Works in Progress

Peer-reviewed journal publications:

• “The ‘Theoretical’ Jew Versus the ‘Southern’ Jew: Black Perceptions of Jewish Whiteness in the Nineteenth-Century American South,” American Jewish History 106, No. 1 (January 2022): 31-54.

• “Free From Proscription and Prejudice: Politics and Race in the Election of One Jewish Mayor in Late Reconstruction Louisiana,” Southern Jewish History 22 No. 1 (October 2019): 5-42.

Peer-reviewed translations:  

• “Vos I. I. Zinger Hot Gezen In Di Neger Kabareys In Harlem” (Forverts, 1932). (“What I.J. Singer Saw in the Black Cabarets in Harlem”) In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies (May 2024), https://ingeveb.org/texts-and-translations/cabarets. Translated from Yiddish.
  • (An accompanying essay to this translation can be found here)

Book reviews and review essays:

• (Forthcoming) Book review of Jonathan Karp, ed. Beyond Whiteness: Revisiting Jews in Ethnic America (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2023). Reviewed for American Jewish History.

• Book review of Ellen Eisenberg, ed., Jewish Identities in the American West: Relational Perspectives (Waltham, Ma: Brandeis University Press, 2022). Reviewed for Annals of Wyoming: The Wyoming History Journal 95 (Winter 2023).

• Book review of Peter M. Wolf, The Sugar King: Leon Godchaux: A New Orleans Legend, His Creole Slave, and His Jewish Roots (New York: Bayou Editions, 2022). Reviewed for Southern Jewish History 26 (Fall 2023).

• Review essay, “Memoirs and Archives: Celebrating the Jews of Atlanta,” of Janice Rothschild Blumberg, What’s Next?: Southern Dreams, Jewish Deeds and the Challenge of Looking Back While Moving Forward (Baltimore: Bartleby Press, 2022); Jeremy Katz, ed. The Jewish Community of Atlanta (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2021); Catherine Lewis, Jeremy Katz, and Anna Tucker, The Temple: The First 150 Years (Atlanta: The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, 2020). Reviewed in Southern Jewish History 25 (Fall 2022).

Research Fellowships and Awards

Year-Long Fellowships

• Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Association for Jewish Studies (2025-26)
• Sid and Ruth Lapidus Graduate Research Fellowship (2024-25)

Short-Term Fellowships

• John Morton Blum Fellowship for Graduate Research in American History and Culture, Yale University (2024)
• Summer Fellowship, Feinstein Center for American Jewish History, Temple University (2024)
• Lawrence J. Kanter Research Grant, Southern Jewish Historical Society (2024)
• Charleston Research Fellowship, Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture, College of Charleston (2024)
• Graduate Research Award, Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, Brandeis University (2023)
• Fein & Lapidus Fellowship, American Jewish Historical Society (2022)
• Graduate Student Grant, American Academy of Jewish Research (2022)
• Starkoff Fellowship, American Jewish Archives (2021)
• Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (German), U.S. Dept. of Ed. (2020)

Awards

• Rose Fellowship, Yale University (2025)
• Merrill Graduate Student Award, Organization of American Historians (2024)
• Montgomery History Award, History Department, Tulane University (2018)
• Walter S. Stern 1905 Memorial Medal (best thesis on American government in Political Science, Economics, or History), Tulane University (2018)
• Kaufman Essay Contest Award (best thesis in Jewish Studies), Jewish Studies Department, Tulane University (2018)

Presentations

Invited Talks

• “Southern Jewish Politics and the Coming of the New South,” invited by the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture, College of Charleston (November 2024)

• “American Jewish Politics through 1876,” guest lecture in undergraduate course “American Jewish History,” Brooklyn College (March 2024)

• “Human Rights in the Postwar World, 1945-1951,” guest lecture in undergraduate course “Origins of US Global Power,” Yale University (November 2022)

• “The Nineteenth Century Jewish South,” guest lecture in undergraduate course “The Civil War and Reconstruction Era,” Yale University (February 2022)

• “The Jewish-Black Story: A Complicated Relationship of Race, Religion and Foreignness in the American South,” lecture and radio interview, invited by the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. (Postponed due to COVID-19)

Conference Talks

• (forthcoming) Respondent for book panel Shari Rabin, The Jewish South: An American History, Southern Jewish Historical Society Annual Conference, New Orleans, LA (October 2025)

• “Slavery, War, and the American Jewish Citizenship Reformer,” Panel on ‘Jewish Citizenship and the State in the Modern Era,’ Association for Jewish Studies, online (December 2024)

• “The End of Slavery and the Future of American Jewish Politics,” Panel on ‘Jews and Slavery in the American South,’ Southern Jewish Historical Society Annual Conference, Louisville, KY (October 2024)

• “Jewish Redeemers and the Coming of the New South,” Panel on ‘Jews and Public Life in the Civil War Era,’ American Jewish Historical Society Biennial Scholars Conference, New York, NY (May 2024)

•  “Probation and Assimilation: Jewish Immigrant Crime and the Communalist Origins of Urban Surveillance,” Panel on ‘Jewish Politics, Race, and Power in the 20^th Century,’ Organization of American Historians, New Orleans, LA (March 2024)

• “Jewish Citizenship in the Age of American State Transformation, 1865-1933,” University of Pennsylvania Jewish Studies Graduate Student Conference on “Jews and Political Authority: Citizenship, Homeland, and Diaspora,” Philadelphia, PA (March 2024)

• “Crafting Citizenship: Alice Davis Menken, Criminal Surveillance and the Making of American Jewish Citizenship, 1910-1930,” Panel on ‘Jews Navigating State and Bureaucracy in New York During the Long Nineteenth Century,” Association for Jewish Studies, San Francisco, CA (December 2023)

• “Grits and Gefilte Fish: Teaching Southern Jewish History in 2023,” Roundtable discussion, Association for Jewish Studies, San Francisco, CA (December 2023)

• “Keep the State Far From Us! Isaac Mayer Wise, Reconstruction, and the Jewish Politics of Anti-Federalism,” Panel on ‘Diaspora Jews Between Nationhood and State Power,’ Association for Jewish Studies, Boston, MA (December 2022)

• “Bastions of Localism: Mapping Southern Jewish Redemption Politics, 1870-1900,” ‘Rising Stars of Southern Jewish History’ panel, Southern Jewish Historical Society Annual Conference, Charleston, SC (October 2022)

• “‘Artificiality of color line’: Rose Pastor Stokes and the Limits of Black-Jewish Solidarity in Early Twentieth Century America,” Panel on ‘Race and the Jewish Radical Left,’ Association for Jewish Studies, Chicago, IL (December 2021)

• “‘Hebrew Wanderers in Alien Lands:’ Shifting Black Perceptions Toward Jews in the Nineteenth Century South,” Panel on ‘Jews in the 19^th Century American South,’ American Jewish Historical Society Biennial Scholars Conference (Conducted online due to COVID-19) (May 2020)

• “Jews, Race, and the Democratic Party: Understanding the Jewish Position in Local Politics in Post-Civil War Louisiana and Mississippi,” Panel on ‘Jews, Race and Southern Politics,’ Southern Jewish Historical Society Annual Conference, Charlottesville, VA (October 2019)