Was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jewish?

My friend ‘The Black Rabbit on Inle’ (hereafter Black Rabbit) directed me to his article on the alleged jewishness of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (hereafter FDR) on his Substack a few weeks ago after the subject of his alleged jewishness came up on X/Twitter. It is an excellent article that does a lot of the necessary research and source leg work to figure out much of the truth of the claim that is really worth reading. (1)

He also asked for my comments on it in so far as we agreed but he asked for my specific thoughts of FDR’s former son-in-law Curtis Bean Dall claims in his 1967 book ‘F.D.R.: My Exploited Father-in-Law’ where Dall mentions that FDR’s family was a ‘a composite of English, Dutch, Jewish, and French stock’. (2)

I will liberally quote his article examining the claims of FDR’s jewish ancestry although I’d encourage you to read his original work and subscribe to him as well (his work is also published for free).

Black Rabbit begins by pointing to the letters of the long-time editor of the ‘Detroit Jewish Chronicle’ Philip Slomovitz as the primary source of this claim via the then elderly former governor of Michigan and an intimate friend of FDR as well as Theodore Roosevelt:

‘Back in 1982 the Jewish Chronicle "The Organ of British Jewry" announced that FDR had a Jewish great-grandmother, but they got a little confused.

The whole story is based on a book published that year which contained a series of six letters written in March and April 1935, regarding the alleged Jewish ancestors of the Roosevelts. The Jewish great-grandmother mentioned in one of these letters, was that of FDR's wife Eleanor—FDR was her distant cousin, but they did not share any great-grandparents—and the "evidence" mentioned in this letter, is just hearsay. But, that's not the end of the story, it was authoritatively claimed that FDR was far more Jewish than having just one long-dead Jewish in-law.

In 1934, a 74 year old Chase Osborn, the former governor of the State of Michigan, and friend of both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, gave an interview to a Florida newspaper in which he revealed the Jewish ancestry of the Roosevelt family.

The article reads:

"He (Osborn) referred to the 'Jewish ancestry' of the president, explaining how he is a descendant of the Rossacampo family expelled from Spain in 1620. Seeking safety in Germany, Holland and other countries, members of the family, he said, changed their name to Rosenberg, Rosenbaum, Rosenblum, Rosenvelt and Rosenthal. The Rosenvelts in north Holland finally became Roosevelt, soon becoming apostates with the first generation and others following suit until, in the fourth generation a little storekeeper by the name of Jacobus Roosevelt was the only one who remained true to his Jewish faith. It is because of this Jewish ancestry, Osborn said, that President Roosevelt has the trend of economic safety in his hands."

The Nazis would later pick up on this, dubbing Roosevelt: "Rosenfeld."

This is the book in question, retired newspaperman Philip Slomovitz's Purely Commentary. It was the cause of Roosevelt's alleged Jewish origin to re-emerge 48 years after Chase Osborn's interview was published. In the book, Slomovitz devotes a short chapter to aforementioned six letters from 1935, when he was then editor of the Detroit Jewish Chronicle. I have reproduced the chapter here in its entirety, in the gray italic text, everything else is my own.

He provided this introduction to the chapter entitled F.D.R.:

A ninety-year old (he was actually only 74. Not a good start) former governor of the state of Michigan, Chase Osborn, gave a story to a southern newspaper in which he said that the Roosevelt family was originally Jewish. Osborn had no reason to be prejudiced against the Jews and had no political axe to grind; he was an old friend of the Roosevelts. He told this reporter that the Roosevelts had confided in him frequently, saying that they were of Jewish stock. It began, Chase said, with Theodore Roosevelt. I wrote F.D.R. asking him for an authentic reply to the rumor of his Jewish ancestry. Roosevelt responded to my inquiry, and the published letter, which created rather a sensation, elicited a comment from Dr. Stephen S. Wise and a series of comments from Osborn. Osborn was dissatisfied with the courteous treatment this writer accorded President Roosevelt. He wrote and called to say that the Roosevelts should be condemned for failing to affirm their Jewish background. "I am a better Jew than you are," he told me. What Osborn failed to take into account is that the Nazis used the Roosevelt letter as a means of calling him a Jew, of branding him "Rosenfeld," and it would have been adding fuel to the fires of anti-Semitism to say that Roosevelt was Jewish. As for the letter from Stephen Wise quoting Mrs. Roosevelt on the family's Jewish background, I have until now refused to release this material. But there is historical tradition that such a document can be released after almost half a century of anonymity.

