Jewish American Chronology: Chronologies of the American Mosaic

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JEWISH AMERICAN CHRONOLOGY

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JEWISH AMERICAN CHRONOLOGY CHRONOLOGIES OF THE AMERICAN MOSAIC Mark K. Bauman

Copyright 2011 by Mark K. Bauman All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bauman, Mark K., 1946– Jewish American chronology : chronologies of the American mosaic / Mark K. Bauman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–313–37604–7 (hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–37605–4 (ebook) 1. Jews—United States—History—Chronology. 2. Jews—United States—History—Sources. 3. Jews— United States—Bibliography. I. Title. E184.35B38 2011 9730 .04924—dc22 2010054375 ISBN: 978–0–313–37604–7 EISBN: 978–0–313–37605–4 15 14 13 12 11

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Greenwood An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS Preface vii Introduction ix Abbreviations xi Origins through the Colonial Era 1 American Revolution to 1819 19 Getting Established: 1820–1880 31 The Era of Mass Migration: 1881–1924 61 Settling in, the Holocaust, and Israel: 1925–1948 The Multicultural Society: 1949–Present 107 Glossary 129 Selected Bibliography Index 149

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PREFACE This chronology begins centuries before European exploration of North and South America and brings the story up to 2010 with Barack Obama in the White House. In between, it explains American Jewish history by highlighting important people, events, and trends. No history can be totally complete, of course, and certainly other scholars might include other people, events, and trends. Although I name, for example, some businesses, literary figures, economists, and historians, there are just too many to list them all. Put simply, the details in this book are but representative examples. Ideally, this chronology will entice readers to learn more about the history of American Jews and Judaism. Within the chronology, individual stories illustrate broader themes and bring history alive. Personality profile sidebars appear throughout to bring attention to especially interesting, important, or representative individuals. The extensive, although far from exhaustive, bibliography, including key books, journals, and Web sites, recognizes the research upon which this book is based, and guides the reader to a broader range of in-depth studies. The entries appear chronologically by date, organized into 20 overarching categories or topics. The list of category abbreviations appears with the front matter for easy reference. For example, the topic immigration is abbreviated as IMMI and acceptance/toleration as ACCT. I have broadly defined the categories so that, for example, population (POPU) describes demographic trends rather than just listing statistics. Within each date heading, the categories are usually listed in alphabetical order, with a few exceptions where one category would not make sense if it did not follow another. For example, business, government, or organizational activities related to a specific immigrant group appear in logical order after the immigration itself. Foreign or unusual words are explained in the text as well as in the glossary that appears toward the end. From approximately 1820 to 1880, Jews from central Europe dominated Jewish immigration into the United States. Although this region includes several countries, the majority of these immigrants came from the German states. Thus sometimes they are designated as Jews from central Europe and at other times labeled simply as German Jews. In similar fashion, from 1881 to 1924, Jews from eastern Europe dominated Jewish immigration into the country, although the majority arrived from Russia. Thus the terms eastern European Jews and Russian Jews are both used. I have been studying American and especially Southern Jewish history for more than 30 years. Besides original research in primary sources, I—and this work—have benefited tremendously from the work of other historians. Moreover, throughout my career several outstanding editors have broadened my perspective by challenging me with important questions and pressing me to stress a comparative framework. These people have my

viii Preface

gratitude and admiration. I thank the following individuals and organizations, which graciously assisted with illustrations and granted permission to include them in this volume: Camille Servizzi, Elise Nienaber, Kevin Proffitt, and Gary Zola, the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives; Frank B. Gilbert and Alice Popkin (Louis Brandeis’s grandchildren), Maggy McNeely, James Rosenbloom and Sarah Shoemaker, Robert B. Farber University Archives and Special Collections, Brandeis University; Joseph Rubin and Dale Rosengarten, Judaica Collection, College of Charleston Library; Barbara Morley, the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documents and Archives, Martin P. Catherwood Library, Cornell University; Sandra Berman and Ruth Einstein, Cuba Archives of the Breman Museum; Rachel Howell and Bryan McKinney, Dallas History and Archives Division, Dallas Public Library; Boyd Cathy, Kim Cumbor, and Jesse R. Lankford, Jr., North Carolina Office of Archives and History; David B. Farris and Bonnie Eisenman, Beth Ahabah Museum and Archives; Joan Levy (a Sheftall descendant), Lauree San Juan, Congregation Mickve Israel, Lynette Stroud, Georgia Historical Society; Avi Decter, Rachel Kassman, and Deborah Weiner, Jewish Museum of Maryland; Leonard Rogoff, Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina; Ellen Eisenberg; Anee LeVant Prahl, Oregon Jewish Museum; Mary Laura Cludy and Diane Jacobs, Virginia Military Institute; Catherine Kahn, Touro Infirmary Archives; Bea Ross, Touro Synagogue. I greatly appreciate the support of Mariah Gumpert, Acquisitions Editor at ABC-CLIO, who asked me to write this book and provided helpful assistance and guidance along the way and the copyediting assistance of Arathi Pillai, Project Manager, PreMediaGlobal.

INTRODUCTION The first known Jewish immigrant to what became the United States arrived in 1685. For the next three centuries, Jews emigrated from Spain and Portugal, northern Europe (especially England, Holland, the German states, and Poland), eastern Europe (especially Russia, Austria–Hungary, Romania, Lithuania, and Latvia), and Mediterranean Europe (the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, and Greece). Jews also number among the most recent immigrants, having arrived since 1959 from Cuba, Iran, the former Soviet Union, South Africa, and Israel. Often the country of origin is misleading because of substantial international immigration. For example, a family moving to America from Holland may have originated in Portugal or Lithuania. This chronology tells the story of these people from different lands and explains how they adapted to life in America even while maintaining their own traditions as well as how they influenced their adopted country. Jewish immigrant experiences can be broken down into broad categories reflecting life. These categories include religion and philanthropy; business and economics; politics, government, and foreign affairs; education, culture, and the arts; and leisure activities. Jews have been Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, athletes, business people, social reformers, liberals and conservatives, and innovators with movies, music, drama, and news media. They have also been criminals. Readers of these pages will find both heroes and villains whose stories illuminate a series of broad themes. History is often perceived as a series of seemingly unrelated names, dates, and events, and a chronological history can easily fall into this trap. Although they often disagree among themselves, historians use such “facts” as the building blocks for interpretations. Interpretations analyze and place facts within historical contexts and disclose important themes. Themes are logical patterns based on facts that make sense out of what otherwise might seem like just curious trivia. This chronological history uses historians’ many different tools. Some of the information crosses the chronological time periods, because patterns frequently break clear-cut boundaries. Likewise, conditions the immigrants faced in Europe are included here because they informed the “cultural baggage”—the background and experiences—the emigrants brought with them. Jewish immigrants, for example, were aided in their adaptation to American society by the cultural baggage they brought with them. They adapted but also retained things from their backgrounds that varied from individual to individual. They also influenced America even as they were influenced by it. Thus corollary themes include this mixture of adaptation and change, the ways in which Jews in different times of immigration fit into changing environments and conditions in American history, and the influence and contributions of Jews to America.

x Introduction

When discussing business and economics, a major theme is that Jewish immigrants arrived with backgrounds—cultural baggage—that led them into specific niches in the U.S. economy. The mixture of their backgrounds and the available opportunities tended to foster success. In terms of religion, their beliefs were already undergoing change even before emigrants departed Europe. Conditions and the environment in America both encouraged those changes and led to other variations. Consequently, Jews in America illustrate varied degrees and practices of their religion to the extent that some remain devoted to tradition and Orthodoxy while others have become totally assimilated, leaving the Jewish religion behind. This theme also raises an important question that separates Jews from other immigrant groups. The country of origin typically defines immigrant groups—for example, by distinguishing Italian, Irish, Polish, or Chinese immigrants. But for hundreds of years Jews were denied citizenship in most countries in which they lived. They were defined as a separate group on the basis of religion. Religion was not the only identifying factor. Jews have also been defined and have defined themselves as an ethnic group (sometimes referred to as “peoplehood”) or, during the era of racial classifications, even as a distinct race. This ethnic identity has led to Jews helping other Jews overseas and in the United States regardless of country of origin, and creating and joining a variety of organizations based on ethnic group membership. Intragroup division and conflict provided the other side of the coin of ethnic identity. Jews separated themselves from other Jews by country of origin, religious beliefs, their position in relation to the creation of a Jewish nation overseas, and socioeconomic class, among other factors. The racial definition of identity brings up the additional theme of interaction with others. Typically this interaction was positive, but sometimes it was negative. This book explores how Jews responded to toleration, acceptance, and discrimination, and how these factors in turn affected them. It also illuminates interactions between Jews and members of other religions and between Jews and African Americans. Viewing the Jewish immigrant experiences as forming a spectrum rather than a set of polar opposites is very helpful. For example, Jews adapted and adjusted in a variety of ways. Seen as a polarity, these approaches varied from trying to maintain total allegiance to religious practices and Old World traditions to total assimilation into American society in which immigrants no longer practiced or identified as Jews and rejected any association with Old World ties. Yet the reality is that each individual mixed tradition and change in different ways, leading to an almost infinite number of variations. For most cases, the term acculturation—meaning a mixture of tradition and adaptation—is most appropriate to describe this process. A second example of the spectrum of experiences relates to the reactions of the majority society to Jews and Jewish immigration. Again, the polarity would cast these reactions as either total acceptance or total rejection. In fact, the varied spectrum describes reality more accurately. Jews were sometimes tolerated, sometimes accepted in some areas and not others, sometimes treated with insensitivity, and sometimes they encountered varying degrees of intolerance and even prejudice and persecution. Often, meanings are mixed. To illustrate, Jews protested against social discrimination (especially exclusion from social clubs) in the news media. The exclusion demonstrates intolerance and discrimination, yet the ability to speak out and feeling secure enough to do so reflects substantial acceptance. These themes are common to all immigrant groups in American history and, therefore, are universal. Each group illustrates both similarities and differences in terms of how the themes unfold. Comparing and contrasting the stories of different groups through a series like Chronologies of the American Mosaic provides a critical framework for better understanding the experiences of any single group and, for that matter, of the United States.

ABBREVIATIONS ACCT AFRI ANTI ART BUSI

Acceptance/toleration African-American/Jewish relations Anti-Semitism Art Business/economics

LIT MIGR MILI ORGS PERF

COMM CULT EDUC GOVT IMMI INTL

Community activities Culture Education Government Immigration International

PHIL POP RELI SCI SPOR

Literature Migration Military Organizations Performing arts—vaudeville, movies, music, television, theater Philanthropy Population/demographics Religion Science/medicine/technology Sports


ORIGINS THROUGH THE COLONIAL ERA 711–1492 INTL: Muslims from Arabia and North Africa conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). These Moors welcome Jews, who flourish in business, government service, science, medicine, and philosophy, especially during the tenth- and eleventh-century golden age. 1031 POPU: The Jewish population on the Iberian Peninsula is an estimated 150,000, by far the largest in Europe. 1290 INTL: England expels all Jews. 1391–1492 INTL: Gradually Christians reconquer Spain and Portugal. The new Spanish government uses Jews as scapegoats for internal political conflicts and works with the Catholic Church and its Inquisition (1483) to force Jews to convert or leave. Jews are murdered in massacres in 1391, 1412–1414, and 1449. Some Jews leave, others convert (“Conversos” or “New Christians”), and still others (“Crypto-Jews”) outwardly convert but secretly practice as much Jewish ritual as they can. The Inquisition uses spies and torture to hunt down, condemn, and murder members of the last group, so that Crypto-Jews continue to flee. New Christians are often denounced as heretics, blasphemers, and “Judaizers” (those who secretly practiced Judaism and encouraged others to do the same) but also because of their success

in business and government service. In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella order the expulsion of all Jews from Spain. 1492–1775 IMMI: A small number of Jews call the colonies that later become the United States home. Even on the eve of the American Revolution, their numbers reach only about 2,500. Nonetheless they contribute to the economic success of the New World and play roles in the emergence of freedom of religion disproportionate to their percentage of population. These Jews, relying on a transatlantic network, typically conduct trade and move repeatedly to capitalize on economic opportunity. They fight for economic, political, and religious rights almost everywhere. In practice, [because (1) they are so few in number that it is difficult to view them as a serious threat economically or to religious establishment; (2) their economic contributions are valued; and (3) other minority groups—especially Catholics and dissenting Protestant sects in terms of religion— bear the brunt of prejudice and persecution] and ultimately by law in many colonies, they enjoy more rights than Jews in Europe. Even so, no matter how much they flourish, their situations are often precarious. Many go in and out of debt, become entangled in legal battles, move frequently, and are affected by international events. The same is true of the small Jewish communities that gradually evolve in five major port cities and a few inland trade centers. These communities and their religious institutions rise and decline, only to be reborn when circumstances allow.

2 Jewish American Chronology

Observing religious practices while living along the frontier in relative isolation is almost impossible, but it is also difficult where synagogues exist because of the relative freedom and toleration Jews enjoy. Many no longer feel the compulsion to remain different in an environment that allows them to become integrated into the broader society. Certain factors hold Jews together, while other factors tend to divide them. Gradually Jews learn to think of themselves as a religious society on an equal plane with other religions, rather than as a separate nation (for example, by referring to themselves as the “Portuguese Nation”). 1497 INTL: Many Jews from Spain take refuge in Portugal. Portuguese King Manuel I follows Spain’s anti-Semitic policies and forms an alliance with Spain. Jews are converted in large numbers but cannot leave for 20 years so that the economy is not disrupted by their exit. Many live as Crypto-Jews continuing many Jewish practices within the weaker restraints of Portuguese policy. Others eventually flee, especially after 1521 when Manuel’s successor welcomes the Inquisition. Some New Christians actually travel to Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas in hopes of getting away from the Inquisition, but it follows them there in 1569. 1568 INTL: Seven Dutch provinces revolt against Spanish rule. The struggle, which is interrupted by a truce from 1609 to 1621, lasts 80 years, although the United Provinces (Holland) gains independence in 1648. By 1650, Amsterdam is considered the greatest center of European Jewish culture. 1580 INTL: Spain and Portugal unify (until 1640), and the Inquisition and persecution of New Christians intensifies. 1585 IMMI: Joachim Gaunse (or Gans) travels to the Roanoke Island colony in what later becomes North Carolina as a metallurgist. Although he

remains there for only about a year, he is the first known Jew in British America. 1590s–1700s IMMI: Jews from Spain and Portugal—called Sephardim—flee to Holland, where they find refuge. The Dutch, who have recently become free from Spanish control, hate the Spanish and welcome Jews who can increase the country’s commercial prosperity. INTL: Jews in central and east Europe—called Ashkenazim—experience economic hardship and discrimination. They are not allowed to own land and so cannot become farmers. Instead, they are limited to crafts within the Jewish community or to trade. They often act as peddlers, pawn brokers, money lenders, or middlemen between local farmers and urban markets. Some German government leaders raise a few Jews to economic power, recognizing that Jews have valuable business skills that are otherwise condemned by the Catholic Church. Jews dominate the horse trade for the upper classes and create international family banking houses as they provide loans and exchange currency. The discrimination that leads to Jews’ welldefined economic roles is fueled further by the interactions that those roles involve. During the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), thousands of central European Jews are murdered. In 1648, Cossacks kill Jews throughout eastern Europe. From 1650 to 1700, several German states expel Jews (some of whom had originally come from Poland and Lithuania), many of whom flee to Holland. England also attracts Jewish emigrants from Holland, Germany, and Poland. IMMI: Poverty is widespread among the persecuted Ashkenazim, many of whom eventually travel to the colonies in search of economic opportunity. The skills they practice in Europe suit them well for adaption to a gradually emerging commercial/capitalistic, urban world. RELI: Many Sephardim, upon becoming free to practice their religion in Holland, undergo circumcision (a ritual they were unable to perform in Spain and Portugal) and renew their marriage vows in Jewish ceremonies. Others stress their ethnic identity but leave behind traditional

Origins through the Colonial Era

religious practices. The religious emigrants form Spanish and Portuguese congregations and other institutions, and Amsterdam houses the leading European Jewish community by the mid-1600s. Wanting to fit in and be accepted wherever they settle, their synagogues do not display any outward signs or symbols of Judaism. RELI: Ashkenazim forced to live in ghettoes and in communities run by Jewish community councils tend to practice their religion strictly in Europe. 1621 IMMI: Elias Legardo arrives in Jamestown, Virginia, on the ship Abigail. Because of the largely agricultural nature of the colony and its lack of large port cities, the colony attracts only scattered Jewish individuals over the next 150 years. Furthermore, political rights depend on the taking of an oath acknowledging faith in Jesus Christ and economic privileges are also limited. The established Anglican Church opposes rights for Jews and Catholics. 1630 INTL: Holland captures Pernambuco, Brazil, from Portugal, possibly with the assistance of Crypto-Jews. The Dutch West Indies Company (1621) is placed in charge of the colony and welcomes Jews to encourage trade and business there. Jews flock to the capital, Recife, and make up a major part of the population. The main street is called Rua dos Judos. 1635 RELI: Ashkenazim organize a congregation in Amsterdam. 1639 RELI: Jews in Amsterdam build their first synagogue before it is legally allowed. Although the Calvinist Reform Church is well established, in practice Dutch merchants and their government representatives prove to be more tolerant. 1645 POPU: Approximately 1,500 Jews reside in Dutch Brazil. Many prosper in the sugar and slave trades and government service. About the same time,

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approximately 10,000 Jews reside in Amsterdam, where they represent roughly 6 percent of the total population. This percentage is higher than that achieved at any time in the history of the United States. RELI: Jews in Brazil create two congregations. The one in Recife employs the first rabbi in the western hemisphere. 1649 ANTI: Simon Franco immigrates to Massachusetts Bay Colony but is quickly expelled by the Puritan authorities in Boston because he is Jewish. IMMI: The proprietor of colonial Maryland approves an Act Concerning Religion that offers freedom of conscience to those who believe in Jesus Christ. This law and the agricultural nature of the economy discourage Jewish settlement. Further discouragement of Jewish immigration occurs in 1692, when the proprietor loses his charter and Maryland comes under Anglican control. A few Jews do trade and even settle in the colony, as they do virtually everywhere in North America. INTL: Russian Cossacks under Chmielnicki massacre Jews in Poland. Poland is later divided between Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Prussian Posen (formerly part of Poland) becomes a major source of Jewish immigrants to America. 1654 INTL: Portugal conquers Dutch Brazil. Given three months to depart the colony, Jews flee to Holland and its colonies. IMMI: Twenty-three poor Jewish refugees—a mixture of Sephardim and Ashkenazim—from Recife arrive in Dutch New Amsterdam. A total of approximately 750 people reside in the colony. Although met by Jewish merchants who precede them, and although most remain in the colony only a short time, these Jews symbolically represent the first Jewish community in what eventually becomes the United States. ACCT: Governor Peter Stuyvesant asks the Dutch West Indies Company’s directors for permission to expel the immigrants because he believes Jews will


dominate and damage the economy and undermine the Dutch Reform Church. In the ensuing years, protests led by Dutch Jewish stockholders in the Dutch West India Company result in the company allowing the immigrants to remain so long as “the poor among them shall not become a burden on to the company or to the community, but be supported by their own nation.” Forced to grant Jews the right to settle and conduct business, Stuyvesant extends the same rights to Lutherans and Catholics. Asser (or Asher) Levy, a butcher and merchant; Jacob Barsimon; Solomon Pietersen; and a few others are in constant conflict with Stuyvesant but succeed informally or through the intervention of the company directors to trade throughout New Amsterdam, serve guard duty instead of paying a substitute tax, enjoy rights as citizens, and purchase land. When Jews win the right to worship in private although not in public, Lutherans and Catholics gain the same privilege. 1655 IMMI: Six Sephardic families travel from Holland to join the earlier settlers in New Amsterdam. Unlike the 23 refugees from Recife who preceded them, these immigrants include affluent community leaders investigating trade possibilities. Joseph Da Costa, for example, is a past president of the Amsterdam Sephardic congregation and a stockholder in the Dutch West Indies Company. MIGR: One of the rights Jews in New Amsterdam petition for is to trade with Native Americans along the Delaware River. Before the governor and council reject the request, the Jews have already sent merchandise for trade, so the failure of their petition would equate to financial losses. The merchants are permitted to send two agents to exchange the goods. These men, Isaac Cardozo and Isaac Israel, are the first Jews in what becomes Delaware. Joseph d’Acosta and Isaac Israel conduct regular trade with the Native Americans in the area after the Dutch East Indies Company overrules Stuyvesant’s restrictions later the same year. Other traders follow suit, but none remains in the area on a permanent basis. RELI: New Amsterdam’s Jews obtain a plot of land for a cemetery and organize a burial society,

followed by development of the oldest American Jewish cemetery still extent (1682). Jews do not always practice ritual during their lives but the many communities that start with burial societies and cemeteries (Newport, Rhode Island, in 1677; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1740) reflect people’s desires to die and be interred as Jews. Abraham de Lucena, head of one of the six new families in New Amsterdam, brings a Torah scroll lent by the Amsterdam congregation. RELI: New Amsterdam’s Jews organize Congregation Shearith Israel, the first of the five mainland colonial congregations. Nonetheless, the return of the Torah scroll to Amsterdam in 1663 signals the temporary end of the functioning community. The 10 Jewish males necessary for formal worship (a minyan) can no longer be found in the colony until the 1680s when a Torah is obtained. Receipt of a Torah symbolizes the presence of a congregation as well as religious ties across communities. One Torah scroll travels from London to Savannah, New York, and Newport for use in different congregations. Except for years when the synagogue remains dormant due to insufficient membership, congregants meet in members’ homes until they build an edifice in 1730. As with the houses of worship founded by Sephardic congregations in London, Amsterdam, and the Caribbean, this synagogue has no outward Jewish symbols. INTL: Dutch Rabbi Menashe ben Israel travels to England and petitions Oliver Cromwell to allow Jews to reenter the country. Jews are informally allowed entry, and within 40 years a thriving community of 800 Jews live in London. In 1657, England allows Jews to worship in public, which leads to building of a synagogue. The Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of Bevis Marks and its counterpart in Holland act as centers for Jewish communities in the American colonies. Dutch Curaçao, Cayenne, and Surinam, for example, draw Jews with promises of religious freedom and economic opportunity. INTL: A small group of Crypto-Jewish merchants had resided in London prior to Menashe ben Israel’s visit, outwardly practicing Catholicism while secretly retaining their identity as


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Personality Profile: Jacob Lumbrozo In 1657, Jacob Lumbrozo settles in Maryland. Born in Lisbon, Portugal, he lives in London before becoming one of the first Jews to migrate directly from England to the mainland colonies. Lumbrozo is one of several (and likely the first) Jewish physicians in colonial America. Unlike the others, he seems to welcome controversy. Whereas Maryland’s proprietor did not want religious conflict, Lumbrozo openly identifies as a Jew. Even worse, in response to a Quaker missionary’s questions, Lumbrozo states that Jesus was a man and that miracles associated with the Christian messiah were really the result of magic. The missionary brings charges of blasphemy against the doctor before the Provincial Court. There, Lumbrozo indicates that he had simply responded to the missionary with his beliefs and had not said anything derogatory or blasphemous. Luckily for Lumbrozo, a general amnesty is issued honoring Richard Cromwell’s accession to the Lord Protector’s position in England, and he is set free. Although Lumbrozo gets involved in several other controversies, what is even more remarkable is his success and integration into the community. In 1663, the colonial government gives him letters of denigration that allow him to conduct business, buy and sell land, and vote. Besides acting as a physician, he serves as a planter, merchant, innkeeper, and attorney. Lumbrozo’s experiences illustrate the mixture of practical acceptance and alienation with which Jews live, and highlight how some choose confrontation while others avoid conflict.

