Able to Be American: Disability in US Immigration Policy and the American Jewish Response

Epilepsy. Heart disease. Varicose veins. “Feeble-mindedness.” In 1891, Congress unambiguously codified the popular sentiment that “defects” like these should preclude admission to the United States. Expanding the eugenics-rooted restrictions of the 1882 Immigration Act, the new law conflated illness, poverty, and disability with criminality and “moral turpitude,” starkly revealing Congress’s vision of the “ideal” American. Simultaneously, American Jews sought security and acceptance in the United States. In confronting this American culture of exclusion, they boldly asserted that they too had the right, knowledge, and ability to shape the meaning of American national belonging and, indeed, the fabric of the country itself.

Able to Be American explores this tension, revealing how eugenic theories about illness and disability fundamentally shaped American society, government, and everyday life. As Jewish communal leaders contested the thorny relationship between perceived able-bodiedness and the ability to become American, they strove to reform federal immigration law and its implementation according to their own visions for what the United States could become. Hannah E. Zaves-Greene’s groundbreaking and richly sourced analysis weaves together archival documents, government records, and captivating case studies to expose enduring truths about exclusion, belonging, democracy, and citizenship at this watershed moment in US history.

Hannah E. Zaves-Greene is a scholar-in-residence at Brandeis University’s Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and an expert in American Jewish history and disability studies.