The first Jews to settle in North America came from two Dutch communities in 1654. One group was fleeing from Brazil, where the Portuguese
had expelled a Dutch company called the Dutch East India Company.
This group settled in New Netherland in the Dutch town of New
Amsterdam, which became New York City when the English took it
in 1664.
The second group included Jacob Barsimson, a Jew who sailed to
New Amsterdam from the Dutch city of Amsterdam. More Jewish merchants followed from Amsterdam in 1655. By the time of the English
conquest of New Netherland, around fifty Jews had lived in the colony,
though not altogether as a community.
Built first synagogue
Many Jews migrated to New York City from 1690 to 1710. By 1692,
they were meeting for worship in a private home, calling their congregation Shearith Israel. In 1730, they received permission from authorities
to build New York City’s first synagogue. At the time of the American
Revolution (1775–83), around four hundred Jews lived in the city.
A small community of Jews from the Caribbean settled in Newport,
Rhode Island, in the middle of the seventeenth century, shortly after
Jews settled in New Amsterdam. After New Amsterdam became New
York, more Jews moved from there to Newport. By 1756, the Jewish
community in Newport had both a synagogue and a school.
In the South, Jewish communities formed during the colonial period
in Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. Some fled from
Savannah to Charleston in the 1740s for fear of Spanish invasions. Many
returned to Savannah in the 1760s after the end of the French and
Indian War.
Barred from public office
Around 1790, there were about fifteen hundred Jews in the United
States. The year before, synagogues sent President George Washington
(1732–1799; served 1789–97) notes of congratulation at his inauguration. They spoke of the importance of religious freedom, to which
Washington responded that the United States “gives bigotry no sanction,
to persecution no assistance.” At the time, most states excluded nonChristians from serving in public office.
By 1820, the Jewish population in America had grown to around
twenty-seven hundred. Their communities were concentrated in
Newport; New York City; Philadelphia and Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
Richmond, Virginia; Charleston; and Savannah. Philadelphia’s first permanent synagogue was erected in 1782. Before the 1840s, there were no
professionally trained rabbis in America. Congregations were led by a
cantor, called the hazan.
Nineteenth and twentieth century immigration
During the nineteenth century, Jews began immigrating to North
America in large numbers. The first immigrants came mainly from the
German states (a group of nation-states in what is now Germany), which
had begun to pass anti-Semitic laws (laws hostile to Jews) around 1830.
Many of the new arrivals were rebels who had tried, and failed, to initiate a revolution against the German governments. The German immigrants were generally an elite group; many had been educated in the
finest European universities and many were idealist and highly political.
(See German Immigration.) With the new influx from the German
states, the Jewish community in the United States grew to about
160,000 in 1860.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Jews from Eastern Europe
began to arrive in large numbers. In fact, between 1881 and 1914, two
million Eastern European Jews arrived in the United States. They came from lands that were considered part of Russia, but had once been part
of Poland. The Russian government had discriminated against Jews,
sending them to live in an agricultural region known as the Pale of
Settlement, an area including Byelorussia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine,
and a part of Russia. The Pale became horribly overcrowded and its inhabitants lived in desperate poverty. From 1881 to 1906, they were subjected to pogroms, or state-sponsored violence by mobs. Many fled to
other countries.
When they arrived in the United States, most Eastern European Jews
were extremely poor and they differed greatly from the elite population
of German Jews already in the country. They struggled to find their way
in the new land, most frequently settling in large eastern cities like New
York City; Chicago, Illinois; Boston, Massachusetts; and Philadelphia.
They faced many difficulties. Adding to the toll of poverty, harsh working conditions, and difficulties adapting to a foreign culture, during the
1920s and 1930s anti-Semitism in the United States increased significantly.
World War II
When Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) rose to power in Germany
in the early 1930s, Jews became the targets of persecution. By 1938, it
had become clear to most Jews that Hitler and the Nazis intended to kill
them all. Many tried to flee. When U.S. president Franklin D.
Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) learned of the violence against
the Jewish people of Germany, he condemned Hitler’s actions, but he did
not alter the U.S. immigration laws to provide a way for the Jews to
legally enter the country.
On May 13, 1939, over nine hundred people boarded the steamship
St. Louis in Hamburg, Germany. Most were Jews fleeing the Nazis, and
they had paid every penny they could beg or borrow to buy a place on
the ship and to secure a landing permit for Cuba. But the Cuban government did not allow most of the passengers to disembark, breaking its
own arrangements. The ship finally set sail for Florida, where the U.S.
government turned the ship away saying the quota—the number of immigrants admitted to the country from Germany and Austria—had already been filled. The U.S. response was later called a “paper wall,”
erected to keep the imperiled Jews out of the United States. The passengers of the St. Louis were forced to sail back to Europe. Some found safety in other nations but many of the passengers would die at the hands
of the Nazis.
During the years 1938 to 1941, about 110,000 Jews immigrated to
the United States. Until the end of the war, the United States maintained
its policy of not becoming involved in the rescue of European Jews.
Later immigration
Jews have continued to immigrate to the United States since World War
II, especially from nations that were once part of the Soviet Union,
where they faced violence and discrimination intermittently through history. In 2000, there were 6.15 million Jews in the United States, accounting for about 2 percent of the nation’s population.