Philip Slomovitz's letter to FDR:

March 4, 1935

His Excellency Franklin D. Roosevelt

President of the United States

Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. President:

I believe you will be interested in an article which appeared in a Michigan publication called Civic Echo under the heading, "Michigan Governor Explains Roosevelt's Jewish Ancestry." The article reads:

Mr. Chase S. Osborn, former governor of Michigan, was a recent visitor to St. Petersburg, Florida. In a newspaper interview, he expressed his opinions concerning the revolutionary policies of the present administration in Washington. Among other things, he described in detail the alleged Jewish ancestry of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The statement appearing in the press is as follows:

" 'Although a Republican, the former governor has a sincere regard for President Roosevelt and his policies. He referred to the "Jewish ancestry" of the President, explaining how he is descendant of the Rosscampo family expelled from Spain in 1620. Seeking safety in Germany, Holland, and other countries, members of the family, he said, changed their name to Rosenberg, Rosenbau, Rosenblum, Rosenvelt, and Rosenthal. "

'The Rosenvelts in north Holland finally became Roosevelt, soon becoming apostates with the first generation and others following suit, until in the fourth generation, a little storekeeper, by the name of Jacobus Roosevelt was the only one who remained true to his Jewish faith.' "

It so happens that this is not not the first time that we have seen your name coupled with the Jews, especially in the efforts of anti-Semities to label you as a tool of Jews and Catholics. However, it occurs to me that you may be interested in the above-quoted statement particularly in view of the fact that an eminent Michigan leader and former governor has seen fit to find that your ancestry was Jewish.

It is with a sense of considerable regret that I must comment that we have grave doubts as to whether we may hope to feel so deeply honored with the truth of your lineage as traced by former Governor Osborn.

However, there is always a chance that there is an honor in store for us somewhere, even though unexpected. I am therefore just wondering a bit whether your family records or albums somewhere lend affirmation or denial to these fantastic stories. Perhaps you will be able to find occasion someday to make your own comment on this story.

Faithfully and cordially yours,

Philip Slomovitz

Editor

Detroit Jewish Chronicle

FDR's reply to Philip Slomovitz: (Which was published in newspapers across the U.S.)

The White House

Washington

March 7, 1935

My dear Mr. Slomovitz:

I am grateful to you for your interesting letter of March fourth. I have no idea as to the source of the story which you say came from my old friend, Chase Osborn. All I know about the origin of the Roosevelt family in this country is that all branches bearing the name are apparently descended from Claes Martenssen Van Roosevelt, who came from Holland sometime before 1648—even the year is uncertain. Where he came from in Holland I do not know, nor do I know who his parents were. There was a family of the same name on one of the Dutch Islands and some of the same name living in Holland as lately as thirty or forty years ago, but, frankly, I have never had either the time or the inclination to try to establish the line on the other side of the ocean before they came over here, nearly three hundred years ago.

In the dim distant past they may have been Jews or Catholics or Protestants—what I am more interested in is whether they were good citizens and believers in God—I hope they were both.

Very sincerely yours,

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Chase Osborn's first letter to Philip Slomovitz:

Poulan, Worth County

Georgia

March 21, 1935

Dear Editor Slomovitz:

Thank you for your courtesy in sending me the Detroit Jewish Chronicle, dated March 15, 1935, with President Roosevelt's letter and comments, and you interesting editorial. The your letter just came, which is equally interesting. I have often heard of you in the highest terms from our mutual friend, Mr. Herbert Case.

