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Yeah, the current text does appear misleading. Feel free to make a conflict of interest edit request. My first impression is that that paragraph could be cut down to one or two sentences tacked onto the previous paragraph, sticking to the facts and mentioning that Hamilton might have been raised Jewish but little is known for certain. Freoh (talk) 16:02, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
I tweaked the wording regarding Newton's argument as to not seem like a response of any sort. Regarding Cohen-Ioannides, you're correct that she's not a Jewish Studies professor (she's an English professor) but she has a Doctor of Science in Jewish Studies and she has authored several books regarding Judaism & Jewish people in the U.S. so she qualifies as an expert in the field . By the way, regarding the reviews you listed: 1) Whitfield's review actually notes that the work is "supremely revisionist" and its claim and although he calls the book's thesis (as you noted) "ingenious", he also calls it "tentative". 2) Fink's review doesn't comment on the theory at all. 3) Goodman calls the theory "compelling" (i.e. interesting) but that's about it. We should follow the scholarly consensus and make sure not to create a false balance as the theory hasn't (yet) been adopted by the majority of scholars. Antiok 1pie (talk) 18:30, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply and for editing. A few comments: (1) Cohen-Ioannides is still inaccurately described as a "professor" when she is in fact an instructor, (2) Contrary to the entry, I don't actually argue that "Hamilton's mother must have converted to Judaism" but rather that she "probably" did , (3) to describe a work as "revisionist" is not to gainsay its credibility but merely to comment on its departure from conventional thinking. In fact Whitfield says that chapter one (wherein I lay out my evidence for Hamilton's likely Jewish identity) would have made "a terrific scholarly article." (When he says the theory is "tentative" he's referring to my own description of my thesis as probabilistic, rather than to his tentative acceptance of my thesis.)(4) Jonathan Sarna, widely accepted as the world's leading authority on American Jewish history, has also praised the book , (5) the book won two book prizes, including the Journal of the American Revolution Book-of-the-Year Award.
These latter three points are antecedent to my main point: the Misplaced Pages entry *only* refers to two scholars who are highly critical of my theory (one of whom self-publishes books and has no graduate training in history), while not mentioning *any* of the scholars who are more amenable to it. Readers of this entry could easily draw the mistaken impression that my theory has only elicited negative reactions when in fact the reaction is mixed, with more senior scholars proving more amenable. Porwancher (talk) 19:36, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
You know more about Hamilton than I do, but in my opinion all of this debate only distracts from the main point of this article, which is encyclopedic information about Alexander Hamilton. I made an edit that cut down and reorganized the Judaism section into § Faith. Porwancher and Antiok 1pie, does that work for you two? Freoh (talk) 20:36, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
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Footnote 20 to the sentence: "Alexander supplemented his education with a family library of 34 books" should reference page 24 of Chernow's biography of Hamilton, not 34; 34 books as referenced on page 24. 64.231.36.132 (talk) 14:02, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
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I have a conflict of interest, of course, but I would ask an editor to revise the Misplaced Pages article, which one-sidedly depicts my research on Hamilton's Jewish origins by only making reference to two critics (neither of whom has a PhD in the field) while neglecting the established scholars who have widely accepted the book's findings. The Misplaced Pages page could simply suggest that Porwancher's theory is controversial with a number of established scholars accepting it and others disputing it.
@Shoreranger, SwensonJ, Baguetteboing, and KAYTRA: I have mentioned you all here because of my editing of the portrait of Alexander Hamilton provided in the infobox. As the conversation on my talk page has gone to a standstill, I am opening a conversation on this article's talk page to discuss this in a more appropriate location than a user talk page and so that people who didn't read my previous edit summary can voice their opinions. I will not change the infobox portrait for now to not cause another edit war, but I firmly stand with the belief that the 1792 portrait is way better than both the 1802 and 1806 portraits. I am open to counter-arguments to this statement. Luxtay theIInd () 22:57, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
The image is massively cropped and depicts Hamilton out of office. Now I'm not going to change it yet but just be aware that I don't agree with your change (maybe unless you can find the full original portrait). Yourlocallordandsavior (talk) 21:38, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
If what you mean by "out of office" is that the image depicts him after he was no longer the Secretary of the Treasury, I fail to see the significance. If it is a good likeness of him as an adult, what difference does it make?
You can find an image of the full portrait here, for what it's worth:
Are you okay with this image as a compromise? It's an official portrait of him as Secretary of the Treasury in 1792 and looks fairly close to your 1802 portrait. Most importantly, it looks official (and doesn't depict Hamilton in a depressed state after the death of his son in 1801). Yourlocallordandsavior (talk) 01:00, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
No, not OK.
For one thing, that is the portrait I edited out in the first place. Secondly, as I have already contended, it i not "fairly close" to the 1802 portrait I substituted it with. Third, while I have provided a ink to another portrait directly from the Treasury website, there is conversely no indication that the portrait you suggest is "official" in any way. Finally, it is speculation as to what "state" Hamilton was in for the portrait I propose, but it is irrelevant anyway. Shoreranger (talk) 14:10, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
I actually meant the 1806 posthumous image of Hamilton, that is most frequently used when referring to Hamilton. The 1806 image is the one used for Alexander Hamilton articles on the Mount Vernon website, the National Park Service website, and the Department of the Interior website (you can scroll down Google forever after searching for "Alexander Hamilton" without seeing the 1802 portrait without having to try to find it on Google images). The Ron Chernow book on Hamilton, which inspired the play Hamilton, uses the 1806 portrait on its front-cover. As a counter-point, it appears that his portrait on the Treasury article doesn't use that 1806 image, but it is based on the 1806 portrait and based on the opinions on the Talk Page of the Frederick the Great article, using portraits done many years after their deaths is not ideal (the Treasury portrait was done 80 years after Hamilton's death). The 1806 image, however dramatized, was done just two years after Hamilton's death and is in my opinion, artistically most suitable to be the infobox photo, not the 1802 image. Being historically accurate is one thing, but the presentation or suitability of an image on an infobox representing an important historical person as Hamilton is another.
In comparison, even if your portrait is the most "accurate" portrait, your portrait is square (while the full sized one is low-res). The artist, Ezra Miller, is largely unknown compared to the more famous Turnbull (Miller has a very distinctive style but it seems as if he uses the same pose over and over in his paintings). Your portrait depicts Hamilton ten years after leaving office and in the midst of depression following the death of his eldest son in a duel (according to this post by the Albany Institute of History & Art on Facebook, "The portrait captured a pensive and somber Hamilton who was still mourning the death of his eldest son, Philip, who was killed in a duel in 1801 at age nineteen."), so I don't see how this is the most "realistic portrait", if you don't give any historian evidence. No websites uses the 1802 or 1792 portraits (Britannica and History uses the 1792 portrait, but they are encyclopedias with editors just like Misplaced Pages), compared to the 1806 portrait reused a thousand times when referring to Hamilton (the 1806 portrait is also exclusively used on many foreign language Wiki articles of Hamilton). Is your argument supported by multiple historians (I can't even find a book on Hamilton that uses that 1802 image)?
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Resolved Freoh (talk) 01:55, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
Done 
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