History of the Jews in the United States
There have been Jewish communities in the United States since colonial times, with individuals living in various cities before the American Revolution. Early Jewish communities were primarily composed of Sephardi immigrants from Brazil, Amsterdam, or England.
For contemporary American Jewish culture, see American Jews.
Private and civically unrecognized local, regional, and sometimes international networks were noted in these groups in order to facilitate marriage and business ties. This small and private colonial community largely existed as undeclared and non-practicing Jews, a great number deciding to intermarry with non-Jews. Later on, the vastly more numerous Ashkenazi Jews that came to populate New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere in what became the United States of America altered these demographics.
Until the 1830s, the Jewish community of Charleston, South Carolina, was the largest in North America. In the late 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, many Jewish immigrants arrived from Europe. For example, many German Jews arrived in the middle of the 19th century, established clothing stores in towns across the country, formed Reform synagogues, and were active in banking in New York. Immigration of Eastern Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, in 1880–1914, brought a new wave of Jewish immigration to New York City, including many who became active in socialism and labor movements, as well as Orthodox and Conservative Jews.
Refugees arrived from diaspora communities in Europe after the Holocaust and, after 1970, from the Soviet Union. Politically, American Jews have been especially active as part of the liberal New Deal coalition of the Democratic Party since the 1930s, although recently there is a conservative Republican element among the Orthodox. They have displayed high education levels and high rates of upward social mobility compared to several other ethnic and religious groups inside America. The Jewish communities in small towns have declined, with the population becoming increasingly concentrated in large metropolitan areas. Antisemitism in the U.S. has endured into the 21st century, although numerous cultural changes have taken place such as the election of many Jews into governmental positions at the local, state, and national levels.
In the 1940s, Jews comprised 3.7% of the national population. As of 2019, at about 7.1 million,[1] the population is 2% of the national total—and shrinking as a result of low birth rates and Jewish assimilation.[2] The largest Jewish population centers are the metropolitan areas of New York (2.1 million), Los Angeles (617,000), Miami (527,750), Washington, D.C. (297,290), Chicago (294,280) and Philadelphia (292,450).[3]
Americanization[edit]
The rapid assimilation into American culture of recent immigrants, dubbed Americanization, was a high priority for the established German Jews.[75] Jacob Schiff played a major role. As a wealthy German Jew, Schiff shaped key decisions providing help to Eastern European Jews and fought against immigration restriction. A Reform Jew, he backed the creation of the Jewish Theological Seminary even though it was a Conservative project. He took a stand favoring a modified form of Zionism, reversing his earlier opposition. Above all, Schiff believed that American Jewry could live in both the Jewish and American worlds, creating a balance that made possible an enduring American Jewish community.[76]
The National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), founded in Chicago in 1893, promoted philanthropy and the Americanization of newly arrived Jewish women. Responding to the plight of Jewish women and girls from Eastern Europe, the NCJW created its Department of Immigrant Aid to assist their travels. The NCJW's Americanization program included assisting immigrants with housing, health, and employment problems, connecting them with organizations where women could begin to socialize, and conducting English classes while helping them maintain a strong Jewish identity. The council, pluralistic rather than conformist, continued its Americanization efforts and fought against restrictive immigration laws after World War I. At the forefront of its activities was the religious education of Jewish girls, who were ignored by the Orthodox community.[77]
Philanthropy[edit]
Since the 1820s organized philanthropy has been a core value of the American Jewish community. In most cities the philanthropic organizations are the center of the Jewish community and activism is highly valued. Much of the money now goes to Israel, as well as hospitals and higher education; previously it went to poor Jews. This meant in the 1880-1930 era wealthy German Reform Jews were subsidizing poor Orthodox newcomers, and helping their process of Americanization, thus helping bridge the cultural gap. This convergence brought Jews into the political debates in the 1900-1930 period over immigration restriction. Jews were the leading opponents of restrictions, but could not stop their passage in 1924 or their use to keep out most refugees from Hitler in the 1930s.[78]
Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932) moved to Chicago in the late 1880s. Purchasing a half-interest in 1895, he transformed a small mail order house Sears, Roebuck into the largest retailer in America. He used his wealth for philanthropy targeted especially at the plight of rural blacks in collaboration with Booker T. Washington. From 1917 to 1932 the Julius Rosenwald Foundation set up 5,357 public schools for blacks. He funded numerous hospitals for blacks in the South as well as 24 YMCA's; he was a major contributor to the NAACP and the National Urban League. His major contributions to the University of Chicago and to various Jewish philanthropies were on a similar grand scale. He spent $11 million to fund the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.[79]
Lynching of Leo Frank[edit]
In 1913, a Jewish factory manager in Atlanta named Leo Frank was convicted for the murder of Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old Christian girl in his employ. Frank was sentenced to death. Today, the consensus of researchers is that Frank was wrongly convicted.
In response to attacks on Jews, in October 1913, Sigmund Livingston founded the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) under the sponsorship of B'nai B'rith. The Leo Frank affair was mentioned by Adolf Kraus when he announced the creation of the ADL, but was not the reason for the group's founding.[80][81] The ADL became the leading Jewish group fighting antisemitism in the United States.
In 1915, Georgia governor John Marshall Slaton, commuted Frank's death sentence to life imprisonment. As a result of public outrage over this act, a Georgia mob kidnapped Frank from prison and lynched him.
On November 25, 1915, two months after Frank was lynched, a group led by William J. Simmons burned a cross on top of Stone Mountain, inaugurating a revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The event was attended by 15 charter members and a few aging survivors of the original Klan.[82] The Klan disseminated the view that anarchists, communists and Jews were subverting American values and ideals.
