History of the Jews in the United States

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The Touro Synagogue in Newport : The oldest surviving synagogue in North America, inaugurated in 1763

The history of the Jews in the United States begins in the 16th century with Joachim Gaunse , who took part in an expedition, and in the 17th century with the Dutch settlement of Nieuw Amsterdam (later New York City ). After Sephardic Jews had settled in Nieuw Amsterdam in 1654, Jewish communities were founded in other port cities such as Newport , Philadelphia and Charleston . Although exposed to discrimination, Jews in North America found greater freedom to maintain their religious and cultural identity from the outset than in most European countries and achieved equality with the Christian white residents in the American Revolution in 1787 . At the same time, the history of Jewish immigration to the United States mirrors the history of the anti-Semitic repression that Jews in Europe were exposed to.

With different Jewish immigrant groups, different currents of Judaism came to the USA, which promoted the further development of existing and the emergence of new forms of Judaism, especially Reform Judaism with its various denominations .

Just as US cultural and social conditions have influenced the religious life and self-image of American Jews, Jewish artists, scientists, politicians, and entrepreneurs have also shaped the cultural identity of the United States.

At the end of 2013 there were between 6 and 8 million Jews living in the USA, which, depending on the method of counting, formed the largest Jewish community in the world - ahead of the Jewish population of Israel .

16th and 17th centuries

First wave of immigration: Dutch colonial times

The names of individual Jews who came and immigrated from Europe have been handed down from the early colonial history of North America. The first Jew in North America known by name was the Prague- born metallurgist Joachim Gaunse , who traveled to Virginia on a British expedition led by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584 . The first Jews known to settle in colonial North America were Solomon Franco (1649), Solomon Pietersen, and Jacob Barimson (both 1654), Dutch merchants and those who served Dutch trading companies in the Dutch and British colonies were active.

After the Netherlands became independent from Spain in 1648 and offered its people greater religious freedom than any other country in Western and Central Europe (“ Golden Age ”), thousands of Jews had found a new home there. Most were descendants of the Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal at the end of the 15th century. Many of them came to Pernambuco (today: Recife , Brazil ) as merchants and traders , which was the most important overseas trading post in the Netherlands in the middle of the 17th century.

When the colony was recaptured by the Portuguese in 1654 , Jewish merchants and others left Pernambuco for fear of the Inquisition . A group of 23 of these, consisting of 4 couples, 2 widows and 13 children, together with non-Jewish passengers, began a cruise with the destination Netherlands . However, stormy seas forced the refugees to call at a port in Jamaica , which was part of Spain. They were able to continue their voyage and came to Cuba , from where they traveled on with the French ship "Sainte Catherine" to Nieuw Amsterdam , now New York City , where they arrived in early September 1654. Other Jewish immigrants followed, including many whose ancestors had sought refuge in the Spanish and Portuguese overseas colonies after the expulsion from Spain and Portugal, but also numerous Sephardic Jews from the Netherlands and individual Ashkenazi Jews .

Nieuw Amsterdam was the administrative seat of the Dutch colony Nieuw Nederland , which existed from 1624 to 1667 and was under the direction of Petrus Stuyvesant from 1647 . Stuyvesant - a Calvinist for whom the Jews were blasphemers - had tried to expel the newcomers, but had to tolerate them on the instructions of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) . He implemented the guidelines of the WIC for equal treatment of Jews only incompletely and did not allow them to hold an office or to practice a craft other than that of butcher . They were also excluded from military service and had to pay an annual tax for not doing their service. The Jews were forbidden to hold public services, but they were allowed to practice their faith in private. The oldest Jewish community was founded in 1654, and in 1656 a Jewish cemetery was established. One of the first Jews to play a social role in the colony was the Dutch merchant Asser Levy .

British colonial times

Early Jewish congregations in the 13 British colonies (with the year the first congregation was founded)

After Nieuw Amsterdam, a second Jewish settlement center emerged in Newport in 1658 in the religiously tolerant British colony of Rhode Island . This community owed its early bloom to patrons such as the Jewish merchants Jacob Rodriguez Rivera (1717–1789) and Aaron Lopez (1731–1782).

In 1664 the British conquered Nieuw Amsterdam. With the Peace of Breda , concluded in 1667 , the incorporation of Nieuw Nederland into the British colonial empire was sealed; the area was divided into New York and New Jersey . Fearing new oppression, many Jewish settlers had left the colony before the British takeover, but it soon became apparent that their living conditions had changed little under the new rule. The ban on Jews imposed by Edward I in 1290 was lifted again in 1656 by Oliver Cromwell . Since then, Jews have been allowed to settle in the British colonies largely without restrictions.

Early Jewish life in New York

In the British colony of New York, which was converted into a crown colony in 1685 and incorporated into the Dominion of New England in 1688 , Jews enjoyed de jure a considerable part of all civil rights, but often had to enforce them in court. In 1672 the English Council of Trade passed a landmark judgment in the appeal proceedings of the New York merchant Rabba Couty, which for the first time made British citizenship possible for Jews living in the British colonies. In 1674 New York Jews gained full religious freedom . In Britain, Jews had to wait another hundred years for equality.

Many Jews were business people at the time. Traders and shipowners with worldwide connections to Sephardic Jews were particularly successful. Only British-owned ships could be used for trade between England and the colonies. The Jewish long-distance traders based in New York had commercial law in the sense of the navigation files . An internationally active merchant was Luis Moses Gomez , born in Spain around 1660 , who probably emigrated to America in 1703. In 1705 he was granted rights by Queen Anne that otherwise only British citizens were entitled to, in particular the right to purchase real estate. His family became one of the most influential in New York.

Jews were initially not allowed to hold public services in New York. However, a street map from 1695 shows a building called a Synagogue (Jew's Synagogue) near the southern tip of Manhattan. The New York Jews built their first synagogue in 1728/29 on Mill Street (today: South William Street). The synagogue of the congregation " Shearith Israel ", consecrated in 1730, was the first synagogue on the North American continent. As a philanthropist, Gomez had supported the construction of the synagogue and was its president. Shearith Israel has had its current building on Central Park West and 70th Street since 1897 . The synagogues of the colonial times, whose congregations followed the Sephardic rite , were not headed by rabbis , but merely by prayer leaders. As recently as 1773 there was not a single rabbi on the North American mainland.

18th century

Development of civil rights up to the war of independence

Another milestone in the emancipation of American Jews was a 1727 created laws that allowed Jews, in the naturalization payable oath ( oath of abjuration ) without the phrase "upon the true faith of a Christian" ( " as I a I am a believing Christian ”). A law passed in 1740 ( 1740 Naturalization Act ) generally granted Jews the right to be naturalized in the North American colonies. However, by 1775 only about 200 Jews had been naturalized in North America, most of them in Jamaica .

The governor of the New York colony had been assisted by an advisory body since 1683, which at the end of the 17th century developed into an elected institution with a legislative function ( General Assembly ). A bitter political controversy ended in 1737 with the decision of this parliament that Jews should be deprived of the right to vote.