You may say that the only reason you can ascribe to my statement that Mr. Roosevelt might be a libel or a reflection upon your people, is that he and I differ in politics. That is not a particularly big interpretation of my remark. What was in my mind was that if he ever was a Jew, he is an apostate. If he is an apostate, he is a reflection upon your race.

All my greatest idols and ideals belong to your people. Jesus Christ, a Jew, stands first. And then comes Moses. Perhaps every one of the major prophets of the Old Testament almost class with Moses. The greatest of all poetry is in the sublime Psalms. We owe our civilization, if we have a civilization, to the Hebrews and the Israelites, one and the same. From the Israelites we get our conception of the holiness of the Sabbath. No good Jew is a Sabbath-breaker. President Roosevelt is notoriously guilty of non-observance of the Seventh Day.

It is undoubtedly true that all the people of the earth, if we are to believe the Scriptures and I do believe them, descend from Adam. That would makes all Jews at one time. And if we were all Jews at one time, perhaps there may have been general apostasies at various periods and maybe the Roosevelt backsliding is no worse than that of the rest of us except that it is more recent.

President Roosevelt knows well enough that his ancestors were Jewish. I heard Theodore Roosevelt state twice that his ancestors were Jewish. Once was to me when I asked him about it after he had made a pleasing euphemistic statement in a speech to a Jewish gathering.

Furthermore, you conclude that I cannot prove my statements because my fire destroyed my own books. All these and other books bearing upon the genesis of proper names are to be had in almost any good library. I am living down here in the backwoods, simply.

I have enjoyed hearing from you and I like the way you treated the entire matter editorially. The only criticism I can make is that if I were as good a Jew as you are I would never apologize for it on my own account or for my people. You say you are "in good company," I would put it the other way: that Mr. Roosevelt is.

Best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

Chase Osborn

Chase Osborn's second letter to Philip Slomovitz:

April 2, 1935

Dear Mr. Slomovitz:

I believe I am a better Jew than you are! Anyhow you can make any use of my letter you wish. Best wishes.

Yours cordially

Chase S. Osborn

P.S. Better read the Talmud (Palestinian, Jerusalem, and Babylonian) with both Mishna and Gemara, your mosaic laws and ancient Jewish chronicles! All of us are helped by a close study of these.

Philip Slomovitz's reply to Chase Osborn:

April 4, 1935

Dear Mr. Osborn:

You are a much more interesting man than I originally thought you were, and I got a great thrill out of your letter making claim to better Jewishness than is mine.

I assure you, my dear dear governor, that whenever I have a chance, I do glance at Talmudic wisdom. I don't know what reference you have to my last letter (not reprinted in the book) which makes you say that you are a better Jew than I am, unless you are referring to the manner in which I condoned sabbath breaking on the part of some Jews, but it will interest you to know that there was a school of ancient rabbis who maintained that one is justified even in breaking the Sabbath when it helps him to make himself economically secure—meaning that one who is compelled to work on the Sabbath for the sake of his livelihood is justified in breaking even the Sabbatical law.

I am anxious to know which translation of the Talmud you are using for your own studies.

With sincere good wishes, I am

Yours very truly

Philip Slomovitz’ (3)

What is poignant to point out here is that Osborn’s claim that FDR had known jewish ancestry is hearsay and it could be true, but also it could be a figment of Osborn’s imagination, Osborn mishearing/misattributing something or it could be something that was genuinely claimed. If the latter, then it isn’t in and of itself evidence of FDR being of jewish ancestry precisely because it could have been a lie by FDR or a member of his family used to gain support in the jewish community via rumour mongering.

This isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem given that FDR is widely regarded to have been a ‘master manipulator’ (4) and he might well have been using these rumours of jewish ancestry – true or not – to manipulate support within the jewish community.

This is evident in Rabbi Stephen S. Wise’s letter to Slomovitz that Black Rabbit quotes:

‘Dear Slomovitz:

I think I have something that you will find of interest to tell you, in connection with your recent correspondence with President Roosevelt. I give you an almost literal transcript of an item of conversation at the luncheon table in my home when Mrs. Roosevelt was the guest of honor. I was not present, but this is the conversation as it was reported to me by Mrs. Wise, who is very accurate:

Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt said: "often Cousin Alice and I say that all the brains in the Roosevelt family comes from our Jewish great-grandmother."