Jews. When England and Spain go to war, one of the leaders of this enclave has his property confiscated for the charge of being an enemy alien. The merchants disclose their true identity as Jews to Oliver Cromwell and petition for the right to worship openly as Jews and secure a cemetery. 1657 INTL: England conquers the Spanish colony of Jamaica. Jews prosper in the colony, and in 1661 England grants all settlers and their children born on the island citizenship rights. RELI: Two immigrant Jewish communities emerge in London. The Sephardic immigrants seek aid from the Spanish and Portuguese congregation, while the Ashkenazic immigrants look to the Great Synagogue for sustenance. 1658 ECON: Newport, Rhode Island, serves as a major center of international trade until the American Revolution. Jewish merchants prosper there. RELI: Approximately 15 Jewish families, likely mostly from Barbados, establish a synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. The synagogue purchases

a cemetery in 1677 and starts a school in 1680. The colony—a haven for those who dissented from the Anglican Church (the Church of England)—is noted for its religious toleration. SOCI: Abraham Moses is inducted into the Masonic Order, a secret fraternity, in the Newport, Rhode Island, home of another early Jewish settler, Mordecai Campanal. Many Jews join and hold office in the Masons. Their participation marks a major sign of their acceptance into society. 1663 ACCT: In Rhode Island’s colonial charter, England mandates liberty of conscience and religious toleration. Two years later, the legislature passes a law allowing Catholics and Jews voting and office-holding rights. In 1719, these rights are taken away. 1664 ACCT: The British conquer Dutch New Amsterdam. The Duke of York, brother of King Charles II and himself the future King James II, controls the colony renamed New York as its proprietor. Jews are given the same rights they enjoy under


the Dutch and must continue to worship in private. The conquered territory includes what later becomes Delaware and New Jersey. 1669 ACCT: South Carolina’s Fundamental Constitutions of 1669 grants freedom of religion to “Jews, Heathens and other Dissenters” willing to declare their belief in God and be a member of a religious group in the hope that they will convert when exposed to the Anglican Church. This document, written by Anthony Ashley Cooper, one of the colony’s proprietors, with the assistance of Enlightenment philosopher John Locke, is the only colonial founding constitution to mention Jews specifically. Catholics are excluded from the same rights. 1684 ACCT: Rhode Island Governor William Coddington seizes the goods of Simon Mendez and David Brown on the grounds that Jews have never formally received the right to trade in the colony. The legislature overturns his action on the same day, granting Mendez, Brown, and other Jews the same rights “as any strangers being not of our nation residing among us.” Jews are tolerated without totally belonging. However, Jews cannot vote or hold office. 1685 ACCT: Several Jewish merchants (likely from New Amsterdam/New York) conduct business transactions in what had been New Sweden, with this trade probably beginning in the mid-1600s. When William Penn receives a proprietary charter from England in 1685, the colony is renamed Pennsylvania and the Quaker leader grants freedom of conscience to all inhabitants. Penn hopes that Jews will become Christians if they are tolerated. ANTI: Twenty Jews petition the New York Common Council for the right to worship in public. The Council refuses their request, stating that only “those that professe faith in Christ” enjoy that right. The Charter of Liberties of 1683 limits public worship to Christians, and trade rights for Jews are limited. When the Duke

of York becomes King James II after his brother’s death, he quickly repeals the Charter of Liberties while creating the United Colonies of New England. Jews regain their rights. 1688–1689 ANTI: James II is overthrown as king of England in the Glorious Revolution, Jacob Leisler takes control of New York, and the right to public worship is limited to Protestants. English authorities ultimately reject Leisler and execute him. The new governor restores the right to worship to Jews and Catholics, and, early in the 1690s, Jews rent a house on Mill Street for worship. 1693 IMMI: A disease epidemic hits Curaçao. Approximately 90 of its Jews leave the colony and resettle in Newport, Rhode Island, in the ensuing years. 1700s MIGR: Many Jews in Rhode Island move to New York to take advantage of better trade opportunities. RELI: The Newport, Rhode Island, congregation ceases to function on a formal basis from 1700 to 1754. SOCI: The average age at marriage of Jewish men in New York—in their early thirties—exceeds that of their Christian and European Jewish counterparts. New York Jewish women marry at an age (approximately 23 to 24 years old) similar to that of New England Christian women but are younger than their English counterparts. In each generation, the Jewish women marry at a slightly older age and the Jewish men at a slightly younger age. This phenomenon can be explained by a shift in sex distribution, with more eligible Jewish woman being available than men. The difference between men and women in terms of their ages at marriage is explained by the fact that men typically establish themselves economically before marriage. 1695–1704 POPU: At the beginning of this period, New York’s Jews number approximately 100 people, representing 2.5 percent of the total population.


RELI: Sometime between these years New York Jews write a constitution for their congregation Kahal Kadosh (K. K.) Shearith Israel (Holy Congregation Remnant of Israel) and begin record keeping. They appear to worship more publicly in a rented hall without obtaining formal permission from the colonial authorities. 1695 BUSI: South Carolina’s Governor Joseph Archdale employs a Jewish interpreter to converse with Spanish-speaking Native Americans. Jews often act as interpreters and agents of colonial governments besides trading with Native Americans. 1697 MIGR: Four Jews appear in official records in Charles Town (later Charleston), South Carolina. Referred to as aliens of the “Jewish Nation,” they join with 60 Huguenots (French Protestants) petitioning for full citizenship rights. These immigrants fear that the Navigation Act passed by the British Parliament in 1695 will exclude them from trade if they lack citizenship. Jews and Huguenots in London convince Parliament of their contributions to the economy and the royal tradition of toleration, and the Navigation Act is changed the following year to allow naturalized citizens equal trading rights. South Carolina’s legislature grants Jews the rights to become citizens and to vote, although in 1721 the latter right is restricted to white Christians with property. The original Charleston petitioners include Simon Valentine, of Lithuanian descent and the nephew and heir to Asser Levy, the most important Jew in New Amsterdam and colonial New York. Valentine, who has previously lived in Jamaica, spends approximately 15 years in Charleston as a merchant and plantation owner. Two other petitioners, Abraham Avila and Jacob Mendis, both of Sephardic origin, also probably have ties to the Caribbean and New York. Avila’s naturalization document lists him as “a native of the Jewish nation,” reflecting the view that Jews represent a distinct ethnic nationality without a country. Several Jews live in Charleston for short periods from 1700 to 1740. A few of these immigrants

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come from London, including the Moses Cohen, D’Oliviera/Tobias, and DaCosta families—who break the pattern of individual men immigrating to North America. Joseph Salvador and Solomon DaCosta purchase 1,000 acres of land that is known as “Jews’ Lands” (later Abbeville, South Carolina). Nonetheless, until 1750, only a handful of Jewish emigrants—mostly merchants— follow the original families, although the proprietors of the Carolina colony exhibit substantial toleration. 1700s ECON: Colonial Jews are deeply involved in triangular trade between the British mainland colonies, the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa with a variety of products. As examples, Silesian-born Barnard and Michael Gratz emigrate separately from London to Philadelphia, where they succeed in shipping, trading, and then real estate speculation in western Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Kentucky through the early 1800s. Lancaster, Pennsylvania, emerges as a key center of the fur trade with Native Americans and a subcenter of Jewish life. Key leaders like the Gratz brothers typically remain in New York and Philadelphia. The Gratzs and Jacob Franks, who travels from England to become one of colonial New York’s most successful Jewish merchants, serve as trading partners for relatives in London. Portuguese-born Aaron Lopez of Newport also illustrates Jewish success in shipbuilding, shipping, and trade; Lopez is perhaps the colonial Jew most involved in the slave trade. These wealthy Jews represent only a small percentage of the total population. Most Jewish immigrants are middle-class merchants who are often in and out of debt and court, and who move from partnership to partnership and from place to place. RELI: The congregations serve as the centers of Jewish communal life. They use Sephardic ritual, the Portuguese language for prayers and record keeping, and officers’ titles derived from Portugal. Whereas in Europe and the Caribbean governments enforced religious powers, in the mainland British colonies congregations are on their own. They try to maintain tradition through fines, threat of excommunication or refusal to bury


people in the synagogue cemetery. Nonetheless, members frequently break the rules and congregations relent on the punishments because of the threats posed by their loss of membership and fees. The congregation parnas (president) and adjunta (board of trustees) dominate synagogue affairs but are almost constantly involved in conflict. The hazan (cantor/reader), such as Gershom Mendes Seixas in New York, serves as the most important religious functionary because American congregations do not hire rabbis (Sephardic title: haham). RELI: Religion and religious practices are voluntary in America, a very small number of Jews settle in the British mainland colonies, no rabbis are present, and Jews gradually acculturate to a relatively tolerant society. Consequently, Jewish religious practices vary from individual to individual. Some people remain highly observant, others pick and choose rituals to observe or ignore, and still others reject all ritual, intermarry, and become assimilated within the larger culture. Such variations continue with ebbs and flows throughout American history. 1700–1735 INTL: The Inquisition in Portugal is particularly active. Perhaps 1,500 Portuguese Jews depart for London. 1700 POPU: Approximately 300 Jews reside in British America. In contrast, 125 Jewish families—more than those in all the British mainland colonies combined—live in Curaçao. By 1750, this number has reached 1,300 to 1,500 people, making Jews the island’s second largest ethnic group and making this population the largest group of Jews in North and South America. Religious, family, and trade ties link Jews across an Atlantic world through the next century. 1705 ANTI: Virginia’s House of Burgesses passes a law barring Jews, Catholics, and African Americans from testifying in court. Jews are forbidden to employ Christians as house servants even half a century later.

1715 GOVT: The New York legislature offers citizenship to foreign immigrants and those who lived in the colony before 1683. Several Jews become naturalized citizens. These people and others later obtaining citizenship continue to vote even after the legislature rescinds this right. Nonetheless, political rights are generally limited in the colonies and few Jews actively participate in politics. 1718–1776 BUSI: Approximately 100 Jewish convicts are transported from England to Maryland. They account for only a very tiny percentage of the approximately 50,000 convicts forced to move to the colonies in this fashion. Many English poor turn to petty theft or are thrown into debtors’ prisons during hard times; sending them to the colonies to work off their sentences helps England rid itself of this undesirable population. Convict transportation of Jews to the other mainland colonies is unknown. 1720s POPU: In a pattern quickly followed in the other British mainland colonies, Ashkenazim outnumber Sephardim in New York, yet the synagogues continue what is considered higher-class, Sephardic religious practices. Although some Sephardim in London and Amsterdam attain wealth, the number of poor dependent on Jewish communal aid increases dramatically during the next two decades. For many, the prospects in the colonies seem better than in their home countries, and the Jewish communities in England and Holland willingly support emigration to relieve their growing financial burden and fear of anti-Semitism as the rates of crime and disease among the Jewish poor increase. 1724 MIGR: Jews settle in Mobile, in what later becomes Alabama, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Circa 1728–1731 EDUC: New York Congregation Shearith Israel opens Yeshiva Minhat Areb. Before public schools are created, numerous congregations sponsor such schools, where students learn Hebrew, the Bible,


and other subjects. In 1855, the congregation’s school pioneers in mixing Hebrew, Spanish, English, and arithmetic. POPU: New York’s Jewish population reaches approximately 200. Twenty years later it increases to about 300 people. RELI: New York Jews build a synagogue, then a school/meeting room, a ritual bath, and an open-air booth for use on Sukkoth (the Festival of Tabernacles). They also purchase land for a new cemetery, having run out of room in the original lot. Like the other colonial congregations and similar to those in Europe and the Caribbean, the congregation views itself as a community, as reflected in its new constitution, which defines appropriate and inappropriate behavior, punishment for infractions, and the responsibilities of the governing officials. Provisions are made to assist poor Jews within the community. Transients in need are provided aid but also transportation to other cities. A key function of the synagogue/community is the provision of meat according to religious dietary laws, a function highly regulated by the ritual slaughterers employed and overseen by the congregations. SOCI: Sephardim and Ashkenazim share congregation governance, although they continue following Sephardic ritual and governing traditions and even use the Portuguese language. Economic class differences, conflicts over observance, and family squabbles divide Jews in colonial America more than do their national backgrounds. In 1731, some members of New York’s Shearith Israel refuse to recite prayers for the health of the parnas (president) and congregation or to donate money. Fines are instituted for such breaks from custom. In the following decades, it is not usual for people to be fined for insulting the congregation’s leaders, refusing to serve as leaders, and otherwise breaking rules. Maintaining community control proves to be very difficult for Jews, just as it does for Anglicans and other religious groups in the voluntary and individualistic American environment. 1731 GOVT: The New York assembly appoints Jewish merchant Rodrigo Pacheco as its representative in

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London to Parliament, even though Jews cannot vote in England. 1733 IMMI: Georgia’s trustees commission three members of London’s Spanish and Portuguese congregation at Bevis Marks—merchant Alvarez Lopez Suasso; Francis Salvador, a member of the largest stockholding family in the Dutch East Indies Company; and Bank of England director Anthony DaCosta—to raise funds for the new venture, assuming that the money will be used to woo Protestant settlers. Salvador and DaCosta family members remain active in American affairs thereafter. Rather than the funds collected in this effort being turned over to the trustees, the money is used to transport 42 Jews. One dies along the way, so 41 Jews, equal to about one fifth of the colony’s entire population, arrive in Savannah only months after the colony’s establishment. ACCT: Trustee/Governor James Oglethorpe convinces the trustees of the Georgia colony, who had barred Jews, to allow the Jews to remain in Georgia for practical reasons. Lawyers in Charleston, South Carolina, asked by Oglethorpe for an opinion, argue that the charter guarantees liberty of conscience and worship to all except Catholics. Jews from London’s Bevis Marks Synagogue guarantee that the Jews will pay their own way and not be a burden on Georgia, another reason the trustees relent. BUSI: Georgia’s colonists suffer from a yellow fever epidemic and the doctor dies. Among the Jewish immigrants is physician Samuel Nun˜ es Ribiero, who successfully treats the sick for free. Abraham De Lyon, a Portuguese vintner, is also among the immigrants. Introducing wine making will help the colony prosper and help England financially. BUSI: Abraham Minis is Georgia’s first merchant. He initially handles commercial transactions for the trustees, supplies the Frederica settlement, and provisions Oglethorpe’s troops as they fight the Spanish. He is also proprietor of one of Savannah’s three taverns. When Abraham dies in 1757, his wife Abigail takes over the business and


successfully expands it until her death almost four decades later. COMM: Benjamin Sheftall serves as a government translator for other German colonists in Georgia. Daniel Nunes acts in the same capacity for the Spanish and Spanish-speaking Native Americans. 1735 ACCT: In Savannah, the Jews from the German states—two families and a bachelor—have positive interactions with the German Lutheran Salzbergers in the colony, although the latter are motivated partly by their desire to convert these Ashkenazim. John Wesley, founder of the Methodist religion, visits Georgia in 1734 and takes lessons in Spanish from Samuel Nun˜es Ribiero so that he can better communicate with the Sephardic families and be more likely to convert them to Christianity. Such practices of toleration and cultivation of friendships with Jews in service of converting them are widespread throughout the colonies and in England. They fit within the late-eighteenth-century Enlightenment notion that Judaism has not been eliminated by persecution but will disappear with toleration and acceptance. In an ironic twist, the proselytizing efforts likely contribute to the cooperative effort to form a congregation so that the Jews can better counteract the conversion drive. When it becomes obvious that the Jews will not convert, the Lutheran ministers turn anti-Semitic.

indentured servants with colonial masters. Within a year the Levys are joined in Philadelphia by their nephews, David and Moses Franks, who also migrate from New York. Nathan Levy and David Franks create a merchant partnership—the largest Jewish business of its era in colonial America— with ships that regularly travel across the Atlantic. In 1752, their ship Myrtilla transports the Liberty Bell to America. Unexpected consequences derive from the business/family/religious ties and movement of people. During the mid-1760s, Naftaly Hart Franks and Naftaly Hart Myers, both of who are born in America and act as agents for their colonial families, preside over the Great Synagogue in London. POPU: Philadelphia’s Jewish population gradually increases as Jews continue to migrate from New York and other colonies as well as from Europe. By 1770, their number reaches approximately 100; by 1775, there are almost 300 Jews in Philadelphia. 1739–1742 BUSI: Savannah’s Benjamin Sheftall and Abraham Minis gradually shift from farming to commerce. They buy and sell goods from colony to colony. INTL: Among other nations, Spain and England fight against each other in the War for Spanish Secession (called “the War of Jenkins’ Ear” in British America).

RELI: Ashkenazim and Sephardim try to maintain separate worship services, but Savannah’s Jews are so few in number they are forced to cooperate in their congregation, K. K. Mikve Israel. The Sephardim think of themselves as more aristocratic, while the Ashkenazim accuse the Sephardim of being lax in religious observance. Both are common factors in conflicts between the two factions across the Atlantic.

POPU: Approximately 20 Jewish children are born in Savannah and an additional 39 Sephardic settlers arrive from London between 1733 and 1740. All of the Sephardim leave (typically for Charleston, South Carolina, and New York) during the War of Jenkins’ Ear because they fear a Spanish invasion from Florida will bring with it the Inquisition. The Ashkenazic Sheftall and Minis families remain but K. K. Mikve Israel is inactive.

1737 BUSI: Nathan and Isaac Levy become the first long-term Jewish settlers in Philadelphia when they arrive from New York. The Levys are typical Jewish port merchants, although they participate in the less common specialty of placing English

1740s BUSI: Maryland’s economy is dominated by tobacco production, and it boasts few towns and cities to attract Jews. By the 1740s, the economy starts to provide more open opportunities and urban life appears. A few Jewish merchants from


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Lancaster or employ agents there. During the early part of the decade, a small Jewish community develops in Lancaster. These Jews hold services in the home of Joseph Simon and purchase cemetery land. Yet the Jewish community declines by the end of the century and essentially ends with Simon’s death in 1804. (It is rebuilt half a century later.) The decline and end of one community bodes well for others, as Jews departing Lancaster play leading roles in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other cities.

Descendant of the first Ashkenazim to arrive in colonial Savannah, Georgia, Mordecai Sheftall rises to success as a merchant and represents those Jews who support the American Revolution. (Courtesy of Joan Levy and the Levy family. Congregation K. K. Mickve Israel Archives, Savannah, GA. Edmund H. Abrahams Collection, courtesy of Marion Abrahams Levy Mendel)

other colonies settle in Annapolis and Fredericktown (later Frederick), Maryland, and travel between other colonies and Maryland towns to trade as they do elsewhere. Fredericktown draws Jews as a backcountry trade center. MIGR: Along with the towns of Easton and Reading, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, draws Jews as a center of the fur trade and other western commerce, and as a military outpost. In partnership with the Levys and Franks of Philadelphia and others, Joseph Simon becomes one of the leading Indian traders. Simon and his son in-law, Michael Gratz of Philadelphia, eventually purchase land tracts in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Jews in New York and Philadelphia often travel for business to

1740 GOVT: England grants naturalization as citizens to foreign-born Jews and Protestants who reside in the colonies for seven years. Jews in the colonies actually enjoy more rights than Jews in England, where the required oath of allegiance includes as its last phrase, “upon the faith of a Christian.” Although some colonies restrict their political rights and even their presence, during the next decades Jews are clearly viewed as citizens—unlike their treatment as a separate people and nation throughout Europe for many centuries. England’s colonial policies contribute to the integration and acculturation of Jews into the economic and social life of the colonies as well as declining allegiance to Jewish community control and religious practices. 1742 SOCI: Phila Franks, a member of a family who follows traditional Jewish religious practices, marries Oliver Delancey, scion of an influential New York family. Phila is the daughter of Jacob Franks, one of the most influential Jewish business people of his era, and Abigail Franks. The Franks and other Jews in their class comfortably interact with the highest levels of society. Their son, Moses Franks, attends the same school as Henry Clinton, Governor George Clinton’s son. The marriage of Phila Franks and Oliver Delancey represents acceptance of Jews in elite society and highlights the problems that this practice poses for religious continuity. Phila’s mother Abigail never accepts the marriage partly because it is to a Christian and partly because the Franks family supports the Clinton faction in New York politics against the Delanceys. An estimated


10 percent to 15 percent of colonial Jews intermarry. From the colonial era to 1840, this figure rises to approximately 16 percent. Often part of the middle and upper classes, these affluent Jews are viewed by Christians as acceptable partners. Some Jews, like Philadelphia’s David Franks, intermarry but continue to practice at least some Jewish rituals, but their children are almost always raised as Christians. 1743 COMM: David Franks and Nathan Levy join others in petitioning the colonial government to create a militia. They also create standard rates for economic exchanges in conjunction with other merchants. Like Jews in other times and places, they are assisting in the building of an infrastructure conducive to economic growth and settlement. 1745 SCI: John de Sequeyra arrives in Williamsburg, Virginia, from England. The Dutch-trained physician compiles pioneering notes on diseases and a smallpox list, and works as a key individual in the Public Hospital for the Insane. Thomas Jefferson credits him with bringing the edibility of the tomato to the attention of the colonists. 1746 ANTI: New York’s Jewish cemetery is vandalized. Newport’s cemetery is vandalized in 1775. SOCI: Samson Levy and David Franks join Philadelphia’s elite Dancing Assembly. 1747 MILI: Jacob Judah volunteers to serve as a soldier in a campaign against the French and Native Americans. In 1754, Isaac Meyers calls a town meeting to raise a company of soldiers. He wins election as captain of this group, which marches across the Allegheny Mountains. Other Jews participate in similar campaigns leading to the French and Indian War. 1749 RELI: Charleston, South Carolina’s Jews establish congregation K. K. Beth Elohim. Moses Cohen is appointed rabbi and head of the

religious court, although neither he nor Hazan Isaac Da Costa is ordained. 1750s–1760s GOVT: A few Jews in Maryland receive appointments as overseers of roads and manager of lotteries. Although Jews have to pay the same tax as others to the Anglican Church and antiSemitic stereotypes appear in the Annapolis press and local theater, they are largely tolerated. 1750 GOVT: Moses Nunes lives as a trader among the Creeks, a Native American tribe, and marries a Creek woman. His role places him in a position to provide information to the Georgia officials on Native American hostilities associated with the French and Indian War and to act as a government interpreter and negotiator. Consequently, in 1768 he wins appointment as a Savannah Port Searcher for illegal shipping. POPU: Approximately 7,000 to 8,000 Jews reside in England. The number of Ashkenazim is triple the number of Sephardim. From 1750 to 1783, Charleston’s Jewish population increases to about 50 families. It takes them another decade to build and dedicate a synagogue. Jews come to the city from Europe, the Caribbean, and several other mainland colonies. SOCI: Along with four other men, Benjamin Sheftall creates the St. George Society to support the education of orphans and found the first orphanage in America in Bethesda, Georgia. The name of this elite social service organization is changed to the Union Society to reflect its emphasis on cooperation between the founders, who practice different religions. 1751 MIGR: Abraham Judah is the first known Jew in Wilmington, Delaware. He registers ships and purchases land before relocating to Philadelphia in 1761. During the rest of the colonial era, Jewish business people from Pennsylvania conduct business in Delaware but do not live there. Delaware is viewed as a remote outpost of its neighbor.


