This cartoon in the popular humor magazine Puck depicts Uncle Sam, represented as Moses, leading Jewish refugees through the seas of “oppression” and “intolerance” to “western homes.” The exaggerated Semitic features of the subjects offended American Jews. In truth, humor magazines of the period regularly caricatured and poked fun at all ethnic groups and Puck was generally sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. In this very issue, Joseph Keppler, the editor of Puck and one of the artists of “The Modern Moses,” admitted that pernicious anti-Semitism threatened European Jewry and he acknowledged that Jewish immigrants “have many remarkable and admirable qualities.” 

In common with many Americans of the period, Keppler welcomed Jewish and other immigrants, as long as they were prepared to assimilate into American society. Frederick Burr Opper, the other artist of this cartoon, was himself the son of a Jewish immigrant father from Austria. 

Frederick Burr Opper and Joseph Keppler

Puck

New York, November 30, 1881

Chromolithograph

B(NS)A87 (Abraham and Deborah Karp Collection)