She added a name which, as I recall it, was Esther Levy. Then she said, "Whenever mention is made of our Jewish great-grandmother by Cousin Alice or myself, Franklin's Mother gets very angry and says, 'you know that is not so. Why do you say it?'"

Mrs. Roosevelt spoke as with knowledge, conviction and authority. You must not, however, make use of this. I think it is just as well to let the matter die down now. Do you not think that what President Roosevelt wrote to you is more or less the statement of a man who knows what I have written to be true but deems it wiser and more expedient not to make public mention of it at this time?

With most cordial greeting and thanks again, dear Slomovitz, and wishing you might say something editorial about the Congress.

Faithfully yours,

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise’ (5)

Now as Black Rabbit points out; (6) the truth is that Wise and Slomovitz appear to have both believed that because Eleanor Roosevelt was claimed by Rabbi Wise’s wife (Louise Waterman; despite the name she was also jewish) to have claimed to have had a jewish great-grandmother called ‘Esther Levy’ during conversation at an unspecified social function therefore FDR also had jewish ancestry.

He rightly avers that this in itself is not evidence in and of itself and goes on to demonstrate that Wise’s claim is almost certainly completely untrue since Alice and Eleanor Roosevelt’s Roosevelt side great-grandmothers – Margaret Barnhill and Martha Stewart – were not jewish according to the available evidence and certainly not called ‘Esther Levy’.

As he concludes:

‘I personally cannot find any obvious Jewish ancestry for Eleanor Roosevelt, although I don't pretend my research on this has been that extensive. Rabbi Wise and Philip Slomovitz thought she was part Jewish, and Chase Osborn thought they were all Jewish. But aside from their letters, I can't find any evidence which points to it.’ (7)

The key I think is understanding that FDR was – and is – rightly regarded as a ‘master manipulator’ as before and that one of the principal targets for his manipulation was in fact Rabbi Stephen S. Wise.

As Medoff has recently written:

‘Nowhere was Roosevelt’s “passion for manipulation” on greater display than the way he managed his relationship with Rabbi Wise. Calling Wise by his first name, extending a dinner invitation to Wise’s daughter, and sending along “affectionate regards” were the kinds of gestures that touched Wise and made him feel important. A meeting in the Oval Office, however rare, made Wise feel as if he had the ear of the president. Such gestures helped ensure that Wise would keep his negative feelings about Roosevelt’s refugee policy to himself. That, in turn, would help sustain the traditionally high level of support for FDR among American Jews, who constituted a significant voting bloc in New York, the state with the largest number of electoral votes in a presidential election. Furthermore, FDR’s practice of glad-handing – of making policy-related promises he had no intention of keeping – was especially effective when dealing with Jewish leaders such as Wise, who were profoundly reluctant to press Roosevelt to follow through on his unfulfilled pledges.’ (8)

My suggestion is simple enough; we need not reject Obsorn’s and Wise’s claims about FDR as being dishonest or mistaken per se, but neither are they necessarily true. A happy middle ground position exists on this issue where we can suggest that FDR likely hinted that he might have jewish ancestry without actually stating that he did – which would be why FDR did just that in his reply to Slomovitz and also (according to Black Rabbit) had his reply syndicated and as a result republished in multiple newspapers – because the desired effect was to make jews – like Slomovitz and Wise – believe that FDR was a fellow member of the tribe and – in effect – a ‘Secret Jew’ which also seems to be the root of - the apparently extremely philo-Semitic - Osborn’s similar claims on the subject (note his ardent and early version of ‘Judeo-Christianity’ as well as his apparent loved of the [Babylonian] Talmud) who was working for their benefit in the White House.

This in turn – as we saw in Medoff’s commentary – allowed FDR to count on the support of the jewish community across the United States and particularly in the electorally important state of New York where jews were one of a few major powerful voting blocs.