1753 BUSI: The Rhode Island legislature grants Moses Lopez a monopoly to produce potash with a new process for 10 years. Such innovation becomes a hallmark of Jewish economic creativity, albeit in a different way than mercantile sales. 1754 COMM: David Franks joins Benjamin Franklin’s Library Company. Franklin is very welcoming in his attitude toward Jews and even contributes to the Philadelphia congregation’s building fund. RELI: Jews in Newport, Rhode Island, organize Congregation Nefutse Yisrael (the Scattered of Israel), whose name is later changed to Yeshuat Israel (the Salvation of Israel). Like the other colonial congregations, Sephardim and Ashkenazim work together under Sephardic governance structures and rituals as part of this congregation, although the majority of members are Ashkenazim. 1756 BUSI: The French and Indian War (1756–1763) in the colonies (known as the Seven Years’ War in Europe) breaks out between England and France. Much of the war is fought in the colonies. Philadelphia’s Moses Franks partners with three nonJews in a consortium responsible for supplying the British troops. Other Jewish merchants provide provisions for the troops in the frontier forts including one near Fredericktown, Maryland. War contracts open up opportunities for trade with Native Americans and western land acquisitions after the war. In the next decades, wheat rivals tobacco as the major crop in Maryland and the colony’s economy gradually diversifies. As it does, following a virtually universal pattern, small numbers of Jews settle along transportation paths where they conduct trade. A similar pattern occurs in the backcountry of Pennsylvania. Jewish involvement in the fur trade expands after the war especially in the area around Fort Pitt (later Pittsburgh). 1757 BUSI: Michael and Sarah Israel purchase 80 acres of land near a mountain pass, named Israel’s

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Gap for them, and thus become the first Jews in Charlottesville, Virginia. 1759 MIGR: David Dias Arais arrives in French Louisiana as the captain of the Texel, an enemy ship from Jamaica trading clandestinely. The ship and its captain become enmeshed in a dispute between two Spanish colonial officials. Commissaire Ordinnaire Vincent Pierre Gaspard de Rochemore reports to Paris that Governor Chevalier Louis Billouart de Kerle´rec allows Dias Arias to sell his cargo to Jewish merchants residing in the colony. Rochemore indicates that six Jews have conducted wholesale and retail trade—especially in indigo and furs—for a year and a half, and that additional Jews are aboard the ship. 1760–1775 AFRI: Several Jews in Georgia own plantations worked by slaves. During the 1760s, Benjamin Sheftall owns 5 slaves and 500 acres of land, and his sons Levi and Mordecai own 750 acres and 9 slaves and 1,000 acres and 9 slaves, respectively. Abigail Minis owns 1,000 acres and 19 slaves. At the onset of the American Revolution, the six Jewish families in Savannah own 22 slaves, a higher average per household than most of their neighbors. This count does not include Levi Sheftall’s 44 plantation slaves. 1760 BUSI: Hayman Levy heads Levy, Lyons, and Company, one of the largest fur traders in the colonies. Levy, Solomon, and Company is the European branch of the firm. Native Americans crowd his Beaver Street warehouse in New York City as they trade fur pelts for merchandise. Levy fights in the American Revolution and continues the fur trade until his death in 1790. BUSI: James Lucena is naturalized as a citizen in Newport, Rhode Island, and receives a 10-year monopoly for the manufacturing of Castile soap, a process he learned in Portugal. Production of this valuable commodity employs many poor people. LIT: Hazan Joseph Pinto of New York’s Shearith Israel publishes the congregation’s Form of Prayer,


Personality Profile: Isaac Rodrigues Monsanto Brothers Isaac Rodrigues, Jacob, and Manuel Monsanto become merchandise brokers after migrating from the Netherlands to Curaçao. Isaac charters a ship to trade in New Orleans, and he, his siblings, and their business partners Manuel de Britto and Isaac Henriques Fastio move there. Isaac supports Louisiana Governor Kerle´rec and enters business ventures with him when Kerle´rec returns to France. Kerle´rec conducts business with Bordeaux merchant Abraham Gradis, and possibly introduces him to Monsanto. Monsanto, Gradis, and other Jewish families interact in trade and exchange credit with one another through ports in France and England and their colonies. Monsanto supplies a British expedition up the Mississippi River to the Illinois territory won in the French and Indian War. He acts as a banker and colonial Superior Court translator and purchases a plantation. When the French cede Louisiana to Spain, however, Jews gradually leave the area. In 1768, the Spanish governor of Louisiana restricts trade. Although he flees in response to Creole protests, his replacement strictly enforces the trade regulations. Under these rules, foreigners must depart within three months. The governor condemns Monsanto, Britto, and others for illegal trade. Nonetheless, petty traders including Fastio, Palacios, and Monsanto family members continue to conduct business in the colony. Faced with financial difficulties and often tied up in court proceedings until his death in 1778, Isaac Mansanto and his family move to Britain’s western Florida capital, Pensacola. Although the concept is over-simplified, we can think of Monsanto and other Jewish merchants discussed in this section as port Jews. These business people exploited trans-Atlantic family and religious ties for trade, credit, mobility, and political favor. The world of the Monsanto and Gradis families was not limited to Jews, however. Nevertheless, their story illustrates the precarious position of Jews along the colonial borderlands and the ways they made the best of their situation. The Monsantos also present a vivid picture of family life on the frontier.

the first publication on the continent focusing on Jewish community activities. POPU: Sephardic immigration essentially ends. Nonetheless, all of the synagogue readers from 1702 to 1816 are Sephardim because the congregations continue to follow that religious rite. Sephardim and Ashkenazim learn to work together. For example, presidents of New York’s Shearith Israel are drawn from both groups. At the same time, the Jewish community is also notable for its fractiousness. Members insult and assault each other and sue each other in court, much as do their Christian neighbors. Many conflicts reflect class divisions and differences between earlier and newer immigrants. RELI: Isaac Touro arrives in Newport from his native Holland and is elected hazan of the

Newport, Rhode Island, congregation at the recommendation of the Amsterdam Sephardic congregation’s leaders. 1761 LIT: Isaac Pinto publishes an English translation of the Sabbath and holiday prayer book, with a second edition appearing in 1766. The book mixes traditional religion practice with the reality that Jews are accommodating to American customs. SOCI: Nine Newport, Rhode Island, Jews form a social club, perhaps in response to anti-Semitism against Jewish merchants. It is the only such club strictly for Jews in colonial America and, as such, does not reflect the widespread acceptance of Jews in such organizations as the Masonic Order.


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Touro Synagogue, Newport, Rhode Island, exterior. Peter Harrison, the synagogue’s non-Jewish architect, designs the outside so that it resembles the facades of area churches. Like Sephardic synagogues in Europe and the Caribbean, the building includes no outward signs of being a Jewish house of worship. (Nineteenth-century lithograph courtesy of Touro Synagogue, Newport, RI)

1762 BUSI: Charleston officials appoint Moses Lindo inspector general of indigo. Indigo is the most valuable commodity South Carolina produces, besides rice. In his decade of service, Lindo encourages the production and sale of this plant, from which dye is extracted. BUSI: Six Newport Jews partner with 20 nonJews to form the United Company of Spermaceti Candlers, which monopolizes whale oil and candle manufacturing as a trade guild. The Jews bring their knowledge gleaned from studying spermaceti candle making in Lisbon, Portugal. Abraham Rodriguez Rivera pioneers this industry in America. Also a major shipping magnate, he leaves an estate valued at $100,000 at his death in 1789. 1763 ART: Peter Harrison, renowned church architect, designs what is now the oldest surviving synagogue in the United States for congregation

Jeshuat Israel (Salvation of Israel) in Newport, Rhode Island. The exterior reflects the best contemporary secular style. The lack of Jewish symbols on the exterior and the traditional interior are components of Sephardic design found throughout the Atlantic world. The building’s elegance demonstrates the success and acceptance of the Jewish community. Newport’s Jews request financial assistance to build the sanctuary from congregations in London, in Amsterdam, and throughout the Americas. Because of the need to assist the poor in London, the Spanish and Portuguese congregation can send only 30 pounds. Newport Jews ask for, and receive assistance from area Christians, another sign of their positive interaction. MIGR: Isaac Mendes, probably from Jamaica, may be the first Jew in Pensacola and West Florida, although Crypto-Jews may have arrived with Spanish expeditions during the early 1500s. Mendes sells Governor Johnstone Native American trade goods and buys and sells land.


Touro Synagogue, Newport, Rhode Island, interior. Also following the Sephardic model, the bimah, or area from which services are led, is placed in the center of the room, with pews for the men surrounding it. Women sit above in the gallery. The synagogue, which is constructed with money Judah Touro bequeathed and is now a National Historical Landmark, reflects the rising status of Jews and their general acceptance in society as a legitimate religious group. (Courtesy of Touro Synagogue, Newport, RI / John Hopf)

In 1766, he leaves the area in search of greater economic opportunity. MIGR: Joseph de Palacios, Samuel Israel, and Alexander Solomons live in New Orleans. From 1763 into the 1770s, Israel and Solomons buy land in Pensacola and a Mobile plantation, and conduct business with Jews in New York, Charleston, and Savannah, and with British officials. Israel and de Palacios eventually lose their property, and the latter spends time in debtors’ prison before his immigration to Charleston in 1778. He swears allegiance to the new state, marries, and actively participates in Jewish affairs. When the Spanish regain control over West Florida in 1783, Haym Solomons—Alexander’s brother, who had worked in Pensacola—flees to Georgia and then to Charleston, where he auctions goods.

1764 GOVT: Five Jews join 41 non-Jews in protest in the Rhode Island legislature against the British enforcement of the Navigation Acts controlling trade. Newport Jewish merchants also join others in protesting the Stamp Act. Nonetheless, after 1767, Newport merchants—Jews among them— generally oppose the non-importation agreements proposed by the rebels. This stance presages the loyalist position assumed by many of these merchants during the American Revolution, in recognition of the fact that trade with Britain is the economic base of the Newport community. 1765 GOVT: Philadelphia Jewish merchants join with other protestors to sign a non-importation agreement in reaction to the Stamp Act passed by the


British Parliament. In Savannah, three scions of the first Ashkenazim families to settle in the area— Mordecai Sheftall, Levi Sheftall, and Abraham Minis—join the Sons of Liberty to protest British actions. Mordecai Sheftall also heads Savannah’s Parochial Committee, which enforces the nonimportation agreements. 1767 RELI: Philadelphia’s Michael Gratz is licensed to ship meat prepared according to Jewish ritual, the first instance in North America. 1768 BUSI: Although Jews have been conducting business in Baltimore, Maryland, Jacob Hart becomes the first long-term settler in that city. Hart, like other local merchants, benefits from trade contacts in Philadelphia. He marries a Jewish woman from Philadelphia, and they move to New York in 1786, where he succeeds in business. RELI: At age 23, Gershom Mendes Seixas, son of a Sephardic father and Ashkenazic mother, is chosen as hazan of New York’s Shearith Israel. He is the first person born in America to hold such a position, although he has little knowledge of Hebrew or Jewish law. Seixas fills the position for decades and gradually transforms the role. Although religious functionaries are typically dominated by governing boards of congregations, Seixas begins to assert some authority and power. SOCI: Moses Michael Hayes introduces Scottish Rite Masonry to Britain’s North American colonies while living in New York. In 1780, he leads the creation of King David’s Lodge in Newport, where he then lives. Hayes serves as deputy inspector general, the highest rank a Mason can attain in America. Participation and leadership in this secret social and philanthropic society reflect members’ acceptance into the upper class. 1769 MIGR: Silversmith Isaiah Isaacs becomes possibly the first permanent Jewish settler in Richmond, Virginia.

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1770 MIGR: Lithuanian-born Mordecai Moses Mordecai moves from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to Baltimore, Maryland, with his Savannah-born wife, Zipporah de Lyon Mordecai. Unlike most of the Jews scattered throughout the colonies, Mordecai comes from a religious background and is observant. He opens a distillery. Within five years, the family relocates to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 1771 GOVT: New York Jewish merchants join with others in protest of the tea tax. RELI: Philadelphia Jews, who have been meeting informally for services for more than two decades (the New York congregation lent a Torah in 1761) and providing assistance for needy Jews (although divided among themselves during the 1760s), rent facilities and conduct regular worship services. In 1773, the congregation replaces former regulations with a constitution that includes a governing structure based on Sephardic traditions, even though almost all members are of German origin. The congregation’s name, Mikveh Israel, is a variation of the name of the Savannah congregation, and Jews from Savannah, Charleston, and New York are involved in its founding. Bernard Gratz serves as president. A hazan is employed who also teaches the children Hebrew and acts as the ritual butcher. Having a religious functionary serve in several capacities but with little power typifies American congregational practices into the midnineteenth century. 1772 BUSI: Most of the approximately 25 Jewish families in Newport, Rhode Island, rank among the city’s wealthiest residents, according to the tax rolls. Aaron Lopez pays twice as much in taxes as anyone else in the city. His father-in-law, Jacob Rodrigues Rivera, pays the fifth highest taxes and owns 12 slaves, the fourth largest number in the city. Lopez is the most prominent slave trader in the city and partly owns or invests in numerous slave ships.


BUSI: At least three Dutch Jews arrive in Philadelphia as indentured servants. Between 1771 and 1776, the Pennsylvania Gazette publishes six advertisements for Jewish servants who have run away. Numerous poor Jews arrive in the colonies. COMM: Jacob Rodrigues Rivera and two other Jews help found Newport’s first library. He and Aaron Lopez contribute lumber to the construction of what becomes Brown University. 1773 GOVT: Francis Salvador, who recently emigrated from England, is elected to the first and then the second provincial congresses that South Carolina calls in reaction to England’s harsh response to the Boston Tea Party. The owner of 7,000 acres in what is known as “Jews’ Land” (later called Ninety-Six), Salvador helps draft the new state constitution and serves in the first state legislature, making him the first Jew in the modern era to be elected to such an office. He joins the patriot militia and dies fighting Tories and their Seneca Indian allies in 1776.

INTL: Rabbi Haim Isaac Carigal from Hebron, Palestine, visits the American colonies. He both preaches and raises funds for needy Jews and Jewish institutions in Palestine. Such visitors from the Holy Land are rare but not unusual during the next century. They and the positive reception they receive reflect the American Jews’ strong ties of religious and ethnic identity to the international Jewish community. 1775 Isaac Da Costa and other Sephardim conflict with Abraham Alexander when Alexander comes from London to become the minister of Charleston’s K. K. Beth Elohim. The congregation is now dominated in number by Ashkenazim and Alexander follows Ashkenazic practices. DaCosta and his Sephardic supporters split away and create Congregation Beth Elohim Unveh Shallom (House of the Lord and Mansion of Peace). The two congregations reunite in 1791 when the differences no longer seem important.

AMERICAN REVOLUTION TO 1819 1776–1819 ACCT: Gradually, established churches lose their government support and Jews gain religious and political rights deriving from the Revolutionary fervor. Nonetheless, they also continue to experience anti-Semitism. Jews respond positively to their new position as a religious group on an equal footing with Christian denominations and feel sufficiently secure to protest discrimination. AFRI: In both the North and the South, Jewish relationships with slavery reflect those of others in the middle and upper classes in the cities. Jews tend to own a few house slaves, and buy and sell slaves as part of their other business transactions. As slavery gradually ends in the North, they leave it behind. As it declines in the upper South during this period, they, like many of their neighbors, sometimes free their slaves, typically in their wills. BUSI: In response to national and international events, Jewish business interests shift from cross-Atlantic trade to domestic (internal) commerce. Although some Jews become affluent, most are middle-class merchants and skilled craftspeople. Few Jews own farms and plantations. Typically such ownership results from their mercantile activities and desire to gain status in Southern society. Most Jews remain in retail sales and merchan dising or temporarily clerk in stores in hopes of eventually owning their own businesses. A few children of families long in America enter into the professions, and some new immigrants thrive

in cities as skilled craftsmen. Links of family, business, and friendship promote business and religious institutions. MIGR: Factors associated with the American Revolution bring turmoil to the Jewish communities and lead to movement of people and changes in congregations. Important communities in Newport, Rhode Island, and in Lancaster and Reading, Pennsylvania, die but their members help build and rejuvenate congregations in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond among other places. Jews participate in and foster the movements westward across the Appalachians. RELI: Ashkenazim overwhelm Sephardim in population but congregations retain the Sephardic rites and differences decline as part of the process of acculturation to America. Strict religious observance declines among many, and German, Polish, and Dutch-rite congregations are established. The colonial and European model of synagogue-centered religious life is replaced with multiple-congregation communities, and independent organizations bond Jews together and provide services. 1776–1781 ART: Prominent Jews have their portraits done by the top artists in the country. Their clothing, with few exceptions, mirrors that of their nonJewish, upper-class counterparts. BUSI: Isaac de la Motta is the only Jew in the top 50 business people giving loans to the South Carolina government. His status reflects the fact


that Jews—typically urban merchants—are not among the financial elite, which is largely composed of plantation owners. The 1790 census bears this out, with only one Jewish plantation owner, Philip Hart, owning as many as 15 slaves. BUSI: Jewish business people in Philadelphia and other cities supply troops, participate as privateers, and organize and expand commission/ brokerage houses. The majority, however, remain petty merchants and crafts people. BUSI: Isaiah Isaacs and Jacob I. Cohen become partners in Richmond, Virginia. They sell real estate and own the Bird in the Hand tavern and inn. In 1781, Daniel Boone surveys their land holdings in Kentucky, then a county of Virginia. Their merchandise business is known as “the Jew’s Store.” The phrase “Jew store,” widely used during the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, reflects negative images of Jews as business people. They are integral members of the business community but set apart as different. Isaiah Isaacs’ brother David runs a mercantile business in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Isaiah joins him by 1800. Isaiah Isaacs and Jacob Cohen are founders of Richmond’s first congregation, Beth Shalome, and Cohen is also prominent in the Baltimore and Philadelphia Jewish communities. BUSI: Some Hessians—German mercenaries hired by the British—are Jews forced to join the military by German princes. A number of these soldiers remain in America. Joseph Darmstadt, for example, is captured in the battle of Saratoga and taken to Virginia by the American forces. He succeeds as a merchant in Richmond, trading especially with German Americans in the Shenandoah Valley. Darmstadt serves as grand treasurer of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons in Virginia during the period when Supreme Court Justice John Marshall acts as grand master. GOVT: Jews fight on both sides of the American Revolution. Although the vast majority side with independence, some, especially in Newport, Rhode Island, and New York, become Tories. Many of these Loyalists flee to Canada or England after the war. Jewish involvement in

politics reflects their senses of security, loyalty, and integration into American life: Even as Tories, they behave much like their non-Jewish neighbors. Besides serving the American Revolutionary as soldiers, Jewish sutlers supply the troops, and Jews serve in government positions, as financiers, and in other capacities. GOVT: Mordecai Sheftall (chairperson), Levi Sheftall, and Philip Minis serve on Savannah’s Parochial Committee of Public Safety (forerunner of the provincial congress) in support of the Revolution. Mordecai is commissioned commissary general of troops in South Carolina and Georgia. Philip Minis loans $10,000 to the Continental Army and becomes commissary and paymaster for Georgia troops in that army. Mordecai Sheftall and Sheftall Sheftall, his son, are captured by the British and imprisoned for two years. With the British occupation of Savannah and Charleston, most Jews flee the cities. After the war, Mordecai Sheftall wins elections as a city magistrate, warden, and finally state legislator. Levi Sheftall is elected alderman and fire master. Jews have won their place, and are fitting in and being accepted. GOVT: Benjamin Levy, who had moved from colony to colony as a merchant, is selected for membership on the Baltimore Committee of Observation, a local governing body created as the colonies separate from England. The Continental Congress authorizes him to issue bills of credit, essentially a money system for the emerging United States. Sampson Lazarus of Fredericktown, Maryland, provides supplies for the American troops. MIGR: During and after the Revolution, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, declines economically because of British encroachments. The town’s Jewish residents move to other locations including Baltimore, where the population increases because the port remains open during the war. Baltimore becomes increasingly competitive with Philadelphia in terms of trade, and Jewish merchants migrate from Philadelphia to the Maryland city to capitalize on economic opportunity. The movement of people takes on the character of chain migration similar to that from Europe to

American Revolution to 1819

specific locations in America, in that the newcomers typically have ties of kinship or friendship with earlier Jewish settlers. MILI: State militia member Solomon Bush is wounded and imprisoned in a battle with the British in Pennsylvania. He secretly sends George Washington information on the movement of British troops while under guard. He serves in the militia as deputy adjutant general. Later, as a lieutenant colonel, Bush becomes the highestranked Jew in a Continental Army combat regiment. David S. Franks and Isaac Franks also attain the rank of lieutenant colonel. MILI: Fourteen Jews join Captain Richard Lushington’s Charleston unit. It is known as the “Jews’ Company,” even though most members are Christian. RELI: The Revolution dramatically disrupts congregational life. When British troops occupy the five port cities with large Jewish populations, most of the Jews there relocate, sometimes multiple times. The hazan of the Newport congregation, Isaac Touro, a Tory, departs for the Caribbean, never to return to the United States. In fact, Newport is so devastated by the disruption in British trade during and after the war that the Jewish community disperses and the congregation becomes moribund in 1792. Most of the New York congregation and its hazan, Gershom Mendes Seixas, spend much of the war first in Connecticut and then in Philadelphia. Before it is occupied and after the British depart, Philadelphia’s Jewish population swells to about 1,000 with refugees from the other port cities with Jewish communities. K. K. Beth Elohim’s hazan, Abraham DaCosta, temporarily chairs the committee that formally incorporates Philadelphia’s Mikveh Israel in 1781. He then returns to Charleston, where the differences between Ashkenazim and Sephardim are no longer so pronounced and two rival congregations ultimately re-unite. Seixas serves as Mikveh Israel’s hazan before returning to his New York pulpit after the war. Seixas, DaCosta, and Mordecai Sheftall and Solomon Pollock of Savannah lead in the creation of an order for services and other instructions that Seixas’ Philadelphia successors follow.

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1776 ANTI: In Common Sense, later in The Age of Reason, and in other writings, Thomas Paine heaps scorn on Jews as unenlightened, superstitious, and stupid. ANTI: An oath of loyalty on a Christian bible is required to vote and hold office under Pennsylvania’s new constitution. This mandate disqualifies Jews and Quakers only months after the Declaration of Independence declares, “all men are created equal.” Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, leading minister of the United Lutheran Church, lobbies for the provision by claiming that giving these rights to nonbelievers would allow them to take over the new country and bring with them atheism. Muhlenberg fails in his attempts to convert Jews. COMM: Haym Salomon, who had emigrated from Poland to New York, contracts to supply New York troops against the British. He escapes his second imprisonment and moves to Philadelphia, where he helps finance the American Revolution and sells national bills of exchange after the war. He thereby acts as an important financier and symbol of broad Jewish support for the Revolution and early America. Salomon, like Savannah’s Mordecai Sheftall, spends years trying to get reimbursed. He dies in poverty. POPU: Fewer than 2,500 Jews reside in the United States, the majority in the port cities. 1777 GOVT: New York extends freedom of religion to “all mankind.” Many such provisions later appear in bills of rights included in other states’ constitutions, but New York’s constitution goes beyond most of these by eliminating religious qualifications for voting and office holding. 1778 BUSI: Moses Levy is admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar Association, perhaps the first Jew in America to qualify as an attorney. Levy receives a B.A. degree (1772) and legal training from the College of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania). He serves in the Pennsylvania


legislature. As recorder (or municipal judge) of Philadelphia, he presides over the Cordwainers (shoemakers) Case, in which the jury decides against a trade union. A former soldier who crossed the Delaware River with George Washington on Christmas Eve 1776 to defeat the British at Trenton, Levy is appointed presiding judge for the District Court in Philadelphia. GOVT: South Carolina’s state constitution grants the right to vote to adult males who believe in God and own either a city plot of land or 50 acres. In 1790, the revised, Federalist Party–supported, state constitution grants Jews the right to office holding. 1780s AFRI: In Virginia, Isaiah Isaacs frees one slave during his lifetime and his other slaves in his will, providing each former slave with $20 in clothing. His former partner, Jacob I. Cohen, also manumits several slaves in his will. BUSI: Moses Myers, who with his brother built and then lost a prosperous merchant business in New York, relocates to Norfolk, Virginia. His brother Samuel ultimately resettles in Richmond. The partners conduct trade between the North and South, as well as with Europe, and act as business agents for Stephen Girard of Philadelphia. Moses Myers also serves as superintendent of the Norfolk branch of the Bank of Richmond, as an agent for Thomas Jefferson, and as a member of the local common council. When Myers’ business fails during the financial panic of 1819, Norfolk citizens sign two petitions to President James Monroe in support of his application for the position of customs collector for the port city. With a change in presidential administration to President Andrew Jackson a decade later, Norfolk merchants again rally to his side to allow Myers to retain the position. GOVT: Isaiah Isaacs runs unsuccessfully for Richmond, Virginia’s common council before Jews gain formal political rights. He then becomes clerk of the market, tax assessor, and finally a member of the common council. RELI: Philadelphia’s Jewish population, which surged during the American Revolution,

temporarily declines to about 150. Raising funds to support the congregation’s building becomes difficult, and its members request assistance from the general community. Symbolic of the acceptance the community enjoys, Benjamin Franklin is among the donors and the government even permits the congregation to hold a lottery. 1783 GOVT: Pennsylvania’s constitution requires a test oath (of belief that both the Old and New Testaments are written by God) to take a seat in the legislature, thereby blocking Jewish office holding. Jews sign petitions protesting discrimination. In 1790, the test oath is eliminated. In the following decades, Jews serve in the state militia, on the board of education, and as justices of the peace. In the early 1800s, Aaron Levy even serves as speaker of the Pennsylvania assembly. Nine other states initially block Jewish office holding in their state constitutions, although several of these states grant freedom of religion. Jews lobby for full political rights. The following states eliminate the religious qualifications for holding office over a span of approximately 30 years: South Carolina, 1790; Delaware, 1792; Georgia, 1798; Connecticut, 1818; Massachusetts, 1821. MIGR: Jews benefit from the expanded boundaries of their new country, won from England in the treaty ending the American Revolution. Like many other Americans, they move west and across the Appalachian Mountains. Their investments in real estate before the war now bear fruit and their involvement in the Indian fur trade moves outward. To illustrate, in 1786, Aaron Levy establishes Aaronsburg, Pennsylvania. The hazan of Philadelphia’s Mikveh Israel, Jacob Raphael Cohen, names his 301 acres bordering the Ohio River on the west, Cohensburg. ORGS: Philadelphia’s Jews recognize the need for further organization to assist other Jews. They form the Society for Destitute Strangers (Ezrath Orchim), typical of societies in Europe, and grant 15 shillings to 1 pound in currency to traveling Jewish poor. The creation of separate societies to care for Jews in need reflects changes in the responsibilities of the congregations, which had previously assumed such duties.


