History Of The Jews In The United States

There have been Jewish communities in the United States since colonial times. Early Jewish communities were primarily Sephardi (Jews of Spanish and Portuguese descent), composed of immigrants from Brazil and merchants who settled in cities. 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. The Jewish communities in small towns have declined, with the population becoming increasingly concentrated in large metropolitan areas.

In the 1940s, Jews comprised 3.7% of the national population. , at about 7.1 million,An estimated figure, as the following sources claim the number to be either slightly higher or lower:
*
*
the population is 2% of the national total—and shrinking as a result of low birth rates and Jewish assimilation. The largest Jewish population centers are the metropolitan areas of New York (2.1 million), Los Angeles (), Miami (), Washington, D.C. (), Chicago () and Philadelphia ().

Jewish immigration

The Jewish population of the U.S. is the product of waves of immigration primarily from diaspora communities in Europe; emigration was initially inspired by the pull of American social and entrepreneurial opportunities, and later was a refuge from the peril of ongoing antisemitism in Europe. Few ever returned to Europe, although committed advocates of Zionism have made aliyah to Israel. Statistics demonstrate that there was a myth that no Jews returned to their previous diasporic lands, but while the rate was around 6%, it was much lower than for other ethnic groups.

From a population of 1,000–2,000 Jewish residents in 1790, mostly Sephardic Jews who had immigrated to Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, the American Jewish community grew to about 15,000 by 1840, and to about 250,000 by 1880. Most of the mid-19th century Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants to the U.S. came from diaspora communities in German-speaking states, in addition to the larger concurrent indigenous German migration. They initially spoke German, and settled across the nation, assimilating with their new countrymen; the Jews among them commonly engaged in trade, manufacturing, and operated dry goods (clothing) stores in many cities.

Between 1880 and the start of World War I in 1914, about 2,000,000 Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews immigrated from diaspora communities in Eastern Europe, where repeated pogroms made life untenable. They came from Jewish diaspora communities of Russia, the Pale of Settlement (modern Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova), and the Russian-controlled portions of Poland. The latter group clustered in New York City, created the garment industry there, which supplied the dry goods stores across the country, and were heavily engaged in the trade unions. They immigrated alongside indigenous eastern and southern European immigrants, which was unlike the historically predominant American demographic from northern and western Europe; Records indicate between 1880 and 1920 that these new immigrants rose from less than five percent of all European immigrants to nearly 50%. This feared change caused renewed nativist sentiment, the birth of the Immigration Restriction League, and congressional studies by the Dillingham Commission from 1907 to 1911. The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 established immigration restrictions specifically on these groups, and the Immigration Act of 1924 further tightened and codified these limits. With the ensuing Great Depression, and despite worsening conditions for Jews in Europe with the rise of Nazi Germany, these quotas remained in place with minor alterations until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

Jews quickly created support networks consisting of many small synagogues and Ashkenazi Jewish '' Landsmannschaften'' (German for "Territorial Associations") for Jews from the same town or village.

Leaders of the time urged assimilation and integration into the wider American culture, and Jews quickly became part of American life. During World War II, 500,000 American Jews, about half of all Jewish males between 18 and 50, enlisted for service, and after the war, Jewish families joined the new trend of suburbanization, as they became wealthier and more mobile. The Jewish community expanded to other major cities, particularly around Los Angeles and Miami. Their young people attended secular high schools and colleges and met non-Jews, so that intermarriage rates soared to nearly 50%. Synagogue membership, however, grew considerably, from 20% of the Jewish population in 1930 to 60% in 1960.

The earlier waves of immigration and immigration restriction were followed by the Holocaust that destroyed most of the European Jewish community by 1945; these also made the United States the home for the largest Jewish diaspora population in the world. In 1900 there were 1.5 million American Jews; in 2005 there were 5.3 million. See Historical Jewish population comparisons.

On a theological level, American Jews are divided into a number of Jewish denominations, of which the most numerous are Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism and Orthodox Judaism. However, roughly 25% of American Jews are unaffiliated with any denomination. Conservative Judaism arose in America and Reform Judaism was founded in Germany and popularized by American Jews.

Colonial era

Luis de Carabajal y Cueva, a Spanish conquistador and converso first set foot in what is now Texas in 1570. The first Jewish-born person to set foot on American soil was Joachim Gans in 1584. Elias Legarde (a.k.a. Legardo) was a Sephardic Jew who arrived at James City, Virginia, on the ''Abigail'' in 1621. According to Leon Huhner, Legarde was from Languedoc, France, and was hired to go to the Colony to teach people how to grow grapes for wine. Elias Legarde was living in Buckroe in Elizabeth City in February 1624. Legarde was employed by Anthonie Bonall, who was a French silk maker and vigneron (cultivator of vineyards for winemaking), one of the men from Languedoc sent to the colony by John Bonall, keeper of the silkworms of King James I. In 1628, Legarde leased on the west side of Harris Creek in Elizabeth City. Josef Mosse and Rebecca Isaake are documented in Elizabeth City in 1624. John Levy patented of land on the main branch of Powell's Creek, Virginia, around 1648, Albino Lupo who traded with his brother, Amaso de Tores, in London. Two brothers named Silvedo and Manuel Rodriguez are documented to be in Lancaster County, Virginia, around 1650. None of the Jews in Virginia were forced to leave under any conditions.