We can then make sense of where these claims come from without dismissing them out of hand and also explain why – as Black Rabbit notes – they appear to have no support in the Roosevelt’s family’s genealogy whatsoever.

Further an underappreciated fact is that FDR’s early life and beliefs undermines the ‘jewish ancestry’ claims since as Breitman and Lichtman write:

‘Like his parents, Franklin took pride in his Protestant heritage, and would later proclaim his members in the “Aryan races.”’ (9)

We can thus see that the young FDR doesn’t appear to have known anything about his alleged jewish ancestry at all which doesn’t preclude it being true, but it just adds further strength to the claim that FDR was deliberately manipulating Osborn, Slomovitz and Wise for his own ends by falsely implying he had jewish ancestry not because he actually did.

Now the last element of this equation is Curtis Bean Dall’s otherwise meaningless aside in his 1967 book ‘F.D.R.: My Exploited Father-in-Law’ where he states that:

‘Most of us can trace our families back for several generations. However, when one goes "way back", then the matter usually becomes rather involved.

As I gathered it, the background of the Franklin Roosevelt family was a composite of English, Dutch, Jewish, and French stock.

I never gave the matter any particular thought except that it was of very solid American background. The Delanos, as a family, were accented on the French side.’ (10)

The issue with this is that Dall published this memoir over thirty years after he had divorced FDR’s daughter Anna Eleanor Roosevelt in 1934 after she had a secret affair with the journalist John Boettiger that began in 1932. (11) As such it is far from perfect memoir that tells the story of FDR’s manipulation by the powerful jews surrounding him – notably Bernard Baruch, Felix Frankfurter and Henry Morgenthau Jr. – long after the alleged events occurred and is not helped by Dall’s involvement with the anti-jewish nationalist rights from the 1950s onwards when the memoir was written and published. (12)

This doesn’t mean Dall is wrong but rather that he – like most so-called ‘Holocaust Survivors’ – published his claims long after they allegedly occurred and also after FDR’s widely syndicated reply to Slomovitz in 1935 that implied but didn’t claim jewish ancestry.

Thus because of the length of time between Dall’s involvement with the Roosevelt family ending – between 1934 and 1945 but probably circa 1934 in the wake of his divorce from Anna Roosevelt – the truth is probably that Dall didn’t have any specific knowledge of the ancestry of the Roosevelt’s and either heard such implied/direct claims made at social events/dinners mentioned by Osborn and Wise or is simply repeating FDR’s implied claim in his widely syndicated reply to Slomovitz in 1935.

Therefore we can see that there is no actual evidence that FDR was jewish at all but there is good evidence that FDR did privately imply/claim to have a vague amount of jewish ancestry during the 1930s (and probably 1920s and 1940s) but also that he did so for political reasons not because it was actually true.

References

(1) You can read this yourself here: https://winstonsmithministryoftruth.substack.com/p/the-roosevelts-were-jewish-the-letters

(2) Curtis B. Dall, 1982, [1970], ‘F.D.R.: My Exploited Father-in-Law’, 2nd Edition, Institute for Historical Review: Torrance, p. 95

(3) https://winstonsmithministryoftruth.substack.com/p/the-roosevelts-were-jewish-the-letters

(4) Rafael Medoff, 2019, ‘The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust’, 1st Edition, University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, p. xii

(5) https://winstonsmithministryoftruth.substack.com/p/the-roosevelts-were-jewish-the-letters

(6) Ibid.

(7) Ibid.

(8) Medoff, Op. Cit., p. xii

(9) Richard Breitman, Allan Lichtman, 2013, ‘FDR and the Jews’, 1st Edition, Harvard University Pres: Cambridge, p. 8

(10) Dall, Op. Cit., p. 95

(11) Peter Collier, David Horowitz, 1994, ‘The Roosevelts: An American Saga’, 1st Edition, Simon & Schuster: New York, p. 364

(12) Sara Diamond, 1995, ‘Road to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States’, 1st Edition, The Guilford Press: New York, pp. 87-88