The interior of the Sephardic Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Philadelphia (founded 1740)

Jewish life outside of New York

Jewish settlers did not find their greatest religious freedom in New York, but in some colonies in the American Southeast, especially in South Carolina , where Jews could be naturalized since 1697. In 1774, Francis Salvador was the first Jew to be elected to the General Assembly of a British colony. Conditions were similarly favorable in Savannah (Georgia) , where the first Jewish congregation was formed as early as 1734 ; 1801 was in Georgia with David Emanuel first time in the history of the young United States a Jew for governor elected. Important Jewish settlement centers in the American Southeast were Charleston , South Carolina (first congregation: 1750), Richmond , Virginia (1789) and St. Louis , Missouri (1837).

Jewish communities also sprang up in New England in the 18th century . In 1763, Jewish settlers established a synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island ; the Touro Synagogue is now the oldest surviving Jewish place of worship on the North American continent. Massachusetts , whose predominantly Puritan population, like the Jewish settlers, had strong ties to the Old Testament was particularly friendly to Jews . As early as 1722 one could study Hebrew at Harvard with Judah Monis (1683–1764) . In Boston and New Haven , Connecticut , the first congregations were dedicated in 1840.

Jewish settlement centers also emerged in Upstate New York , including in Buffalo (first congregation: 1825), Albany (1838) and Syracuse (1846). Other places in the North American Central Atlantic States where larger numbers of Jews settled were Philadelphia (first congregation: 1740), Baltimore (1845), Pittsburgh (1846) and Harrisburg (1851). The first reform congregation of the USA ("Har Sinai") was established in Owings Mills near Baltimore as early as 1842 .

American War of Independence (1775–1783)

About 2,000 Jews lived in the North American colonies at the time of the American War of Independence . They had representatives on both sides of the controversy; however, the revolutionaries found an important financier in the person of the Jewish banker Haym Solomon .

The 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution , passed in 1791, grants all American citizens freedom of religion in the sense that it prohibits Congress from establishing a state religion, favoring a particular religion, or prohibiting the practice of any religion. Most American states have also enshrined freedom of religion in their constitution.

19th century

Development of Jewish institutions

The Jewish communities continued to develop their organization and created new institutions in the early 19th century. A Jewish orphanage was established in Charleston , South Carolina in 1801 . In New York City, the first Jewish school, the Polonies Talmud Torah School , opened in 1806 .

The first secular organization of the Jewish community in the USA was also established in New York in 1843: the B'nai B'rith welfare and education association, which still exists today . The first Orthodox yeshiva on the floor of the United States was opened in New York City in 1896 , Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary , the 1946 Yeshiva University the status of a university gained. In 1898, an initiative by Henry Pereira Mendes also led to the founding of what is still the most important organization of Orthodox Judaism : the Orthodox Union .

Second wave of immigration: Migration of German Jews

Main facade of Temple Emanu-El in New York City

The continuing tensions between the young USA and the former colonial power culminated in the British-American War in 1812 , in which many American Jews took part as soldiers. By the end of the 18th century, the Jewish population in the United States consisted largely of descendants of Sephardic Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496. From the beginning of the 19th century, increasing numbers of Jews from Germany came to the USA. In Bavaria , emigration began as early as 1830, the number of emigrants before the March Revolution of 1848 is estimated at 11,000, that of emigrants from Prussia , especially the then Prussian province of Posen , at 13,000 to 14,000. Initially, the reasons lay mainly in the restrictive legal situation of the Jews and their hope for more profitable living conditions. In the years of economic decline after the bad harvest of 1846, the number of people willing to leave increased significantly, which was exceeded by Eastern European Jews in the second half of the century. Between 1840 and 1871, 20,000 to 25,000 Jews left the Kingdom of Bavaria, where discriminatory matriculation laws were in force until 1861. In Württemberg, too, the Jewish share of emigration was disproportionately high; however, it only reached its maximum after full emancipation in the 1960s.

After the failed March Revolution (1848/1849), Jews from other German states followed who, despite assimilation and high education, were unable to gain access to positions of responsibility in the civil service or officers or at universities due to discriminatory individual laws. In addition, the fear of pogroms among Central European Jews has increased since the Hep-Hep riots of 1819. German immigration peaked in the 1840s and 1850s and declined around 1870.

Among the German emigrants were prominent personalities such as the doctor Abraham Jacobi , who is considered the "father of paediatrics " and opened the first US children's hospital in New York City in 1860, the inventors Emil Berliner and Levi Strauss , the conductor Leopold Damrosch , the founder the Berlitz School Maximilian Delphinius Berlitz and the banker Jacob Schiff , who became one of the most important sponsors of Jewish institutions in the USA. The Bavarian- born businessman Moses Alexander was elected Governor of Idaho in 1915 .

The religious customs of the German immigrants, who were Ashkenazim , differed from those of the long-established Sephardim. The first Ashkenazi synagogues were built in Philadelphia ( Congregation Rodeph Shalom , 1802) and New York City ( Congregation B'nai Jeshurun , 1825). In contrast to the Jewish immigrants of previous generations, who had long since given up their original languages ​​- especially Sephardic - the German immigrants brought the Yiddish language and a centuries-old Yiddish literary tradition to America, which shaped their cultural identity as well as the Torah .

Interior view of the Central Synagogue in New York City, one of the most important and oldest reformed churches in America

Justification of Reform Judaism

Among the Jews who immigrated from Germany since the 1840s were many who had belonged to the upper class in their homeland, were educated, liberal and connected to the Jewish Enlightenment - the Haskala . This included, for the first time, large numbers of learned rabbis , many of whom had already worked on the reform of Judaism in Germany. In the United States, these intellectuals drove the development of Reform Judaism on a massive scale from the 1880s onwards , which soon became the most important trend within American Judaism. Reform Judaism owed its theoretical foundations to European tradition, but its practical implementation was only possible in the young immigration country of the USA, where not only were there more liberal conditions than in Europe, but also many traditional Jewish bodies were lacking that regulated Judaism from within and prevented reforms would have. Among the spiritual fathers of American Reform Judaism, Samuel Hirsch (1808–1888), David Einhorn (1809–1879) and Isaac Mayer Wise (1819–1900) should be mentioned. Sephardic or Orthodox Judaism, which had dominated the USA until then, initially offered little resistance to Reform Judaism, as there was a lack of well-trained rabbis and thus a lack of intellectual leadership; Exceptions were personalities such as B. Isaac Leeser (1806-1868).

Parallel to the religious reform process, a change took place in the Jewish congregations, which at that time took place in a similar way all over the world in the Christian churches: service-like functions through which the believers were connected to their synagogue far beyond religious practice were no longer carried out within the congregations, but were increasingly transferred to secular companies or organizations. B. ritual slaughter , teaching, social welfare and funeral services. This outsourcing of functions marked a dramatic break with the Jewish community life that has been handed down for centuries.

