The Jews' Indian

"The Jews' Indian bristles with original insights and suggests new ways of thinking about whiteness, and encounters between settlers and natives, in American history."

- Derek Penslar (Harvard University)

"A fascinating account…Koffman masterfully reveals the complexities and contradictions in American Jewish inter-ethnic relations. The Jews’ Indian raises important questions about Jews’ relationships to the project of American colonialism and the politics of race."

- Eliyahu Stern (Yale University)

"A major scholarly contribution, The Jews' Indian is endlessly fascinating and truly original. Koffman’s book is complex, distinctive, and—refreshingly—free of abstract polemics and sterile judgmentalism."

- Robert D. Johnston (professor of history, University of Illinois at Chicago)

“The Jews’ Indian represents the best scholarship to date on the complex historical relationship between these two tribal peoples about which little has been written.”

- Walter C. Fleming (Professor and Department Head for Native American Studies, Montana State University)

"A groundbreaking study revealing the tensions of identifying with marginalized peoples while participating in the colonial work of empires, The Jews’ Indian has implications for nearly all arenas of Jewish history."

- Michael Alexander (Maimonides Chair in Jewish Studies, University of California, Riverside)

"America’s Jewish Colonizers," a conversation with David S. Koffman by Hadas Binyamini

(Jewish Currents)

"The Jews’ Indian examines these scenarios of cultural exchange, borrowing, and appropriation with sensitivity and a researcher’s skill and patience."

(Canadian Jewish News)

"Throughout, Koffman’s deep and original work in the archive is in abundant evidence, and the moral thrust of his argument is crystalline."

(The Great Plains Quarterly)

"The Jews’ Indian represents a significant achievement in American Jewish history that addresses a serious gap in prior scholarship and should hold broad appeal for readers in ethnic studies and modern Jewish history. As a bridge between “the literatures on white-Indian relations and Black-Jewish relations,” it deserves consideration for inclusion on graduate and advanced undergraduate syllabi in Jewish identity studies, American Jewish history, and modern Jewish historiography."

(American Jewish Archives Journal)

"Koffman’s excellent book serves as invitation for Jews and Native peoples to dialogue in both Canada and the United States, to find common ground but also appreciate differences, not only in terms of culture but also in communal objectives, contrasting pluralism with sovereignty."

(Canadian Jewish Studies)

"Koffman’s book offers readers, scholars, and students a powerful chance to remember the insidious workings of white supremacy on American Jewish communities, and how those Jewish communities then affect other people."

(Journal of Jewish Identities)

"An important contribution to both the study of encounter, perception and transformation by Jewish Americans as they participated in the westward expansion of the United States."

(Australian Journal of Jewish Studies)