A Jewish Holy Land in Texas? Immigration, Assimilation, and Making Land Holy with Rachel Cockerell

Straight White American Jesus

Axis Mundi Media: Bradley Onishi + Daniel Miller

News, Politics

4.7 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 800-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ In this episode of Straight White American Jesus, Brad welcomes Rachel Cockerell, author of Melting Point, for a conversation about a little-known chapter in American and Jewish history: the Galveston Movement. More than a century ago, 10,000 Russian Jews immigrated to Texas through a coordinated effort led in part by Rachel’s great-grandfather and inspired by Zionist thinker Israel Zangwill. Rachel shares the personal journey that led her to uncover this buried history and write Melting Point, which explores themes of migration, memory, and identity. Together, Brad and Rachel examine how this movement reframes common narratives about Jewish immigration, the American frontier, and what it means to seek a homeland. They discuss the spiritual dimensions of migration, the complexity of assimilation, and the ongoing relevance of these themes in the context of current immigration debates. This episode weaves together history, personal legacy, and timely questions about belonging, borders, and the meaning of “home” in America. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163 Check out BetterHelp and use my code SWA for a great deal: www.betterhelp.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Axis Mundi.
0:07.0	What if I told you that over 100 years ago, a ship packed with Russian Jews set sail to the Holy Land, or what they thought would become the Holy Land?
0:26.7	They were not on their way to Jerusalem.
0:29.0	They were not on their way to New York.
0:31.3	They were on their way to Texas.
0:34.2	Today I speak with Rachel Cockroll about her book, Melting Point, which is an innovative memoir about her family history and the man who persuaded all of these Jews from Russia to get on a boat and head towards the Gulf of Mexico.
0:49.8	That journey marks the beginning of what's known as the Galveston movement, a forgotten moment
0:54.5	in history when 10,000 Jews fled to Texas in the lead-up to World War I.
1:01.6	Rachel discovered this family history by accident, and today in our interview we discuss
1:06.7	what it meant for her to uncover, this Zionist movement to America rather than to Israel.
1:14.7	This idea of building a holy land or making a land holy in a place that was foreign and other.
1:22.2	The thing that I think fascinates me most about this story is the way that Russian Jews who were fleeing persecution understood Palestine, the place that would become the nation of Israel, to be occupied already by a people.
1:38.0	And thus the decision not to go there, but to go to Texas.
1:42.5	This story has much to teach us about how we understand pilgrimage, how we understand
1:46.8	sacredness, and how we understand the territories that Jews and others call holy.
1:53.9	We talk about what it means to call a place home.
1:56.9	We also talk about how the place you imagine is where you belong, sometimes doesn't feel like it.
2:04.0	For subscribers, stick around.
2:06.2	I'm going to talk about the themes of assimilation and migration and juxtaposed Rachel's work with what was happening in the United States as the Galveston movement took hold Chinese exclusion, an injunction on Asian
2:19.1	migration and segregation in the South. And most of all, the idea that in what is supposed
2:25.9	to be a melting pot, the United States, there are many, and there always have been many,
2:31.4	who are unassimilable. those who will not be welcome, considered
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 26 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Axis Mundi Media: Bradley Onishi + Daniel Miller, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Axis Mundi Media: Bradley Onishi + Daniel Miller and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.