Historian Pamela Nadell is very familiar with the rituals of publishing a book, as she has written nine of them: Secure a release date, present at academic conferences, maybe headline a handful of general-public events. Although she is at the forefront of her field at American University — chair in Women’s and Gender History, director of the Jewish studies program and former president of the American Jewish Historical Society — Nadell knows that success in academia does not often translate to strong book sales. 

Things appear to be different for her latest book, Antisemitism: An American Tradition. 

Nadell began to understand how much interest a book on antisemitism would generate when her publisher assigned a full-time publicist to promote the book, which will be published on Oct. 14. Nadell is booked at speaking engagements across the country into 2027, starting with an event at the Washington bookstore Politics and Prose next week. 

The book that she began researching six years ago will now appear on bookshelves at a time when antisemitism has reached record levels since the Anti-Defamation League began tracking data in 1979.

“I had hoped, frankly, that the subject would be seen as a historic subject by the time [the book] came out into the world,” Nadell told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “And that’s absolutely not the case.” 

Nadell argues in her book that antisemitism is not an aberration in the United States. Instead, she writes, it is intricately woven into the American experience — as American as, say, apple pie. 

Jews came from Europe seeking freedom from religious persecution, and while they escaped the pogroms that had haunted them overseas, they did not arrive in a world magically free from antisemitism. She traced the history of anti-Jewish sentiment in America from colonial days to the present, identifying the aftermath of the Civil War as the moment it really gained a foothold in American society. 

“America is different [from Europe] in that we never had state sponsored violence against American Jews,” Nadell said. “But the roots of anti-Judaism in America start immediately … the roots of anti-Judaism in America rest on traditional Christian ideas about who the Jews are and what they did to Jesus.”

While antisemitism has always been present in America, the tenor and intensity of it has ebbed and flowed. “We’re in a moment,” she said, “where it’s really bad.” 

The reason she is most concerned about the state of antisemitism in America is not just the frequency of antisemitic incidents or the toll of violent attacks on Jews. According to a study published this week by the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Federations of North America, more than half of American Jews now say antisemitism is a normal part of the Jewish experience. 

It’s that doors are once again closing to Jews in a way that reminds her of the quotas, housing covenants and employment restrictions that were baked into American life until the 1950s and 1960s. 

“The perception that [antisemitism] was over was because of how much American Jews ascended into American life as those structural barriers fell,” Nadell said. “The doors to corporations opened up, the doors to the colleges opened up. But antisemitism — it’s like it was a nagging factor.” 

America is now experiencing another period “where Jewish life once again seems to be constricting,” Nadell argued. “Not in exactly the same ways that it did in those years between World War I and World War II, when there were so many structural limitations. But the closing off of spaces to Jews today is happening once again.” 

She pointed to boycotts of Jewish and Zionist writers in the publishing industry, and antisemitic litmus tests appearing in unexpected places like the mental health profession. 

“Being told that you have to denounce Israel in order to join a student club? Those students are going to carry those memories forward into their future,” said Nadell. 

In recent years, and particularly following the wave of antisemitism that was unleashed after the Oct. 7 attacks two years ago, several Jewish thinkers have posited that the American Jewish community’s best days are behind it. Franklin Foer wrote an Atlantic cover story under the alarming headline, “The Golden Age of American Jews is ending.”

Nadell argues that the notion that there ever was a “golden age” is a myth. “The idea that there was a golden age of Jews in Spain actually emerges during the Dreyfus Affair [in 1894], when things are so terrible in Europe,” she noted. Similarly, Nadell argues that the supposedly now-over golden age for American Jews after the end of quotas and de jure discrimination is not really so straightforward. 

“By the time we get to the late ‘60s and on in the 20th century, American Jews feel really secure. The places that used to be closed to us have now opened, and that’s what leads to the perception of the golden age,” said Nadell. “The problem … is the assumption that antisemitism disappeared, but it didn’t.”

Still, Nadell considers herself an optimist. Antisemitism is part of the American fabric. And while that might be a demoralizing conclusion, she views it the other way: Jews have thrived in this country despite antisemitism, and they will continue to do so. 

“The reality is that it is part of the normative Jewish experience to experience antisemitism,” said Nadell. “But I think ultimately, American Jews will be okay in the United States.”