1784 ACCT: Hazan Gershom Mendes Seixas of New York is appointed to Columbia College’s governing board. He also serves as a trustee of the Humane Society. Seixas becomes a public figure during the era of the American Revolution, marching in parades and giving speeches. He also interacts with clergy of other religions while planning, for example, fasting and thanksgiving days for the city. ANTI: During an attempt to charter a bank, Jews are attacked in the Pennsylvania legislature as “Jew brokers,” and “Shylocks” because Hyam Salomon and others hold shares in the Bank of North America, the competitor of the new venture. Jews feel sufficiently accepted to respond to these attacks in Philadelphia newspapers. GOVT: In Virginia, Jews, along with a few Protestant sects, gain the legal right to perform marriage ceremonies. RELI: Seixas supervises ritual butchers—a role requiring knowledge of religious practices that is typically performed by ordained rabbis— although he lacks such certification. He also gives sermons. Because these duties venture beyond even the role of traditional European rabbis, he uses the Christian model. He also borrows Christian theological concepts. 1785 MIGR: Abram Mordecai is the first citizen to settle in what becomes Montgomery, Alabama. He marries a Creek woman and lives and trades among the Creeks until his death in 1849. ORGS: New York Jews create a burial society separate from the congregation. The Philadelphia congregation follows this pattern in 1813. In that year, the New York congregation creates the Society for the Visitation of the Sick and Mutual Assistance. Such specialized and quasi-independent societies reflect the decline of synagogue power. 1786 ART: Myer Myers becomes president of the Silversmith Society of New York, the first Jew to hold that office in an American guild. He is the

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first and finest, American Jewish silversmith. He creates numerous ritual and household items as well as works for churches from the 1740s until his death in 1795. Such an occupation is not unusual for Jews because of their need for ritual objects. GOVT: The Virginia legislature passes the Statute for Religious Freedom, which is written by Thomas Jefferson. This law separates church and state, and allows everyone to practice their religion as a private matter. Six years later, the legislature grants members of all religions equal rights. Although philosophically liberal, Jefferson accepted stereotypes of Jews as greedy, unethical, and antisocial. RELI: A sufficient number of Ashkenazic and Sephardic families (the latter especially from Charleston) live in Savannah to revive K. K. Mikve Israel. Four years later, the governor grants the congregation formal incorporation. The two groups are sufficiently acculturated so that Old World differences are not as divisive as they had been in the 1730s and they worship together in peace. Whereas Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities remain apart elsewhere in the Atlantic world, in America Jews are too few in number to maintain separate congregations, and their differences erode as they acculturate and intermarry. RELI: Baltimore Jews informally conduct services and purchase a cemetery. Five years later, they employ a ritual butcher. 1787 ANTI: Charleston’s K. K. Beth Elohim is robbed and vandalized, and the Torah scrolls are thrown on the floor. Philadelphia’s Jewish cemetery is vandalized the following year. EDUC: Franklin Academy, forerunner of Franklin and Marshall College, is founded in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and four Jews—two men and two women—are in its first class. GOVT: The Northwest Ordinance Congress passes to govern the Northwest Territory (ultimately Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin) includes the guarantee of religious


freedom. Some Jews had speculated in land in what became Ohio and Indiana before the Revolution, but now Jews join other American in streaming westward. GOVT: The United States Constitution bans religious oaths or tests for federal office holding. 1788 ACCT: At the Fourth of July parade in Philadelphia marking the first anniversary of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, five members of the clergy—four Christians and a Jew—march together illustrating unity. Nonetheless, Jews eat a kosher meal apart from the others after the parade, reflecting their right to be distinctive. ANTI: The New York Daily Advertiser opposes the ratification of the U.S. Constitution because the document did not ban Jews from voting and holding office. The newspaper fears that a Jewish commander-in-chief would use American troops to rebuild Jerusalem. Such charges of dual loyalty will fuel anti-Semitism for the next 200 years. SOCI: Samuel Myers, Joseph Darmstadt, and other Jews join non-Jews, including Chief Justice John Marshall, in forming Richmond’s Amicable Society, an elite organization that assists the needy. 1789 RELI: K’hal Kadosh Beth Shalome (the Holy Congregation of the House of Peace) is created in Richmond, Virginia. Although the vast majority of members are Ashkenazim, the congregation accepts Sephardic rites and governance partly to foster cooperation with the other five congregations in the country. Yet, unlike in the five earlier congregations, the parnas (president) lacks the power to discipline members and K. K. Beth Shalome does not require adherence to ritual for membership. Richmond Jews accept the realities of acculturation. Congregants create a charitable society to aid fellow Jews and purchase land for a cemetery the following year. 1789–1790 ACCT: The congregations in Newport and Savannah independently, and later four congregations

jointly, send letters of support and loyalty to President George Washington, as do numerous churches. In contrast to many of the latter missives, the synagogue letters refer to past discrimination while praising the United States for religious liberty. Washington’s responses go beyond toleration to assure Jews of their freedom and citizenship, and to reject bigotry and persecution. The president has these letters published in the Gazette of the United States, just as he does with the letters from Roman Catholics and Protestant sects, to give them wide circulation. Such exchange of letters continues under the next presidents and reinforces Jews’ sense of belonging and citizenship. Having three separate letters sent to Washington illustrates congregational independence and lack of unity, whereas cooperation between the Charleston, New York, Philadelphia, and Richmond congregations demonstrates a lack of regional divisions. ACCT: Especially in synagogue dedications and on similar occasions, Jews refer to the United States as their “New Jerusalem” and as “This happy land.” This terminology harks back to the early images Quakers and Puritans had of their colonies and speaks to Jewish feelings of being at home and being accepted—things that had been foreign in Europe, where Jews were traditionally viewed as a separate nation. GOVT: Gradually political parties emerge on the national level. Jews tend to support and be supported by the Federalist Party in opposition to the Republicans. The Federalist Party best represents their business interests, and Presidents George Washington and John Adams publicly state their belief in the religious and political rights Jews hold dear. 1790–1820 ACCT: Government officials are invited to speak at synagogue dedications, and members of the general public are welcome and attend these events. ANTI: From this era at least to the Civil War, Jews actively participate in national days of fast and thanksgiving. Nevertheless, they are reminded of


being different because the government proclamations typically describe America as a Christian country or otherwise refer to Christianity, assuming it is virtually an official faith. BUSI: Disruptions in overseas trade coupled with American expansion beyond the Appalachian Mountains contribute to changes in Jewish business activity. Although most Jewish business people remain merchants, far fewer pursue shipping and trade across the Atlantic. Jewish skilled craftspeople open shops in the cities and some American-born Jews follow professional careers. INTL: American relations with Europe are frequently disrupted during this era because of issues surrounding the America and French Revolutions and the Napoleonic Wars. INTL: Several Jewish communities in the Caribbean, including those in Curaç ao and Saint Eustatius, decline and even disappear. POPU: The total Jewish population of the United States is estimated to be 3,000 in 1790. During these decades the Jewish component accounts for less than 1 percent of the country’s total. Natural population increases are only slightly enhanced with immigrants. Small numbers, for example, emigrate from Bordeaux, France, during the era of the French Revolution, while others come from the Caribbean. In terms of the largest centers, the Jewish population of Charleston is approximately 225 to 250 people, or 3 percent of the total white population of the city. New York has about 240 Jews. By 1800, Charleston clearly jumps ahead with 400 Jews, a number that increases to 600 during the 1810s and to 700 in 1820s. In contrast, New York houses about 550 Jews during the 1810s and 1820s and Philadelphia about 450. In 1790, approximately 200 Jews live in the entire state of Virginia. More than half of these people reside in Richmond. At that time, the city boasted 1,200 to 1,800 residents equally divided between slaves and free individuals, thus making the Jewish segment relatively substantial. The Jewish population of Richmond increases to approximately 190 by 1820. Baltimore’s Jewish

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population rises from 29 in 1790 to 98 in 1810 and then to 125 a decade later. The Savannah Jewish community reaches only about 94 in 1820; the more prosperous Charleston draws away many of its residents. SCI: Isaac Levy practices medicine in Illinois Territory. He is one of several Jewish physicians of the era. Moses Sheftall studies under the most famous American doctor of the Revolutionary period, Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, before opening his practice. After pursuing medical studies in Copenhagen, Isaac Cohen starts his practice in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by not charging poor patients. 1790 RELI: New York’s Shearith Israel approves a new congregational constitution influenced by American political events that opens membership, makes office holding more democratic, and defines a membership bill of rights. All of the other congregations agree to similar governing documents. Nonetheless, such democratic concessions do not halt conflicts in the following decades between congregations and congregants concerning issues relating to marriage with non-Jews, dietary and Sabbath laws and customs, and the power relationships between members and officers, and between officers and religious functionaries. Congregational education programs fail for lack of students and fees, and the synagoguecommunity structure of Europe and the colonial era is breaking down. 1791 BUSI: Benjamin Gomez opens a book and stationery store in New York. He also publishes books. GOVT: The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, forbids Congress to pass any law “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free expression thereof.” The meaning and extent of the amendment are debated up to the present day, and the boundaries of separation of church and state are frequently blurred.


1792 BUSI: Ephraim Hart joins 23 other New Yorkers in signing an agreement that begins the Stockbrokers Guild, forerunner of the New York Stock Exchange. His brokerage house is located on 74 Wall Street. Joel Hart, son of Ephraim and his wife Frances, graduates from London’s Royal College of Surgeons and becomes a charter member of the Medical Society of New York. RELI: The cornerstone-laying ceremony for K. K. Beth Elohim’s new synagogue is conducted according to Masonic ritual, as is the same activity for Savannah’s K. K. Mikve Israel (1819). Christian Masonic officials participate in the latter ceremony. In 1794, the exterior of the Charleston congregation’s building resembles a parish church in England when it is dedicated. Hazanim now wear clothing modeled on that of Episcopalian clergy. Congregations are acculturating even as they fight to maintain tradition. 1793 GOVT: As the French Revolution unfolds, Jews are emancipated. The American Republican Party supports the French Revolution, while the Federalist Party denounces it. Many Jews switch allegiance to the Republican Party for this and other reasons. Jews join the Republican Society of Charleston. Abraham Saspotas acts as agent for American privateers who attack English, Dutch, and Spanish ships in quasi-warfare associated with the French Revolution. 1794 ANTI: Pennsylvania passes a Sunday closing law for businesses. This legislation discriminates against Jews, who miss both Saturday and Sunday customers if they close their business on the Jewish Sabbath. When Jews challenge the law by conducting business on Sunday, they are arrested and lose the ensuing court cases. Such Sunday closing laws plague Jews almost everywhere in the country during the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century. These laws and the fact that Saturday is market day in most towns leads Jews to keep their businesses open, thereby breaking the precepts of their religion.

GOVT: The frequent president of Shearith Israel and a successful merchant, Solomon Simson serves in the position of second vice president of the Democratic Society created in New York in 1794. James Rivington, a Federalist newspaper editor, attacks Jewish Republicans as “of the tribe of Shylock.” Rivington singles out Simson for criticism. Nonetheless Simson rises to the first vice presidency and then the presidency of the Democratic Society by 1797. Simson wins election as city assessor in 1794 and 1795, and as election inspector in 1798. 1795 RELI: Thirty to 40 of the recent Jewish immigrants to Philadelphia from the German states and Holland so dislike the Sephardic ritual at Congregation Mikveh Israel that they form the German Hebrew Society. In 1801, the congregation purchases a cemetery plot; the following year, the organization changes its name to Rodeph Shalom (Lovers of Peace). This is the first permanent Ashkenazic congregation in the United States. Its establishment reflects the breakdown of the one-synagogue-centered community. The two congregations engage in both conflict and cooperation. Mikveh Israel initially assists with ritual slaughter supervision and provision of a Torah, and some members of Rodeph Shalom contribute to Mikveh Israel. Both congregations are orthodox, but Rodeph Shalom increases proportionately in size as more immigrants join. Reflecting the process of Americanization, some Dutch charter members of Rodeph Shalom rejoin Mikveh Israel during the 1820s as class and prestige become more important than ritual differences based on country of origin. 1798 GOVT: President John Adams calls for a day of prayer and fasting in preparation for war with France. Gershom Mendes Seixas stands out among the clergy by preaching a sermon advocating peace and opposing the recently passed Alien and Sedition Acts. ORGS: Gershom Mendes Seixas establishes a society to assist the needy in response to a yellow


fever epidemic. Four years later, he creates a burial society that also offers aid to the poor. 1800–1819 ANTI: Savannah’s Jewish cemetery is vandalized in 1800 and 1812, and in 1807 Moses Sheftall is blackballed from admission into a prestigious dance society. Sheftall protests his rejection from admission into the dance society in the Savannah newspapers. When confronted with antiSemitism in similar incidents, Jews frequently respond in the same fashion. They, like Sheftall, point to American liberty and the positive qualities Jews bring to the country, and denounce the prejudice of their detractors. COMM: Jews help found numerous civic institutions. In Philadelphia, for example, they participate in the creation of lending libraries, the city’s first orphan asylum, the College of Pharmacy (the first in America), and the Music Fund, besides serving on the board of education. GOVT: Thomas Jefferson appoints Reuben Etting to the position of U.S. Marshal of Maryland. The consul to Scotland in 1816 is Joel Hart, and the consul to Saint Thomas in 1818 is Nathan Levy. Jews in Charleston also serve in a variety of local offices. As more of Georgia’s Jews turn to the Republican Party, they become clerks of the mayor’s court, fire chiefs, and market commissioners. 1800 ANTI: A strong supporter of Thomas Jefferson and his political party, Benjamin Nones of Philadelphia belongs to the Democratic Society of Philadelphia. Nones is attacked in the press as a Jew, a Republican, and a poor man. His newspaper response glories in each of the attributes and even extols Judaism above Christianity. 1801 ORGS: Charleston, South Carolina, Jews have recently united with Christians to form an orphan asylum, but create the Hebrew Orphan Society when they realize that Jewish orphans are being given a Christian education.

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MILI: Simon M. Levy is the first Jewish graduate of West Point and subsequently becomes an instructor there. SOCI: In Philadelphia, Rebecca Gratz and seven other Jewish women become charter members of the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances. This reflects their acceptance into upper-class society and their desire to help those once on that level who have now fallen on hard times. 1802 EDUC: Congregation Shearith Israel of New York reorganizes its school as the Polonies Talmud Torah. The school is named for a major donor, Mayer Polonies. Students learn religious and secular subjects until 1840, when the facility becomes a religious supplementary school to the regular public school education. The school still functions today. 1804 PERF: A Charleston theater manager refuses to allow the performance of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, with its negative depiction of Jews, when asked by the “gentlemen of the Jewish nation of that city,” according to the Massachusetts Spy. The play is performed in both Philadelphia and New York, however. 1807 LIT: Isaac Harby publishes The Quiver, the first American literary journal published by a Jew. The leader of the Reformed Society of Israelites (see the entry for 1824), Harby edits several newspapers in Charleston, writes poetry and plays, and runs Harby’s Academy, a well-known school. 1808 EDUC: The Mordecai family starts the Mordecai Female Academy in Warrenton, North Carolina. The school, which is largely run by the Mordecai women, stresses the genteel education of the era. Relatively isolated from other Jews in Warrenton, in later decades most of the children of the family


convert to Christianity. Although Jacob Mordecai expresses early doubts, he becomes the president of Richmond’s K. K. Beth Shalome and a stalwart supporter of traditional Judaism. SCI: Manuel Phillips is the Medical Lyceum of Philadelphia’s secretary. The next year he wins appointment as the U.S. Navy’s assistant surgeon.

RELI: German-born, Israel Baer Kursheedt arrives in Richmond, Virginia, and becomes the minister of Congregation Beth Shalome. He is one of the most religiously knowledgeable Jews in nineteenth-century America and a traditionalist.

1810–1812 SOCI: Solomon Jacobs, a Richmond bank director, serves as grand master of the grand lodge of Virginia of the Masonic Order. During the nineteenth century, Jews hold this office in several states, including Georgia.

1815 ANTI: Although during earlier periods in America, Christians urged toleration and acceptance of Jews so that they would convert to Christianity—notions supported by European Enlightenment philosophers that serve as the basis for citizenship and toleration in much of Europe—now two organizations are formed with the specific purpose of conversation. The Female Society of Boston and Vicinity for Promoting Christianity among the Jews and the American Society for Evangelizing the Jews are followed a few years later by the American Society for the Ameliorating the Condition of the Jews. These societies are founded to convert Jews to acceptance of Jesus as the messiah following the Second Great Awakening evangelical spirit. They and other missionary societies have little success, but their existence encourages Jews to reform and promote Judaism.

1811 ART: Abraham I. Nunes’s botanical paintings are shown at the first exhibit of Philadelphia’s Academy of Fine Arts, an organization Jews help establish. Nunes conducts a drawing academy in the city.

BUSI: Brothers Jacob and Daniel de Solis open a dry goods store in Wilmington, Delaware. The business is short-lived and the brothers move to Philadelphia. Delaware fails to attract another Jewish resident until 1843. Such is the nature of Jewish business and settlement in locations with weak business prospects.

1809 GOVT: Jacob Henry wins a battle on a technicality when his election to the state legislature is challenged because Jews cannot hold office under North Carolina’s constitution. However, he is defeated for reelection. POP: Fifty-five percent of the Jewish population of Charleston, South Carolina, resides on King Street, a central business corridor with a large Jewish presence for the next 200 years.

1812 BUSI: The owner of a New York City copper store, Harmon Hendricks opens the Soho Copper-Rolling Mill in New Jersey. The company pioneers in making copper sheeting. The company grows from the metals business his father Uriah Hendricks runs as an ironmonger during the colonial era. Harmon Hendricks purchases $40,000 in government bonds to help finance the War of 1812. MILI: Many Jews serve in the military during the War of 1812.

GOVT: Solomon Jacobs serves as acting mayor of Richmond, Virginia. RELI: New York’s Shearith Israel appoints Jennet Isaacs the shammas (sexton), succeeding her deceased husband in that role. The appointment of women to such positions goes against tradition. 1817 INTL: Jews in Hamburg, Germany, organize the first Reform society. Reform Judaism gradually spreads to other German cities as well as Holland, England, and other European countries.


Traditionalists and reformers come into repeated conflict. American Judaism is profoundly affected by the reformers through contact with Europe and the influence especially of German immigrants who bring the ideology with them. 1818 RELI: New York’s Shearith Israel builds a new synagogue. The partition separating men’s and women’s views in the upstairs women’s gallery is eliminated and the gallery is expanded because

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women attend services in greater number than previously. 1819 RELI: In 1816, Joseph Jonas from England moves to Cincinnati, Ohio. Three years later, he and three other British American Jews, along with a Jew running a trading post in Indiana, hold the first High Holy Day services west of the Appalachian Mountains. They organize a cemetery in 1821.


GETTING ESTABLISHED: 1820–1880 1820–1880 ANTI: Immigrants and their descendants acculturate to varying degrees into an America with substantial rights and freedoms that nonetheless continues to harbor prejudices. The prejudices are heightened in the decades before the Civil War by a huge influx of new immigrants. For example, the nativist Know Nothing Party rails against the newcomers. At the end of this era, other organizations rise in response to the anxiety associated with adjustment to urbanization and industrialization. The last wave of prejudice-oriented groups includes the Ku Klux Klan and white-cappers as well as elite, social anti-Semites. IMMI: Jews emigrate from England, Holland, Poland, Austria, and other European countries to the United States, although the largest group of emigrants arrives from the German states. First Jews mostly from the small towns of the south German states arrive, followed by larger numbers from the north. The key places of origin for these emigrants within what becomes a unified Germany in 1871 are Bavaria, Posen, Prussia, and Wu¨rttemberg. Many are actually east European Jews moving to the German states and Jews from Poland after Prussia annexed Poznan. Thus often the official country of origin is misleading. For example, many Jews from the European continent live in England before moving again to the United States. Jews from east Europe migrate to the German states before America. These Jews comprise part of a much larger wave of immigrants into the United States, a wave that

also introduces large numbers of Catholics especially from the German states and Ireland. The greatest motivating factor for Jews, as for other emigrants, is the desire for economic opportunity. The failure of the liberal revolutions of 1848 fosters emigration of Jews and Christians alike. By mid-century, steamships and railroads greatly facilitate this movement. Yet antiSemitism complicates the picture. German states deny Jews the right to own land or enter many crafts. Certain Jewish communities must maintain a Matrikel, or registry of those families eligible to live in the town. Marriages are permitted only if someone on the Matrikel dies and thus provides an opening for a new household. During the Hep! Hep! riots of 1819, Jews are murdered and their businesses and synagogues vandalized. Jews are gradually allowed into the secular society, where some gain educations. To become rabbis, men must speak the German language and obtain a degree from a German university. Government officials routinely oversee and regulate Jewish communities. The basis for emancipation and rights is the expectation that Jews will assimilate and become Christians. European Jewish communal unity gradually erodes, and conflicts arise over religious practice and theology. Chain migration patterns prevail, with young men emigrating and preparing the way for other family members and people from the same community so that large percentages of Jewish communities throughout America are composed of people from a particular area in Europe.


Somewhat ironically, in America Jews from the German states interact positively with their Catholic and Lutheran counterparts and identify with the German language, culture, and foodways, although they tend to live in different locations. They also correspond with and visit family members who remain behind. BUSI: The view of America as the land of economic opportunity and individual freedom lures the immigrants. However, the more religious and better off tend to remain in Europe. Within the United States, Jews follow transportation corridors to peddle goods until they can open dry goods stores, which then often turn into department stores along an urban frontier. Jews are disproportionately self-employed in dry goods and clothing businesses, and their dry goods (and then department) stores often line downtown shopping streets. Whereas most people remain in one community, Jews routinely move to locations that offer the greatest economic opportunity and where they can be with other Jews. The vast majority of Jews become small-town and urban business people, whereas the majority of non-Jewish Americans live and work as rural farmers. The largest concentrations of Jews reside in the major cities, especially New York. In towns and cities Jews, like many other immigrant groups, tend to live in residential clusters with people of a similar heritage; thus they are able to speak Yiddish, assist each other, walk to synagogues for Sabbath services, and support and benefit from businesses catering to ethnic needs and tastes. The immigrants’ background in peddling and petty trading in Europe prepares them well for success in an America that is growing larger and expanding westward. Family and community credit ties facilitates business success. Jews make disproportionate contributions to creating a consumer society, providing credit and finance, and developing infrastructure. Jewish tailors, cigar makers, jewelers, shoemakers, and glass workers also reflect some of the trades carried to America from the old country. Yet many immigrants fail. In turn, benevolent and fraternal societies, orphanages, and free schools arise to assist the needy.

