Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

October 20, 2025

Theodore Roosevelt, Friend of the Jews

“The valiant achievements of the Maccabees have always made them favorite heroes of mine.”

As New Yorkers face the prospect that their city will soon have a mayor obsessed by hatred of Israel and committed to undermining the police, it’s perhaps worth remembering one of the city’s greatest philo-Semitic politicians: Theodore Roosevelt. Although Roosevelt lost his mayoral run in 1886, he was a remarkably successful police commissioner from 1895 to 1897, actively recruiting Jews to the police force. The following anecdote, related by Stuart Halpern in his review of Andrew Porwancher’s new book about Teddy Roosevelt and the Jews, sums up his attitudes:

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