#037 - Introduction to Jewish history in America.

#037 - In this episode Gabi gives an introduction to Jewish migrations to the US.

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Transcript

Jewish presence in the US

Over 3.5 million Jews have immigrated to the United States since the first Jews arrived back in the 17th century. As a result, the vast majority of American Jews are descended from people who came to America from someplace else.

Today, America’s Jewish community is largely Ashkenazi , Jews who trace their ancestry to Germany and Eastern Europe. However, the first Jews to arrive in what would become the United States were Sephardi, tracing their ancestry to Spain and Portugal. 

Sephardi Jews

The first Sephardi settlers arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654 from Brazil. For several decades after, adventurous Sephardi and Ashkenazi merchants established homes in American colonial ports, including New Amsterdam (later New York), Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston and Savannah. While Ashkenazi Jews outnumbered Sephardi ones by 1730, the character of the American Jewish community remained Sephardi into the early 19th century. 

All of the early Jewish communities were Sephardi-style “synagogue-communities”: the community and the synagogue were one and the same.  Even if some leaders were Ashkenazi, they followed the Western Sephardi liturgy and adhered to Sephardi customs. Early American synagogues also seated congregants in the traditional Sephardi manner: women upstairs, men downstairs and everyone seated around the perimeter. They resembled and maintained ties with Western Sephardi congregations elsewhere, such as Amsterdam, London and the West Indies. 

Sephardi hegemony ended in the United States in the early decades of the 19th century. Sephardi immigrants nevertheless continued to arrive on America’s shores, initially from Holland and the West Indies, later from the disintegrating Ottoman Empire and still later from Arab lands, the latter now known as Mizrahi (Eastern) Jews. Some 50-60,000 Eastern Sephardi Jews immigrated to the United States between 1880-1924, many of whom spoke Ladino (Judeo-Spanish). More arrived following the 1965 Immigration Act, which ended four decades of quotas and made immigration to the United States easier. Today, an estimated 250,000-300,000 Sephardi Jews of different backgrounds live in the United States, comprising 3-4% of the total U.S. Jewish population.

Central Europeans

Between 1820 and 1880, America’s Jewish population ballooned from 3,000 to 250,000, a rate of growth 15 times greater than that of the U.S. as a whole. An estimated 150,000 Jews emigrated to America during these years, the overwhelming majority young German-speaking Central European Jews from Bavaria, Western Prussia, Posen and Alsace. Like the Catholics and Protestants who emigrated from these lands, Jews were spurred to leave by famine, economic dislocation and political discontent. But Jews emigrated at a rate almost four times that of their non-Jewish neighbors, for they additionally faced severe restrictions on where they could live, what kind of work they could pursue, how they practiced Judaism and even, in some cases, whether they could marry.  For them, America represented both economic opportunity and religious freedom.  

Overall Jewish emigration from Central Europe peaked in the 1850s — partly in response to the failed liberal revolutions of 1848, partly in response to the antisemitism that followed them, and mostly because of a dramatic rise in food prices and a sharp decline in real wages across the region. While immigration subsequently slackened, German-speaking Jews continued to arrive in America well into the 20th century – 250,000 of them, according to one estimate, by World War I alone.

German-speaking Jews took advantage of America’s expanding frontier and burgeoning market economy. They fanned out across the country, often beginning as peddlers, they spread the fruits of American commerce to the hinterland, building up new markets and chasing after opportunities. They also carried Judaism with them, spreading it literally from coast to coast. By the Civil War, the number of organized Jewish communities with one or more established Jewish institutions reached 160, and individual Jews lived in about 1,000 other American locations, wherever rivers, roads or railroad tracks transported them.  

German-speaking Jews transformed American Judaism. The synagogue-communities gave way to communities of (competing) synagogues, most of them Ashkenazi in one form or another and many of them conducted in German. Where Sephardi Jews had venerated ancestral custom and tradition, many German-speaking Jews looked to modernize Judaism in various ways, while a percentage abandoned religion altogether. Some, influenced by liberal religious currents in America and Europe, embraced what came to be known as Reform Judaism, with heightened attention to decorum, vernacular sermons, abbreviated services and a relaxed approach to Jewish laws and customs. Others looked to connect as Jews through fraternal organizations, the best-known being B’nai B’rith. German-speaking Jews also took advantage of new technologies to advance Judaism’s message. Books, periodicals and other publications — in English, Hebrew and German — promoted Jewish education, connected Jews one to another and helped Jews defend themselves.  

Eastern Europeans

The unification of Germany in 1871 diminished German-Jewish immigration to the United States, but at that very time East European Jewish immigration to America’s shores began to increase. Violent attacks (known as pogroms) led many to risk life and fortune in the new world, but the root causes of the mass migration lay deeper — in overpopulation, oppressive legislation, economic dislocation, forced conscription, wretched poverty and crushing despair, coupled with tales of wondrous opportunity in America and offers of cut-rate steerage travel. Once again, Jews emigrated at a much higher rate than their non-Jewish counterparts. Between 1880 and the onset of restrictive immigration quotas in 1924, well over two million Jews from Russia, Austria-Hungary and Romania settled in the United States.  

