Jew and Mormon: Historic Group Relations and Religious Outlook

Rudolf Glanz

• Publisher: Paeroa House
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781779797087
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Two faiths. Two peoples. Two histories shaped by persecution, resilience, and an unrelenting search for belonging. In mid-nineteenth-century America, Jewish immigrants and Mormon settlers found themselves navigating the same turbulent national landscape, each group carrying the weight of difference, suspicion, and profound spiritual conviction. Rudolf Glanz, a meticulous scholar with a gift for uncovering the human drama buried within historical record, brings these two extraordinary communities face to face in a study that is as surprising as it is illuminating. What emerges is a portrait of encounter that defies easy categorization, revealing moments of unexpected kinship alongside striking theological divergence, all set against the restless backdrop of a young nation still defining its own identity. Glanz digs deep into the social and religious textures of both communities, tracing the contours of how Jews and Mormons perceived one another, misunderstood one another, and occasionally recognized something familiar in each other's struggles. Both groups knew what it meant to be outsiders. Both carried sacred texts, covenantal identities, and a sense of divine destiny that set them apart from mainstream Protestant America. Yet their interactions were colored by theological curiosity, cultural distance, and the complicated dynamics of a society that viewed both with suspicion and sometimes outright hostility. The book captures these tensions with quiet intensity, drawing on period sources that give authentic voice to the people living through these remarkable historical crosscurrents. For readers fascinated by American religious history, interfaith relations, or the broader story of minority communities forging identity under pressure, this book offers something genuinely rare: a scholarly yet deeply human account of two peoples whose stories intersect in ways history has largely overlooked. Glanz wrote at a time when such comparative religious scholarship was groundbreaking, and his findings retain a powerful relevance in any era grappling with questions of tolerance, identity, and what it means to be different in a society that demands conformity. This is history that challenges assumptions, rewards careful attention, and leaves the reader with a richer understanding of the American spiritual experience in all its complexity, contradiction, and unexpected grace.

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1 — Contemporary Interest in Mormonism
• CHAPTER 2 — European Influences: Biblicism and Mormonism
• CHAPTER 3 — The American Situation—As Seen by Mormonism
• CHAPTER 4 — Indian-Israel in Mormonism
• CHAPTER 5 — “Mormon Bible”
• CHAPTER 6 — Zion in America
• CHAPTER 7 — Self-Identification with Israel
• CHAPTER 8 — The Gentiles, and the Jew as a Gentile
• CHAPTER 9 — Ephraim: Mixed Among the Nations
• CHAPTER 10 — The Mormon Mission to the Jews
• CHAPTER 11 — Restoration of the Jews
• CHAPTER 12 — The Mormons and the Jewish People of Old
• CHAPTER 13 — The Image of the Jew Through the Ages
• CHAPTER 14 — The Jew-Mormon Comparison
• CHAPTER 15 — School of Prophets and Bible Language
• CHAPTER 16 — Jewish Converts to Mormonism
• CHAPTER 17 — Early Meeting of Jew and Mormon
• CHAPTER 18 — The Resident Jewish Merchant Class and the Rise of a Gentile Front, Religious Life and Social Contact with the Mormons
• CHAPTER 19 — From Outright Gentile Conflict to the Achievement of Utah Statehood and Peace
• CHAPTER 20 — Polygamy and Political Strife
• CHAPTER 21 — Jews and Jewish Matters in the Mormon Press
• CHAPTER 22 — The Jewish Press on Mormons and Mormonism
• CHAPTER 23 — The Jew-Mormon Relationship in American Public Opinion
• CONCLUSIONS