GOVT: Jews participate in the political life of the country, albeit often with twists that reflect their backgrounds. This is particularly true concerning slavery, sectionalism, the Civil War, and its aftermath. Twenty Jews serve in the U.S. Congress. RELI: The number of congregations expands dramatically especially after the Civil War, and diversity prevails in an environment in which religion is an individual’s choice. With stops and starts, Reform Judaism emerges both from experiences in America and importations from the German states. Some traditionalists also adapt although not as much as reformers, while others fight a rearguard battle against acculturation. Many Protestants influenced by the second Great Awakening stress faith and evangelical religion. Most Jews become less observant, and follow rationalism and decorum more in line with mainstream Protestant denominations such as Episcopalians. The first rabbis arrive in America and battle with their congregations. Even as they call for unity and cooperation, they come into conflict with one another. The number of congregations and Jewish institutions dramatically expands, and Jews build sanctuaries reflecting their status in society. They also speak out on behalf of Jews facing persecution overseas. 1820–1840 EDUC: Jews adopt the Protestant practice of creating catechisms to teach their children the basics of Judaism through the memorized questionand-answer approach. Although Jews in Europe use them sparingly for over two centuries, such teaching tools break from the traditional use of the entire Bible for instruction. They thus reflect secular accommodation. 1820–1830 POPU: The total Jewish population of the United States during this decade increases from approximately 3,000 to 15,000, with most of the new arrivals coming from the German states. Charleston continues to boast the largest Jewish community in the United States (approximately 700 individuals in 1830). Its Jewish population, which is deeply involved in business, cultural,

Getting Established: 1820–1880

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Personality Profile: Mordecai Manuel Noah Mordecai Manuel Noah, an ardent supporter of the War of 1812, is appointed consul-general in Tunis. There, he helps free American sailors who have been enslaved by Barbary pirates. Noah previously served as consul to Riga, Russia. U.S. Secretary of State James Monroe recalls Noah from Tunis on the grounds that his religion had not been known at the time of his appointment and his Jewish faith might negatively affect his duties. Isaac Harby of Charleston writes to Monroe condemning the implications of the letter and reminding Monroe of his previous role in Virginia’s guarantee of religious freedom. Noah, a playwright, also becomes deeply involved in partisan politics. For example, he helps found Tammany Hall, New York City’s Democratic Party organization. He is best known for proposing Ararat, near Buffalo, New York, in 1820 as a refuge colony for European Jews facing discrimination. When that effort fails, Noah supports Jewish return to Palestine. His life and career illustrate the way an individual could remain an identifiable Jew and still participate as a politician during the Jacksonian era.

and civic affairs, includes descendants of colonial Sephardic and Ashkenazic families from South Carolina as well as throughout America and the Atlantic world. Yet this area’s agricultural economy declines during the 1830s as its northern neighbors forge ahead. Many of Charleston’s Jews move north and west and often help found and reinvigorate congregations in their new homes. Approximately 1,150 Jews live in New York and 750 in Philadelphia. 1820–1860 BUSI: In a process than unfolds internationally into the next century, Jews migrate across the country, often starting as peddlers to rural populations. Supplied with goods on credit from Jewish wholesalers in major cities, these peddlers sell their goods on credit and save enough money to settle in towns and cities often located along transportation corridors likely to foster business. 1820s RELI: Adam S. Naustedler emigrates from the German states to Petersburg, Virginia, where the learned Talmudist conducts services while supporting himself through business. Although lacking formal ordination, he is addressed as “Rabbi.” Such arrangements prior to the creation of a congregation typify isolated Jewish communities. Holding services, providing a Jewish education to children, maintaining a cemetery, and organizing

a benevolent society to aid Jews in need do not require the formality of a congregation; indeed, these actions often precede the establishment of one. Nevertheless, these circumstances make it difficult to maintain tradition, and many Jews move to established Jewish communities to be better able to do so. 1820 RELI: The playing of an organ (especially by the music director of Savannah’s Independent Presbyterian Church) as part of the services dedicating a new sanctuary for K. K. Mikve Israel reflects acculturation to American Christian practices contrary to Jewish tradition. The use of an organ in the next decades creates controversy and marks the road to reform. RELI: Two women serve as readers for Yom Kippur services in Wilmington, North Carolina. This event represents a major break from the traditionally limited role of women. 1823 BUSI: A native of Morocco who lives in the Caribbean and England before moving to the United States, Moses Elias Levy establishes the first Jewish communitarian settlement in the United States. He experiments with sugar cane production at this Pilgrimage colony in Florida. Levy also promotes the creation of a Hebrew boarding school and


When they split from Charleston, South Carolina’s K. K. Beth Elohim, the members of the Reform Society of Israelites attempt to Americanize services to make them acceptable to acculturating Jews and visiting Christians. Some leaders, including Isaac Harby, compose their own prayer books, as illustrated by this frontis page. (Courtesy of Jewish Heritage Collection, College of Charleston Library, Charleston, SC)

travels to England where he writes a pamphlet, A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery (1828). 1824 RELI: Forty-seven relatively young, acculturated, and politically attuned Jews petition Charleston’s Congregation K. K. Beth Elohim for religious reforms. They seek more decorum in the service and greater use of English, and reject the concepts of a personal messiah and return to the Holy Land. Their place is in America, they insist, and they desire practices that will keep second- and third-generation American Jews within the faith and that are acceptable to the predominantly Protestant society. The congregation refuses to accede to their demands, and the next year more than a dozen of the petitioners establish the Reformed Society of Israelites, the first Reform congregation in the United States. During the next decades, congregations throughout the United States as well as in Europe

grapple with change concerning using an organ and choir during services, having English translations of prayers, shortening services, eliminating the auction of honors during services, and other issues. Even those congregations that consider themselves traditional innovate to provide more decorum and use sermons for spiritual uplift. Laypeople lead these efforts until ordained rabbis arrive from Europe who have been exposed to Reform precepts in their home countries. RELI: Approximately 20 people organize B’ne Israel (Sons of Israel) in Cincinnati. The construction of their sanctuary, which is dedicated in 1836, draws contributions from Philadelphia, Charleston, New Orleans, Barbados, and England. 1825 RELI: In New York, B’nai Jeshurun separates from Shearith Israel. The new congregants want


to follow Ashkenazic rites, seek a better education program for their children, and object to the growing power of the hazan. Differences between more recent immigrants and American-born and earlier immigrants provide the impetus for the splits in congregations in New York and elsewhere. The Reverend Samuel M. Isaacs from England serves the new congregation’s spiritual needs. The traditionalist Isaacs also later publishes Jewish Messenger, a periodical. 1826 ACCT: Maryland’s “Jew Bill” becomes law. The state’s constitution of 1776 grants religious liberty to Christians and limits office holding to them as well. In 1797, Solomon Etting petitions for equal rights for him and his fellow Jews. Yet it takes legislator Thomas Kennedy, Colonel W. G. D. Worthington, and other Christians from 1818 to 1825 to get the House of Delegates to agree. A successful business man, Etting wins election to the Baltimore City Council the year the bill is put into effect and ultimately becomes the council’s president. Jacob I. Cohen, Jr., later president of an insurance company and railroad, also lobbies for passage of the bill and wins election to the city council. Unlike in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, but as in legislation passed in England and some other European countries, Jews are singled out from other religious groups by the Maryland law. LIT: In New York, Solomon Henry Jackson publishes the first complete Hebrew–English prayer book in the United States. Jackson also publishes The Jew. He uses this publication—the country’s first Jewish periodical—to attack Protestant societies designed to convert Jews. In 1837, Jackson follows these efforts with the first haggadah published in America. Previously, this printer has written the constitution for the society that led to the creation of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. 1827 GOVT: Gustavus A. Myers is elected to the first of his 27 terms on the Richmond city council. Around 1837 he heads the city council. He is also a founder of the Virginia Historical Society (1831) and an ardent supporter of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

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RELI: Shanarei Chasset (Gates of Mercy) is the first congregation established in New Orleans after a substantial period of time during which Jews live in the city. The congregation follows Sephardic rites although the majority of members come from the German states and Alsace. Three fourths of the members are intermarried with nonJewish women, so the congregation allows “strange spouses” to be buried in a walled section of its cemetery. Children of these marriages are considered Jews contrary to Jewish law, which honors matrilineal descent. From roughly 1830 to 1850, actor Albert “Roley” Marks serves as hazan although he is barely fluent in the Sephardic ritual. SOCI: Accepted into upper-class society, Gustavus A. Myers marries the Episcopalian daughter of a former governor. Within three generations, virtually all of the Jewish first families of Virginia intermarry and their children are raised as Christians. 1828 LIT: Reverend Henry Ruffner, president of Washington College (later Washington and Lee), writes Judith Bensaddi. The book depicts Jews negatively, as do other novels of the era. A key exception is the flattering portrait of Rebecca in Ivanhoe (1819) by Sir Walter Scott, possibly influenced by Scott’s association with Rebecca Gratz. RELI: A New York newspaper publishes antiSemitic articles first appearing in the London Quarterly Review. German-born Isaac Leeser, who had settled in Richmond in 1823, responds with six articles in the Richmond [VA] Whig. Leeser gains widespread attention for his articles and for a treatise he writes on Jewish law. He has studied Judaism but has not been ordained. Nonetheless, he receives appointment as minister of Philadelphia’s Congregation Mikveh Israel. Leeser goes on to an illustrious career first at Mikveh Israel and then at Beth El Emeth, supporting traditional Judaism although with measured changes. He edits The Occident and American Advocate newspaper; initiates a Hebrew Education Society and Maimonides College (1867; although short-lived, the first Jewish seminary in America); publishes the first American translation of the first five books of the Bible as well as the first book of sermons written by an American Jewish minister; composes


Personality Profile: Rebecca Gratz Isaac Leeser, Isaac Mayer Wise, and Rebecca Gratz, a traditionalist in religion who expands doors for Jewish women, are the key Jewish institution builders of the era. Born into a Philadelphia merchant and land-owning family, Gratz faces the choice of finding one of the few eligible Jewish partners, accepting intermarriage, or remaining single. Gratz never marries, although one of her brothers marries a Christian. The rate of marriage for scions of the colonial Jewish families with Christians between 1776 and 1840 is estimated at 27.8 percent. Instead of focusing on marriage, and like many women of all faiths who choose single status, Gratz dedicates her life to worthwhile causes. Working first with a secular women’s charity to benefit widows and orphans, Gratz leads other Jewish women in the establishment of a Jewish orphanage, ladies’ Hebrew benevolent society to aid the needy, and Jewish Sunday school (1838)—all firsts of their kind in the United States and all borrowing from the Christian model. These institutions spread throughout the country through a women’s network of kinship and friendship. They illustrate the gradual expansion of women’s expected role as moral nurturers by middle- and upper-class women into the public sphere. These activities and the influence Gratz and her co-workers exert on Leeser also show the gradually shifting and expanding role of women within Judaism.

prayer books; writes catechisms and other materials for youth education; and supports conferences to foster unity among American Jews. Leeser attempts to overcome conflicts among American Jews but he is also a protagonist in many of these. RELI: Although a traditionalist, shortly after filling Mickveh Israel’s pulpit, Leeser is convinced by women in the congregation to give sermons for edification, many of which are published. Although European religious leaders had long given sermons on learned topics, the purpose of the Jewish sermon in American reflects Christian influence and the desire for spirituality. Its acceptance also marks the expansion of women’s interest and influence within the synagogue. During the nineteenth century, men spend more time with business and less with religion— and women fill the vacuum. Thus one can speak of the feminization of American Judaism as similar to and influenced by the feminization of American Protestantism. 1830 POPU: Savannah’s Jewish community includes approximately 80 people. The population reflects substantial continuity in that 14 out of 20 congregants (only adult males could formally join

synagogues) of Mikve Israel have been members or are children of members since 1793. RELI: Although the Maryland legislature had refused to incorporate a Baltimore congregation the previous year, Governor Thomas King Carroll intervenes and Congregation Nidche Yisrael, later called the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, obtains a state charter. 1831 AFRI: Dr. Henry Myers and Samuel Mordecai are mobilized into the Richmond, Virginia, militia during Nat Turner’s insurrection. Emma Mordecai is among those who feel revulsion against the horrible punishments inflicted on African Americans in response to Turner’s uprising. 1832 ACCT: Georgia legislator James Stark curses Dr. Philip Minis as “a damned Israelite.” Minis demands an apology, but Stark responds with a challenge to duel. Although the duel does not take place, when they next meet Minis calls Stark a coward and, when Stark goes to his pocket seemingly for a gun, Minis shoots and kills Stark. This and a few other duels fought by Jews with nonJews signify upper-class status, since only those


considered worthy opponents will be challenged to duel over something considered a matter of honor. 1833 LIT: Penina Moı¨se publishes a poetry collection, Fancy’s Sketch Book. This first female Jewish poetess publishes poems, short stories, and essays in national periodicals. Moı¨se’s participation in Reform Judaism in Charleston includes writing most of the hymns in the first Jewish hymnal published in America. Her writings stress appreciation for American religious freedom, support for the Confederacy and the Lost Cause, and the use of Palestine as a refuge from European anti-Semitism. After the Civil War she runs a private school and teaches literature from memory (she eventually loses most of her vision). 1836 RELI: Gershom Kursheedt, grandson of Gershom Mendes Seixas and son of Isaac Baer

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Kursheedt, both famous New York hazanim, enters business in New Orleans with his brother-in-law. He pushes Gates of Mercy toward traditional Judaism. Because of his opposition to intermarriage and other issues, he helps found Dispersed of Judah in 1845. He convinces Judah Touro to donate the land for the synagogue, to donate to other Jewish charities, and to become involved in the congregation. Before this time, Touro has made generous donations to churches but largely stayed aloof from Jewish affairs. 1837 BUSI: As a business panic hits America, August Belmont emigrates to New York and establishes A. Belmont & Company, the first great American Jewish finance bank. The Seligmans and Lemans work as cotton brokers in Mobile and New Orleans before the Civil War—an occupation that involves them in transcontinental financial transactions and ultimately finance banking also from New York. Kuhn, Loeb & Company; Goldman, Sachs & Company; Lazard Fre`res; and M. Guggenheim’s Sons are other pioneers in finance banking. Jews, who are often investors in local banks, never dominate the banking industry. 1838 EDUC: Inspired and informed by the Philadelphia model, Charleston’s K. K. Beth Elohim establishes the second Jewish Sunday school in the United States. Its founder, Sally Lopez, and the other women who run it obtain learning materials from Rebecca Gratz and Isaac Leeser. Traditionally, men have controlled Jewish education. The shift to female involvement in this area reflects the declining interest of the men in synagogue affairs and the growing participation of women.

Penina Moı¨se, the first American Jewish poetess, writes about her Jewish heritage and the South, among other subjects. A supporter of the Reform Society of Israelites, she rejoins K. K. Beth Elohim and contributes to a hymnal it publishes. (Courtesy of Anita Moı¨se Rosenberg Collection, Jewish Heritage Collection, College of Charleston Library, Charleston, SC)

RELI: Charleston’s K. K. Beth Elohim sanctuary, constructed in 1794, burns down, and the members of the Reformed Society of Israelites reunite with the parent congregation. When the congregation rebuilds, the Reverend Gustavus Poznanski accepts the inclusion of an organ, a musical instrument typically found in churches but not in synagogues. At the sanctuary dedication in 1841 attended by Christians and Jews alike,


Personality Profile: Uriah Philips Levy Uriah Phillips Levy rises from cabin boy in 1802 to merchant ship owner and captain to commodore of American naval operations in the Mediterranean opposing African pirates in 1857. Along the way, he defends America during the War of 1812 and is court-martialed six times (convictions are overturned in half of these cases) when he confronts other officers over anti-Semitic comments. Thus his experience illustrates the duality of intolerance and acceptance faced by many American Jews. Levy’s merchant shipping career highlights Jewish participation in trade. However, although Jews actively fight for the United States in every war, few pursue military careers. In 1836, Levy purchases Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home, as a monument to his hero of religious liberty, for the purpose of restoring the once great estate. His nephew and heir, Jefferson Monroe Levy, does the major work of restoration after 1879. The younger Levy is a New York attorney and congressperson. Levy sells Monticello to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in 1923.

Poznanski echoes the Reformed Society of Israelites’ emphasis on America being the Promised Land as opposed to the Biblical Holy Land. Poznanski leads the congregation in moderate reforms. After two court cases, in 1840 the losers form Shearit Israel, the first traditional congregation in the country resulting from a traditionalists/ reformers conflict. By 1866, Shearit Israel has moved toward reform and the two congregations reunite. 1840–1880 ANTI: Unsuccessful candidates for political office commonly blame Jews or the “Jewish vote” for their loss, and Jewish candidates for office are frequently attacked based on their religion. In 1858, for example, the Oregonian blasts Jews for their perceived love of money and the power it has brought. Cartoonists including Thomas Nast and Puck stereotypically depict Jews as having hooked noses and bent shoulders. R. G. Dun and Company credit reports and newspaper accounts often portray Jews as untrustworthy, greedy business people. COMM: Matilda Samuel Cohen, first of Liverpool, England, and, after her marriage, of Philadelphia, is a member of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, the Women’s Centennial Commission, and the New Century Club, as well as

manager of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society, the Ladies Association Board of the United Hebrew Charities, and the Hebrew Sunday School Society. She presides over the Jewish Foster Home. Middle- and upper-class women in the United States and Europe spend substantial amounts of time volunteering for charities and other clubs. EDUC: Jews attend public schools as they become available. The school day often includes Protestant-oriented prayers. During the 1840s, Jews and Catholics work together in challenging this and other religious-oriented materials in the New York City schools. Similar battles are waged in Cincinnati during the 1860s and in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1870s. INTL: As men attend secular universities in Germany to become rabbis, they take courses in philosophy, philology, history, and biblical criticism that bring into question assumptions concerning the Bible and accepting things on faith. Gradually at least three schools of thought rise and conflict. Reform challenges religious practices and acceptance of the Talmud (centuries-old rabbinical commentaries on the Bible). Beyond certain essentials, Reform leaders emphasize adapting Judaism and Jewish law to both time and place. From Christianity, they borrow the sermon for edification, the organ and choir, shortened prayers, prayers and sermons in the German language, and


order and decorum in services. Reformers emphasize that Judaism is a religious like other religions; thus they reject the nationalistic idea of returning to the ancient homeland. According to this perspective, one can be simultaneously a good Jew and a loyal German or American. This school transforms the place of Jewish women from infusers of household ritual to important participants in the synagogue. Nevertheless, actual membership, voting in synagogue affairs, and entrance into the rabbinate must await future generations of Jewish women in America. The second school is associated with Samson Raphael Hirsch. Hirsch pioneers the NeoOrthodox or historical school, which accepts gradual change but with greater acceptance of tradition for its value as such. To some extent, this school becomes the forerunner of the American Conservative movement. Ardent traditionalists fight most changes, although even some of them support more order and decorum. In Europe and America, these people become known as Orthodox Jews. Jews in Holland, Great Britain, Eastern Europe, and Russia participate in variations in these trends. Because people migrate from country to country, or, as in the case of Poland, are incorporated into Prussia and Russia, differences of experience are somewhat blurred. POPU: The Jewish population in the United States, which had been approximately 15,000 in 1840, reaches 50,000 in 1848 and approximately 240,000 by 1880. By the mid-1840s, roughly one fourth of all American Jews live in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. RELI: Although only 5 American congregations exist in 1789 and only 3 are created from that date to 1824. In 1850, 76 congregations are formally organized. By 1877, this number increases to 277. RELI: German Jews move to Cincinnati during the 1840s and form Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (Sons of Righteousness), later called the Plum Street Temple. During the following decade, after being pressured out of his Albany, New York congregation Isaac Mayer Wise fills this pulpit and his friend and colleague Max

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Lillienthal becomes rabbi of B’ne Israel. The men, the lay leaders of the city, and the institutions they create make Cincinnati a center of Judaism and particularly of the Reform movement during ensuing decades. 1840–1860 AFRI: Approximately 25 percent of the Jews in Virginia own slaves, roughly the same percentage as non-Jewish whites. In Charleston, approximately the same percentage of Jews own slaves as their non-Jewish urban middle- and upperclass peers. Jews account for such a small percentage of the total population that they represent only a tiny fraction of the slaveholders and traders in the South. For perspective, more free blacks own slaves in Charleston than Jews do. On the eve of the Civil War, five Jews specialize in slave trading in Richmond. Yet most Jews who buy and sell slaves do so as part of their general retail business. Before, during, and after the Civil War, many small Jewish-owned dry goods stores actively seek out African American clientele—a practice not typical of their non-Jewish counterparts. Jews, like other whites, benefit from the existence of slavery and the impact of slavery on the U.S. economy. August Bondi, who flees Austria after the failed revolution of 1848–1849, fights alongside John Brown as an abolitionist in Kansas and then at the incident at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Jacob Benjamin and Theodore Weiner also join ranks with Brown. Nonetheless, Jews fight on both sides on the issue of abolition. MIGR: Jews move from the east across the country to the west coast. Certain congregations become models and breeding grounds for others. As the economy of Charleston declines, Jews move to other communities in South Carolina, including Columbia, as well as to Mobile, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Jews from Baltimore influence congregation building in North Carolina, West Virginia, Texas, California, and the Southwest. The extended Dyer/ Osterman family, a traditionalist family originally from the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, for example, largely establishes the Galveston, Texas, Jewish community. They join with Jews from Charleston’s Reformed Society of Israelites,


who also foster congregational life in New Orleans and Mobile. PERF: New Orleans-born Louis Moreau Gottschalk gains fame as a pianist and composer. RELI: In New York, emigrants from Poland and Holland establish Congregation Beth Israel in 1840. Over the next 40 years, most large Jewish communities in America have both German and Polish congregations. New York’s Russian congregation organizes in 1852. San Francisco’s Polish and Lithuanian Jews found their synagogue at the end of the decade. During the mid1860s, two groups of Jews from Lithuania meet to worship together. The pattern of congregation building based on country of origin and slight variations in religious practices and customs accelerates as emigrants from a variety of places arrive in sufficient numbers to create them. 1840 INTL: Jews in Damascus, Syria, are accused of kidnapping and murdering two people to use their blood to make Passover matzos. Demonstrating religious/ethnic solidarity, American, French, and English Jews protest this false and derogatory depiction of Jewish practices. New York and Richmond congregations take the lead within the U.S. The Reverend Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia leads effective lobbying of President Martin Van Buren, who objects to the ensuing persecution and “blood libel” through the State Department. RELI: Baltimore Hebrew Congregation chooses Abraham Rice, the first ordained rabbi to hold a pulpit in America, to be its rabbi. Recently arrived from Germany, Rice is an ardent traditionalist who attacks participation in the services by Jews who break the Sabbath by conducting business on Saturday. 1841 EDUC: The University of Virginia becomes the first American college to appoint a Jewish professor. This fits well with the thinking of Thomas Jefferson, the university’s founder. Nonetheless, James Joseph Sylvester is plagued by anti-Semitism from students and the Presbyterian Church newspaper,

When Abraham Rice, the first ordained rabbi to fill an American pulpit, attempts to enforce ritual observance and attacks the use of Masonic rites at a funeral, a group splits from Baltimore Hebrew Congregation and forms Har Sinai Verein, the first permanent Reform synagogue to break from a traditional congregation in the United States. (Courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Maryland, Baltimore [1986.113.011])

Watchman of the South. His abolitionist views do not help. He leaves in less than two years. A Catholic professor appointed at the same time as Sylvester also confronts prejudice. Later in the decade Sigmund Waterman teaches German at Yale University without incident. INTL: Joseph Smith, the Mormon leader, sends Elder Orson Hyde to the Holy Land in preparation for the prophetic return of the Jews. Such support for the return of Jews to Jerusalem as a prerequisite for Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ continues to the present and forms the basis for Christian evangelical Zionism. According to this view, Jews who fail to convert and accept Christ will not share in the fruits of the Messianic age. RELI: As new, tradition-minded German immigrants move to Richmond, Virginia, they desire services following Ashkenazic custom, unlike the Sephardic ritual at Beth Shalome. In 1839, some


of these newcomers organize Chebrah Ahabat Israel (Association for the Love of Israel); others create K. K. Beth Ahabah two years later. In 1856, these congregations are joined by Kenesseth Israel (Congregation of Israel; later Kenesseth Beth Israel or Congregation House of Israel), a largely Polish congregation, albeit with some German members. 1842 ACCT: Rhode Island changes its constitution so that Jews are allowed to vote and hold office. BUSI: Adam Gimbel settles in Vincennes, Indiana, after peddling goods along the Mississippi Valley. He advertises the opening of his store and offers to refund the cost of goods to unsatisfied customers. By the 1880s, four Gimbel’s department stores are open for business in Vincennes. Adam Gimbel sells out to join his sons, who open Gimbel Brothers department stores in other cities. During the ensuing decades, the company buys out competitors including Saks and Company (Saks Fifth Avenue). The company remains an independent business until being sold during the 1980s. BUSI: Emmaline Quentz Miley moves with her husband and family to the Lake Thonotosassa area near Tampa Bay, Florida, while Seminoles still dominate the area. After her husband’s death in 1863, she maintains and expands the pioneering citrus groves planted during his lifetime. RELI: A funeral takes place at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation that includes Masonic ritual. Rabbi Abraham Rice strongly objects to what he calls Christian ritual. A group of members, who are already disgusted with Rice for his strict enforcement of ritual, separate to form Har Sinai Verein, the first permanent Reform congregation in America to break off from a parent congregation. The new congregation looks to the Hamburg (Germany) Temple for a Torah, prayer books, and sermons and as an example. The congregation rejects what it perceives as superstition in religious practices and the authority of the Talmud and rabbis. 1843 ANTI: When Congregation Mishkan Israel is established, the New Haven Register laments that

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overseas missionary activities have not been applied successfully in the Connecticut city. LIT: In Philadelphia, Isaac Leeser publishes The Occident and American Jewish Advocate. For 25 years, the periodical advocates traditional Judaism while simultaneously unifying American Jews by printing and widely disseminating information on Jews and Jewish communities throughout the country. ORGS: Twelve men establish the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant). The fraternity spreads from New York throughout America and ultimately internationally, providing insurance to members, fostering education, aiding the needy, and opposing discrimination. Organizations like the B’nai B’rith tend to unify Jews, even as religious conflicts divide them. They take on the trappings of the Masonic Order and offer an alternative to participation in synagogue life. 1844 RELI: New York’s largely Polish American congregation Shaare Zedek resolves that emigrants from Russia can become seat holders but not voting members. Those who are already members can remain so. RELI: Sha’arai Shomayim U Maskil El Dol (Congregation of the Gates of Heaven and Society of the Friends of the Needy) formally incorporates in Mobile, Alabama. The congregation actually existed three years earlier in an unincorporated form, when it purchased a cemetery. 1845 ANTI: His family attempts to declare him legally insane when Philadelphia Quaker Warder Cresson converts to Judaism. Cresson begins an agricultural community in Palestine in preparation of the return of the Jews to the Holy Land. GOVT: David Levy Yulee is Florida’s first U.S. Senator and arguably the first Jewish member of that body. Attorney Levy Yulee attended the Florida constitutional convention (1838–1839), helped create the state Democratic Party, initially represented the territory in Congress during which time he fought for statehood, and became a “Florida Fire Eater” in the Senate supporting


the South and secession leading to the Civil War. Levy Yulee largely sits out the war although Union troops destroy some of his property. In 1845 after the Second Seminole War, Levy Yulee purchases thousands of acres of land for sugar and cotton production using slave labor. He develops a sugar mill, the Florida Railroad, the Florida Town Improvement Company, and cedar tree lands. Although he intermarries and does not practice Jewish ritual as an adult, Levy Yulee is attacked as a Jew and defends himself with pride as such. INTL: Leading Reform rabbis hold a conference in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in which they establish a platform for Reform Judaism. It is one of many such conferences to be held. Participating rabbis, like Reform leaders in America, believe that change is essential to preserve Judaism among laypeople questioning beliefs, departing from ritual observance, and otherwise gradually adjusting to secular society. Thus Reform serves as an alternative to both traditional Judaism and Christianity. LIT: The Reverend Isaac Leeser establishes the American Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphia with a branch in Richmond, Virginia, to publish books on Jewish subjects in English. RELI: In the early 1840s, young, recent emigrants from the German states meet as a society for prayer and discussion in New York. They form Emanu-El (God Is with Us) as a Reform congregation. Hymns requested from a Reform temple in Munich are sung in the German language and an organ plays during services that often draw as many as 300 people. RELI: Jews from England split from New York’s B’nai Jeshurun to form Congregation Shaaray Tefilah and take Reverend S. M. Samuels with them. When a new chief rabbi is selected in England in 1845, this congregation sends a congratulatory letter. 1846 ORGS: Jewish women in New York City organize the United Order of True Sisters, a counterpart to the all-male B’nai B’rith. Lodges spread across the country.