The German immigrants, who had often entered the country as poor people and many of whom had started their economic existence in the USA as workers and hawkers, formed within a few generations into a Jewish middle class with a high level of education, many business people and a clearly visible proportion of Doctors, lawyers and other academics. At the end of the 19th century there were Jewish congressmen , judges, and university professors. A major achievement of Reform Judaism was that with its relaxation of the rules - e. B. with regard to hairstyle and diet - enabled the believers to lead an everyday life that was outwardly hardly different from that of the non-Jews and thus enabled the majority of American Jews to achieve far-reaching social integration. This development came to an end around 1950; the Jewish working class had virtually disappeared in the United States by this point.

Civil War (1861-1865)

In the controversy over slavery , many Jews - including z. B. New York Rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall - the position of the Confederate (Southern States) , but even more of them supported abolitionism , the abolition of slavery. During the American Civil War (1861-1865) 6,000 to 8,000 Jews fought on the side of the Union , 1,200 fought with the Confederates.

During this period, a broader anti-Semitic controversy arose for the first time in US history . Representatives of both warring parties accused the Jews of supporting the other side. The Commander in Chief of the Union Armies, Ulysses S. Grant , issued an order in April 1862 to expel all Jews from the areas he controlled in Tennessee , Mississippi and Kentucky . President Lincoln promptly revoked the order.

Overview map of the Jewish settlement in the USA since 1776: Early settlements in the individual US states (with the year of the founding of the first congregation)

Jews in the American West

The German settlers arrived in the USA at a point in time when a great movement of settlements towards the west, that is, into the undeveloped areas west of the Mississippi , began. As early as the 18th and early 19th centuries, Jewish settlements had emerged outside the thirteen British colonies, for example in Florida , New Orleans , Louisville (Kentucky) and Ohio . Around 1825 the first Jews set out further west and formed new settlement areas there, for example in St. Louis and Leavenworth (Kansas) . The first Jewish settlement on the American west coast emerged in Portland, Oregon , in the early 1840s . For San Francisco , Jewish settlers have been documented since the time of the California gold rush (1849).

Important Jewish-American personalities of the 19th century

Jewish Americans gained access to high positions in diplomacy earlier than in politics . One of the pioneers was Mordechai Immanuel Noah , who was appointed American consul in Riga in 1811 . It was not until the middle of the 19th century that Jews in the USA also gained high political offices for the first time. In 1845 Lewis Levin was elected to the House of Representatives in Pennsylvania . David Levy Yulee became a senator that same year . Judah P. Benjamin was appointed Secretary of War in Jefferson Davis ' Confederate Cabinet in 1861 and Secretary of State a year later. Jews also rose to top positions in the military for the first time, above all Uriah P. Levy , who was appointed Commodore in the Navy in 1858 with the rank of today's admiral . At the American Civil War 9 Jewish participated generals and 21 Jewish colonel in part.

Among the numerous Jewish-American artists of the 19th century are the poet Emma Lazarus , the playwrights Isaac Harby and David Belasco , the sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel and the painter Moritz Fuerst . Solomon H. Jackson published the first Jewish magazine, "The Jew," in New York City since 1823 .

Another prominent American Jewess was Rebecca Gratz (1781–1869), who founded the “Female Association” , the first non-denominational female aid organization, in Philadelphia in 1801 . She was also the founder of the first Jewish Sunday School (1838). In 1893 Lillian Wald founded the pioneering New York social project "Henry Street Settlement" . The businessmen Juda Touro (1775–1854), Nathan Straus (1848–1931) and Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932) were also important philanthropists .

Third wave of immigration: Migration of Eastern European and Russian Jews

Austro-Hungarian emigrants on a ship of the "Emigration Service" of the Austro-Americana from Trieste to New York at the beginning of the 20th century.

Individual Jews from Poland had emigrated to the USA as early as the early 1820s . Poland had been largely sovereign since the Congress of Vienna (1815), but after the failed November uprising of 1830 it split into a Prussian and a Russian occupied part. Especially under the tsarist rule, the living conditions of Polish Jews deteriorated considerably. They were not allowed to hold an office or purchase property and had only limited access to higher schools. The result was a massive emigration of Polish Jews, which was soon joined by Jews from other parts of the Pale of Settlement , which was dominated by bitter poverty, ie Russian and Romanian Jews. Almost 50,000 Eastern European Jews went to the United States in the 1870s. However, the mass exodus only reached its peak when Tsar Alexander was murdered in 1881 and the assassination attempt was wrongly attributed to the Jews. In Russia, a whole series of anti-Jewish pogroms followed , many of which were approved by the state because they kept popular anger away from the government. The situation of the Jews in Russia was exacerbated by the 1882 of Alexander III. May laws passed , which drastically restricted the freedom of movement of Jews in the Pale of Settlement. The number of Eastern European Jews who emigrated to the United States continued to rise. In the second half of the 19th century, the emigration of Galician Jews increased sharply due to the incipient Polish nationalization in this Austrian crown land . Whereas in 1857, at the beginning of the wave of emigration that began in the 1850s, 2,000 Jews emigrated from Galicia to various destinations, in 1897 there were around 7,000. From 1880 to 1910, a total of 236,504 Galician Jews immigrated to the United States. In addition, around 45,000 Jews came from other (eastern) parts of Austria-Hungary during the same period . The Hamburg-America Line (HAPAG) , with which the majority of Eastern European and Russian migrants traveled, developed into the largest shipping line in the world thanks to the great demand at this time. Another beneficiary of the emigration, albeit on a smaller scale, was the Austro-Americana shipping line in Austria-Hungary , which started operating from Trieste to New York in 1904.

Among the Eastern European and Russian migrants, who spoke Yiddish to an even greater extent than the German immigrants and who were the bearers of an important Yiddish cultural heritage, there were such important personalities as the composer Irving Berlin , the violinist Jascha Heifetz , the conductor Sergei Kussewizki , the actor Al Jolson , the writers Scholem Alejchem , Schalom Asch and Abraham Goldfaden , the painter and sculptor Max Weber , the philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen , the activist Emma Goldman , the later Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meïr and the cosmetics entrepreneur Max Factor .

The biggest surge in Jewish immigration that the USA had ever experienced coincided with a rise in anti-Semitic tendencies, which hit the headlines around 1880 because social exclusion also affected members of the - actually already fully recognized - Jewish upper class. The case of the Jewish banker Joseph Seligman , who was denied access to the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga , New York in 1877 because of his religious affiliation , caused a sensation . Some private schools and business clubs also soon stopped accepting Jewish applicants.

