Jewish Americans

SIGNIFICANCE: From their arrival in New Amsterdam in 1654, Jews were the most important non-Christian group in an overwhelmingly Christian America. Their experiences tested and helped define the meaning of religious freedom and the nature of ethnic relations in the United States.

In 1654, twenty-three Jewish refugees, who had fled Brazil when it was retaken by the Portuguese from the Dutch, arrived in New Amsterdam seeking asylum. They were not welcomed by Governor Peter Stuyvesant, who put them in jail and requested permission from the Dutch West India Company to ban all Jews from the colony. The company, which had several substantial Jewish shareholders, refused, and Stuyvesant had to permit the newcomers to remain. Despite facing prejudice, the Jews were able to worship undisturbed. The congregation grew slowly after the British conquered the colony in 1664 and renamed it New York. Other small Jewish settlements emerged in the port cities of Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Savannah. Most newcomers were descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who used Sephardic rituals in their synagogues and spoke a dialect of Spanish in their homes.

By 1776, the Jewish population in the British mainland colonies reached between 1,500 and 2,500. The Jews were accepted by their neighbors and could practice their religion unmolested, but they occasionally faced overt prejudice and legal disabilities. Jews could be, but were not always, barred from voting in colonial elections or holding political office because they were unable to take required oaths as a Christian. Jewish merchants and craftspeople participated fully in the commercial life of Newport, Rhode Island. However, even after the London Parliament passed a naturalization act providing special oaths for Jews in the American colonies, Rhode Island courts refused to naturalize Jews, claiming this would violate the purpose for which the colony was founded.

The state and federal constitutions established after the American Revolution shifted Jewish-Gentile relations from sometimes uneasy toleration toward civil and political equality. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights provided federal protection for freedom of conscience, and the new state constitutions began to remove test oaths and disestablish religion. The movement was steady if uneven. Rhode Island did not grant Jews the right to vote or hold office until 1842; North Carolina did not do so until 1868.

German Jews

Until significant numbers of Jews from German-speaking areas of Europe arrived in the United States in the 1840s, the Jewish population remained small. In 1840, probably fewer than 15,000 Jews were in the United States; when Jewish immigration from Slavic lands began to increase in 1880, there were an estimated 250,000. Unlike their Sephardic predecessors, these Jews used Ashkenazic rituals and many spoke Yiddish. The vast majority of migrants were young men and women reacting to economic and political changes that worsened the position of Jews in their home countries.

The German Jewish immigrants flourished in the New World and greatly valued the political and economic freedoms they enjoyed in the United States. As the nation expanded, the young men moved west, some beginning as peddlers serving the scattered farmsteads, then opening mercantile establishments in the towns; a few very successful merchants established major department stores in the new cities. Their services were appreciated by their fellow townspeople; the first settlers in a town often became respected political and social leaders. In the early years of this migration, a small, thinly scattered Jewish population made finding Jewish marriage partners difficult, and a significant percentage married Gentiles. As they became economically successful, they founded families and brought young relatives to join them. Increased population meant Jews could create their own communal organizations, first a synagogue and a cemetery, then clubs that eased social isolation, and also philanthropic organizations to care for those experiencing poverty and those who were older. Often unable to observe the Sabbath as commanded by orthodox Jewish law, they were particularly receptive to the relaxed requirements of the Reform movement, designed to modernize Judaism, that had already begun in Germany.

During the nineteenth century, a number of antisemitic incidents occurred in the United States. Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant issued an order calling for the expulsion of all Jews from his army department on December 17, 1862, after hearing that some were trading with the enemy. President Abraham Lincoln reversed the order shortly thereafter. When financially successful German Jews began to arrive in resorts that had been the preserve of the highest-ranking social groups of the United States, they experienced prejudice and discrimination. Famous resorts near New York such as Saratoga, Newport, and Long Branch began to turn away Jews, even wealthy New York City investment bankers. Lesser hotels began to use code words such as “restricted clientele” or “discriminating families only” in their advertisements.

Eastern European Jews

Between 1881 and 1924, approximately 2.5 million Jews, about one-third of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe, left their homelands; nearly 2 million came to the United States. The modernization of agriculture in Eastern Europe had eliminated many of the petty merchant and artisan occupations on which Jews depended. The major reason for the timing and scale of the migration, however, was the impact of government-sponsored antisemitism, especially the pogroms (anti-Jewish massacres) encouraged by the Russian government after the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881. Unlike the German Jews who had preceded them, these Jews concentrated in major cities, especially on the East Coast. Unlike other European groups of the period, few would return to their countries of origin. Theirs was a migration of families, with an almost even sex ratio. Lacking financial resources, they crowded into the poorest sections of the cities.

The reaction of theose outside of the Jewish community was even more negative. Old-line Yankees viewed the Jewish areas of cities as a foreign intrusion corrupting the fabric of American society. Psychologists, using intelligence tests to rank ethnic groups, placed these Jews at the bottom, calling them genetically defective and ineducable. Immigration restrictionists claimed the Eastern European Jews proved the need to close the United States to new immigrants.

Anti-Jewish Prejudice and Discrimination

Dislike and fear of the newly arriving Jews helped spur the drive to restrict immigration, which took the form of legislation in 1924. It also provoked an outburst of overt prejudice and discrimination in the years from 1920 to 1940. As the children of the massive Eastern European Jewish immigration began to enter colleges and professional schools, they faced direct discrimination. Columbia College established quotas limiting admission of Jewish candidates, and other prestigious colleges and medical schools followed its example during the 1920s. Economic opportunities narrowed as few manufacturing companies, corporate law firms, major banks and insurance companies, or government bureaucracies such as the State Department were willing to employ Jews. Restrictive covenants, which barred homeowners from selling their houses to Jewish Americans or members of other “undesirable” groups, proliferated.

In 1922, Henry Ford began to publish a seven-year-long series of anti-Jewish articles in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, propagating older European stereotypes of Jews as both international bankers conspiring to control the country and communist conspirators determined to undermine capitalism. In the 1930s, the rise of Adolf Hitler inspired right-wing orators to preach ideological antisemitism. They defended Hitler, blaming Jews for the Great Depression and the international crises in Europe. More than one hundred antisemitic organizations appeared across the nation. In New York City, the Christian Front held street-corner rallies that often ended in fistfights between adherents of the movement and Jewish passersby.

The reluctance to respond effectively to the plight of German Jews in the 1930s reflected the impact of prejudice against Jews. No agency enforced immigration restriction rules more rigidly than the United States consular service in Germany, which insisted on absolute proof of the ability of prospective immigrants to be self-supporting. As a result, despite the desperate need of German Jews to escape, between 1933 to 1940 some 30 percent of the visas available for Germans were never issued.

Post-World War II

American revulsion at the sight of photographs of Hitler’s death camps changed attitudes toward Jews. Overt antisemitism was no longer acceptable, and relations of Jews with other ethnic groups eased. When the courts refused to enforce restrictive covenants, the movement of Jews out of cities and into suburbs increased. Restrictions on college entry and job opportunities began to disappear. New York City home offices of major insurance companies, embarrassed by the revelation that they did not employ any Jewish stenographers in a city with a huge Jewish population, hastened to change their practices. The founding of the State of Israel and its survival under attack increased Jewish pride and improved American perceptions of Jews; they now appeared a "normal" ethnic group, not greatly different in its support of Old World nationalism from American Poles or Irish Americans.

Although pre-World War II antisemitism had surfaced predominantly among members of the Right, during the radical upheaval of the 1960s, Jews began to experience overt expressions of prejudice from members of the Left. Support of Israel when it was attacked by its Arab neighbors was a rallying point for all branches of the Jewish community. To Jewish ears, advocacy of Palestinian rights by radicals too often sounded like attacks on Jews, rather than simply criticisms of Israeli policy.

Even more disturbing was the open expression of anti-Jewish prejudices by Black Americans. The long-term alliance of the two groups in the fight for civil rights seemed a thing of the past. Verbal attacks by Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam followers and the slur against New York Jews uttered by Jesse Jackson in his 1984 presidential campaign were particularly worrisome because Black Americans seemed the only major group believing it acceptable to express such prejudices publicly. Verbal and physical violence against Jewish shopkeepers in Harlem and the riots in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood intensified the feelings of antagonism between Black Americans and Jews.

Greater acceptance by other Americans helped raise the rate of outmarriage by Jews to more than 30 percent, which, combined with a birthrate that dropped below replacement level, led to fears that the American Jewish population would decline and ultimately disappear. Others were more optimistic, believing that many of the children of outmarriages would remain Jews. Immigration from Israel and the Soviet Union increased the Jewish community.

The Twenty-First Century

The Pew Research Center estimated that in 2020, there were approximately 7.5 million Jews in the United States. While the Jewish community continued to make contributions to American society, antisemitism also remained issue. Some experts noted that antisemitic sentiment had actually risen by the 2010s, with incidents such as the 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, synagogue occurring and an increase in hate in general amid more extreme political and societal divisions. Many Jews expressed concerns over antisemitism following Israel's war in Gaza in response to an attack by Hamas in 2023.

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