Moses Jacob Ezekiel, Confederate Jews & The Reckoning Of The Lost Cause
I wrote a blog post about a roadtrip we took in 2019 through Virginia which was not so different than many I’ve taken to Civil War Battlefields and numerous historic sites. But since that particular trip, a lot has happened at the places we visited - monuments were removed at two different spots and a battle for the soul of Virginia Military Institute erupted. Some of this I wasn’t really aware of until I sat down to write about the trip…
See, I just started this history blog in March of this year, and I have photos of trips I took well before I knew I would be blogging about them. It’s been a joy really - I get to go back through the photos in a fresh storytelling mode that has me “researching” the topics anew to give context to the photos and often really just to refresh my memory. I end up learning a lot more than I originally gleaned from the visits.
One photo from this Virginia trip led me down a wormhole that I couldn’t have seen coming.
Moses Jacob Ezekiel, Confederate Jews & The Reckoning of the Lost Cause
As I mentioned in the other post I was simply walking down the street in Lexington, Virginia from General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s home on the way to Washington and Lee University, when I noticed a seemingly random plaque on the sidewalk that stopped me in my tracks:
I thought “How cool!” As a Jew I thought it was so cool that Moses Jacob Ezekiel was honored with a plaque for being VMI’s 1st Jewish Cadet, and the fact that it mentions him being a “famous sculptor” didn’t really even register at the time. I moved on to all the history at the two universities and forgot about Ezekiel.
Four years later as I started writing the blog post about the trip I came upon the photo again while at my computer and did a simple Google search. The first thing that came up was his Wikipedia entry. I don’t link to Wikipedia often because it’s still not really considered the reliable academic standard, but I do find it useful as a place to start. Wikipedia is actually quite trustworthy. Here are the basics of what I’ve discovered:
Ezekiel fought for the Confederacy at the battle of New Market in 1864 and was wounded there as a cadet, became a world famous sculptor with a studio in Rome, where he kept a Confederate flag hanging for years. He fully believed in the Lost Cause of the South and his descendants have recently asked that the Confederate Memorial statue in Arlington Cemetery (he’s buried at the foot of it) be removed. The Lost Cause at its most basic is the stance that the South was right and noble in its fight for independence in the Civil War, and it romanticizes the pre-war South while denying the truth of the horror of Slavery. The official page on the Confederate Memorial at the Arlington National Cemetery website gives a well-written background on this and some valuable context - much of which will, or at least damn well should make you sick.
As I’ve said often on this blog, I try to keep things historical here even while discussing emotionally charged topics. You can’t study the Civil War without studying the Confederacy, which can get complicated as you have to confront unpleasant facts that may disgust you. And yes, there were Jewish Confederate rebels, which I’ve known for a long time. Judah Benjamin served as the Attorney General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State for the Confederacy - we stopped years ago to see the Gamble Plantation where Benjamin stayed in Ellenton, FL while working his way to escape to England by way of the Bahamas, Havanah, and St. Thomas. We didn’t stop there because he’s some hero to me because he was Jewish. This country is certainly in a reckoning about how it views its history and there are plenty of opinions. So while it can be easy to get triggered over these hard topics I try to look at them pragmatically even as I let you know where I stand from time to time.
Okay so back to Ezekiel… I eventually made my way to the Jewish Virtual Library where there was a page about him. I was disappointed to find a totally whitewashed version of his life that even goes so far as to say that “Despite his Roman residence and his familiarity with celebrities and kings, no one remained a more loyal son of the South or proud American than this expatriate Jew from Richmond.” C’mon…. You can’t be a loyal son of the South AND a proud American if your definition of the South is the Confederacy. You can’t be loyal to BOTH the no-longer-in-existence Confederate States of America AND the United States of America. Sorry.
I had the following typed up for this piece when I discovered that page: “I’m not sure what year that article was written but it needs to be updated. I emailed them - not to remove the page and any mention of him, but to give a balanced historical representation of who he really was, and importantly what his art represented which is absolutely relevant since his contributions in art are what he’s being celebrated for. They replied that they would pass my concerns along to the author. His name is Michael Feldberg, PhD. I guess we’ll see what happens.”
Here’s the email I sent - I was respectful but forceful:
Hello,
I am doing a little “online research” for a blog post I am writing and I came across this article on Moses Jacob Ezekiel on your website. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/moses-jacob-ezekiel I find it extremely troubling that you’ve posted this whitewashed version of his life without mentioning his devotion to the Confederacy and the Lost Cause of the South long after the end of the American War Between The States. As a Jew I don’t swell with Jewish pride reading about who this guy really was. We need to own all aspects of our history good and bad. You need to correct this. My objective isn’t to “cancel” him once and for all - indeed the blog post I’m writing includes photos of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s home which I was walking from to Washington & Lee University when I came across this plaque on the sidewalk:
I had no idea who he was but of course it caught my eye as a Jew and I thought it was pretty cool.
I figured I’d include it in my blog and so I started Googling and ultimately I came to your site after discovering that his own descendants are trying to have some of his Lost Cause Jim Crow era sculptures removed.
The last two paragraphs of the article on your site are the most troubling.
“Ezekiel did indeed "earn a reputation" as Robert E. Lee had hoped, and he proved that Jews could be sculptors. When the United Daughters of the Confederacy approached him to execute the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery (1914), Ezekiel felt he could dictate the terms of his commission. He insisted that the Daughters give him full artistic license for the monument, which was based on the words of the prophet Isaiah, "And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks." They agreed nervously to Ezekiel’s conditions, but were delighted with the results.
As a tribute to the beauty of his work, Ezekiel was knighted by Emperor William I of Germany, and Kings Humbert I and Victor Emmanuel II of Italy –– hence his title "Sir." Despite his Roman residence and his familiarity with celebrities and kings, no one remained a more loyal son of the South or proud American than this expatriate Jew from Richmond. When Ezekiel died Rome in 1917, he left behind a specific request that his body be returned to America and buried at the base of his confederate Memorial in Arlington, alongside his comrades-in-arms.”
Of course the United Daughters of the Confederacy were delighted with the results - it expressed devotion to the Confederacy during a time when Lost Cause mythology was in full swing to reclaim the rightful cause of states rights and the slaveowning way of life - as righteous protectors and caretakers of their human property during the Jim Crow era. It seems quite the contradiction to say “no one remained a more loyal son of the South or proud American than this expatriate Jew from Richmond”. Can you really be both if your loyalty to the South is more than just being from a hometown you love in Alabama (which is perfectly acceptable for example) - if your devotion actually represents the Confederacy itself? Absolutely NOT.
You need to update this. I hope you can do it as soon as possible.
L’Shana Tovah to you all.
Regards,
Doug Cohen
Proud United States American and Jew
I am pleased to report that I received an email back the very next day from the author himself - here’s what it said:
Dear Mr. Cohen,
I'm the author of the Ezekiel essay on the JVL. I wrote it @2003 or so. Since then, I've published a different version that was published 5 years ago in an online magazine, Artes.com. I've attached it to this email. Mitchell Bard has consented to swap the new one in to replace the older version. Thanks for bringing this to his attention so he could bring it to mine.
L'shana tova,
Michael
Michael Feldberg, PhD
So let’s talk about this for a minute. For starters, how cool is that? Michael Feldberg didn’t just make some obligatory modification because someone called him out on his original piece. Granted, I didn’t ask him what prompted him to publish an updated version, but he had already rewritten and published the piece in 2018 and the new version is much more thorough and well balanced. He pulls no punches about Ezekiel’s full embrace of the Lost Cause and what that means starting with the third sentence. Lost Cause mythology is still a problem the remnants of which haven’t all been removed. You want to end racism? Can you “end” it? I say you can’t as long as you continue to normalize Lost Cause mythology. Changing a narrative like that one will not “erase” our history as some seem to freak out about. But it may help to make it more unfashionable and unacceptable in our society little by little. A lot happens in15 years (as I’m sure you’ve noticed) and I don’t know what led Dr. Feldberg to rewrite the piece 15 years after the first version, but I give him credit for it and it appears he didn’t know the old one was still online.
And now it’s no longer online. The new one is! They made the change immediately. Here’s the new one.
Yes, how we think about and tell our history can evolve as we grow and learn from it, and it should. I never want to stop learning. I’ll never end my ongoing quest for knowledge. I refuse to stay stuck and not let the changing times inform my takes on things. That’s the only way to be for me - progress is important and I resolve to be a part of it. Go ahead and comfort yourself that you’re “old school” as a catch all cover for your stubbornness if you refuse to change, but instead of old school you’ll just become…..old. And irrelevant.
M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com. You can follow Doug’s band Vintage Playboy at their Facebook page here.
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