Conservative Judaism strengthened

In religious, social and political terms, the Eastern European and Russian Jews were fundamentally different from the previous German immigrants. While the German Jews, who were under the impression of the Enlightenment , had great hopes of participating in the privileges of the social middle class with assimilation and the reform of their faith, the - mostly pauperized - Eastern European and Russian Jews were so socially isolated that they rose to the middle class was so fundamentally denied to them that there was no breeding ground for religious reforms. These Jews either firmly adhered to Orthodoxy or, on the contrary, turned to radical secular movements such as Zionism , socialism or anarchism . A typical representative of the radical pole was the writer Abraham Cahan , who in 1903 founded the largest Yiddish newspaper in the USA - Forverts . Attempts to put a stop to assimilation came mainly from representatives of Conservative Judaism such as Solomon Schechter (1850–1915) and Cyrus Adler (1883–1940). In response to the supposed freedom of movement of Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism gained such popularity that it became a mainstream of American Judaism and temporarily pushed Reform Judaism back to the rank of minority belief within the Jewish religion. Most of the descendants of the Eastern European and Russian immigrants have remained loyal to Conservative Judaism to this day.

20th century

Jewish men and boys in Chicago, 1903. Two boys carry pots of cholent , the traditional Sabbath dish that used to be cooked on a small fire in communal ovens from Friday to Saturday lunchtime and picked up on the way back from the synagogue on Saturday .

Immigration restrictions

The influx of mainly Eastern European and Russian Jews did not stop in the 20th century. After immigration reached record highs after the end of World War I , growing public opposition to the influx of war refugees led to the passing of the Emergency Quota Act in 1921 , a federal law that limited immigration to a certain quota . The number of immigrants entering from a particular country was then allowed to make up only 3% of the country team that already existed in the United States. The Immigration Act of 1924 followed three years later, tightening the existing regulation and applying unequal quotas to different national groups for the first time. Applicants from southern and eastern Europe were particularly hard hit; for them, the rate fell to around 0.4%.

The following note can be found in the Wiener Neue Freie Presse of June 7, 1931:

“ The Jewish population in America has increased by four million in five years. Two million Jews in New York. New York June 6th. According to figures published by the Statistics Department of the Jewish Committee in America , the Jewish population in the United States has increased by more than four million since 1927. Of the Jewish population in the United States, about 85 percent lived in cities of 100,000 or more. There are currently over two million Jews living in Yewyork. "

Political Preferences

The Russian and Eastern European Jews who came to New York at the beginning of the 20th century found work either as peddlers or in the textile and cigar factories on the Lower East Side of Manhattan . These “ sweatshops ” were exploitation companies in which people worked under inhumane and occasionally life-threatening conditions. In contrast to many other immigrant groups, the Jewish migrants in New York had a well-developed network of self-help organizations (“country teams”) that effectively alleviated the worst need. Many of the immigrants were close to the General Jewish Workers' Union in their homeland and continued their involvement in the USA. In the first three decades of the 20th century, Jews often played a key role in the American labor movement . Well-known Jewish-American labor leaders were Samuel Gompers (1850-1924; President of the American Federation of Labor ) and Sidney Hillman (1887-1946; Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America ). On the other hand, few American Jews were active in socialist or communist movements; in the early 20th century presidential election, the great majority of American Jews supported the Republican candidates McKinley , Roosevelt, and Taft . During the Great Depression, however, most of them turned to liberalism and to this day have found a political home with the Democratic Party . In the 1950s and 1960s, many Jews were in the American Civil Rights Movement ( Civil Rights Movement ) involved.

Reconstructionist Judaism

Since the late 1920s, the fourth mainstream Judaism emerged in the United States: Reconstructionist Judaism . The principles of this movement were developed by Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983) and his student Ira Eisenstein (1906–2001). The spiritual center of reconstructionism is the "Reconstructionist Rabbinical College" founded in 1968 in Wyncote, Pennsylvania .

Cultural life

The Lower East Side of Manhattan was home to a brisk Jewish art scene in the first decades of the 20th century. The sculptor Jacob Epstein grew up here, Chaim Gross and Raphael Soyer painted here, and Alfred Stieglitz and Ben Shahn captured street life in their photographs. A flourishing Yiddish theater scene had emerged in the USA as early as the 1880s . Boris Thomashefsky founded the first Yiddish professional theater in New York in 1882. More followed, and in 1917 there were 22 Yiddish theaters and 2 Yiddish vaudeville houses in New York alone . Between 1890 and 1940 there were more than 200 Yiddish theaters and traveling stages across the country. Thomashefsky has also been producing cinema films with Jewish themes and in Yiddish since 1915. By 1950 numerous other Yiddish feature films were made, the most prolific directors of which were Sidney M. Goldin , Henry Lynn , George Roland and Joseph Seiden . Popular stars of Yiddish-American cinema were Molly Picon , Jetta Goudal , Esta Salzman , Ytta Zwerling , Lazar Freed and Morris Strassberg . The 1930s to 1950s were also a "golden age" for Yiddish radio in the USA. Two of the first American radio chains - RCA (1919) and CBS (1927) - had Jewish founding fathers ( David Sarnoff and William S. Paley, respectively ). From 1929 to 1947, NBC and CBS broadcast the first radio sitcom that focused on a Jewish family: "The Goldbergs"; the show was so successful that it was produced for television from 1949 to 1956.

Some other prominent Jewish-American artist personalities (musicians, writers, visual artists) are below listed.

Anti-Semitism in the interwar period

In the 1930s, anti-Semitic attitudes were widespread in the United States. The discussion was fueled above all by the Catholic radio preacher Charles Coughlin , who since 1936 made the Jews publicly responsible for the economic problems of the USA and called for their ghettoization . Organizations in which the American anti-Semites gathered included the Ku Klux Klan , which gained considerable influence in the 1920s and in which anti-Jewish sentiments still play a central role today, and the America First Committee , whose prominent spokesman is the Aviator Charles Lindbergh was. As early as the 1920s, the industrialist and publisher Henry Ford had waged a major anti-Semitic campaign in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent and with the book The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem (German translation: Der Internationale Jude - Ein Weltproblem ) The theory that world Jewry had conspired to gain control of the economy and high finance to world domination , which was not dissimilar to the arguments of the National Socialists . He later apologized for his hate speech. Even John F. Kennedy's father , Joseph P. Kennedy , the 1938-1940 US ambassador in London, was known at this time publicly to anti-Semitism.

Expressions of everyday anti-Semitism were discrimination against Jews in working life and in university careers; They were also denied access to many residential and vacation areas, clubs, organizations and educational institutions. Many private universities made it difficult for Jewish students to gain access with a numerus clausus until the 1950s . Occasionally, laws came into being to prevent discrimination. In New York z. B. In 1930, an initiative by MP Louis Lefkowitz led to a law prohibiting employers from discriminating against employees because of their race, creed or skin color. Physical violence against Jews remained the exception in the USA: In 1902, at the funeral of the New York Chief Rabbi Jacob Joseph, an attack by Irish workers, in which many mourners were injured. In 1915, the murder charged Jew Leo Frank was lynched by the mob in Marietta , Georgia . Occasionally, such as For example, during the race riots in Detroit in 1943, Jewish shops were also looted and destroyed.