Solomon Franco, a Jewish merchant, arrived in Boston in 1649; subsequently he was given a stipend from the Puritans there, on the condition that he leave on the next passage back to Holland. In September 1654, shortly before the Jewish New Year, twenty-three Jews from the Sephardic community in the Netherlands, coming from Recife, Brazil, then a Dutch colony, arrived in New Amsterdam (New York City). Governor Peter Stuyvesant tried to enhance his Dutch Reformed Church by discriminating against other religions, but religious pluralism was already a tradition in the Netherlands and his superiors at the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam overruled him. In 1664 the English conquered New Amsterdam and renamed it New York.

Religious tolerance was also established elsewhere in the colonies. The charter of the colony of South Carolina granted liberty of conscience to all settlers, expressly mentioning "Jews, heathens, and dissenters." As a result, Charleston, South Carolina has a particularly long history of Sephardic settlement, which, in 1816, numbered over 600—then the largest Jewish population of any city in the United States. Sephardic Dutch Jews were also among the early settlers of Newport (where Touro Synagogue, the country's oldest surviving synagogue building, stands), Savannah, Philadelphia and Baltimore. In New York City, Congregation Shearith Israel is the oldest continuous congregation started in 1687 having their first synagogue erected in 1728, and its current building still houses some of the original pieces of that first.

Revolutionary era

By the beginning of the Revolutionary War in 1776, around 2,000 Jews lived in the British North American colonies, most of them Sephardic Jews who immigrated from the Dutch Republic, Great Britain and the Iberian Peninsula. Many American Jews supported the Patriot cause, with some enlisting in the Continental Army; South Carolinian planter Francis Salvador became the first American Jew to be killed in action during the war, while businessman Haym Solomon joined the New York branch of the Sons of Liberty and became one of the key financiers to the Continental Army.A "portion of the People"
, Nell Porter Brown, ''Harvard Magazine'', January–February 2003 The highest ranking Jewish officer in the Patriot forces was Colonel Mordecai Sheftall; whether or not Brigadier general Moses Hazen was Jewish is still the subject of debate among historians. Other American Jews, including David Franks, suffered from their association with Continental Army officer Benedict Arnold (Franks served Arnold as an aide-de-camp) during his defection to the British in 1780.

U.S. President George Washington remembered the Jewish contribution when he wrote to the Sephardic congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, in a letter dated August 17, 1790:

May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in the land continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants. While everyone shall sit safely under his own vine and fig-tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.

A small Jewish community had developed in Newport over the 18th century; this included Aaron Lopez, a Jewish merchant who played a significant role in the town's involvement in the slave trade.

In 1790, the approximate 2,500-strong American Jewish community faced a number of legal restrictions in various states that prevented non-Christians from holding public office and voting, though the state governments of Delaware, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Georgia soon eliminated these barriers, as did the U.S. Bill of Rights in 1791 more generally. Sephardic Jews became active in community affairs in the 1790s, after achieving "political equality in the five states in which they were most numerous." Other barriers did not officially fall for decades in the states of Rhode Island (1842), North Carolina (1868), and New Hampshire (1877). Despite these restrictions, which were often enforced unevenly, there were really too few Jews in 17th- and 18th-century America for anti-Jewish incidents to become a significant social or political phenomenon at the time. The evolution for Jews from toleration to full civil and political equality that followed the American Revolution helped ensure that antisemitism would never become as common as in Europe.

19th century

Following traditional religious and cultural teachings about improving the lot of their brethren, Jewish residents in the United States began to organize their communities in the early 19th century. Early examples include a Jewish orphanage set up in Charleston, South Carolina in 1801, and the first Jewish school, Polonies Talmud Torah, established in New York in 1806. In 1843, the first national secular Jewish organization in the United States, the B'nai B'rith was established.

Jewish Texans have been a part of Texas History since the first European explorers arrived in the 16th century. Spanish Texas did not welcome easily identifiable Jews, but they came in any case. Jao de la Porta was with Jean Laffite at Galveston, Texas in 1816, and Maurice Henry was in Velasco in the late 1820s. Jews fought in the armies of the Texas Revolution of 1836, some with Fannin at Goliad, others at San Jacinto. Dr. Albert Levy became a surgeon to revolutionary Texan forces in 1835, participated in the capture of Béxar, and joined the Texas Navy the next year.

By 1840, Jews constituted a tiny, but nonetheless stable, middle-class minority of about 15,000 out of the 17 million Americans counted by the U.S. Census. Jews intermarried rather freely with non-Jews, continuing a trend that had begun at least a century earlier. However, as immigration increased the Jewish population to 50,000 by 1848, negative stereotypes of Jews in newspapers, literature, drama, art, and popular culture grew more commonplace and physical attacks became more frequent.

During the 19th century, (especially the 1840s and 1850s), Jewish immigration was primarily of Ashkenazi Jews from Germany, bringing a liberal, educated population that had experience with the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. It was in the United States during the 19th century that two of the major branches of Judaism were established by these German immigrants: Reform Judaism (out of German Reform Judaism) and Conservative Judaism, in reaction to the perceived liberalness of Reform Judaism.

