New Civil War Jewish Novel Includes a Jewish Union Spy at a Confederate Seder
The April 4th-5th Weekend Journal of The Wall Street Journal carried a review by Emily Bingham of the new novel by Dara Horn ALL OTHER NIGHTS. The review was headlined “A Passover Plot and a Civil War Spy Tale” and begins:
In March 1861, blond, blue-eyed Jacob Rappaport of New York is hiding in a barrel on a boat headed to New Orleans. Rappaport, a 19-year-old Jewish private in the Union Army, has been ordered to kill his own uncle, a rabid Confederate plotting President Lincoln’s assassination. So begins Dara Horn’s “All Other Nights,” an enjoyably fast-paced amalgam of historical romance, spy novel and political thriller — laced with American Jewish history.
Bingham, a historian who is the author of MORDECAI: AN EARLY AMERICAN FAMILY, later in the review says:
Disguised as a Confederate who has turned against his native North, Jacob arrives at the home of his uncle, Harry Hyams, in time for a Passover Seder prepared and served by slaves. A fellow guest is Judah Benjamin, the Confederate secretary of state, the highest post held in America by a Jewish politician up to that point. Jacob despises Benjamin’s slaveholding and pro-South politics but can’t help admiring his political brilliance. During the Seder, where Jacob intends to kill his uncle with poison, Hyams discusses his plan to kill Lincoln — an assassination plot that Benjamin dismisses as egotistical nonsense: “Glory isn’t for the Jews, Harry.”