An opinion poll conducted by the Roper Organization in 1939 provides information about the extent of American anti-Semitism . Then 53% of those questioned declared: “ Jews are different and should be restricted ”, 10% even advocated deportation . Only 39% were of the opinion that Jews should be treated like everyone else. On the other hand, the anti-Semitic sentiments of the American population were fluctuating and less radical and consistent than in Germany. According to a Gallup poll in 1937, 47% of those questioned would have been willing to vote for a suitable presidential candidate even if he was Jewish.

American reactions to German anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism in their own country did not prevent the majority of Americans from accepting the treatment of Jews in National Socialist Germany as an outrage. In a data collection that Gallup carried out immediately after the November 1938 pogroms , 94% of those questioned said that they disapproved of the treatment of Jews under National Socialism. Jewish aid organizations such as the Joint Distribution Committee solicited large amounts of donations to support Central and Eastern European Jews. Through the activities of the Nazi organization German-American Bund , the American public in its own country was constantly confronted with National Socialist positions. Until 1944, however, even American Jews were not fully aware of the full extent of the Holocaust . American policy responses remained weak. An initiative of the Senator from Utah , William H. King , who in July 1935 wanted to create the conditions for a break in diplomatic relations with Germany by investigating the persecution of Jewish Germans, came to nothing.

The Immigration Act of 1924 remained in force until 1965 and thus determined American immigration policy even during the Nazi and Holocaust era, when millions of European Jews who either failed or failed to emigrate died in concentration camps . The American people, who saw the horrors of mass unemployment in the difficult economic times, contributed significantly to the policy of immigration restrictions. According to a 1939 Gallup poll, only 26% of respondents were in favor of a change in the law that would allow more Jewish refugees to enter the United States.

One Catholic, one Protestant and one Jewish military chaplain (1942)

Until October 1941, the German authorities had barely prevented Jews from leaving the country. Of the roughly 399,000 Jews who left Germany and annexed Austria by the beginning of World War II , around 95,000 emigrated to the USA. The most prominent Jewish-German / Austrian exiles in the USA included the composers Arnold Schönberg , Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill , the writer Lion Feuchtwanger , the philosophers Theodor W. Adorno and Ernst Bloch , the film directors Kurt Bernhardt and Billy Wilder and the physicist Albert Einstein . 15-year-old Henry Kissinger , who became US Secretary of State in 1973 , was among the refugees whose families managed to get hold of an American visa . Many applicants - including z. B. also the philosopher Hannah Arendt - received a visa only illegally. Fewer than 30,000 Jews entered the United States annually during the Holocaust. In isolated cases, political pressure resulted in prominent Jewish personalities being allowed to travel to the USA; the psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim z. B. was released from Buchenwald concentration camp because u. a. Eleanor Roosevelt had campaigned for his departure. However, many Jewish Germans and Austrians who had applied for a visa were turned away or had to be turned away by the American authorities. B. the writer Stefan Zweig , who committed suicide a little later - left the USA soon because their visa was not renewed. Political initiatives to support or rescue European Jews, such as those discussed at the Bermuda Conference in 1943, were not carried out.

Large numbers of Jewish Americans took part in World War II as soldiers. Around 11,000 of them were killed and more than 40,000 wounded.

After the Second World War

The majority of the Holocaust survivors decided to leave Europe forever after the liberation. Many other European Jews who, although they had not suffered direct persecution in their home countries, also lived there under anti-Semitic conditions, joined them. Their preferred destination was the State of Israel , founded in 1948 , followed by the USA. On December 22, 1945, President Harry S. Truman issued the Truman Directive , an executive order intended to facilitate immigration to the USA by the European Displaced Persons (DP). Since this measure proved ineffective - it was only applied to 5,000 DPs by the end of 1946 - the US Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act in 1948 , a federal law that also allowed a larger number of DPs to enter the USA. Since the law initially discriminated against Jewish DPs, the majority of the 80,000 Jewish DPs who came to the United States by 1952 could only enter after the 1950 Act was amended.

The Holocaust survivors who went to the USA after the end of the war included the resistance fighter William Herskovic , the writer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel , the writers Fanya Heller , Jerzy Kosiński and Gerda Weissmann-Klein , the actors Robert Clary and Brother Theodore , the impresario Bill Graham , the film producer Branko Lustig , the psychiatrist Karl Targownik and the physicist and later Nobel laureate in chemistry, Walter Kohn .

After large parts of the Jewish community in Central Europe had been destroyed by the Holocaust, the USA and the Soviet Union replaced the states with the world's largest Jewish populations. More than two million Jews fell victim to the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, and Stalin's fight against “ rootless cosmopolitans ” led to the indictment, conviction, deportation and shooting of many Jews in areas that had not been conquered by the German armed forces . The Yiddish language had been pushed back in the USSR since the Revolution, and it was the USA that became the main stage for the further development of Yiddish literature after the end of World War II .

Conditions of American Zionism

The diverse origins of the Jews in the USA and the extensive possibilities for realizing political projects also left room for Zionist endeavors from the middle of the 19th century . In 1825, the writer and diplomat Mordechai Immanuel Noah made an attempt to establish a Jewish settlement in Erie County , New York, which he called "Ararat"; the project failed because the colony did not attract enough settlers. New Zionist tendencies appeared in the US with the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The masterminds and supporters of American Zionism included Gustav Gottheil (1827–1903), Benjamin Szold (1829–1902), Louis Brandeis (1856–1941), Richard Gottheil (1862–1936) and Stephen Wise (1874–1949) . Zionist tendencies remained in the US until the Second World War, however, of no major importance; As recently as 1912, the Zionist organizations in the USA had no more than 12,000 members. This changed fundamentally under the impact of the Holocaust and the extensive obliteration of the Jewish population of Europe. The majority of American Jews now supported the creation of a Jewish state, and the US advocated the establishment of Israel early on . American Jewish support for Israel grew steadily , especially after the 1967 Six Day War . The American Israel Public Affairs Committee , founded in 1953, is now considered one of the most influential political lobbies in the United States. On the other hand, after the establishment of the Jewish state, few Jews (fewer than 100,000 people) left their American homeland to settle in Israel.

Fifth wave of immigration: Migration of Jews from Islamic countries

The reasons for another large wave of Jewish immigration lay in the countries of the Arab region, which began to free themselves from European colonial rule after the end of the Second World War. According to the law of the Dhimma , Jews have always been tolerated and protected in Islamic countries. After the war in Palestine and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, however, the living conditions of Jews in the other countries deteriorated considerably; In many states there were bomb attacks , pogroms , arrests, torture, expropriations and mass expulsions of Jews. The Jews in Egypt , Syria , Iraq and Libya were particularly hard hit. Almost 900,000 Jews left their home countries; two thirds of them went to Israel, the rest to North America or Europe. In the second half of the 1940s, 10,000 Jewish refugees came to the United States from Syria alone. The Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979) was followed by tens of thousands of Iranian Jews, most of whom now live in Los Angeles or Great Neck on Long Island .

Sixth wave of immigration: Migration of Soviet Jews

The last major wave of Jewish immigration to date began with the opening of the Iron Curtain . In 1973, under American pressure, the Soviet Union first allowed a large number of Jews to leave the country and go to the United States. After the CSCE conference in Helsinki , the Soviet exit regulations were further relaxed in 1975. In November 1989, the US Congress passed the Lautenberg Amendment , a federal law that made it easier for Soviet Jews to immigrate to the United States because they were classified as religiously persecuted. Based on this law, up to 50,000 Soviet Jews were allowed to enter the United States annually until 1992. The total number of Jews who came to the United States from the USSR between 1985 and 1992 was approximately 150,000. However, this surge of immigration did not reach its peak until the end of the Soviet Union (1991), when hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet republics moved to the USA.

The Mount Sinai Hospital (Central Park, New York City) is now one of the best hospitals in the country

Development of the Jewish institutions

In the 19th and 20th centuries, prominent Jewish institutions emerged in the USA such as the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City in 1852 (formerly The Jews Hospital ), the "Union of Orthodox Rabbis" (1901), the American Jewish Committee (1906 ), the Zionist women's organization Hadassah (1912), the Anti-Defamation League (1913), which became an important institution in the fight against anti-Semitism, the Yeshiva College (1928), the "Rabbinical Council of America" (1923) and the Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO) (1940), the world's most important research institution for the history and culture of Ashkenazi Jews. As a non-denominational private university, the Jewish-American community in 1948 created Waltham , Massachusetts , the Brandeis University .

Anti-Semitism after the Holocaust

Under the shock of the Holocaust and through the civil rights movement , anti-Semitism in the USA was significantly pushed back. In the McCarthy era (1948-ca. 1956) he found a niche again in the “ blacklisting ” of many Jewish artists and intellectuals who were forced out of their professions because they were accused of communist aspirations. The fact that anti -Semitic feelings followed in the wake of the anti-communist mood was also shown by a number of series of acts of violence against Jewish institutions that occurred between 1949 and 1951 in Boston , Philadelphia and Miami . In 1957/58 synagogues were bombed in Atlanta and Miami.

For decades, Jewish Americans were also affected by “redlining” . This practice by many banks and insurance companies of withholding home financing and insurance from applicants from residential areas with a high proportion of ethnic or religious minorities was primarily tailored to the disadvantage of colored people, but was also applied to areas with a high proportion of Jewish people. A number of executive orders and laws (e.g. Fair Housing Act , 1968) have largely pushed redlining back to this day.

Research by the Anti-Defamation League shows that anti-Semitic attitudes are significantly more common among black Americans than among white people. Such attitudes are usually only comparably common among Hispanic immigrants of the first generation. Massive anti-Semitic propaganda also ran in the late 1940s in Texas launched Judge Armstrong Foundation . The neo-Nazi organization National Socialist Movement (founded in 1971) has been a reservoir for anti-Semites to this day. In 1977/78, the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA) caused a sensation when it went to court to conduct a protest march in the Jewish suburb of Skokie in Chicago .

New anti-Semitic tendencies appeared at the end of the 20th century. Occasionally these culminated in acts of violence, such as the murder of the Jewish radio presenter Alan Berg in June 1984, who had spoken out against white Suprematists in his programs. The act was perpetrated by members of the racist organization " The Order ".

Assimilation and population development

In the second half of the 20th century, too, cultural assimilation remained a main topic of controversy among the Jewish public. Although interreligious marriages are by no means approved by all American Jews, their proportion rose from 6% (1950) to 47% (2000). Because the birthrate of the Jewish population is lower than that of the rest of the Americans, the Jewish population has been declining in relative terms since the 1940s and in absolute terms since the 1970s. The community of Orthodox Jews , in which the birth rates are significantly high and mixed marriages are rare, is growing steadily. The number of American Jews returning to a more religious way of life ( Baal Teshuwa ) is also increasing.

Important Jewish-American personalities of the 20th century

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The number of Jewish-American personalities who achieved fame in the 20th century for their achievements in the artistic, scientific, economic, or political fields is very large. Some of the most important are Nobel Prize winners like the physicists Richard Feynman , Murray Gell-Mann , Steven Weinberg and Melvin Schwartz , the microbiologist David Baltimore , the biochemist Paul Berg , the economists Milton Friedman , Joseph Stiglitz , Paul Samuelson , Kenneth Arrow , Gary Becker , George Akerlof , Leonid Hurwicz , Paul Krugman and Peter Diamond and the writers Saul Bellow , Isaac B. Singer and Joseph Brodsky . The mathematician Edward Witten was awarded the Fields Medal in 1990. Jonas Salk , Leo Sternbach and Leó Szilárd made history as inventors . Prominent Jewish-American humanities scholars and intellectuals are the scientific theorist Thomas S. Kuhn , the philosophers Hilary Putnam , Leo Strauss , Michael Walzer and Thomas Nagel , the essayist Susan Sontag , the literary scholar Judith Butler , the linguist Noam Chomsky , the sociologists Daniel Bell and Amitai Etzioni , the political scientist Norman Finkelstein and the ethnologist Franz Boas .

In politics, too, Jews were represented in numerous positions and offices in the 20th century, for example in the cabinet , in the Senate and in the House of Representatives . In the run-up to the 1976 presidential election , Milton Shapp , the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania , ran unsuccessfully for nomination as the Democratic Party presidential candidate . In 2000 , the Democrats named Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut as a candidate for the vice presidency ; however, he lost the election alongside presidential candidate Al Gore . The first Jewish-American woman to hold high political office was Anna M. Rosenberg , who was appointed Secretary of State in the US Department of Defense in 1950 .

The names Levi Strauss , Calvin Klein , Ralph Lauren , the Guggenheims , Max Factor, Sr. , Estée Lauder , Donald G. Fisher , Ruth Handler and Phil Spector appear among the ranks of the most prominent Jewish-American businessmen in the 20th century .

Jewish-American entrepreneurs played a significant role in the development of the American film industry , which had moved from New York to Hollywood , California since the 1910s , such as William Selig , Irving Thalberg , Adolph Zukor , Carl Laemmle , William Fox , Samuel Goldwyn , Marcus Loew , the brothers Warner and David O. Selznick ; later followed by Sam Spiegel , Saul Zaentz and the Weinstein brothers . Apart from a number of Yiddish films in the early sound film era, the Jewish-American producers and film directors - including Michael Curtiz , Stanley Kubrick, and Sidney Lumet - initially produced only a few films with a Jewish theme. Jewish-American film stars such as Douglas Fairbanks , the Marx Brothers , Mae West , Lauren Bacall , Elizabeth Taylor and Dustin Hoffman rarely appeared in Jewish roles. Jewish characters and themes only found a prominent place on the big screen in the 1960s through actors and directors such as Barbra Streisand , Woody Allen and Steven Spielberg .