Civil War

During the American Civil War, approximately 3,000 Jews (out of around 150,000 Jews in the United States) fought on the Confederate side and 7,000 fought on the Union side. Jews also played leadership roles on both sides, with nine Jewish generals serving in the Union Army, the most notable of whom were brigadier generals Edward Solomon (who attained the rank at the age of 29) and Frederick Knefker. There were also twenty-one Jewish colonels who fought for the Union, including Marcus M. Spiegel of Ohio. and Max Friedman, who commanded the 65th Pennsylvania Regiment, 5th Cavalry, known as Cameron's Dragoons or the Cameron Dragoons, which had a sizable number of German Jewish immigrants from Philadelphia in its ranks. Several dozens of Jewish officers also fought for the Confederacy, most notably Colonel Abraham Charles Myers, a West Point graduate and quartermaster general of the Confederate Army.

Judah P. Benjamin served as Secretary of State and acting Secretary of War of the Confederacy.

Several Jewish bankers played key roles in providing government financing for both sides of the Civil War: Speyer and Seligman family for the Union, and Emile Erlanger and Company for the Confederacy.

In December 1862 Major General Ulysses S. Grant, angry at the illegal trade in smuggled cotton, issued General Order No. 11 expelling Jews from areas under his control in western Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky:

The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled ... within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.

Jews appealed to President Abraham Lincoln, who immediately ordered General Grant to rescind the order. Sarna notes that there was a "surge in many forms of anti-Jewish intolerance" at the time. Sarna, however, concludes that the long-term implications were highly favorable, for the episode:

also empowered Jews with the knowledge that they could fight back against bigotry and win, even against a prominent general. The overturning of Grant's order, especially on top of the victory in the chaplaincy affair, appreciably strengthened the Jewish community and increased its self-confidence. The successes also validated an activist Jewish communal policy that based claims to equality on American law and values, while relying on help from public officials to combat prejudice and defend Jews' minority rights.

Participation in politics

Jews also began to organize as a political group in the United States, especially in response to the United States' reaction to the 1840 Damascus Blood Libel. The first Jewish member of the United States House of Representatives, Lewis Charles Levin, and Senator David Levy Yulee, were elected in 1845 (although Yulee converted to Episcopalianism the following year). Official government antisemitism continued, however, with New Hampshire only offering equality to Jews and Catholics in 1877, the last state to do so.

Grant very much regretted his wartime order; he publicly apologized for it. When he became president in 1869, he set out to make amends. Sarna argues:

Eager to prove that he was above prejudice, Grant appointed more Jews to public office than had any of his predecessors and, in the name of human rights, he extended unprecedented support to persecuted Jews in Russia and Romania. Time and again, partly as a result of this enlarged vision of what it meant to be an American and partly in order to live down General Orders No. 11, Grant consciously worked to assist Jews and secure them equality. ... Through his appointments and policies, Grant rejected calls for a 'Christian nation' and embraced Jews as insiders in America, part of "we the people." During his administration, Jews achieved heightened status on the national scene, anti-Jewish prejudice declined, and Jews look forward optimistically to a liberal epoch characterized by sensitivity to human rights and interreligious cooperation.

Banking

In the middle of the 19th century, a number of German Jews founded investment banking firms which later became mainstays of the industry. Most prominent Jewish banks in the United States were investment banks, rather than commercial banks. Important banking firms included Goldman Sachs (founded by Samuel Sachs and Marcus Goldman), Kuhn Loeb (Solomon Loeb and Jacob Schiff), Lehman Brothers ( Henry Lehman), Salomon Brothers, and Bache & Co. (founded by Jules Bache). J. & W. Seligman & Co. was a large investment bank from the 1860s to the 1920s. By the 1930s, Jewish presence in the private investment banking had diminished dramatically.

Western settlements

In the nineteenth-century, Jews began settling throughout the American West. The majority were immigrants, with German Jews comprising most of the early nineteenth-century wave of Jewish immigration to the United States and therefore to the Western states and territories, while Eastern European Jews migrated in greater numbers and comprised most of the migratory westward wave at the close of the century. Following the California Gold Rush of 1849, Jews established themselves prominently on the West Coast, with important settlements in Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; and especially San Francisco, which became the second-largest Jewish city in the nation.

Eisenberg, Kahn, and Toll (2009) emphasize the creative freedom Jews found in western society, unburdening them from past traditions and opening up new opportunities for entrepreneurship, philanthropy and civic leadership. Regardless of origin, many early Jewish settlers worked as peddlers before establishing themselves as merchants. Numerous entrepreneurs opened shop in large cities like San Francisco to service the mining industry, as well as in smaller communities like Deadwood, South Dakota and Bisbee, Arizona, which sprung up throughout the resource-rich West. The most popular specialty was clothing merchant, followed by the small-scale manufacturing and general retailing. For example, Levi Strauss (1829 – 1902) started as a wholesale dealer in with clothing, bedding, and notions; by 1873 he introduced the first blue jeans, an immediate hit for miners and also for informal urban wear. Everyone was a newcomer, and the Jews were generally accepted with few signs of discrimination, according to Eisenberg, Kahn, and Toll (2009).

