Brother against brother, Jew against Jew, 10,000 Jewish soldiers fought in the nation’s deadliest war, in numbers proportionally higher than other American groups. Jewish Soldiers in Blue & Gray explores the little known history of the Civil War Jews who fought on both sides of the battlefield—7,000 for the Union and 3,000 for the Confederacy.
Allegiances during the War Between the States split the Jewish community as deeply as it did the nation at large: some prominent Jews, including Jewish slave owners, cited the Torah to justify slavery, while others were leaders in the abolitionist movement or established their synagogues as stops on the Underground Railroad.
Jewish Soldiers in Blue & Gray unreels remarkable history, including Ulysses S. Grant’s infamous “General Order No. 11” expelling Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi; the rise of Sephardic Jew Judah P. Benjamin to Secretary of State of the Confederacy; the imprisonment of Confederate spy Eugenia Levy Phillips; and the unlikely story of Abraham Lincoln’s Jewish doctor who moved through the South as a Union spy.
A dramatic and visual rich film narrated by Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Milius (Apocalypse Now) with Sam Waterston (Law & Order) voicing Abraham Lincoln.