RELI: The Reverend Maximilian J. Michelbacher comes to Richmond, Virginia, to minister to Beth Ahabah. He leads the congregation for more than three decades, during which time he oversees its gradual move toward Reform; ardently supports the Confederate States of America, as do virtually all congregants; and views slavery as ordained by God. Ultimately Beth Shalome (1898) and Chebrah Ahabat Israel merge into Beth Ahabah. When Beth Ahabah becomes a Reform stronghold during the last decades of the nineteenth century, Kenesset Beth Israel remains the bastion of Orthodoxy. Michelbacher organizes the Richmond German, Hebrew, and English Institute. Such schools are common before the creation of public schools. They provide for the education of the young, supplement the incomes of religious leaders, and reflect the multiple-language and -cultural identity of mid-nineteenth-century Jews of German origin. SCI: Isaac Hayes, who receives a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1820, proposes the creation of a national medical association to the New York Medical Convention. The following year he submits a code of ethics that the organization accepts and uses. Hayes specializes in treatment of the eye and founds two medical journals. 1847 RELI: In New York, Dutch Jews form Congregation B’nai Israel. Philadelphia Jews from Holland form a congregation with the same name in 1852. 1848 COMM: Ernestine (Sismondi Potowski) Rose lobbies New York’s legislature to pass a Married Women’s Property Act. Rose, having fled an arranged marriage in Poland in 1836, addresses every women’s rights convention between 1850 and 1869 with the rallying cry, “Agitate, agitate.” Her efforts bear fruit when Wyoming adopts women’s suffrage (1869). She works with other reformers in behalf of the abolition of slavery and, during Reconstruction, rights for African Americans.


IMMI: Liberal revolutions in Europe spur general emigration, including emigration of Jews. RELI: Jews establish Congregation Achdut VeSholom in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and create a school. 1849 MIGR: The California Gold Rush draws Americans west. Jews join the migration, albeit overwhelmingly as merchants rather than as miners. POPU: San Francisco Jewry grows from 30 people to 5,000 individuals (and four congregations) by 1860 and to 15,000 people by 1875, making this group the second largest Jewish population in the United States. A Jew resides in Portland a decade before Oregon is granted statehood. LIT: New York businessman Robert Lyon begins publishing The Asmonean, one of numerous periodicals geared toward a widespread Jewish audience. By 1860, two German-language and seven English-language Jewish-oriented periodicals are published. RELI: San Francisco Jews celebrate the High Holidays in a tent. German Jews create Congregation Emanu-El and Polish Jews, Sherith Israel. EmanuEl’s first rabbi is Julius Eckman, who had previously served in Richmond, Virginia; Charleston, South Carolina; and Mobile, Alabama. In 1865, Eckman becomes the first rabbi of Portland, Oregon’s Temple Beth Israel, before moving to Ohavai Sholom, a conservative offshoot of Beth Israel. The meanderings of this Prussian/Poland-born Jew reflect the mobility of Jews and Jewish institutions across the country. During the nineteenth century, most rabbis move from congregation to congregation rather than remaining in one pulpit. 1850s GOVT: In Davenport, Iowa, dry goods store owner Samuel Hirschl runs for the city council as a Republican in 1851. Morris Goodman serves on the first city council of Los Angeles. Such local office holding by Jews is widespread and reflects the commitment of Jewish business men to public improvement as well as their general acceptance as valued citizens. Jews are both Republicans and Democrats based largely on local preferences.

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GOVT: Marcus Otterbourg, owner of a Milwaukee vinegar distillery, is an ally of fellow German immigrant Carl Schurz in the Republican Party. He manages and then edits a local newspaper and in 1860 becomes reporter for the Wisconsin Assembly. The following year President Lincoln appoints Otterbourg consul at Mexico City. He serves as acting minister to Mexico in 1865. MIGR: Jews in Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Newark, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Saint Louis establish congregations and other Jewish institutions. RELI: All of the rabbis who come from Europe to fill American pulpits are either fired or forced to resign by congregations used to running their own affairs and not willing to accept the rabbis’ criticisms or theological differences. 1850 LIT: The Maimonides Library Association founded by a B’nai B’rith lodge in New York oversees possibly the first Jewish library in the United States. SCI: Josiah Nott publishes The Physical History of the Jewish Race. This scientist uses craniometry (a pseudo-science that measures skull sizes to define mental ability and separate races) to determine that Jews are a pure race, distinct from Christians. 1851 INTL: The U.S. Senate deliberates on a commercial treaty with Switzerland. The treaty accepts the discrimination of several Swiss cantons against American Jews attempting to travel or conduct business. The Senate eventually ratifies the treaty in spite of lobbying and protest against the discriminatory features. The Swiss do not end the latter practices until 1874. RELI: Albany, New York’s Anshe Emeth is the first American Jewish congregation to seat men and women together. 1852 ART: Solomon Nunes Carvalho wins the South Carolina Institute’s Diploma and Silver Medal for Ideal Painting for his The Intercession of Moses.


Carvalho uses Biblical motifs for his paintings, including Cain Receiving the Curse of the Almighty, Moses at the Battle of the Malakites, and Moses Receiving the Law on Mount Sinai. He also paints portraits, including one of Abraham Lincoln, and experiments with daguerreotype. In 1853, Carvalho joins John C. Freemont’s scientific exploration to the West as a mapmaker, photographer, and painter. His Incidents of Travel and Adventures in the Far West with Colonel Freemont’s Last Expedition Across the Rocky Mountains (1857) is the only account of the expedition.

inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty that extols America as a land open to immigrants.

BUSI: Jewish represent possibly 10 percent of all merchants in San Francisco.

1853 BUSI: Levi Strauss brings canvas to California to sell for tents and Conestoga wagon covers. With little demand among the gold miners for these products, he uses the material to produce pants for the miners. Jacob Davis, a Reno, Nevada, tailor, has a harness maker reinforce the pockets with copper rivets. Davis and Strauss patent the innovation in 1873, and Levi Strauss & Company market what later become known as denim jeans nationally. A Bavarian immigrant, Strauss is a charter member of San Francisco’s Board of Trade.

GOVT: Judah P. Benjamin is elected to the U.S. Senate from Louisiana. Born in St. Thomas but raised in Charleston by parents involved with the Reformed Society of Israelites, Benjamin attends Yale University and then becomes a successful lawyer in New Orleans and sugar cane plantation owner. In the Senate, he outspokenly supports slavery and ultimately secession. Benjamin serves as attorney general, secretary of war, and secretary of state in Jefferson Davis’s Confederate cabinet. At the end of the Civil War he flees to England, where he pursues a successful legal career and publishes important legal works. Although Benjamin marries a Catholic, is buried in a Catholic cemetery, and does not associate with Judaism or any Jewish organizations as an adult, he has to defend himself against anti-Semitic attacks from Northerners for his pro-South views and from Southerners who blame him for Confederate failures. LIT: Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writes “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport,” after the burial of Slowey Hayes, Moses Michael Hayes’s daughter. Like poet Emma Lazarus’s “In the Jewish Synagogue in Newport,” (1867) Longfellow’s poem looks back with nostalgia at a once energetic Jewish community and predicts the disappearance of what he describes as a once great race and nation. In the decades after the Civil War, Lazarus publishes poems stressing Jewish patriotism and ethnic identity, and glorifying Jewish women as mothers of Israel. She is best known for “The American Colossus,” the poem

RELI: The first congregation organized by Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian immigrants, Beth Hamedrash (“house of prayer”; later called Beth Hamedrash Hagodol) opens in New York. The congregation includes at least two Jews from Germany. A Polish group separates from this congregation in 1853. In 1861, a schism also develops in which Hassidic Jews also separate to form their own congregation.

RELI: Baltimore’s Oheb Shalom, lead by Rabbi Benjamin Szold, is the first congregation to organize following the Positive-Historical School of German Jewish theology, forerunner of Conservative Judaism. 1854 LIT: In Cincinnati, I. M. Wise publishes The Israelite, renamed The American Israelite 20 years later. This newspaper gives Wise a platform for his moderate Reform ideas and brings Jews throughout the country together by informing them about happenings in local America communities and overseas. The following year Wise begins publishing the German language periodical, Die Deborah. Numerous other rabbis publish periodicals extolling their positions on the practice of Judaism. LIT: Edward Bloch, I. M. Wise’s brother-in-law, establishes the Bloch Publishing Company in Cincinnati to publish books of Jewish interest. PHIL: Judah Touro, a wealthy merchant, dies in New Orleans. He bequeaths about $500,000 to a


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variety of Jewish and secular charities and religious institutions in American and in the Holy Land, the largest bequest of a Jew in the United States up to this date. Sir Moses Montefiore of London and Gershom Kursheedt execute the estate. Consequently, both get involved in building a hospital in the Holy Land for the poor and join together in protest in the Mortara incident (see the entry under 1858). RELI: Traditionalist Congregation Brith Sholom is established in Charleston, South Carolina. 1855 ANTI: William M. Stowe (Santa Clara), Speaker of the California House of Representatives, supports a bill against Jewish shopkeepers who conduct business on Sunday by stating that Jews came to California to make money and leave without investing in the local economy. E. Gould Buffon, a representative from San Francisco who edits the Alta California newspaper, defends the Jews against Stowe’s attack, as does Jewish attorney Henry J. Labatt. IMMI: Castle Garden opens in New York City as an immigration station. ORGS: Rabbis hold a conference in Cleveland, Ohio, designed to foster unity. In reality, it highlights the divisions between traditionalists and reformers. ORGS: In response to yellow fever epidemics, the New Orleans Home for Widows and Orphans opens.

Bavarian-born David Einhorn moves from Europe, where his religious views bring him into frequent conflict with other leaders, to Baltimore, where he becomes the first rabbi of Har Sinai Congregation. He gives sermons in German, publishes a prayer book (Olat Tamid) and a German-language periodical (Sinai), and becomes the champion of radical Reform. His outspoken abolitionism leads to his leaving Baltimore in 1861 and relocating to Philadelphia. Einhorn holds prestigious pulpits there and then in New York. (Courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Maryland, Baltimore [1985.184.001])

Personality Profile: David Einhorn David Einhorn leaves Germany because his religious views are so radical that he is not allowed to lead a congregation. In 1854, he becomes the first ordained rabbi to occupy Baltimore’s Har Sinai pulpit and the leader of radical Reform in America. He gives sermons in German, experiments with Sunday Sabbath services, and publishes two periodicals, Sinai and Der Wecker, and a prayer book, Olat Tamid. Although the more moderate I. M. Wise serves as the institution builder of the Reform movement, by the last decades of the nineteenth century Einhorn’s philosophy prevails in what becomes known as classical Reform Judaism, especially through the actions of his sons-in-law, Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler and Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch. In 1861, Einhorn is forced to flee Baltimore because of his abolitionist views; he becomes rabbi at Philadelphia’s Kenesseth Israel.


The second such home in the United States, the Jewish Widows and Orphans Home on Jackson Avenue and Chippewa Street in New Orleans opens in 1856 after the deadly yellow fever epidemic of 1853. This building remains in use until 1881, when it is replaced by a new structure. Besides orphans, children whose parents cannot afford to support them are also welcomed for as long as needed. In the late 1880s, widows are moved to the Touro Infirmary “old folks section,” which has housed men since 1852. The home’s structure shows the pride the community takes in the undertaking. Attempts are made at these homes to integrate the children into the community. In 1903, the Isadore Newman School is founded for the orphans and for other children on a nondenominational basis. (Photograph from History of the Jews of Louisiana compiled by The Jewish Historical Publishing Company of Louisiana [1903]. Courtesy of Touro Infirmary Archives, New Orleans)

ORGS: The Jews’ Hospital of the City of New York opens. By 1868, Jewish hospitals also open in Chicago, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia. RELI: Beth-El Emeth opens in the nation’s capitol. As the Washington Hebrew Congregation, it draws rabbis for long tenures who tend to dominate congregational affairs and attempt to make the temple a symbol of American Jewry. RELI: Jews largely from Russia establish Congregation Shomrei Shabbas in San Francisco. 1856 LIT: California’s Voice of Israel begins publication, followed the next year by the launch of the Weekly Gleaner.

1857 LIT: I. M. Wise publishes Minhag America (“American Rite”). Rather than bridging divisions as it sought to do, this moderate Reform prayer book antagonizes both traditionalists and radical reformers. The prayer book is the predecessor of the Union Prayer Book later adopted by the Reform movement. 1858 INTL: Six-year-old Edgara Mortara, after being secretly baptized by a servant, is taken from his parents in Bologna, Italy, by the Catholic Church. The church refuses to return the child because it views him to be a Catholic. This decision leads to international protest. Several congregations in the United States attempt to influence President James Buchanan to intervene,


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and protest rallies are held in several cities. Buchanan considers the Mortara affair an internal issue and refuses to act.

and lobby for the Board of Delegates of American Israelites. Wolf later acts in this capacity through the B’nai B’rith.

1859 ORGS: The Mortara incident demonstrates the need for more unified and effective responses to discrimination. A number of rabbis and laypeople establish the Board of Delegates of American Israelites. Based on a similar British society, it is created about the same time as a French counterpart. The American organization fights antiSemitism at home and abroad and promotes Jewish education, literature, and philanthropy. Although it fails to unify American Jewry, the cooperation it represents between Northern and Southern congregations and Jews on the eve of the Civil War contrasts with the earlier and continuing sectional divisions among Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians. Nonetheless many Reform leaders oppose the Board of Delegates because they fear it will undermine congregational and rabbinic independence.

1860 ACCT: Morris Raphall of New York is the first rabbi to deliver the prayer at the opening of a Congressional session.

PERF: Adah Isaacs Menken performs as an actress on Broadway. She goes on to a short but brilliant career (she dies in 1868 at age 33), especially in San Francisco and Paris, during which she becomes known for her risque´ wearing of tights on horseback in the play Mazeppa. Menken converts to Judaism with her first marriage and remains committed to the religion after her divorce. RELI: By this year, Milwaukee’s three Orthodox congregations merge, thereby creating B’ne Jeshurun. It remains the sole congregation in the city for the next decade until Emanu-El is begun, and turns into a Reform institution. Approximately 115 Jewish families out of more than 200 total in the area are members. SOCI: Gradually a new type of Jewish leader emerges who acts as a spokesperson and lobbyist in behalf of Jews being persecuted, especially overseas. Before the Civil War Mordecai Manuel Noah illustrates this pattern, as do Simon Wolf and Adolphus Solomons during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Wolf and Solomons live in Washington, D.C., are politically active,

LIT: H. M. Moos writes a play, Mortara; or, The Pope and His Inquisitor, focusing on the Mortara incident. Five years later Moos writes about a German American Jewish peddler in Hannah; or, A Glimpse of Paradise. LIT: Joshua Falk writes Avne Yehoshua (“Stones of Joshua”), the first original book published in Hebrew in the United States. POPU: Fifteen cities are home to approximately two thirds of all Jews in America. RELI: Simon Tuska becomes the first graduate of an American university to fill an American pulpit when he becomes rabbi of a Memphis, Tennessee, congregation. He is also the first man to go from America to Europe to study for the rabbinate. Born in Hungary, he emigrated to Rochester, New York, where his father served as rabbi of Congregation Berith Kodesh. Tuska receives a degree from the University of Rochester in 1850 and teaches before attending the Jewish theology seminary in Breslau, Germany. 1861–1865 ANTI: Colonel Max Friedman, commanding officer of the 65th regiment of Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry allows Sergeant Michael Allen, a Hebrew teacher, to act as chaplain. A Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) worker informs the War Department that Allen lacks ordination, a violation of policy. New York Rabbi Arnold Fischel replaces Allen but is denied a commission because he is not a Christian, another War Department requirement. COMM: Jews divide over the issues of slavery and Civil War. Jewish abolitionists and slavery advocates debate competing views of the Bible and morality. Jews, like other Americans, tend to support and fight for the section in which they


live. Illinois Republican Abraham Jonas is an early and long-term supporter of Abraham Lincoln and assists his rise in politics, as do several other Jews. Jonas’s sons living in New Orleans support the Confederacy. Jews serve especially as quartermasters. COMM: Jewish women in the North and South nurse the wounded, make clothing and bandages for the soldiers, and raise funds for the war efforts of their respective sides during the Civil War. MILI: The profile of the typical Southern Jewish Confederate soldier reflects their background and culture and differs from that of the typical soldier. Jews are over-represented in the quartermaster corps and under-represented in the cavalry. The typical Jewish Confederate soldier is a private from New Orleans who recently emigrated from the German states and either owns or works in a dry goods store. After the war he is likely to return to retail trade and rise into the middle class. MILI: Some special Jewish companies or companies largely composed of Jews are created on both sides, such as the Illinois Volunteer, 82nd Regiment, which includes emigrants from Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. Most Jewish soldiers serve in units with people from a variety of religious backgrounds. MILI: Recent immigrant Simon Baruch works as a physician in the Confederate army. He may have been one of the few Jews to join the Ku Klux Klan after the war. Shortly after the war he moves to New York, where he establishes a successful medical career although he and his family continue to enjoy his estate in South Carolina. His son, Bernard Baruch, becomes a highly successful financier and adviser to several presidents during the twentieth century. POPU: Approximately 150,000 Jews live in the United States. Although New York City is the home to the largest contingent, major centers in, for example, Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and San Francisco and the small communities throughout the country reflect the general dispersal of this population. During a period in which the majority of

Americans are rural farmers, Jews are overwhelmingly urban-oriented merchants, whether they congregate in cities or towns. SCI: Phoebe Yates Pember serves as superintendent of a wing of the Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond catering to the Confederate wounded. After the war she writes a Southern Woman’s Story chronicling her experiences, glorifying the Confederacy, and castigating the national government and the North for the Civil War and Reconstruction. 1861 MILI: Major Alfred Mordecai, a Virginia native and West Point graduate whose services are sought by the Union and Confederacy as an ordnance expert, resigns his commission in the U.S. Army and spends the war in Philadelphia with his abolitionist wife and her family rather than to take up sides against his native state and family. His son, however, fights for the Union. Dr. David De Leon of South Carolina resigns his position as surgeon in the U.S. Army and becomes the Confederacy’s first Surgeon General. Abraham C. Myers of Charleston also resigns his army commission and becomes the South’s Quartermaster General. 1862 ACCT: Reverend Jacob Frankel of Philadelphia’s Congregation Rodeph Shalom is the first Jewish chaplain commissioned into the army after Lincoln eliminates the requirement that limits the chaplaincy to Christians. ANTI: General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order 11, singling out Jews for expulsion from Kentucky, Tennessee, and sections of Alabama and Mississippi for war profiteering and smuggling. The Jews of Paducah, Kentucky, are given 24 hours to depart. The charges made by Grant are echoed on the Confederate side in Thomasville and Talbotton, Georgia, when the towns attempt to force Jews to leave and ban new Jewish residents. Jews led by Cesar Kaskel of Paducah, Kentucky, successfully petition President Abraham Lincoln to rescind General Grant’s order. BUSI: Solomon and David Adler operate the largest wholesale clothing businesses in Milwaukee,


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Dry goods stores typically follow peddling as an occupation once the immigrant accumulates more capital and decides to settle with a family in a town or city. Merchants like Sam Jaffa, depicted in this picture in Trinidad, Colorado, in the late nineteenth century, employ family members (including wives and daughters) and people from their European towns of origin. These individuals often later open satellite stores or their own stores. (Jaffa Bros. Mercantile courtesy of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati [PC-2028])

Wisconsin. S. Adler & Bro. benefits from a U.S. government contract to supply uniforms to Union soldiers, as does Zellner and Bonns. 1864 MILI: Congress authorizes the awarding of a medal for valor. Sergeant Leopold Karpeles receives this Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery as a flag bearer in rallying the Union forces against the Confederate attack in the Battle of the Wilderness during the Civil War. ORGS: In Memphis, Tennessee, several Jewish charities cooperate under a central organization. 1865–1877 BUSI: Jewish business and family ties facilitate the extension of credit and the expansion of trade after the war. Even in the South, Jewish retailers

quickly recover and prosper. Soldiers’ clothing is manufactured during the war after it is recognized that clothing sizes tend to be uniform. This understanding leads to dramatic increases in the production of ready-to-wear apparel after the war. The development of standard clothing sizes benefits Jews in the clothing industry and retail trade, and facilitates the emergence of department stores. COMM: Reconstruction affects Jews somewhat differently than many Americans because of their ties of family and business. Families divided by the war quickly reunite. Rabbis with strong regional allegiances occupy pulpits in the opposing sections. For example, James J. Guttheim, who had fled when Union troops occupied New Orleans during the war instead of swearing an oath of allegiance, accepts a prestigious position


L&P Sanger store, Millican, Texas. Jews often move along transportation corridors—rivers and then railroads—to identify the best place to establish a store. If the town flourishes, so do many merchants. The successful towns grow into cities, and the stores expand from small dry goods businesses into department stores, sometimes with multiple branches. This photo of one such enterprise, along with the following two images, illustrates the pattern of growth and modernization. Bavarian immigrant Lehman Sanger opens a dry goods store in Millican, Texas, in 1865, where brothers Philip and Isaac quickly join him. Millican serves as the terminus for both ox train and railroad lines. (Courtesy of Dallas History and Archives Division, Dallas Public Library, Dallas [MA 83.18/61])

in a New York congregation after the war before returning to New Orleans. 1865–1880 ACCT: Senator Zebulon Vance (Democrat–North Carolina) heaps praise on ancient and contemporary American Jews in the “Scattered Nation” speech he presents to Jewish and Christian audiences. ANTI: Social and economic anti-Semitism dramatically increases. During the late 1860s, for example, several insurance companies institute policies designed to stop insuring “Jew risks.” By the end of the period Jews are excluded from many elite social clubs. BUSI: Jews own the Pittsburgh Crushed Steel Company and Knox Pressed and Welded Steel,

both of which are located in that Pennsylvania city. Such direct involvement in extraction industry remains unusual. However. Jews become involved in the oil industry in Oklahoma and Texas but typically on the business and supplier side. Jews open dry goods and specialty shops in the silver towns of the Rockies, and the gold towns of California and later Alaska, as they do also later in the coal mining towns of the Appalachian Mountains. BUSI: Dry goods and specialty shops turn into department stores that nurture a national consumer culture and remain household names often for more than a century. Examples include Abraham & Strauss, B. Altman, Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdale’s, Filene’s, Godchaux’s, Gimbel’s,


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Sanger Brothers Dry Goods store, Elm Street, Dallas, 1890. After the initial store opens, Lehman, Philip, and Isaac Sanger, along with three other brothers, in-laws, and friends, open stores in the next nine towns that the rail line reaches. Isaac moves to New York, where he acts as the main buyer from wholesalers and establishes credit. Alex opens the Dallas store in 1872 and quickly helps attract a second rail line to the city. The Dallas store booms, while the brothers close some of the earlier stores. The brothers calculate when opportunity beckons or lags. Besides a retail empire, Sangers provide goods on credit to peddlers and stores in small towns. (Courtesy of Dallas History and Archives Division, Dallas Public Library, Dallas [MA 83.18/62])

Lord and Taylor, R. H. Macy & Company, I. Magnin, Neiman Marcus, Rich’s, Sears Roebuck, and Spiegel’s. Several of these companies pioneer catalog (mail-order) sales. Although Jews are not alone in these businesses, they are disproportionately well represented, and few cities or towns lack such establishments. BUSI: A few Jews begin to participate in labor union and socialist activities with their Christian German American counterparts. Cigar maker Conrad Kuhn presides over the German Central Union of New York, and Sigismund Kaufman wins elections as speaker of that city’s Sozialistische Turnverein party.

location of the buildings, as well as the dedication ceremonies with participation of public figures and Christian attendance, testify that Jews are making it in America and achieving acceptance. Yet many of the synagogues are built in the Moorish style with onion-shaped domes common to contemporary synagogue architecture in Europe but foreign to American churches. Thus Jews are also symbolically situating themselves as distinctive.