Though many Jewish immigrants to the West found success as merchants, others worked as bankers, miners, freighters, ranchers, and farmers. Otto Mears helped to build railroads across Colorado, whil
Solomon Bibo
became the governor of the Acoma Pueblo Indians. Though these are by no means the only two Jewish immigrants to make names for themselves in the West, they help to showcase the wide variety of paths that Jewish settlers pursued. Organizations like the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and Baron Maurice de Hirsch'
Jewish Agricultural Society
served as a conduit for connecting Jewish newcomers arriving from Europe with settlements in the Upper Midwest, Southwest, and Far West. In other cases, family connections served as the primary network drawing more Jews to the West.

Jeanette Abrams argues persuasively that Jewish women played a prominent role in the establishment of Jewish communities throughout the West. For example, the first synagogue in Arizona, Tucson's Temple Emanu-El, was established by the loca
Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society
as was the case for many synagogues in the West. Likewise, many Jewish activists and community leaders became prominent in municipal and state politics, winning election to public office with little attention paid to their Jewish identity. They set up Reform congregations, and generally gave little support to Zionism down to the 1940s.

In the 20th century, Metropolitan Los Angeles became the second-largest Jewish base in the United States. The most dramatic cast of newcomers there were in Hollywood, where Jewish producers were the dominant force in the film industry after 1920.

1880–1925

Immigration of Ashkenazi Jews

None of the early migratory movements assumed the significance and volume of that from Russia and neighboring countries. Between the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century, there was a mass emigration of Jewish peoples from Eastern and Southern Europe. During that period, 2.8 million European Jews immigrated to the United States, with 94% of them coming from Eastern Europe. This emigration, mainly from diaspora communities in Russian Poland and other areas of the Russian Empire, began as far back as 1821, but did not become especially noteworthy until after German immigration fell off in 1870. Though nearly 50,000 Russian, Polish, Galician, and Romanian Jews went to the United States during the succeeding decade, it was not until the pogroms, anti-Jewish riots in Russia, of the early 1880s, that the immigration assumed extraordinary proportions. From Russia alone the emigration rose from an annual average of 4,100 in the decade 1871–80 to an annual average of 20,700 in the decade 1881–90. Antisemitism and official measures of persecution over the past century combined with the desire for economic freedom and opportunity have motivated a continuing flow of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Central Europe over the past century.

The Russian pogroms, beginning in 1900, forced large numbers of Jews to seek refuge in the U.S. Though most of these immigrants arrived on the Eastern seaboard, many came as part of the Galveston Movement, through which Jewish immigrants settled in Texas as well as the western states and territories. In 1915, the circulation of the daily Yiddish newspapers was half a million in New York City alone, and 600,000 nationally. In addition, thousands more subscribed to the numerous weekly Yiddish papers and the many magazines. Yiddish theater was very well attended and provided a training ground for performers and producers who moved to Hollywood in the 1920s.

Response to Russian pogroms

Repeated large-scale murderous pogroms in the late 19th and early 20th century increasingly angered American opinion. The well-established German Jews in the United States, although they were not directly affected by the Russian pogroms, were well organized and convinced Washington to support the cause of Jews in Russia. Led by Oscar Straus, Jacob Schiff, Mayer Sulzberger, and Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, they organize protest meetings, issued publicity, and met with President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of State John Hay. Stuart E. Knee reports that in April, 1903, Roosevelt received 363 addresses, 107 letters, and 24 petitions signed by thousands of Christians leading public and church leaders—they all called on the Tsar to stop the persecution of Jews. Public rallies were held in scores of cities, topped off at Carnegie Hall in New York in May. The Tsar retreated a bit and fired one local official after the Kishinev pogrom, which Roosevelt explicitly denounced. But Roosevelt was mediating the war between Russia and Japan and could not publicly take sides. Therefore, Secretary Hay took the initiative in Washington. Finally Roosevelt forwarded a petition to the Tsar, who rejected it claiming the Jews were at fault. Roosevelt won Jewish support in his 1904 landslide reelection. The pogroms continued, as hundreds of thousands of Jews fled Russia, most heading for London or New York. With American public opinion turning against Russia, Congress officially denounced its policies in 1906. Roosevelt kept a low profile as did his new Secretary of State Elihu Root. In late 1906, Roosevelt appointed the first Jew to the cabinet: Oscar Straus, becoming Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

Restricting immigration from Eastern Europe – 1924-1965

By 1924, 2 million Jews had arrived from Central and Eastern Europe. Anti-immigration feelings growing in the United States at this time resulted in the National Origins Quota of 1924, which severely restricted immigration from many regions, including Eastern Europe. The Jewish community took the lead in opposing immigration restrictions. In the 1930s they worked hard to allow in Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. They had very little success; the restrictions remained in effect until 1965, although temporary opportunities were given to refugees from Europe after 1945.

Local developments 1600s to 1900s

Chicago, Illinois

The first Jews to settle in Chicago after its 1833 incorporation were Ashkenazi. In the late 1830s and early 1840s German Jews arrived in Chicago, mostly from Bavaria. Many Jews in Chicago became street peddlers or eventually opened stores, some of which grew to larger companies. In the early 20th century, a wave of Ashkenazi Jews arrived, fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe.