The most important Jewish-American artists of the 20th century include the singers Bob Dylan , Paul Simon , Art Garfunkel , the jazz musicians Benny Goodman and Stan Getz , the soprano Beverly Sills , the composers George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein , and the conductors Lorin Maazel and James Levine , the pianist Vladimir Horowitz , the violinist Yehudi Menuhin , the Nobel Prize winners Saul Bellow and Joseph Brodsky , the writers Bernard Malamud , Arthur Miller and Philip Roth , the poet Allen Ginsberg , the painter Max Weber , the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein , the sculptor Jacob Epstein and the architects Richard Meier , Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind .

21st century

A 73-year-old man killed three people on April 13, 2014 in Overland Park , Kansas at a Jewish community center and a nearby Jewish retirement home .

In an attack in a synagogue in Pittsburgh ( Pennsylvania ) on 27 October 2018 lone assassin shot and killed eleven people and injured six, including four policemen. This was the most serious anti-Semitic act of violence against Jews in the US to date .

Statistics of the Jewish population in what is now the United States (1650-present)

Estimated Jewish Population of the United States:

year Total population thereof Jewish proportion of
1650 50,400
1654 25th
1670 111,900
1700 250,900 200-300 0.08-0.12%
1770 2,148,100
1776 1,000-2,500
1780 2,780,400
1790 3,929,214 1,243-3,000 0.003-0.008%
1800 2,000-2,500
1810 7,239,881
1820 9,638,453 2,650-5,000 0.03-0.05%
1830 12,866,020
1840 17,069,453 15,000 0.09%
1848 50,000
1850 23,191,876 50,000-100,000 0.22-0.43%
1860 31,443,321 150,000-200,000 0.48-0.64%
1870 38,558,371 200,000 0.52%
1880 230,000-280,000
1890 62,979,766 400,000-475,000 0.64-0.75%
1900 76.212.168 937.800-1.058.135 1.23-1.39%
1910 92.228.496 1,508,000-2,349,754 1.64-2.55%
1920 106.021.537 3,300,000-3,604,580 3.11-3.40%
1924 114,113,000 *
1927 119,038,000 * 4,228,029 3.55%
1930 123.202.624
1937 128,825,000 * 4,641,000-4,831,180 3.60-3.75%
1940 132.164.569 4,770,000-4,975,000 3.61-3.76%
1950 151.325.798 4,500,000-5,000,000 2.97-3.30%
1960 179.323.175 5,367,000-5,531,500 2.99-3.08%
1970 203.211.926 5,370,000-6,000,000 2.64-2.95%
1980 226.545.805 5,500,000-5,920,890 2.43-2.61%
1990 248,709,873
1992 255,029,699 * 5,828,000 2.29%
2000 281.421.906 6,136,000 2.18%
2001 285.102.075 * 6,155,000 2.16%
2010 308,745,538 * 6,543,820 2.11%

* Official US census estimate

literature

Introductions and general presentations
  • Sydney E. Ahlstrom: A Religious History of the American People . New Haven 1972, ISBN 0-385-11164-9 (English)
  • Hasia Diner: The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000 . University of California Press, 2004, ISBN 0-520-22773-5 (English)
  • Arthur Hertzberg: Shalom, America! Jüdischer Verlag, 1996 ISBN 3-633-54110-1 (German)
  • Arthur Hertzberg: The Jews in America . Columbia University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-231-10841-9 (English)
  • Ulla Kriebernegg, Gerald Lamprecht, Roberta Maierhofer, Andrea Strutz (eds.): “To America!” Jewish migrations to the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries. Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-0886-2 .
  • Howard M. Sachar: A History of the Jews in America . Vintage, 1993, ISBN 0-679-74530-0 (engl.)
  • Jonathan D. Sarna: American Judaism. A history . Yale University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-300-10197-X (English)
  • Robert Stein: Jewish Americans . Barron's, 2002, ISBN 0-7641-5626-8 (English)
1654-1820
  • Eli Faber: A Time for Planting. The First Migration, 1654-1820 . The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8018-5120-3 (English)
  • Jeffrey Gurock: American Jewish History, Vol. 1: The Colonial and Early National Periods, 1654-1840 . Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0-415-91920-7 (English)
1820-1920
  • Hasia R. Diner: A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration, 1820-1890 . The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8018-5121-1 (English)
  • Gerald Sorin: A Time for Building. The Third Migration, 1880-1920 . The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8018-5122-X (English)
1920-1945
  • Gulie Ne'eman Arad: America, Its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism . Indiana University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-253-33809-3 (English)
  • Henry L. Feingold: A Time for Searching. Entering the Mainstream, 1920-1945 . The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8018-5123-8 (English)
1945 – today
  • Samuel C. Heilman: Portrait of American Jews. The Last Half of the Twentieth Century . University of Washington Press, 1995, ISBN 0-295-97471-0 (English)
  • Edward S. Shapiro: A Time for Healing. American Jewry since World War II . The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8018-5124-6 (English)
Development of the Jewish Religion in the USA
  • Nathan Glazer , American Judaism. an historical survey of the Jewish religion in America , Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957
  • John A. Hardon: American Judaism , Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1971
Special topics
  • Leonard Dinnerstein : Antisemitism in America . Oxford University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-19-510112-X (English)
  • Arthur Liebman: Jews and the Left , New York 1979 (still a standard work).
  • Paula E. Hyman, Deborah Dash Moore (eds.): Jewish Women in America. An Historical Encyclopedia . Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0-415-91935-5 (engl.)
  • Gerald Sorin: Tradition Transformed. The Jewish Experience in America . The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8018-5447-4 (English)
  • Arthur A. Goren: The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews . Indiana University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-253-21318-5 (English)
  • Steven M. Cohen, Arnold M. Eisen: The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America . Indiana University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-253-33782-8 (English)
  • Riv-Ellen Prell: Fighting to Become Americans. Assimilation and the Trouble Between Jewish Women and Jewish Men . Beacon Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8070-3633-1 (English)
  • Jerold S. Auerbach: Are We One? Jewish Identity in the United States and Israel . Rutgers University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8135-2917-4 (English)
Autobiographical and Fictional Literature