BUSI: Jews actively participate in Texas’s livestock industry. A few own cattle ranches, but many more deal in sheep, hogs, and especially cattle as wholesale shippers, retailers, and exporters.

ORGS: Upper- and middle-class Jews organize social clubs, typically called Concordia or Harmonie Societies, in numerous communities. This practice reflects their sense that they were not totally accepted in secular society and their greater comfort in associating with individuals from similar backgrounds. A few decades later many of these societies change their names to Standard Clubs.

CULT: A synagogue building boom takes place with the expansion of congregations and the economic rise of American Jews. The size and

RELI: The number of congregations skyrockets as Jews move across the country and rise into the middle and upper classes.


This Sanger store in Dallas covers an entire city block at Main and Lamar streets in 1923. Sangers and similar stores are built in virtually every city in the country. They sell goods on credit, conduct special holiday sales, are among the first to hire women as sales clerks, and help promote a cosmopolitan, consumer culture. The owners act as city boosters for infrastructure development such as streetcar lines as well as the arts, culture, education, and philanthropy. Unlike the case with many department stores, after the last of the Sanger brothers dies, their business falls on hard times. The family retains substantial stock when they sell it in 1926. In 1951, Federated Department Stores purchases Sanger, in keeping with the move toward consolidation of the last half of the twentieth century. (Courtesy of Dallas History and Archives Division, Dallas Public Library, Dallas [MA 83.18/64])

RELI: During this era and through about 1895, rabbis frequently move from congregation to congregation as Reform and traditional factions split control of congregation power and congregations move back and forth between the two branches of Judaism. Different turning points marking movement toward the Reform perspective include elimination of head coverings and mixed seating of men and women. Yet even some Orthodox congregations—especially in the Midwest—allow mixed seating. Other signs of

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, many congregations constructed new synagogues. The exotic Moorish architecture of many of these buildings reflects not only the growing size and affluence of the congregants, but also their sense that they are sufficiently accepted to display distinctiveness. Reminiscent of the golden age of Jewish architecture in Spain and Portugal, the New World architecture also implies the old and almost aristocratic heritage of American Jews, even though the vast majority of congregants are of central and eastern European origin. Central Synagogue of New York reproduced from Harper’s Weekly, July 6, 1872. (Courtesy of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati [PC-3269])

Reform are the replacement of bar mitzvah (celebrating the coming-of-age of 13-year-old boys) with confirmations for boys and girls, use of organs and choirs of men and women, riding on the Sabbath, Sunday services, elimination of the second day of holidays, shorter services and replacement of Hebrew with English, use of a Reform prayer book, reading of the Torah in a three-year cycle instead of over the course of one year, and simply the use of the term “Reform.” 1866 SCI: Jews are subject to proselytizing and find it difficult to obtain kosher food in most hospitals.


Furthermore, many hospitals refuse to employ Jewish doctors. With the support of Jewish fraternities, Isaac Leeser leads in the establishment of the Jewish Hospital in Philadelphia. 1867 ACCT: Rabbi Max Lilienthal of Cincinnati and a Unitarian minister exchange pulpits. The practice becomes popular among Reform rabbis. BUSI: Polish-born Mark Jacobs sends sons Lionel and Barron to Tucson, a town that has recently been designated as the capital of Arizona Territory and headquarters for the military. They open a branch of their father’s San Francisco dry goods and clothing store. Currency exchange and a loan company follow. The Arizona store is financed and supplied from California and does business with Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and the military. Lionel Jacobs is elected chairperson of the county board of supervisors in 1871. The following year he wins election to the territorial legislature. Both brothers serve as territorial treasurers during the 1870s. They help create the Tucson Literary Society and join the Arizona Social Club as charter members. The activities of the Jacobs family typify those of Jews along a constantly moving frontier, who expand to likely business sites, grow their business activities according to local conditions, and become part of the social and political community. INTL: Jews in Romania are persecuted. American Jews request that Secretary of State William Seward direct the ambassador to Turkey to investigate Romanian anti-Semitism. The following year they lobby for a congressional resolution condemning the situation. In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant appoints Benjamin F. Peixotto consul to Bucharest, in which capacity he can report on developments. Peixotto leads B’nai B’rith, an organization that protests discrimination against Jews at home and abroad.

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import business. She helps develop the condensed milk concept she shares with Morton Borden, Jr., and uses Peruvian bark to help treat yellow fever during the epidemic of 1853. While nursing Confederate and Union wounded during the 1862 battle of Galveston, she spies for the Confederacy. When she dies in a Mississippi riverboat explosion five years after her husband, she leaves approximately $250,000 to Jewish and secular charities. Her bequests lead to the creation of Hebrew benevolent societies and the building of synagogues in Houston and Galveston. 1868 ACCT: In its Reconstruction constitution granting political rights to African American males, North Carolina also removes restrictions on Jewish office holding. AFRI: S. A. Bierfield, a young emigrant from Russia, is murdered in Franklin, Tennessee. The following year German immigrant Samuel Fleishman is killed in north Florida. In 1871, M. H. Lucy is also murdered in Florida. All are Republicans who conduct business and even employ African Americans as clerks, contrary to southern racial mores. GOVT: Many Jews mobilize against the election of Ulysses S. Grant as president because of General Order 11, which he issued during the Civil War. Yet Simon Wolf and others support Grant. After Grant wins the election, Wolf acts as an informal liaison between Grant and the Jewish community. Grant nominates Wolf for Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, and Wolf wins Senate approval for this post in spite of an anti-Semitic protest that is submitted to a Senate committee. MIGR: By 1868, one year after the United States purchases Alaska from Russia, at least 20 Jews hold religious services in Sitka.

LIT: Physician Nathan Mayer publishes Differences, a novel about Jewish experiences during the Civil War. Mayer writes three other novels as well as poems.

ORGS: The Cleveland Lodge of B’nai B’rith establishes a Jewish orphanage. The Midwest district of the fraternity sponsors the orphanage. In the following years, the other district lodges create a network of such institutions.

PHIL: After her husband dies in 1862, Galveston’s Rosanna Dyer Osterman runs the family

RELI: Atlanta Jews, mostly from the German states, establish the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation


A native of Richmond, Virginia, Moses Ezekiel fights in the 1864 Civil War battle of New Market along with other cadets from the Virginia Military Institute. This battle is the only time in the history of the country that an entire student body participates in combat. After the war, Ezekiel becomes a sculptor of international renown. Although he lives much of his adult life in Italy and receives knighthood, he produces numerous statues honoring both Confederate and American national heroes. This picture of Ezekiel is taken at his Rome studio. (Courtesy of Beth Ahabah Museum and Archives, Richmond, VA)

from a benevolent society begun earlier. Jews have lived in the city since its incorporation in 1845. The congregation gradually moves from traditionalism to Reform with many stops and starts and six different rabbis from the 1870s to 1895. 1869 INTL: Russian officials order Jews to leave Kishinev, Bessarabia. American Jews petition the State Department to protest the Kishinev persecution. A famine in Suwalki, Russia, acts as another factor pushing Jews to leave for the United States—a migration that will continue through the next decades. Many of the individuals who make up this wave of immigration are Lithuanian. The

This Moses Ezekiel sculpture of Virginia Mourning Her Dead (1903) lists the names of the 10 cadets from Virginia Military Institute who die in the battle. It is in its original location in front of the old Jackson Memorial Hall at VMI. (Courtesy of the Preston Library, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, VA [photo 2679; album 229])

immigrants typically work as peddlers initially and eventually become shopkeepers. ORGS: Philadelphia Jews of German extraction form the United Hebrew Charities by merging two men’s and three women’s charities. As they rise into the middle and upper classes and their charitable needs decline, this segment of the Jewish community takes several steps to make fund raising and giving more effective, efficient, and unified. These efforts dramatically increase with the large influx of Jews from Eastern Europe. Men take the leadership roles, while women typically act as volunteer care providers and fund raisers. RELI: Following German precedent, 13 rabbis travel to Philadelphia to attend the first national conference of Reform clergy in America. The platform they write largely reflects the radical Reform ideology espoused by David Einhorn.


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wounded in the battle of New Market. After the Civil War he becomes a sculptor and opens a studio in Rome, Italy. His statues include “Virginia Mourning Its Dead” at VMI, the Confederate Monument at Arlington National Cemetery, and “Religious Liberty” sculpted for Philadelphia’s 1876 centennial celebration. He is knighted and spends most of his career in Europe, yet remains devoted to the Lost Cause. BUSI: German-born Isaac Bernheim succeeds as a liquor distiller in Kentucky. Jewish tradition rejects only abuse of alcohol—not alcohol consumption itself. The drinking of wine after a prayer is a regular aspect of Jewish Sabbath observance. Jews actively participate in alcohol production and sale. In this and future decades, this practice puts them at odds with Protestant prohibition drives.

Many Jews during the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century use their Old World experience in trading with non-Jews to begin their economic life in the United States as peddlers walking regular routes with packs (pekls) of goods. These traveling salesmen typically obtain goods on credit from Jewish wholesalers in large cities and open a consumer culture to rural customers who purchase items on credit. This young peddler, Isaac Wolfe Bernheim, emigrates from Baden (Germany) in 1867 and, after peddling in Pennsylvania (picture circa 1867), settles in Paducah, Kentucky, where he and a brother ultimately establish a distillery in 1872. After they move the business to Louisville a decade later, it emerges as one of the most important in the United States. Bernheim contributes to Jewish and secular causes, serves on the executive board and as vice president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and becomes treasurer of the American Jewish Committee. (Courtesy of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati [PC-354])

1870s ART: As a young military cadet at Virginia Military Institute (VMI), Moses Ezekiel fights and is

COMM: During and after Reconstruction, many Southerners look back with nostalgia to the Lost Cause and the noble Confederacy, and glorify the Old South. Some Southern Jews actively participate in the revelry. Jewish women join the United Daughters of the Confederacy and serve as state presidents. Richmond, Virginia’s Jewish cemetery creates a special section for Confederate veterans and celebrates Confederate Memorial Day. Richmond also is home to a Hebrew Ladies Memorial Association. LIT: The Yiddish press begins in New York with J. K. Bruckner’s Die Yiddishe Zeitung, Tzvi Hirsch Bernstein’s Die Post, and Kasriel Sarsohn’s Die Yiddishe Gazeten and Die New Yorker Yiddishe Tsaytung. M. Toplowsky prints Yiddish writings as a New York publisher. Hebrew journalism also emerges in New York and Chicago with Hatzofe B’Eretz Ha-Hadash (“The Scout in the New Land”), Hadashot Yisraeliyot, and Hechal Ha’Ivriyah. All of these periodicals reject Reform Judaism and typically publish short stories and poems. LIT: Russian-born Jacob Zvi Sobel teaches Hebrew in upstate New York and begins publishing Hebrew poetry including a book, Shir Zahav l’Yisrael Ha’Zakane (“A Golden Song for Old Israel”). His poems depict the opportunities and hope of American but also attack Reform Judaism. Sobel later joins Hovevei S’fat Ever (“Lovers of the Hebrew Language”). Sobel’s poems, other


writings, and the Hebrew language press reflect a renewal of the secular use of the ancient language brought from Europe to America. Hebrew poems by Rabbi Henry Gersoni, who fills Reform pulpits in Macon and Atlanta, Georgia, and in Chicago, presage these works. Gersoni publishes Hebrew translations of Longfellow’s poems and Die Yiddishe Post, a Yiddish periodical that publishes Hebrew literature. MIGR: The few Jews to settle in Wilmington, Delaware, during the 1850s and 1860s increase in number sufficiently (approximately 100 in 1875) by the early 1870s to conduct services and plan a cemetery. They employ rabbis from Philadelphia for High Holiday worship and conduct services in Hebrew and German. The first long-term congregation, Adas-Kodesch, is not established until 1885. 1870 EDUC: The first Jew graduates from Harvard University. Like other Americans, few Jews attend college. LIT: Moritz Loth writes Our Prospects, a novel defending Jews. Loth is a major leader in Cincinnati who pushes I. M. Wise for the establishment of national Reform institutions. RELI: Traditionalists split off Congregation Chizuk Amuno from Baltimore Hebrew Congregation when the latter moves to Reform. Henry W. Schneeberger, one of the first ordained rabbis born in America, fills the Chizuk Amuno pulpit five years later. Schneeberger adheres to the Positive-Historical Judaism of his European seminary mentor, Israel Hildescheimer. Following this precursor of Conservative Judaism, Schneeberger later helps found the Jewish Theological Seminary.

immigrant James M. Phillips undertakes the task. Gilman welcomes Jews to attend the university in his presidential inaugural speech. Instruction in Hebrew had been mandatory in American colleges of the colonial era as a tool for Protestants to understand the Bible. Now it reflects a revival of Jewish interest in Hebrew as a modern language. ORGS: The national Jewish women’s society, Daughters of Israel, is established in Pittsburgh. It serves as a women’s counterpart to B’nai B’rith. 1873 IMMI: In Russia, 13-year-old Jewish boys are subject to conscription into the military, typically for a period lasting 25 years. In the military they are not allowed to practice Judaism and are often forcibly converted to Christianity. This creates the prelude to the mass emigration from Czarist Russia beginning in 1881. POPU: Almost 30 eastern European congregations function in New York City even before the era of mass emigration begins. In the 1860s, the number of eastern European Jews surpasses the number from central Europe in the California cities of Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco, and San Jose.

1871 LIT: Esther Levy’s Jewish Cookery Book provides kosher recipes for women and their cooks to help maintain tradition.

RELI: Moritz Loth, Julius Freiberg, I. M. Wise, and others establish the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC). As the name implies, this organization attempts to unify the American Jewish community, but it ultimately reflects the ongoing divisions between the various perspectives. The UAHC becomes the congregational arm of the Reform movement. All except one of the congregations are from the South and West. The congregations in the East tend to be more radical and came to view the Board of Delegates of American Israelites as the appropriate national body. When the UAHC absorbs the Board of Delegates in 1878 and makes it a committee, Reform congregations in the East join the UAHC.

1872 EDUC: Jews in Los Angeles and San Francisco successfully petition the president of the University of California, Daniel Coit Gilman, to include Hebrew instruction in the curriculum. Russian

RELI: Chicago Sinai Congregation inaugurates the first Sunday morning services through its rabbi Kaufmann Kohler. Several other congregations follow this example in the next decades but it never becomes the typical day of prayer.


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RELI: Prosperous Jews establish Congregation Hand-in-Hand in Harlem, New York. Although Orthodox, the congregation’s mixed seating of men and women, symbolic of Reform practices, reflects blurred boundaries. 1874 ACCT: Since the Civil War, Protestant evangelicals—supported by college professors, a Supreme Court justice, and many governors—have lobbied for a constitutional amendment recognizing Christianity as the United States’ official religion. The proposal dies in the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives. SOCI: Through the newly created Women’s Christian Temperance Union, women participate in public life, just as they do in missionary societies and clubs. Yet Jewish women do not fit into societies associated with a different religion, and they oppose prohibition and Christian proselytizing. They create a mirror club life through ladies’ Hebrew benevolent societies, where they learn fund raising and parliamentary procedure. 1875 AFRI: Pinckney B. S. Pinchback, a Reconstruction governor (Republican–Louisiana), uses Jews as an example for African Americans to emulate, explaining that Jews rose from slavery to achieve success in education and business. Yet black imagery of Jews during the last decades of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century in newspapers and speeches is mixed. Jews are depicted as both the people of the Bible and Christ killers. They are cited as models to be emulated, yet are also perceived as taking advantage of African Americans in their positions as pawnbrokers, landlords, and business people. EDUC: I. M. Wise and the UAHC create Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, the first permanent American Jewish seminary to train rabbis. The seminary initially opens to, and is supported by, Jews who follow a variety of practices and beliefs. ORGS: Borrowing from the Young Men’s Christian Association, a Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) is founded in New York, followed

German immigrant Isaac M. Wise acts as the institution builder of Reform Judaism in the United States. He edits newspapers, helps begin and presides over Hebrew Union College, and spearheads the establishment of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. He strives for unity among American Jews by supporting moderate Reform precepts and avoiding outspoken positions over the issues of slavery and the Civil War. Both traditionalists and radical Reformers criticize his middleof-the-road approach to religious change. (Courtesy of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati [Isaac M. Wise folder 3])

by formation of YMHA chapters throughout the country. These organizations become centers of Jewish cultural, educational, and athletic life. RELI: Traditionalists split off Congregation Adas Israel from Washington Hebrew Congregation (originally called Shaare Zedek) when the latter becomes a Reform congregation. 1876 RELI: Felix Adler takes classical Reform to what he perceives as its logical conclusion by leaving Judaism and starting the Ethical Culture Society. He reasons that religious differences should come to an end and all good people should unite


behind a program of justice and ethnics. Adler’s social justice emphasis presages both the Protestant Social Gospel and Reform Judaism’s Pittsburg Platform emphasis on secular reform. 1877 ACCT: New Hampshire is the last state to grant Jews full political rights. ANTI: Financier Joseph Seligman is barred from registering at the Grand Union Hotel in Sarasota, New York, at the order of the owner, Conrad Hilton. This incident symbolizes the dramatic rise in social anti-Semitism during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Jews who were formerly admitted into elite social clubs and served as kings of Mardi Gras krews are now often refused membership. BUSI: Samuel Gompers helps lead a Cigarmakers Union strike that fails. Gompers learns from the experience and helps found the American Federation of Labor, which adapts the pure and simple labor union tactics of his native England. He serves as its president from its beginning in 1886 until 1924. LIT: The first book of Yiddish poems to appear in the United States, Shir Zahav L’chavod Yisrael Hazakane (“A Song in Honor of Ancient Israel”), written by Jacob Zevi Sobol, is published in New York. LIT: Rabbi Edward M. B. Browne begins publication of the Jewish South in Atlanta. It typifies regional periodicals, which include the work of local contributors who help tie Jewish communities together. SCI: Emile Berliner patents a talking machine record to replace the cylinders produced by Thomas Edison. The Berliner gramophone evolves into the Victor Talking Machine. The Berliner Gramophone Company introduces the concept of paying royalties to musicians for exclusive recording contracts and opens a commercial recording studio and record shop in Philadelphia. In 1877, Berliner also patents a telephone receiver that increases the volume, makes a clearer sound, and can transmit farther than Alexander Graham Bell’s invention. Bell Telephone Company purchases the rights to

Berliner’s invention. Berliner experiments with the microphone and acoustical tiles. He and his son Henry, educated at Cornell and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, design three different models of helicopters that fly between 1919 and 1926. 1878 ANTI: Raphael J. Moses, a former Confederate officer credited with introducing the commercial production of peaches in Georgia, defends himself in a congressional race against an antiSemitic attack by declaring, “Would you honor me? Call me a Jew.” BUSI: Harry and Max Hart, along with Joseph Schaffner, and with the financial backing of Marcus Marx (all of whom are related), manufacture and distribute ready-made clothing in Chicago. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Hart, Schaffner & Marx becomes the largest men’s clothing manufacturer in the world. 1879 ANTI: Jews are excluded from a Coney Island, New York, hotel because of fears that the presence of Jews would drive away the Christian clientele. After World War II, Coney Island becomes famous partly for Nathan’s hot dogs. ORGS: The Moses Montefiore Beneficial Society, created in Wilmington, is the first Jewish organization formally established in Delaware. RELI: New York’s Emanu-El abolishes the use of German in sermons and prayers. The congregation previously added an English-speaking rabbi to supplement the work of Dr. Samuel Adler, who spoke only German. Within a decade, 300 people attend Saturday morning services at the Gothic-style synagogue, which was created from a Baptist church refurbished for the congregation’s use. Temple Emanu-El is the most prestigious synagogue in the country. 1880 INTL: Tsar Alexander II’s adviser, Count Constantine Pobyedonostev, proposes that one third of the Jews of Russia be baptized, another third


migrate, and the final third die of starvation, thus ridding the country of Jews. LIT: General Lewis Wallace’s widely read novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, depicts Jews as responsible for the crucifixion of Christ. Yet in 1882 as minister to Constantinople, Wallace supports Jewish colonies in the Holy Land. During the 1950s, Ben Hur is the basis for a Cecile B. DeMille epic motion picture, starring Charlton Heston (who also appears in The Ten Commandments as Moses). LIT: Seventeenth Jewish periodicals are published in Chicago, Cincinnati, New Orleans,

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New York, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, and San Francisco. Besides coverage of local, national, and international Jewish events, the periodicals often publish serialized novels. POPU: Eighty-three percent of American Jews live in cities of 5,000 or more, in contrast to only 25 percent of the overall population. Mobile, Alabama, is home to 530 Jews; the Jewish population in Montgomery numbers 600. New Orleans has 5,000 Jews and San Francisco 16,000.


THE ERA OF MASS MIGRATION: 1881–1924 1881–1924 ANTI: During the last decades of the nineteenth century, dislocation and hardship resulting from the industrial revolution and urbanization contribute to a dramatic rise in anti-Semitism. Many Populist leaders denounce what they perceive as an international Jewish money conspiracy, and white-cappers in the South—descendants of the Ku Klux Klan—assault Jews and destroy Jewishowned property. ANTI: Many American intellectuals and social theorists define and accept racial differences and the superiority of some groups over others. This group includes sociologist E. A. Ross and Madison Grant, whose Passing of the Great Race depicts the decline of what he believes to be the superior Anglo-Saxon race and the rise of what he considers the inferior Slavic and other races. A major theme of literature and even movies during the 1890s and into the early twentieth century is race suicide: the notion that the Anglo-Saxon race will lose power and disappear, only to be replaced by inferior races. These racist ideas influence the rise of Jim Crow laws against African Americans, opposition to Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the western United States, and immigration restriction legislation. BUSI: Jews open a variety of factories. The New York clothing industry is dominated by such concerns. Cone Mills, the largest in North Carolina and the supplier for Levi Strauss pants, benefits from the local supply of cotton and cheap labor, as does the largest factory in Atlanta, Fulton Bag Company, owned by the Elsas family. Jacob

Epstein’s Baltimore Bargain House becomes the chief source of goods for immigrant businesses in the southern and middle states. IMMI: By 1881, emigration of Jews from Germany dramatically declines. The concentration in petty crafts and peddling and gradual move from small towns to cities facilitate the adjustment of Jews to the industrial revolution in the second half of the nineteenth century. Jews rise into the middle and upper classes through success in the textile industry, banking, shipping, department stores, and railway building. They also gain political rights and freedoms. The “push factor”—the reasons to leave Germany—largely disappears. This era is marked by the mass migration of Jews from Eastern Europe to the United States, sparked by the desire for greater economic opportunity. Approximately 2.5 million Jews—one third of all of eastern European Jewry—emigrate from 1881 until America closes its doors to extensive immigration with a series of laws passed from 1917 to 1924. Eighty percent of the emigrants come to America. Jews are far from alone in moving to the United States: Large numbers of people (especially Catholics) arrive from Italy, Ireland, and other European locations. Jews share many of the same reasons that inspire these other people to leave Europe and come to America. But there are also specific reasons Jews depart. Anti-Semitism and violence against them become commonplace in Russia, Galicia (Austria–Hungary), Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. Within Russia, most Jews are


Peddlers and merchants require the services of wholesale suppliers—typically other immigrants who established themselves earlier. Illustrative of these businesses, Lithuanian-born Jacob Epstein’s Baltimore Bargain House offers goods on credit, suggests likely peddling routes, and fosters consumerism for those who might not otherwise have access to goods. The Baltimore Bargain House, established 1882, becomes one of the country’s largest mail-order firms and one of the four largest wholesalers. Buying trips to Baltimore, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and other big cities provide peddlers and merchants with opportunities to interact with larger Jewish communities and find spouses. Postcard circa 1910. (Courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Maryland, Baltimore [1998.070.005])

forced to live in the Pale of Settlement. Their rights and economic opportunities are limited, as are their opportunities for education. BUSI: Based on prior experience and opportunity, many Jewish immigrants settling in industrial cities such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York work in the clothing industry and are typically employed by Jewish business people of German ancestry. In fact, in 1890, 60 percent of the employed immigrants find work in the garment industry. Some immigrants are skilled tailors but many work in sweatshops or do piece work in their homes for low wages and under horrible living and working conditions. By 1900, 95 percent of women’s clothing and 85 percent of men’s clothing are produced in Jewishowned factories. BUSI: Those east European Jews who leave the major industrial cities often begin as peddlers, first on foot and then with a horse and buggy, before opening small stores, following the model

of earlier immigrants and using their experiences in their countries of origin. Others begin in the towns and cities, often in the poor sections near other immigrant groups and/or African Americans. They typically partner with friends and relatives, obtain financing from free loan associations or Morris Plan banks (for which two signatures are required rather than collateral), and invest in real estate. Jewish clothing and department stores again dot the landscape. This is the pattern, for example, in Atlanta, Georgia; Columbus, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; Hartford, Connecticut; Los Angeles, California; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Portland, Oregon, where few Jews work in factories. CULT: The Jewish newcomers from Eastern Europe typically speak Yiddish, practice traditional Judaism, and are poor. They attend Jewish schools and study the Talmud, the ancient rabbinical commentary on the Bible. Yiddish culture flourishes. Modern Zionism begins and draws

The Era of Mass Migration: 1881–1924

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Eastern European Jewish peddlers, following the paths of the previous wave of immigrants, often graduate from walking to selling from a wagon once they accumulate sufficient capital. In this way, they expand their routes and the quantity of goods they carry. Joseph Nudelman emigrates with his family from Russia in 1882. Following the Russian Am Olam, or “back to the soil” movement, he organizes a series of unsuccessful communal, Jewish agricultural colonies in Canada, North Dakota, and California. Nudelman, his extended family, and friends from his agricultural ventures eventually settle in Portland, Oregon, where many open small businesses. In addition, Nudelman serves as the founding president of Shaarie Torah, an Orthodox synagogue in Portland. After peddling from his wagon in Oregon (picture circa 1900), Joseph’s son Hyman opens a butcher shop in Portland, a market, and then a clothing store. His son joins him and they change from manufacturing clothing to sell, to selling ready-to-wear items. During the 1930s, the Nudelmans contract with labor unions to provide uniforms to their members and become major suppliers for police, firefighters, postal workers, the U.S. Forestry Service, and, during World War II, sailors as well. The business continues to be operated by the Nudelmans until it is sold during the 1980s. (Courtesy of the Oregon Jewish Museum, Portland, Oregon [OJM 3307])

individuals to prepare for a return to ancient Israel and to emigrate. Yet changes associated with the industrial revolution and the Maskil, or eastern European Jewish Enlightenment, mark varied behavior. Some Jews espouse socialism, communism, and trade union activity as they experience the hardships and inequality associated with industrialism and the harsh control of the Russian czars. Many live in small towns called shtetls, but many others move to the cities.