Clarksburg, West Virginia

In 1900, five of seven clothing merchants in Clarksburg, West Virginia, were Jewish, and into the 1930s the Jews here were primarily merchants. Because of the need to expand their synagogue, the Orthodox Jewish congregation merged with a smaller Reform group to form a compromise Conservative congregation in 1939, and Jewish community life in Clarksburg centered on this synagogue. The community, which reached a population peak of about three hundred in the mid-1950s, is still represented by about thirty families.

Wichita, Kansas

The Jews of Wichita, Kansas, fashioned an ethnoreligious world that was distinct, vibrant, and tailored to their circumstances. They had migrated west with capital, credit, and know-how, and their family-based businesses were extensions of family businesses in the east. They distinguished themselves in educational, leadership, and civic positions. Predominantly German Jews through the 1880s, their remoteness and small numbers encouraged the practice of Reform Judaism. The arrival of conservative Jews from Eastern Europe after the 1880s brought tension into the Wichita Jewish community, but also stirred an ethnoreligious revival. The German Jews were well respected in the Wichita community, which facilitated the integration of the Eastern European newcomers. The Jewish community was characterized by a "dynamic tension" between tradition and modernization.

Oakland, California

The Jewish community in Oakland, California, is representative of many cities. Jews played a prominent role, and were among the pioneers of Oakland in the 1850s. In the early years, the Oakland Hebrew Benevolent Society, founded in 1862, was the religious, social, and charitable center of the community. The first synagogue, the First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland, was founded in 1875. The synagogue, also known as Temple Sinai, took over the religious and burial functions for the community. Jews from Poland predominated in the community, and most of them worked in some aspect of the clothing industry. David Solis-Cohen, the noted author, was a leader in the Oakland Jewish community in the 1870s. In 1879 Oakland's growing Jewish community organized a second congregation, a strictly orthodox group, Poel Zedek. Women's religious organizations flourished, their charitable services extending to needy gentiles as well as Jews. Oakland Jewry was part of the greater San Francisco community, yet maintained its own character. In 1881 the First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland, elected Myer Solomon Levy as its rabbi. The London-born Levy practiced traditional Judaism. Oakland's Jews were pushed hard to excel in school, both secular and religious. Fannie Bernstein was the first Jew to graduate from the University of California at Berkeley, in 1883. First Hebrew Congregation sponsored a Sabbath school which had 75 children in 1887.
Oakland Jewry was active in public affairs and charitable projects in the 1880s. Rabbi Myer S. Levy was chaplain to the state legislature in 1885. The Daughters of Israel Relief Society continued its good works both inside and outside the Jewish community. Beth Jacob, the traditional congregation of Old World Polish Jews, continued its separate religious practices while it maintained friendly relations with the members of the first Hebrew Congregation. Able social and political leadership came from David Samuel Hirshberg. Until 1886 he was an officer in the Grand Lodge of B'nai B'rith. He served as Under Sheriff of Alameda County in 1883 and was active in Democratic party affairs. In 1885 he was appointed Chief Clerk of the U.S. Mint in San Francisco. As a politician, he had detractors who accused him of using his position in B'nai B'rith to foster his political career. When refugees from the fire-stricken, poorer Jewish quarter of San Francisco came to Oakland, the synagogue provided immediate aid. Food and clothing were given to the needy and 350 people were given a place to sleep. For about a week the synagogue fed up to 500 people three times a day. A large part of the expenses were paid by the Jewish Ladies' organization of the synagogue.

New Orleans, Louisiana

Because of the Code Noir, Jews were excluded from the French territory of Louisiana until 1803. Abraham Cohen Labatt, a Sephardic Jew from South Carolina, helped found the first Jewish congregation in Louisiana in the 1830s. Leon Godchaux, a Jewish immigrant from Lorraine, opened a clothing business in 1844. Isidore Newman established the Maison Blanche store on Canal Street. In 1870, the city's elite German Jews founded Temple Sinai, the first synagogue in New Orleans founded as a Reform congregation. Most Jews in New Orleans were loyal supporters of the Confederacy but Orthodox Eastern European Jews never outnumbered the Reform "German Uptown" Jews. Elizabeth D. A. Cohen was the first female physician in Louisiana. Leon C. Weiss became Governor Huey Long's favorite architect, and designed the new state capitol in Baton Rouge. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, only about 70% of the city's pre-Katrina Jewish population had returned.

Maine

Jews have been living in Maine for 200 years, with significant Jewish communities in Bangor as early as the 1840s and in Portland since the 1880s. The arrival of Susman Abrams in 1785 was followed by a history of immigration and settlement that parallels the history of Jewish immigration to the United States. What initially brought people to these various towns around Maine was the promise of work, often linked with opportunities that supported Maine's shipbuilding, lumber and mill industries.

New York City, New York

In 1654, the first group of Jews came as refugees from Recife, Brazil to New Amsterdam, which became New York City. Over the years, German, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews continued to arrive, playing an important part in the city's history and cultural life. In the late 1800s and early 20th century, a wave of Ashkenazi Jews fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe came to the city, bringing New York's Jewish population to over 1 million in 1910, the world's largest Jewish population in any city at that time.