Local developments 20th and 21st centuries[edit]
Nashville, Tennessee[edit]
Reform Jews, predominantly German, became Nashville's largest and most influential Jewish community in the first half of the 20th century; they enjoyed good relations with the Orthodox and Conservative congregations. Some German Jewish refugees resettled in Nashville from 1935 to 1939, helped by prominent Nashville families. Both the Orthodox and Conservative congregations had relocated their synagogues to the suburbs by 1949, and the entire Jewish community had shifted southwest by about five miles. Although subtle social discrimination existed, Nashville's Jews enjoyed the respect of the larger community. Public acceptance, however, required complicity in racial segregation. The Observer, Nashville's Jewish newspaper, tried to find a middle ground between assimilation and particularism, but after years of calling for group solidarity, accepted that the Jewish community was pluralistic.[137]
Palm Springs, California[edit]
About 32,000 Jews reside in the Palm Springs area, reports the United Jewish Congress of the Desert. The world-famous desert resort community has been widely known for its Hollywood celebrities. Philadelphia publisher Walter Annenberg opened the Tamarisk Country Club in 1946, after being refused membership in the Los Angeles Lakeside country club. But his connections with Hollywood and corporations alike made his country club a success, and made it a policy to allow Jews and all people, regardless of race and religion, to have access to his facility.
Many elderly American Jews from the East coast and the Los Angeles metropolitan area come to retire in the warm climates such as the Coachella Valley, favoring golf course and mobile home communities. By the 1990s they were a large component of demography in the desert resort. There are 12 Jewish places of worship, including a Jewish community center in Palm Desert, where an estimated 20–25 percent of the population are of Jewish descent.
Palm Springs has the annual "Winter Festival of Lights" parade, which began as a separate parade to celebrate Chanukah in the 1960s. Over time, that and the Christmas-themed parade merged into the one celebrating the season's lights of menorahs, Christmas trees and the calendar new year.[138][139]
Miami[edit]
After 1945 many northeastern Jews moved to Florida, especially to Miami, Miami Beach, and nearby cities. They found familiar foods and better weather, and founded more open, less tradition-bound communities, where greater materialism and more leisure-oriented, less disciplined Judaism developed. Many relaxed their religiosity and attended services only during Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. In South Florida synagogue affiliation, Jewish community center membership, and per capita contributions to the United Jewish Appeal and the Jewish Federation are among the lowest of any Jewish community in the United States.[140][141]
Princeton, New Jersey[edit]
The development of Jewish (particularly Orthodox) student life at Princeton University improved rapidly since the end of World War II, when Jewish students were few and isolated. In 1958 Jewish students were more numerous; they protested against the Bicker system of eating club member selection. In 1961 Yavneh House was established as Princeton's first kosher kitchen. In 1971 Stevenson Hall opened as a university-managed kosher eating facility in the midst of the older private eating clubs. Jewish student initiative and Princeton administration openness deserve credit for this progress.[142]
Beverly Hills, California[edit]
An estimated 20-25 percent of the population of this affluent Los Angeles suburb is Jewish,[143] and about 20 percent is Persian.[144] About a quarter of the membership of Sinai Temple, a prominent synagogue in nearby Westwood, is Persian Jews who largely came to the United States in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.[144]
Rise to affluence in the 20th century[edit]
In 1983, economist Thomas Sowell of Stanford University wrote "Jewish family incomes are the highest of any large ethnic group in the US—72% above the national average."[148] Sowell points out that Episcopalians have also experienced similar prosperity—as a group—as Jews, but it is the "social and economic distance covered in a relatively short time" that makes the Jewish experience in America unique.[149]
Gerald Krefetz discusses the prosperity that Jews earned in the United States following their emigration from Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, and he attributes their success to their familiarity with "trading and exchanging, commerce, city living, property rights, ... and accumulation of funds for future investment."[150]
Historian Edward S. Shapiro cites a Forbes magazine survey from the 1980s, which showed that, of the 400 richest Americans, over 100 were Jewish, which was nine times greater than would be expected based on the overall population.[151] Shapiro also estimates that over 30% of American billionaires are Jewish, and he cites a 1986 issue of Financial World that listed the top 100 money makers in 1985, and "half the people mentioned" were Jewish, including George Soros, Asher Edelman, Michael Milken, and Ivan Boesky.[151]
Very few Jewish lawyers were hired by White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ("WASP") upscale, white-shoe law firms, but they started their own. The WASP dominance in law ended when a number of major Jewish law firms attained elite status in dealing with top-ranked corporations. As late as 1950 there was not a single large Jewish law firm in New York City. However, by 1965 six of the 20 largest firms were Jewish; by 1980 four of the ten largest were Jewish.[152]
By the 1990s Jews were becoming prominent in Congress and state governments throughout the country.
Jewish historical archives and collections[edit]
Audio interviews[edit]
The University of Pittsburgh houses and has made available a collection of audio interviews produced by the NCJW. Over one hundred audio interviews produced by the Pittsburgh Chapter of NCJW are available online. Those interviewed describe their interactions and affiliations with historical events such as emigration, synagogue events, professional activities and other topics with which they were personally involved. These interviews also include information about personal life events, episodes of discrimination against Jews, moving from Europe to America, meeting Enrico Caruso, Robert Oppenheimer, Jonas Salk and other historical figures. Others that were interviewed came to America but were born elsewhere. Jews from Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Hungary, India, Israel, Korea, Poland, and other countries describe their experiences.[192]
Written resources[edit]
Other collections and archives can be found at: