Jewish American Immigration

1
Jewish American Immigration

• Background

2
First Jewish Community in America

• 1654 New Amsterdam (Dutch colony) modern-day
  New York
• 23 Jewish refugees from Brazil arrived on the St.
  Catherine
• They left Brazil, which up till then had offered
  them relative freedom, because the country had
  just been taken over by the Portuguese

3
Great Era of Jewish Immigration

• 1820-1924
• Jews immigrated in waves of successively larger
  groups
• 1820-1880s primarily Jews from Central Europe
• American press labeled 1881 when the first 18
  pogrom refugees reached New York -- the beginning
  of mass migration of Eastern European Jews
• Most lived in cities
• Most worked in commerce and industries

4
Margin to Mainstream

• 1924-1940s
• Period of socio-economic mobility mixed with
  social prejudices against Jewish immigrants
• 1945 Ives-Quinn antidiscrimination bill, New
  York forbade discrimination in employment based
  on race, religion, or color. Followed by similar
  laws in other states with large Jewish
  communities

5
Golden Age of American Jewry

• 1948-1960s
• Post-Depression, Holocaust, and anti-Semitism of
  1920s-40s
• Establishment of State of Israel
• Suburbanization
• Economic growth
• Social activism

6
Contemporary American Jewry

• 1960s present
• Questions of Jewish identity
• Feminism

7
Two examples of Jewish American culture

• Emma Lazarus

8

• Superman

9
Jewish Immigrants and American Identity

• What makes American Judaism unique from the
  perspective of American religion is not its
  survival related fears, which are commonplace and
  well founded, but the fact that for the major
  part of American history it has been the nation's
  largest and most visible non-Christian
  faith...a challenge to those who sought to
  define the nation (or its soul) in restrictively
  Christian terms.
• -- Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism A
  History