San Francisco, California

Jews formed a community in San Francisco during the California Gold Rush, 1848–55. Levi Strauss, founder of the first company to manufacture blue jeans ( Levi Strauss & Co.), and Harvey Milk, LGBT rights activist and politician, were famous Jewish San Franciscans.

Progressive movement

With the influx of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe many members of the Jewish community were attracted to labor and socialist movements and numerous Jewish newspapers such as '' Forwerts'' and '' Morgen Freiheit'' had a socialist orientation. Left wing organizations such as The Workmen's Circle and the Jewish People's Fraternal Order played an important part in Jewish community life until World War II.

Jewish Americans were not just involved in nearly every important social movement but in the forefront of promoting such issues as workers rights, civil rights, civil liberties, woman's rights, freedom of religion, peace movements, and various other progressive causes such as fighting prejudice.

Americanization

The rapid assimilation into American culture of recent immigrants, dubbed Americanization, was a high priority for the established German Jews. 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.

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.

Philanthropy

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.

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.

Lynching of Leo Frank

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. 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. The Klan disseminated the view that anarchists, communists and Jews were subverting American values and ideals.

World War I

Jewish American sympathies likewise broke along ethnic lines, with recently arrived Yiddish speaking Jews leaning towards support of Zionism, and the established German-American Jewish community largely opposed to it. In 1914–1916, there were few Jewish voices in favor of American entry into the war. Many regarded the British government as hostile to Jewish interests. New York City, with its well-organized Jewish community numbering 1.5 million Jews, was the center of anti-war activism.

Of greatest concern to Jews was the tsarist regime in Russia because it was notorious for tolerating pogroms and issuing antisemitic policies. As historian Joseph Rappaport reported through his study of Yiddish press during the war, "The pro-Germanism of America's immigrant Jews was an inevitable consequence of their Russophobia". The fall of the tsarist regime in March 1917 removed a major obstacle for many Jews who refused to support tsarism. The draft went smoothly in New York City, and left-wing opposition to the war largely collapsed when Zionists saw the possibility of using the war to demand a state of Israel.

The number of Jews who served in the American military during World War I was disproportionate to their representation in the American population at large. The 250,000 Jews who served represented approximately 5% of the American armed forces whereas Jews only constituted 3% of the general population.

Starting in 1914, the American Jewish community mobilized its resources to assist the victims of the European war. Cooperating to a degree not previously seen, the various factions of the American Jewish community—native-born and immigrant, Reform, Orthodox, secular, and socialist—coalesced to form what eventually became known as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. All told, American Jews raised $63 million in relief funds during the war years and became more immersed in European Jewish affairs than ever before.

1930s and World War II

While earlier Jewish elements from Germany were business oriented and voted as conservative Republicans, the wave of Eastern European Jews starting in the 1880s, were more liberal or left wing and became the political majority.Hasia Diner, ''The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000'' (2004), ch 5 Many came to America with experience in the socialist and anarchist movements as well as the Bund, based in Eastern Europe. Many Jews rose to leadership positions in the early 20th century American labor movement and helped to found unions in the "needle trades" (clothing industry) that played a major role in the CIO and in Democratic Party politics. Sidney Hillman of the CIO was especially powerful in the early 1940s at the national level. By the 1930s, Jews were a major political factor in New York City, with strong support for the most liberal programs of the New Deal. However their leaders were excluded from the Irish-controlled Tammany Hall, which was in full charge of the Democratic Party in New York City. Therefore, they worked through third parties, such as the American Labor Party and the Liberal Party of New York. By the 1940s they were inside the Democratic Party, and helped overthrow Tammany Hall. They continued as a major element of the New Deal coalition, giving special support to the Civil Rights Movement. By the mid-1960s, however, the Black Power movement caused a growing separation between blacks and Jews, though both groups remained solidly in the Democratic camp.

In Washington, 15% of FDR's appointees were Jewish, including top positions such as Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr. in 1933 and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1939. Roosevelt's programs were not designed to overthrow capitalism as the left wanted, but instead created economic opportunities for working-class city people, especially Catholics and Jews in their roles as voters in a dominant New Deal coalition and as union members. Roosevelt's coalition was so delicate that he could not afford to let ethnic or racial tensions tear it apart. His deliberate policy (until ''Kristallnacht'' in 1938) was not to publicly criticize the atrocities developing in Nazi Germany, nor the domestic anti-Semitism typified by Catholic priest Charles Coughlin which blamed Jews for the Great Depression and the international crises in Europe. As a result of what Roosevelt did accomplish, "For liberal American Jews, the New Deal was a program worth fighting for even if it meant deferring concerns about the fate of German Jews." According to Henry Feingold, "It was the welfare-state aspect of the New Deal, rather than Roosevelt's foreign policy, which attracted the Jewish voter. The war and the holocaust tended to reinforce the left-wing political sentiments of many Jewish voters."

In the 1930s, increasing antisemitism in the United States (see History of Antisemitism in the United States) led to restrictions on Jewish American life from elite circles. Restrictions were mostly informal and affected Jewish presence in various universities, professions, and high-end housing communities. Many of the restrictions originated in the 1920s, but popularized and became more practiced throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s due to increasing antisemitic climate. In the East Coast, the Midwest, and the South, public and private universities imposed limits on the number of Jewish applicants they accepted, regardless of high scholastic standing. Harvard University believed that if it accepted students based only on merit, the student body would become majority Jewish, and for the same reason, the New Jersey College for Women (present-day Douglass College) only accepted 31% of Jewish applicants, versus 61% of all others. Similar patterns emerged among elite professions and communities. Law firms hired fewer Jewish lawyers, hospitals gave fewer patients to Jewish doctors, and universities hired fewer Jewish professors. Across the entire United States, only 100 Jewish American professors were employed in 1930. High-end housing communities across the United States, including the social clubs, resorts, and hotels within them, adhered to pacts that prevented Jewish Americans from buying homes and sleeping in rooms in their communities. These pacts limited high-end communities to American "gentiles".

Refugees from Nazi Germany

In the period between 1934 and 1943, the Congress, the Roosevelt Administration, and public opinion expressed concern about the fate of Jews in Europe but consistently refused to permit large-scale immigration of Jewish refugees. In a report issued by the State Department, Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat noted that the United States accepted only 21,000 refugees from Europe and did not significantly raise or even fill its restrictive quotas, accepting far fewer Jews per capita than many of the neutral European countries and fewer in absolute terms than Switzerland.

According to David Wyman, "The United States and its Allies were willing to attempt almost nothing to save the Jews."

U.S. opposition to immigration in general in the late 1930s was motivated by the grave economic pressures, the high unemployment rate, and social frustration and disillusionment. The U.S. refusal to support specifically Jewish immigration, however, stemmed from something else, namely antisemitism, which had increased in the late 1930s and continued to rise in the 1940s. It was an important ingredient in America's negative response to Jewish refugees.

MS St. Louis

The SS ''St. Louis'' sailed from Germany in May 1939 carrying 936 (mainly German) Jewish refugees. On 4 June 1939, it was also refused permission to unload on orders of President Roosevelt as the ship waited in the Caribbean Sea between Florida and Cuba. Initially, Roosevelt showed limited willingness to take in some of those on board. But the Immigration Act of 1924 made that illegal and public opinion was strongly opposed. The ship returned to Europe. 620 of the passengers were eventually accepted in continental Europe, of these only 365 survived the Holocaust.

Immigration restrictions

The United States' tight immigration policies were not lifted during the Holocaust, news of which began to reach the United States in 1941 and 1942 and it has been estimated that 190,000–200,000 Jews could have been saved during the Second World War had it not been for bureaucratic obstacles to immigration deliberately created by Breckinridge Long and others.

Asylum of the European Jewish population was not a priority for the U.S. during the war, and the American Jewish community did not realize the severity of the Holocaust until late in the conflict. This is in part because the Nazis did not allow Jews to leave Occupied Europe or Germany during this time.

American Jewish response to The Holocaust

During the World War II period the American Jewish community was bitterly and deeply divided, and was unable to form a common front. Most Eastern European Jews favored Zionism, which saw a return to their homeland as the only solution; this had the effect of diverting attention from the horrors in Nazi Germany. German Jews were alarmed at the Nazis but were disdainful of Zionism. Proponents of a Jewish state and Jewish army agitated, but many leaders were so fearful of an antisemitic backlash inside the U.S. that they demanded that all Jews keep a low public profile. One important development was the sudden conversion of most (but not all) Jewish leaders to Zionism late in the war.

The Holocaust was largely ignored by American media as it was happening. Why that was is illuminated by the anti-Zionist position taken by Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the ''New York Times,'' during World War II. Committed to classical Reform Judaism, which defined Judaism as a religious faith and not as a people, Sulzberger insisted that as an American he saw European Jews as part of a refugee problem, not separate from it. As publisher of the nation's most influential newspaper, ''The New York Times'', he permitted only a handful of editorials during the war on the extermination of the Jews. He supported the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism. Even after it became known that the Nazis had singled out the Jews for destruction, Sulzberger held that all refugees had suffered. He opposed the creation of Israel. In effect, he muted the enormous potential influence of the ''Times'' by keeping issues of concern regarding Jews off the editorial page and burying stories about Nazi atrocities against Jews in short items deep inside the paper. In time he grew increasingly out of step with the American Jewish community by his persistent refusal to recognize Jews as a people and despite obvious flaws in his view of American democracy.

While Jews owned few prestigious newspapers other than the ''New York Times'', they had a major presence in Hollywood and in network radio. Hollywood films and radio with few exceptions avoided questioning Nazi persecution of Europe's Jews prior to Pearl Harbor. Jewish studio executives did not want to be accused of advocating Jewish propaganda by making films with overtly antifascist themes. Indeed, they were pressured by such organizations as the Anti-Defamation League and by national Jewish leaders to avoid such themes lest American Jews suffer an antisemitic backlash.

Despite strong public and political sentiment to the contrary, however, there were some who encouraged the U.S. government to help victims of Nazi genocide. In 1943, just before Yom Kippur, 400, mostly Orthodox, rabbis marched in Washington to draw attention to the plight of Holocaust victims. A week later, Senator William Warren Barbour (R; New Jersey), one of a handful of politicians who met with the rabbis on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, proposed legislation that would have allowed as many as 100,000 victims of the Holocaust to emigrate temporarily to the United States. Barbour died six weeks after introducing the bill, and it was not passed. A parallel bill was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Samuel Dickstein (D; New York). This also failed to pass.

During the Holocaust, fewer than 30,000 Jews a year reached the United States, and some were turned away due to immigration policies. The U.S. did not change its immigration policies until 1948.

As of 2021, laws requiring teaching of the Holocaust are on the books in 16 U.S. states.

Impact

The Holocaust had a profound impact on the community in the United States, especially after 1960, as Jews tried to comprehend what had happened, and especially to commemorate and grapple with it when looking to the future. Abraham Joshua Heschel summarized this dilemma when he attempted to understand Auschwitz: "To try to answer is to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enables us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair, to sense a ray fGod's radiance in the jungles of history."

Postwar

500,000 American Jews (or half of the eligible men) fought in World War II, and after the war younger families joined the new trend of suburbanization. There, Jews became increasingly assimilated and demonstrated rising intermarriage. The suburbs facilitated the formation of new centers, as Jewish school enrollment more than doubled between the end of World War II and the mid-1950s, and synagogue affiliation jumped from 20% in 1930 to 60% in 1960; the fastest growth came in Reform and, especially, Conservative congregations.

Having never been subjected to the Holocaust, the United States stood after the Second World War as the largest, richest, and healthiest center of Judaism in the world. Smaller Jewish communities turned increasingly to American Jewry for guidance and support.

Immediately after the Second World War, some Jewish refugees resettled in the United States, and another wave of Jewish refugees from Arab nations settled in the U.S. after expulsion from their home countries.

Politics

American Jews voted 90% against the Republicans and supported Democrats Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman in the elections of 1940, 1944 and 1948, despite both party platforms supporting the creation of a Jewish state in the latter two elections. During the 1952 and 1956 elections, they voted 60% or more for Democrat Adlai Stevenson, while General Eisenhower garnered 40% for his reelection; the best showing to date for the Republicans since Harding's 43% in 1920. In 1960, 83% voted for Democrat John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, against Richard Nixon, and in 1964, 90% of American Jews voted for Lyndon Johnson; his Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater, was raised Episcopalian but his paternal grandparents were Jewish.Mark R. Levy and Michael S. Kramer, ''The Ethnic Factor'' (1973) p. 103 Hubert Humphrey garnered 81% of the Jewish vote in the 1968 elections, in his losing bid for president against Richard Nixon; such a high level of Jewish support has not been seen since.

During the Nixon re-election campaign of 1972, Jewish voters were apprehensive about George McGovern and only favored the Democrat by 65%, while Nixon more than doubled Republican Jewish support to 35%. In the election of 1976, Jewish voters supported Democrat Jimmy Carter by 71% over incumbent president Gerald Ford's 27%, but in 1980 they abandoned Carter, leaving him with only 45% support, while Republican winner, Ronald Reagan, garnered 39%, and 14% went to independent John Anderson.

During the Reagan re-election campaign of 1984, the Jews returned home to the Democratic Party, giving Reagan only 31% compared to 67% for Democrat Walter Mondale. The same 2–1 pattern reappeared in 1988 as Democrat Michael Dukakis had 64%, while victorious George Bush polled 35%. Bush's Jewish support collapsed during his re-election in 1992, to just 11%, with 80% voting for Bill Clinton and 9% going to independent Ross Perot. Clinton's re-election campaign in 1996 maintained high Jewish support at 78%, with 16% supporting Bob Dole and 3% supporting Perot.

In the 2000 US Presidential Election, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, was chosen by Al Gore to be his running mate and the vice presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, marking the first time in history that a practicing Jew was included on a major party's presidential ticket.

Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire Democratic primary on February 9, 2016, by 22.4% of the vote (60.4% to Hillary Clinton's 38.0%); he received strong support from voters who considered it important to nominate a candidate who is "honest and trustworthy." This made him the first Jewish American to win a U.S. presidential primary.(Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, was the first winner of Jewish heritage, but was a Christian).

Exceptionalism

Historians believe American Jewish history has been characterized by an unparalleled degree of freedom, acceptance, and prosperity that has made it possible for Jews to bring together their ethnic identities with the demands of national citizenship far more effortlessly than Jews in Europe. American Jewish exceptionalism differentiates Jews from other American ethnic groups by means of educational and economic attainments and, indeed, by virtue of Jewish values, including a devotion to political liberalism. Historian Marc Dollinger has found that for the last century the most secular Jews have tended toward the most liberal or even leftist political views, while more religious Jews are politically more conservative. Modern Orthodox Jews have been less active in political movements than Reform Jews. They vote Republican more often than less traditional Jews. In contemporary political debate, strong Orthodox support for various school voucher initiatives undermines the exceptionalist belief that the Jewish community seeks a high and impenetrable barrier between church and state.

Most of the discussions of American Exceptionalism