The majority of East European Jews spoke Yiddish and found jobs in rapidly growing cities on the East Coast and midwest, especially New York and Chicago, rather than as peddlers on the (fast-shrinking) frontier. Many became involved in the garment industry, as well as in cigar manufacturing, food services and construction. They became active in the labor movement’s struggles to improve conditions for workers; in socialism, communism and Zionism; and in efforts to assist Jews abroad. They also reinvigorated Orthodox Judaism and then the Conservative Movement, which simultaneously promised to be both religiously traditional and modern. By the time mass immigration ended, in 1924, they had reshaped the whole character of the American Jewish community. It now numbered some 3.5 million Jews, mostly of East European descent, and had become the second-largest Jewish community in the world after Eastern Europe.  

Yiddish culture — in the form of drama, journalism, poetry, prose and later film — flourished in American Jewish immigrant neighborhoods. Some of the cultural works they produced, since they were not subject to censorship, impacted Europe too. Immigrants and their children likewise became involved in music, the arts and scholarship. The most successful among those whose parents spoke Yiddish, like Leonard Bernstein and Barbra Streisand, eventually made major contributions to the broader culture. The legacy of East European Jewry thus continues to shape both the American Jewish community and America as a whole.

Later Immigrants

The immigrant quotas imposed by law in 1924 greatly reduced, but did not completely foreclose, Jewish immigration to the United States. Some Jews still received quota certificates and immigrated. Others crossed over from Canada or Mexico hoping not to get caught. Still others, such as pulpit rabbis, enjoyed quota exemptions under the law. For humanitarian reasons, about 200,000 European Jewish refugees gained entry in the late 1930s and 40s, some just prior to World War II and some soon afterward. 

In the decades following the revised 1965 Immigration Act, six other major groups of Jewish immigrants arrived on America’s shores. The largest by far, at least 500,000, were Jews from the former Soviet Union, who left following the collapse of Communism. Another 60,000-80,000 Persian Jews fled Iran following the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Thousands of Jews from Latin America immigrated to the United State in response to revolution, unrest, persecution and economic collapse. Tens of thousands of Jews from Arab lands immigrated (often via Israel) after being driven out by nationalist Arab governments and hostile Islamic neighbors. As many as 12,000 Jews from South Africa moved to the United States during the tumultuous apartheid era and its aftermath. And over 100,000 Israeli Jews live in the United States.  Unlike other Jewish immigrants to America’s shores, many Israeli-Americans speak of returning to their homeland at some point in their lives.  

The 2020 Pew survey of American Jews reports that about 10 percent of those over 18 were born abroad. Today, as in the past, immigration impacts upon the size and character of the American Jewish community.

n 1880, in a Jewish population of approximately 250,000, only one out of six American Jews was of’ East European extraction; 40 years later, in a community which had reached four million, five out of six American Jews came from Eastern Europe. Indeed, at that time over a third of East European Jewry had left their countries of origin, and 90 percent of them emigrated to the United States. Such an enormous wave of immigration had a tremendous effect on the American Jewish community.

The newcomers tended to cluster in the poorer districts of the metropolises. Most of them settled in the great commercial, industrial, and cultural centers of the northeast (New York in the first place, then Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore) and of the Midwest (particularly Chicago). Certain neighborhoods in these cities became almost exclusively Jewish, congested and bustling with a rich, typically Jewish way of life.

Yiddish Culture and Institutions

Through hard work and under extremely difficult conditions, these Jews established themselves in the garment industry, petty trade, cigar manufacture, construction, and food production. About 30 years after the beginning of the mass immigration, and not without bitter struggles, the Jewish trade union movement emerged as a formidable force, supported by over a quarter of a million workers. A flourishing Yiddish culture–poetry, prose, and drama–revolved mostly around the themes of the hardships of the Jewish worker’s life, expressing the reality of daily existence within a community of immigrants.

Although the majority of the immigrants were Orthodox and attached to the congregational traditions of their forefathers, life in America transformed them. The number of those volunteering to organize corporative bodies of the congregation dwindled rapidly, and former Eastern European institutions were replaced by a host of other organizations, ideological societies, confraternities, trade unions, lay charitable institutions, cultural centers, clubs, and leisure enterprises.

Interdenominational Tensions

Economic pressures, opportunities for social promotion, the cult of liberty and individualism–all these contributed to the disintegration of Orthodox Jewry. How, for example, could one join the American race for success while observing the Sabbath? Nevertheless, Reform Judaism, although it remained dominant, did not encompass the entire American community. Rivalry between Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism was a major contribution to the emergence of a religious pluralism unique to American Jewry.

All these ideological movements, social tensions, religious currents, institutions, and organizations, however, did not prevent the development of solidarity and a strong group consciousness among American Jews. Charitable organizations constituted a pivotal axis for identification with the entire community. Between 1895 and 1920 many of these bodies formed large “federations” which eventually became the most influential factors in community consolidation, as well as a symbol of Jewish continuity.

