Thoughts on Theses: Sonia Chajet Wides

Q: To begin, would you tell me a little bit about yourself?

A: My name is Sonia Chajet Wides. I’m a senior from Brooklyn, New York, and I’m a history major. I’ve been involved with The Student for my whole time here as a news writer, then news editor, then a features editor, [and] then senior managing editor this semester. And I also have been involved in Jewish life here. I run the Jewish discussion group, which I’ve been doing for three years.

Q: Can you tell me about what made you decide to do a thesis?

A: It’s actually related to The Student. My freshman year, I was still working as a news editor … Caelen McQuilkin [’24E] — who’s my dear friend and mentor — and I were working on a two-part article that was about diversity and Amherst admissions and how Amherst had diversified over the course of the past six decades … But there wasn’t a history we could read about it, so we ended up going into the archives and Caelen and I spent a few memorable afternoons going through all these folders of letters and Student articles and basically … piecing together this story of how Amherst diversified. And I really loved that experience. It was just so cool to get to do archival research. And honestly, part of that experience, which was in the second semester of my freshman year, was what made me realize I wanted to be a history major … in the history department, you’re required to work in an archive for your thesis … I think from that point on, I knew I probably wanted to do a thesis, but I did not at all have any idea what it would be about until the fall of my junior year.

Q: How did you find your topic?

A: I was doing research for a paper, for [Associate Professor of Black Studies and History] Elizabeth Herbin-Triant’s class, “Black and White in the U.S South,” which is an amazing class. And my final paper for that class was about the colonization movement, which was a movement among both Northern and Southern white people in the early 19th century; they basically believed that the solution to slavery was that they were going to deport free Black people to Africa to be missionaries there and to colonize Africa … I was doing research for a paper about how that manifested on college campuses, including at Amherst … Professor Herbin-Triant recommended a book called “Ebony and Ivy” by Craig Wilder. [While] I was reading … there was a two-paragraph aside about how a lot of the people that were involved in the in the American Colonization Society were also involved in this group called The American Society for Ameliorating the Condition of the Jews, which wanted to try and convert Jews to Christianity and move them to a colony in upstate New York. And he made this really interesting connection between the two groups … I had never heard of this group before, which I was really shocked by because it sounded really crazy and I would say that if there’s one thing I know the most about, it’s probably Jewish history. So I looked it up and there was really not much to see online. And I was like, “Damn, this is kind of like under the radar. Like what’s going on?” And then I had a little light bulb moment. I was sitting in the catacombs, and I was like, “Wait a minute, maybe this is a potential thesis topic.” And then I was like, “Okay, I need to get back to writing my actual essay.”

[Herbin-Triant] actually helped me find some initial primary sources … and it became quickly clear that there were a lot of primary sources, even if there weren’t a lot of secondary sources. And then I came back [from studying abroad] and the summer before my senior year, I did a lot of archival research. By that point, it was kind of in full swing.

Q: Can you explain more on what you found while researching the Society?

A: [The American Society] was part of a much broader movement of white Protestant groups that was later called the Benevolent Empire. American Jewish leaders had a really fierce response to this society. The first American Jewish periodical was called “The Jew,” and it was written in response to every single issue of [the Society’s] periodical [“Israel’s Advocate”].

The argument in my thesis is that, in setting forth [the Society’s] vision for the place that Jews should have in the United States, both the American Society and the Jewish leaders were making contributions to larger discussions about the nature of America itself. The society had this very clear vision of the United States as a Christian nation — and a Christian promised land — and were trying to think about how Jews fit into that. And in response, Jewish leaders are really claiming this pluralist Republic definition of the United States … and calling the Society anti-American, because they said, “We have religious freedom here and we are important to the fabric of the United States and the Constitution is on our side.” And I think that those debates about religious freedom and the nature of what it means to be American, homogeneity versus plurality, are things that are still very relevant and still being debated. That battle is not over yet. And I think [my] thesis has been one small way to understand those debates through a lens that is sometimes really strange and funny, but also really fascinating.

Q: How did you manage to bring light to the ridiculous elements while also balancing the weight of the Society’s vision?

A: I think … what the society was doing [is] inherently ridiculous, because the way that they wrote was nonsensical ... It was exaggerated. It was self-important. They would lie all the time. And then in response, this guy Solomon Jackson, who wrote “The Jew,” would call them out, and he was really funny and really snarky. So reading his stuff was just really fun. I didn’t even have to try that hard to weave [humor] in, because it was just kind of there … It’s kind of a nice reminder that even these really powerful people who had these really messed up ideas were not always that smart. And you can laugh at them. I think that’s actually really important. It felt very powerful to be like, “You guys are really stupid.” That’s kind of maybe what Solomon Jackson was trying to do too … And honestly, part of [what] was so fun about reading “The Jew” was that it was, I was spending all day reading all of these society materials and being like, “This is crazy” … And then all of a sudden I was able to read this counter-narrative and it was like a breath of fresh air. I was like, “Oh, someone’s calling B.S. on this.” And that was really refreshing.

Q: Did some of the archival research implicate Amherst’s relationship to the Society?

A: A lot of the primary sources I had access to were the materials from the Society, including … a list of all the different chapters … I was just looking through … and I noticed there [were] actually two for Amherst, one for [the town of] Amherst and one for Amherst College. And the one for Amherst town was headed by this guy named Zenas Clapp. Crazy name. And then I ended up finding out that he was actually the first librarian at Amherst. And then there was one [chapter at] the college founded by two students. I don’t know how big of a deal the chapter was … but it was evidence that Amherst [students], [at] one of these very missionary-minded, elite colleges … were interested in it — really indicat[ing] to me that this group had a lot of reach … Also [Frost] Library has a copy of the memoir of the founder of the Society … There [are] only like 12 copies in the U.S. and … it was donated by a student group that existed at the beginning of the college, which is super interesting [that students] were reading his stuff. [One of] the biggest takeaways of my thesis was that even though this group was obviously really unsuccessful in their goal of moving converted Jews to a colony in upstate New York, it still had a lot of reach, a lot of members, and hundreds of chapter societies — and people were interested in it.

Q: What was the most surprising thing that you learned from this whole process?

A: I don’t think people usually expect that Jews have an involvement in this early period of American history. Usually, when you hear stories about American Jewish history, most people will focus on the part of American Jewish history that started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when millions of Ashkenazi Jews came to the United States from Eastern Europe. And the time period before then, which was mostly Sephardic Jews living in the U.S. … is usually just glossed over … And I felt like this was such a significant interruption in that story because here you have some of the most powerful people in the United States — John Quincy Adams, all these members of these super elite families, members of the Jay family, the Livingston family, the Van Rensselaers — that were involved in this group that was dedicating itself to thinking about Jews’ place in the United States.

And also a really important part of my thesis is that, in response, Jewish leaders had really strong opposition to the group and set forth their own idea of American Jewish identity. Again, I was surprised that this wasn’t mentioned more … How could people discount this? It feels so important. And particularly because the Society was part of this broader network that laid the groundwork for white Christian nationalism now.

Q: As the esteemed writer of Old News, how was your archival puzzle-piecing process related to researching and writing your thesis?

A: Well, I think that my interest in history research and in journalism are really similar. It’s all about just wanting to try and help people understand the world around them. And obviously journalism, you’re doing that in a much more recent past — it’s about what’s happening right now … I think that’s why Old News is a kind of perfect overlap for that because it’s bringing both those things together. And so spiritually, [the thesis] did not feel very different from that. Because I really wanted to make sure that this was legible and clear for people, making people understand this history. But it was also incredibly different in that it was just such a longer process and such a longer piece of writing. I think I underestimated how hard that would be. By the time I was kind of starting to write, I had so much information and so many thoughts. And I just kind of felt so overwhelmed … even though I’ve been preparing by writing 25-page papers, it’s just nothing in comparison to 150 pages.

Q: What would you say is the most rewarding part of all of that work?

A: I’m kind of tempted to say all of it. I feel so happy with it. I think that one of the coolest parts for me was that I got to tell this story as part of my thesis … And because there was so little that’s been written about this group, I feel like I got to do the work of a historian, and look at these primary sources and basically be like, “then this happened, and this happened, and this happened.” And that was so fun and exciting.

Q: Did you have a soundtrack for this thesis-writing experience?

A: I actually do have a thesis playlist on Spotify … There's jazz, classical, and house music. One of my favorite albums that I’ve listened to for all of college to do work is called “Afro-Harping” by Dorothy Ashby … But I was listening to Peggy Gou, and I listened to a lot of Daft Punk … and then also I listened to “Swan Lake” and the “Cinema Paradiso” soundtrack … I would shuffle [the playlist] and it would be like the craziest mix of music but that really got me through it for sure.

Q: Do you have any advice for anyone who might be inspired to write a history thesis?

A: I would say go for it … [But] don’t do a thesis unless you’re excited about it, because … there [are] so many ways to cap off your time at Amherst. For me, doing a thesis felt like a really good way of culminating the academic stuff I’ve done here, but I don’t think that’s true for everyone or for every department … If you’re not excited about it, don’t do it. But if you are, then push through because it really is worth it.

And also, I just think I really could not have done this without the help of so many people. I talked to so many professors about this. My advisor, [Charles Hamilton Houston ’15 Professor of Black Studies and History and Department Chair of Black Studies] Stefan Bradley, is amazing — and also a lot of the other professors I talked to. And also the research librarians, [Research and Instruction Librarian] Alana Kumbier — [they’re] amazing. My friends helped me … I worked with archivists. This was not a solo effort, and I think one of the best parts of it was getting to talk about it with so many people who also thought it was interesting.

Q: And if someone totally random were to come across your thesis, what is the one thing that you would want them to take away from it?

A: These big questions about what America is have always been up for debate, and there [never has] been just one narrative. So, if someone says to you, “America’s always been a Christian nation and now modern-day secularists are trying to whitewash our history” — That’s a lie … For as long as the United States has existed, there have been people who wanted it to be a homogeneous Christian nation, and there have been people who have really stood against that …

I think another piece of relevance for this moment for American Jews to understand [is that] white Christian nationalism is not our ally and never will be. And the people [who] created those ideas did not want Jews to be Jewish in the United States. Even though they used this language of being kind to Jews and wanting to stop Jewish hatred, they had no real respect for Jews, and that was just part of their bigger project to create a white Christian nation that would never include Jews. And I think that’s something people should take to heart as they navigate the political landscape now.