documentary

The documentary One of Us (2017), made for Netflix by directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, reports on the difficulties faced by young American Hasidim who, for various reasons, have left their socially closely knit religious community.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ History of the Touro Synagogue [1]
  2. ^ How many Jews are there in the United States? In: Pew Research Center . October 2, 2013 ( pewresearch.org [accessed April 29, 2017]).
  3. ↑ Joachim Gaunse ; Salomon Franco ; Solomon Pietersen ( Memento of the original dated November 3, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Arthur Hertzburg, The Jews in America , Columbia University Press: 1997 pp. 21-22 and 9-10; Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History , Yale University Press, 2004; on Jacob Barimson: Costabel, The Jews of New Amsterdam , (Atheneum) 1988; Yitzchok Levine, Two Founding American Jewish Fathers , Aug. 3, 2005; Yitzchok Levine, Jews Settle In New York , July 1, 2005 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thejewishpress.com
  4. ↑ Hardon, American Judaism , pp. 24f; Stein, Jewish Americans , p. 6
  5. ↑ Our History. Shearit Israel Congregation, accessed April 2, 2012 .
  6. ↑ a b New York. In: Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 2, 2012 .
  7. ↑ Jewish History ( Memento of the original from June 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.eyesofglory.com
  8. ↑ Hardon, American Judaism , pp. 23-27; Stein, Jewish Americans , p. 7
  9. ↑ The Gomez Family
  10. ^ Document of April 18, 1705 from Queen Anne
  11. ^ The Couty Appeal ; Usury, to the English Mind : The Image of the Jewish Merchant in the British Atlantic World ( Memento of the original dated November 16, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Historical Facts on the Progress of the Jewish Community in New York ; Congregation Shearith Israel ; Glazer, American Judaism , p. 17 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wm.edu
  12. ↑ Jewish Encyclopedia [2] ; The History of the Jewish People Archive link ( Memento of the original dated June 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.davidsconsultants.com
  13. ↑ New York General Assembly [3]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Not Allowed to Vote for Assembly . Jewish Encyclopedia [4]@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / srv06.nysed.gov  
  14. ↑ Hardon, American Judaism , pp. 23-27.
  15. ↑ Judah Monis. America's First Hebrew Teacher [5] ; Hardon, American Judaism , pp. 23-27.
  16. ↑ Michael Brenner, Stefi Jersch-Wenzel, Michael A. Meyer: German-Jewish History in the Modern Age, Vol. 2, Emancipation and Acculturation 1780–1871 , Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39703-4 , pp. 65f., P. 304f.
  17. ↑ Hardon, American Judaism , pp. 35ff; Heinrich Heine. Life, suffering, work and background [6] ; Franconian Jewish [7] ; Robert Stein: Jewish Americans , p. 9
  18. ↑ Congregation Rodeph Shalom archive link ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Congregation B'nai Jeshurun Archive Link ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Hardon, American Judaism , pp. 35-42; Glazer, American Judaism , pp. 22–22 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nmajh.org  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jtsa.edu
  19. ↑ Hardon, American Judaism , pp. 35-42; Isaac Leeser [8] ; Glazer, American Judaism , p. 33
  20. ↑ Hardon, American Judaism , pp. 44–44; Glazer, American Judaism , p. 34
  21. ^ Glazer, American Judaism , pp. 43f, pp. 46, 106f
  22. ↑ Morris Jacob Raphall [9]
  23. ↑ Florida [10] ; Kentucky [11] ; Missouri [12] ; Kansas [13] ; Oregon [14] ; San Francisco [15]
  24. ↑ L. Sandy Maisel, Ira N. Forman (ed.), Jews in American Politics , (Rowman & Littlefield) 2002 [16]
  25. ^ Isaac Harby [17]
  26. ↑ Rebecca Gratz archive link ( memento of the original from October 19, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Nathan Straus Archive Link ( Memento of the original from September 5, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jwa.org  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fau.edu
  27. ^ Samuel Joseph: Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910. Arno Press, New York 1969. Quoted in: Anson Rabinbach : The Migration of Galician Jews to Vienna. In: Austrian History Yearbook. Volume XI, Berghahn Books / Rice University Press, Houston 1975, ISBN 3-11-015562-1 , p. 54
  28. ↑ Hardon, American Judaism , pp. 49-61; Jews in Tsarist Russia [18]
  29. ^ Glazer, American Judaism , p. 45.
  30. ↑ Hardon, American Judaism , pp. 49-61; Glazer, American Judaism , pp. 64f; Stein, Jewish Americans , p. 88
  31. ↑ The Immigration Act of 1924 Archive link ( Memento of the original from February 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.historicaldocuments.com
  32. ↑ [19] The Jewish population in America has increased by four million for five years. Two million in Jews in New York , Neue Freie Presse, June 7, 1931
  33. ↑ Are American Jews Becoming Republican? [20]
  34. ↑ New York Anti-Discrimination Act 1930 [21] (PDF; 5.8 MB); The Summer of '43 [22]
  35. ^ Roosevelt and Approaching War [23] ; Poll Analyzes Archive Link ( Memento of the original from February 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Will anti-Semitism hobble first major-party ticket with a Jewish candidate? [24] @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ms.uky.edu
  36. ^ Roosevelt and Approaching War [25] ; The American Jewish Year Book [26]
  37. ↑ Paper Walls: America & The Refugee Crisis 1938–1941 Archive link ( Memento of the original from August 22, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.americanidealism.com
  38. ↑ German Jewish Refugees, 1933–1939 [27]
  39. ↑ American Jews Serve in Wold War II - ( Memento of the original from July 20, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org
  40. ↑ United States Policy Toward Jewish Refugees, 1941–1952 [28] ; Immigration Daily [29] ; Displaced Persons [30]
  41. ↑ Russia [31]
  42. ^ Glazer, American Judaism , p. 64.
  43. ^ Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries [32]
  44. ↑ Countdown to Arrival Day, Week 5 [33] ; "Freedom of Choice" [34]
  45. ↑ Boston: Resurgence of antisemitism archive link ( Memento of the original from April 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Bombing in Miami Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 23, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bc.edu  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.commentarymagazine.com
  46. ↑ Urban Exodus. Why the Jews left Boston and the Catholics Stayed [35] ; Fair Housing Act Archive link ( Memento of the original from December 26, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Do Jewish institutions pay higher insurance rates because of 9/11? Archive link ( Memento of the original from October 18, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hud.gov  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ijn.com
  47. ↑ ADL Servey: More Blacks Found To Be Anti-Semitic [36] ; ADL Survey: Anti-Semitism Declines Slightly in America [37] ; George W. Armstrong [38]
  48. ↑ Philippa Strum: When the Nazis Came to Skokie: Freedom for Speech We Hate , University Press of Kansas, 1999, ISBN 0-7006-0941-5
  49. ↑ A Snapshop of American Jewry Today [39] ; "American Jews See Population, Birthrate Drop" "American Jews See Population, Birthrate Drop" - Intermarriage keeps climbing, although at a slower pace, a new survey finds. The data were compiled to help preserve the faith. ( Memento of March 17, 2006 in the Internet Archive ); The future of Judaism? [40]
  50. ^ Jewish Nobel Prize Laureates [41]
  51. ^ Racist known to the police shoots three people in Kansas. Berliner Morgenpost, April 15, 2014, accessed on December 29, 2019 (German).
  52. ^ 'Deadliest Attack on Jewish Community in US History': Jewish Leaders Lament Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting 'It is unfathomable that in the United States of America, Jews or any one else should have to live in fear of being targeted simply because of who they are and where they choose to worship, 'says World Jewish Congress president Judy Maltz Haaretz October 27, 2018
  53. ^ Jewish Population of the United States [42] ; The Jewish Population of the World (2005) [43] ; United States and Texas Populations 1850–2004 [44]
  54. ^ One of Us. Retrieved November 29, 2017 (official website for the film). Ben Kenigsberg: Review: 'One of Us,' a Portrait of Starting a New Life. In: The New York Times . October 19, 2017. Retrieved November 29, 2017 .