Ford's fourth chapter opens with one political fight: the push by Jewish organizations to change how the U.S. Census classified Jewish identity — from a racial or national category to a religious one. In the early 20th century, U.S. immigration records listed Jewish immigrants as belonging to the Hebrew race, which showed how large Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe was. Ford claimed that Simon Wolf, a leading Washington Jewish figure, and other American Jewish Committee officials had successfully lobbied the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Immigration to move Jews from a racial or national category to a religious one. That change took Jewish immigration out of the statistics that tracked where new immigrants came from.
Ford also cited Daniel Guggenheim and Julian Mack — both prominent in American Jewish civic life — for lobbying Congress on how immigrants were classified. Ford argued the push to classify Jews as a religion rather than a nation was political. Being counted as a religion helped Jewish interests: any limit on Jewish immigration would then look like religious discrimination. Being counted as a nationality would put Jewish immigration under the national-origin quota system that Congress was debating and would pass as the Immigration Act of 1924. Ford saw this fight as Jewish political organizing that served Jewish interests while claiming to stand on principle.
Ford backed his argument with many quotes from Jewish sources. He cited Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, from 'Der Judenstaat' (The Jewish State, 1896): 'The Jewish question is not a social question and not a religious question, even though it may sometimes take these and other forms. It is a national question which can only be solved by making it a political world question.' Ford used this to argue that the most famous Jewish nationalist thinker had himself defined Jewish identity as national — the same definition Ford was using.
Ford also cited Moses Hess, the 19th-century Jewish socialist and early Zionist, who wrote in 'Rome and Jerusalem' (1862): 'Jewish noses cannot be reformed, and the black, wavy hair of the Jews will not turn into blond hair through baptism or conversion, nor can its distinguishing racial characteristics be removed by any sort of education. The Jewish race is a primary race that has maintained itself in complete purity throughout all the centuries despite the most varied influences of climate.' Ford cited this not as his own view of Jews but as proof that prominent Jewish writers had themselves stated a racial definition of Jewish identity.
Ford also cited Israel Friedlaender, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, who wrote: 'The dispersion of the Jews had nothing to do with the loss of nationhood. The Jews remained a nation even in the diaspora. They maintained their language, their customs, their culture, their solidarity. The synagogue was not merely a house of worship. It was the parliament of an exiled people.' And Rabbi Isaac Lesher (also spelled Leeser), who wrote: 'The Jews are a people — one people — and nothing shall make us otherwise.' Ford stacked up these quotes from Jewish authorities to argue that his view of Jewish identity as national, not purely religious, was not his own invention but a position with deep roots in Jewish thought.