World War I, Zionism and Anti-Semitism

The avalanche of disasters that befell East European Jewry during World War I and its aftermath precipitated this development of American Jewish charitable organizations. The principal Jewish aid organization, “the Joint” (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee), established in November 1914, organized large-scale financial, medical, and social relief for their Jewish brethren in Europe, whereas the American Jewish Committee, the oldest Jewish defense organization in the U.S., afraid of being accused of dual loyalty, was content to practice a policy of discrete diplomacy.

The same postwar period witnessed the growth of the American Zionist movement which was developing a spirit entirely different from the radical brand of European Zionism. Led from August 1914 by Louis D. Brandeis, it combined Zionist allegiance with respect for American pluralism and for the democratic and progressive ideals of American culture at large.

Anti-Semitism began rearing its ugly head in America in the 1890s. The well‑established white Christian community despised the masses of poor immigrants who flocked to the United States, including the East European Jews, and regarded them as a threat to the American way of life and mode of government. The success of the German Jews, on the other hand, aroused envy and antagonism. A prolonged propaganda campaign with strong anti-semitic undertones led to the 1921‑1924 legislation that drastically limited immigration and revealed an explicit preference for the “Nordic race.”

Yet the fundamental characteristics of American society were too strong to permit the arrest of integration, and Jews continued to advance in every field. Bankers, scholars, judges, artists, and writers continued rising to prominence and making their impact on American life.

Finding acceptance in America

A gala parade marking the ratification of the Constitution, held in Phila­delphia on July 4, 1788, celebrated this achievement [of equal treatment of Jews and other religious minorities in the Constitution]. It presented, marching together in one division, “the clergy of the different Christian denominations, together with the rabbi of the Jews [probably Jacob R. Cohen], walking arm in arm.”

The famed physician Dr. Benjamin Rush, who witnessed the unprecedented spectacle, wrote that this first-ever ecumenical parade “was a most delightful sight. There could not have been a more happy emblem contrived, of that section of the new constitution, which opens all its powers and offices alike, not only to every sect of Christians, but to worthy men of every religion.”

Though it apparently escaped his notice, when the ceremony concluded, Jews ate separately at a special kosher table prepared on their behalf. Reflect­ing English custom, this public expression of Jewish ritual behavior (even, one assumes, on the part of those who were not always so scrupulous) effec­tively defined the boundaries of interreligious relations from the synagogue community’s official perspective. Much as Jewish leaders rejoiced at the “equal footing’ that brought them politically into step with Christians under the banner of the Constitution, they exercised the right to eat apart, following the precepts of their faith, formulated to help preserve Jews as a group.

Washington & the Jews of Newport

The famed correspondence between Jews and George Washington went even further in defining the place of Judaism in the new nation. The address of the “Hebrew Congregation in Newport” to the president–composed for his visit to that city on August 17, 1790, following Rhode Island’s ratification of the Constitution–paralleled other letters that Washington received from religious bodies of different denominations and followed a custom long associated with the ascension of kings.

Redolent with biblical and liturgical language, the address noted past discrimination against Jews, praised the new government for “generously affording to all liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship,” and thanked God “for all of the blessings of civil and religious liberty” that Jews now enjoyed under the Constitution.

Washington, in his oft-quoted reply, reassured the Jewish community about what he correctly saw as its central concern–religious liberty. Appropriating a phrase contained in the Hebrew congregation’s original letter, he characterized the U.S. government as one that “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” He described religious liberty, following Thomas Jefferson, as an inherent natural right, distinct from the indulgent religious “toleration” practiced by the British and much of enlightened Europe, where Jewish emancipation was so often linked with demands for Jewish “improvement.”

Finally, echoing the language of the prophet Micah (4:4), he hinted that America might itself prove something of a Promised Land for Jews, a place where they would “merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

More Than Just Newport

Washington’s letter to the Jews of Newport was actually the second of three official exchanges between him and the American Jewish community. Two months earlier he had corresponded with the “Hebrew Congregation” of Savannah, and in December, fully 20 months into his administration, he received an embarrassingly late joint letter from the “Hebrew congre­gations” of Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, and Richmond.

Later generations saw in this plethora of letters a reflection of Jewish communal disorganization and disunity, which we certainly know to have been the case. But the episode also reveals anew the determined congregationalism American Jews and their reluctance to cede authority to any single congregation, even the prestigious “mother” congregation, Shearith Israel of New York [a large and influential synagogue].

In defining themselves vis-à-vis their neighbors, Jews in the new nation resisted the hierarchic model of organization that characterized the much-discredited Anglicans [from which many British settlers in the New World were fleeing], and organized no Presbyterian-type synods to govern them. Instead, the congregational form of governance characteristic of Protestant dissenters from Anglicanism came to characterize Judaism, sharply distinguishing it from Judaism as practiced in Europe, and the Middle East.

As the 18th century ended, the goal of “equal footing” seemed closer to realization. The burgeoning pluralism of American religion, the impact of new federal and state laws, and liberal pronouncements from political leaders all reassured Jews of their rights under the new regime and gave them a heightened sense of legitimation. Their numbers had scarcely grown; indeed, no more than three new synagogues were established in America between 1789 and 1824. Their status, however, had improved immeasurably, particularly in those cities where organized communities of Jews existed.