Although immigrants with similar backgrounds and from the same countries arrive previously, the new emigrants from Eastern Europe differ dramatically in background and behavior from the majority who preceded them and who are already adapting to America. Members of another emigrant group from the Ottoman Empire, Greece, and the Balkans are so different from the Ashkenazim that they remain largely separated for decades and the latter question whether if they are Jewish.


GOVT: From the 1890s into the early twentieth century, Jews serve as mayors in numerous cities and behave as go-go (good government) businessmen-reformers. Adolph Sutro, for example, serves as mayor of San Francisco after completing engineering and development projects in the Southwest. After a hurricane devastates Galveston, Texas, Isaac Kempner helps develop the city manager form of government. LIT: Joseph Pulitzer publishes the New York World newspaper and starts a newspaper chain that crosses the country. He pioneers in “yellow journalism,” popularizing and dramatizing stories and inflaming public opinion. In an ironic twist, the prizes named for him symbolize the highest level of excellence. MIGR: The America to which the Jewish newcomers immigrate is very different from the America the earlier immigrants arrived in. The forces of the industrial revolution and urbanization pervade America life. Although some new immigrants travel across the country moving to small towns and cities, the vast majority live in the industrial metropolises, especially New York City. There they work in the garment industry, often for Jewish employers from the earlier migration. Like other immigrants, they typically live in ethnic clusters, in ghettos, surrounded by people from their same place of origin and religion and alongside other immigrant groups. The Lower East Side of New York, the Lombard Street area of Baltimore, the North End of Boston, the West Side of Chicago, and South Philadelphia illustrate this pattern. Jews from Hungary, Galicia, Romania, and Russia and Sephardim from the Ottoman Empire form ghettos within the larger ghetto. Approximately 73 percent of the Jewish immigrants who arrive in New York between 1881 and 1911 remain in the city. Overcrowding is commonplace, but a bustling culture flourishes. Even where fewer Jewish immigrants locate, they tend to live in ethnic neighborhoods Examples include the Decatur Street section of Atlanta, the West Colfax area of Denver, the Pinch in Memphis, Water Street in Milwaukee, and the Dryades Street area of New Orleans. Given their poverty and the local population mixture, in the

South Jewish immigrants tend to live near African Americans; in the West near Ladinos, Chinese, or Japanese immigrants; and generally amid other immigrant groups. For each group, living near people from the same country and background provides a sense of security as well as the benefits of shared culture, language, and religion. In this setting, it is easier for them to obtain housing and employment contacts. Ethnic-oriented businesses (e.g., butchers, bakeries, delicatessens, grocery stores, newspapers) and institutions (e.g., synagogues or churches, charity, insurance, burial, and social associations) ease the process of adjustment to a new land and conditions and ultimately aid acculturation. Living near other ethnic/minority groups results in both positive and negative interactions. As the immigrants gradually rise economically and acculturate, they move into other areas of the cities and into suburbs. Nonetheless, they tend to continue to create and live in ethnic clusters. ORGS: The old immigrants assist the newcomers but also look down upon them and are afraid that their foreign ways will increase anti-Semitism in America against all Jews. Frequently the assistance is geared toward ensuring rapid “Americanization,” and is given in a condescending fashion that belittles the cultural background and beliefs of the newcomers. The institutions and programs both reflect and lead the practices of their Progressive-era secular counterparts. The Jews who are already established in America transform their social services organizations, create new agencies to assist the new immigrants, and attempt to Americanize them as quickly as possible. The new immigrants establish their own synagogues and institutions. The story is one of cooperation and conflict. ORGS: Hundreds of mutual aid societies (landsmanshaften) are established that provide insurance, often religious services, and social interaction to people originating from the same eastern European communities. ORGS: Philadelphia emerges as a leading center of Jewish leadership and organizational life, second only to New York. Cyrus Adler, Joseph Krauskopf, Sabato Morais, Solomon Solis-Cohen, and


Mayer Sulzberger, among others, help create and lead such organizations as the Baron de Hirsch Fund, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Historical Society, the Jewish Publication Society, and the Jewish Theological Seminary. POPU: Estimates indicate that the Jewish population in the United States increases from 250,000 in 1880 to 450,000 in 1890 to 1,050,000 in 1900 to 2,043,000 in 1910 and to 3,600,00 in 1920. In those years, Jews represent 0.50 percent, 0.71 percent, 1.38 percent, 2.22 percent, and 3.41 percent of the total U.S. population, respectively. In 1880, Jews in the United States account for 3.27 percent of all Jews in the world. Forty years later, this figure reaches 22.86 percent. Within this time period, Jews from eastern Europe and their children dominate most American Jewish communities in terms of population. PERF: Charles Froman and David Belasco are pioneers in the American theater. Belasco innovates by using electric stage lighting and footlights and creates the Lyceum School of Acting, in which numerous future stars receive training. Some of his Broadway plays, which feature elaborate scenery, run for thousands of performances. Froman produces plays in New York and London and manages many top stars of the era. Actor/ singer Al Jolson and magician Harry Houdini found the Rabbis’ Sons Theatrical Benevolent Association. POPU: Jewish families come to America to stay. Approximately 30 percent of non-Jewish immigrants return to their country of origin. They depart their homes for economic opportunity, but typically not because of rejection by the secular culture. Often coming as single men, they make money in America and then return to Europe for wives and to establish families. In contrast, only 5 to 8 percent of Jewish immigrants to the United States return to their country of origin after 1905. RELI: Following in Isaac Leeser’s footsteps, Philadelphia emerges as the center of a middleof-the road Judaism with Congregation Mickveh Israel’s leaders Rabbi Sabato Morais, Judge Mayer

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Sulzberger, and Cyrus Adler as well as Congregation Rodeph Shalom’s Rabbi Marcus Jastrow. Similar tendencies and leaders arise in Baltimore and numerous other cities. These people value Jewish rituals and rabbinical teachings more than the Reform movement but are somewhat flexible in their approach and practices. To some degree, they follow in the footsteps of the Positive-Historical School associated with the seminary begun in the mid-nineteenth century in Breslau, Germany. Many of the rabbis involved, including Bernard Drachman, Henry P. Mendes, and Henry Schneeberger, later lead the modern Orthodox movement. SCI: Charles Steinmetz helps revolutionize the field of electrical engineering with his numerous inventions and scientific discoveries while working for General Electric. SOCI: In large industrial cities such as New York and Chicago, problems emerge based on disruption of European customs in the United States and the harsh nature of slum life. Many husbands desert their wives, and young people join gangs. The “white slave trade”—prostitution—is a well-publicized, trans-Atlantic evil. Representatives of Jewish organizations meet young women at the immigration ports of entry to prevent their fall into prostitution. SOCI: Reform rabbis serve as “ambassadors to the Gentiles,” meaning that they reach out to the general community through public lectures, participation and leadership in civic affairs, and interaction with Christian clergy. This behavior reinforces the positions of their congregants in middle- and upper-class society. 1880s ANTI: In 1887, Jews are beaten and murdered in Louisiana and Texas. Two years later, mobs attack Jewish businesses in Delhi and neighboring Tompkins Bend, Louisiana. The Jewish business people are ordered to leave town. In 1892, members of the Whitecaps, a Ku Klux Klan–type group, destroy H. Miller’s Louisiana property. Violence and threats continue into the twentieth century. In 1903, Abram Surasky is murdered in Aiken, South Carolina. The violence is a mixture of anti-Semitism and resentment toward business


Personality Profile: Nathan Straus Bavarian-born Nathan Straus moves to Talbotton, Georgia, with his family in 1854. Although Nathan is reassured that the grand jury presentment demanding that Jews leave because of alleged war profiteering during the Civil War is not aimed against him, his father Lazarus decides to move to Columbus, Georgia. After the war Nathan and his brother Isador become the owners of R. H. Macy Department Store in New York. Isador and his wife perish when the Titanic sinks. Nathan serves as New York City’s Parks Commissioner and president of the Board of Health. During the depression of 1892–1893, he organizes and finances distribution centers for food and coal as well as homeless shelters. Witnessing the high death toll of poor children from tuberculosis, he builds pasteurization plants and distributes sterilized milk, thereby saving thousands of lives. Congress finally enacts milk regulations during the 1920s, largely in response to Straus’s lobbying. He had already turned his New York milk plant over to the city in 1920 when it accepted responsibility for its operation. Straus helps found the American Jewish Congress, gives the largest donation launching the Jewish War Relief Fund in 1917, and, through Hadassah, finances hospitals, nursing clinics, and pasteurization plants, all of which benefit Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land. Straus epitomizes the immigrant who made good in America and uses his wealth and influence to benefit society as a whole.

people to whom many owe debts and who often conduct business with African Americans. Although the images of the peddler and the dry goods storeowner are often romanticized, these people are often resented and vulnerable because they have cash in poor, agricultural areas. Townspeople often oppose the violence and intimidation, and urge the business people to remain. GOVT: Isaac Lowenberg serves Natchez, Mississippi, as mayor and Cassius Tillman as sheriff. Benjamin Dreyfus works his way up from city council to the mayor’s office in Anaheim, California. INTL: During the 1870s, idealistic Russian Jews start the Am Olam, or “return to the earth” movement, to encourage Jewish farming and dispersal from cities. The program influences settlement in Palestine and creation of agricultural colonies in the United States during the 1880s in at least nine states, with the most successful community located in New Jersey. PERF: Jews perform in minstrel shows, occasionally with their faces blackened. Assuming this racist imagery of white Christian society eases their acceptance as “white.”

1881 GOVT: Morris Dzialynski is elected mayor of Jacksonville, Florida. He serves two additional terms during the 1890s and then is elected to a municipal judgeship. Dzialynski also serves as one of four governors (directors) of the Board of Trade, the forerunner of the Chamber of Commerce. Jews are chosen for leadership positions in these business organizations throughout the country. IMMI: The assassination of Tsar Alexander II sparks a wave of anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia in which government officials encourage peasants to beat, rape, and murder Jews and destroy their property. Although Jews had long been leaving Russia, this and other incidents in succeeding years spark huge emigration especially to the United States. Russia is not alone. In Warsaw, Poland, Jews perish in the Christmas Massacre. The level of violence against Jews rises, especially from 1881 to 1884. Protests against the persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe take place in numerous American cities and include the participation of government officials and influential non-Jews. PHIL: Adolphus Solomons and Clara Barton call for a meeting that takes place in Solomons’s


house, at which they organize the American Association of the Red Cross. Solomons becomes the treasurer and one of two vice presidents for the organization. When the United States ratifies the Red Cross Treaty the following year, President Chester Arthur appoints Solomons along with Barton and one other individual as the American representatives to the International Congress of the Red Cross. Solomons wins election as first vice president of this meeting held in Geneva, Switzerland. During the Spanish– American War, when the Red Cross aids sick and wounded American soldiers, Solomons serves on the executive committee. Solomons later acts as general agent of the Baron de Hirsch Fund in America. ORGS: The Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society is created in New York by German Jews, followed the next year by the Hebrew Sheltering Society, for the purpose of assisting immigrants through the entry process on Ellis Island and getting started. Both organizations exist only a few years but help thousands of people. 1882 IMMI: Russia passes the May Laws, which prohibit Jewish settlement in small towns. More than 500,000 Jews are forced to uproot their lives. By 1891, 700,000 Russian Jews (including 20,000 from Moscow) are forced to move to the Pale of Settlement. During the following decade. the number of Jews living in poverty and relying on Jewish charity skyrockets. Jews are not allowed to work in many occupations or to own land. PHIL: Members of the Russian Am Olam movement build Jewish agricultural colonies in Sicily Island, Louisiana, Crimea, South Dakota, and New Odessa, Oregon. Approximately 160 colonies are sponsored by the Baron de Hirsch Fund and under the supervision of the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society. Most of these attempts to turn eastern European immigrants who have traditionally engaged in peddling and crafts into farmers fail. Yet those in New Jersey flourish for decades because of the availability of markets for their goods in New York and Philadelphia.

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Baron de Hirsch symbolizes the continuation of trans-Atlantic ties. An English baron and wealthy businessman, de Hirsch finances several programs in Europe, America, and the Holy Land. Numerous east European Orthodox congregations in the United States, including one in Memphis, are named for him. ORGS: Hebrew emigrant relief societies spring up first in New York, followed by Chicago, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, New Haven, and other cities. IMMI: The U.S. Congress passes the first of several laws restricting immigration. Besides excluding Chinese immigrants, these laws exclude “undesirables,” a term that includes the mentally handicapped, prostitutes, and those unable to support themselves without public assistance. Two laws pass in 1891 that add to the “undesirables” list paupers, polygamists, people who did not pay for their ship tickets, and people with certain diseases. Because relatives and friends often pay for transportation, this consideration especially becomes a debated issue. Many immigrants arrive with little money but relatives, friends, and private charities typically assist them until they become independent. Language and culture differences result in classifications of mental incompetence, and diseases are defined as dangerous and communicable when they are not. 1883 LIT: Emma Lazarus writes “The New Colossus” to help raise funds to build the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, then called “Liberty Enlightening the World.” Her poem becomes famous: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teaming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my hand beside the golden door!” The sonnet fosters an image of the United States as the “Promised Land” to the emigrants from decadent Europe, even as many Americans came to oppose immigration. PERF: Abraham Goldfaden, the father of Yiddish theater, emigrates with his theater company to


New York after Czar Alexander III bans such undertakings in Russia. In the following decades, New York becomes the center of Yiddish theater, owing to playwrights Sholom Aleichem, Sholom Asch, Jacob Gordin, Leon Kobrin, I. L. Peretz, and David Pinski, and actors Jacob Adler, Boris and Bessie Tomashevsky, Molly Picon, and others. By 1918, New York is home to 20 Yiddish theaters that attract 2 million patrons. Acting as a mechanism of continuity but also gradual acculturation, Yiddish theater flourishes in most cities across the country that have populations of eastern European Jewish immigrants. Some actors, such as Muni Weisenfreund (Paul Muni), use the theater as a stepping-stone into the movies.

continue their seemingly distinctive mission of serving as moral exemplars to others. The Pittsburg Platform, which is reaffirmed five years later at another conference, exerts substantial influence over the Reform movement. Kohler succeeds Wise as president of Hebrew Union College when Wise dies. David Einhorn’s prayer book (Kohler is Einhorn’s son-in-law) becomes the basis for the Union Prayer Book in 1896. The later version includes no German and little Hebrew. The English language serves as the medium for Reform services. Einhorn’s radical Reform becomes the classical Reform vision that dominates the Reform movement into the late 1930s.

RELI: Non-kosher food is served at a banquet (thereafter called the “trefa banquet”) at the graduation of Hebrew Union College’s first four graduates. Traditionalists react with revulsion and walk out in disgust. This incident symbolically helps mark the demarcation of the Reform and Orthodox camps. Although I. M. Wise sought union through moderation, this and other incidents lead to hardening of divisions between the Reform and Orthodox camps.

RELI: In the decades following the Pittsburgh Platform, some Jews who seek greater spirituality and meaning follow Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science teachings. Rabbis, taking the universal message one step further, form close bonds with Unitarian/Universalist churches and even preach from these pulpits.

1884 EDUC: Julia Richmond is the first Jewish woman to serve as principal of a New York City public school. Annie Teitlebaum Wise becomes the first principal of Atlanta’s Commercial High School in 1910. Teaching, social work, and secretarial work are typical occupations for educated women. 1885 RELI: Radical Reform Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler and traditionalist Rabbi Alexander Kohut debate the issues separating the two camps. Radical Reform rabbis led by Kohler dominate the UAHC conference that draws up the Pittsburgh Platform. This platform stresses social justice over ritual observance, similar to the Protestant Social Gospel, and rejects Talmudic authority as well as the concepts of return to Jerusalem and a personal messiah. Reform now defines Judaism in universal terms, so that it has much in common with Christianity; at the same time, Jews

1886 BUSI: Philip Whitlock began rolling cigars in his Richmond, Virginia, dry goods store shortly after the Civil War. Now he opens a five-story factory, which ultimately produces 33 million Old Virginia Cheroots per year. The American Tobacco Company purchases the company in 1891. Russian Jews brought from New York provide one of the initial sources of cigar makers for the Durham, North Carolina, industry. BUSI: One day after the Haymarket incident, more than 1,000 Jewish garment workers demonstrate in Chicago for improved working conditions. Police use clubs to beat them. EDUC: Orthodox leaders establish Etz Chaim Yeshiva in New York City. The curriculum emphasizes Talmudic study, with secular classes being offered only after 4 P.M. GOVT: Clothing storeowner Herman Glogowski serves as mayor of Tampa, Florida, for 4 one-year terms between 1886 and 1892. He is a pioneer leader with the city’s Board of Trade and Congregation Schaarai Zedek (Gates of the Righteous; 1894).


GOVT: The Jewish Workingmen’s Association becomes affiliated with the Socialist Labor Party headed by Daniel DeLeon. ORGS: The Neighborhood Guild (later called the University Settlement) opens its doors on New York’s Lower East Side. As the first settlement house, it is designed to assist the immigrant poor. New York’s Henry Street Settlement (run by nurse Lillian Wald), Chicago’s Hull House and Maxwell Street Settlements, Kansas City’s Jewish Educational Institute, and similar institutions throughout the country provide training grounds for the young, affluent women who work in them and break the ground for social work careers. Important social reformers of the 1920s and New Deal era, including New York Governor Herbert Lehman, Jacob Billikopf, and Belle and Henry Moskovitz, as well as non-Jews Jane Addams, Frances Perkins, and Eleanor Roosevelt, gain experience through settlement house work. 1887 BUSI: Immigrants Hyman Madanic and his son Ben work in St. Louis sweatshops to raise money to finance the passage of Russian relatives. Ownership of a clothing store in Fairfield, Illinois, is followed by a store in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then satellite stores in surrounding communities. After World War I, May Brothers’ Department Stores, as they are then called, spread across the country. EDUC: The Jewish Theological Seminary opens as an alternative to Hebrew Union College and in opposition to the Pittsburgh Platform. From its inception, the seminary attempts to serve Orthodox and what would become known as Conservative congregations. Initially it welcomes and is supported by moderates and traditionalists. SOCI: New York’s Temple Emanu-El initiates the first sisterhood of personal service, as a women’s auxiliary geared toward charity activities and assistance to the congregation similar to the ladies’ Hebrew benevolent societies. The idea spreads across the country. 1888–1890 BUSI: Approximately 40 unions join together to form the United Hebrew Trades union of New York. The union spreads to Philadelphia the

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follow year and to Chicago six years later. By 1914, it claims 250,000 members. ORGS: Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) societies, begun in Russia about 1881, spread across America. 1888 LIT: Cyrus Adler and others establish the Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphia to publish volumes of Jewish interest. RELI: Since 1879, a group of Orthodox congregations in New York has tried to establish a Jewish community organization modeled on those found in Europe. The Association of American Orthodox Hebrew Congregations brings in a chief rabbi from Europe. Jacob Joseph of Vilna, who never learns English, fills the position but quickly becomes embroiled in controversy over a one-cent tax on the ritual slaughter of chickens to support him. The Orthodox rabbis hate the Reformers but cannot effectively unify their disparate positions. Regardless of his failure, thousands turn out for Joseph’s funeral in 1902, although Irish workers attack the procession. 1889 ORGS: Eastern European Jews in New York create the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society (1881). Reorganized eight years later, as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, HIAS offers job training, employment assistance, and short-term housing. It distributes information to newcomers, and its agents help immigrants avoid the con men who attempt to take advantage of them on their arrival in Baltimore, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other ports of entry. HIAS, which remains in existence today, mediates between the immigrants and government officials by providing interpreters, legal assistance, and lobbying. 1890s GOVT: Charles Fleishmann, who starts a yeast business and distillery, wins election to the Ohio legislature. His son serves as Cincinnati’s mayor (1900–1906). 1890 BUSI: New York is the center of the American garment industry, and Jews of German descent


own the overwhelming majority of the factories. By 1897, Jewish immigrants—many of whom arrive in the United States with industrial skills— account for 75 percent of these garment workers. Italians are another major component of this work force. The garment industry employs 60 percent of the entire Jewish work force, with many of these people working in sweat shops. In Philadelphia, 40 percent of the Jewish population works in the garment industry. Unlike in New York, however, socialism fails to thrive in Philadelphia. When the largely Jewish Cloak-Makers Union strikes against Jewish factory owners, Congregation Mikveh Israel’s Rabbi Sabato Morais arbitrates in favor of the workers. Ultimately, Italian, Lithuanian, and African American co-workers join the Jewish unionists in advocating for better working conditions. RELI: Rachel “Ray” Frank, born in San Francisco, publishes an article in a New York newspaper criticizing the rabbis of her era. Shortly thereafter, when she delivers a sermon on the evening of Rosh Hashanah in Spokane Falls, Washington, she becomes the first woman in modern times to do so. Sometimes called the “girl rabbi,” Frank delivers lectures and sermons over the next two decades mostly in the western states, and publishes articles emphasizing Jewish women, family, and religious values. 1891 IMMI: Ellis Island replaces Castle Garden in New York as the main immigration station. The majority of European emigrants enter the United States through this facility. Many are rejected and forced to return to Europe for health reasons and later for other issues, including literacy, as Congress gradually restricts immigration into the country. LIT: Ignatius Donnelly’s widely read novel, Caesar’s Column, foresees a future in which Jews dominate government and finance. Three years later, in Coin’s Financial School, Donnelly attacks Jews for supporting the gold standard. Donnelly is an officer in the Farmers’ Alliance, an influential Populist, and a Minnesota legislator. Depicting

Jews as ruthlessly pursuing money, conspiring to control America and the world, and causing the woes of America is typical of novels of the last decades of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. Another example demonstrating these themes is Henry James’s work, Democracy (1880). ORGS: Established Jews of central European descent create the Industrial Removal Office (IRO) in New York in an attempt to move immigrants away from New York and other East Coast cities. Local B’nai B’rith lodges often provide agents who match the immigrants’ skills with the available jobs and accept a specific number of immigrants per month. By the time of America’s entry into World War I in 1917, more than 75,000 immigrants have been sent to almost 1,700 small towns and cities by the IRO. Yet often either the migrant or the host community complains about the relocation, and the vast majority of immigrants remain in New York. 1892 ORGS: The Baron de Hirsch Fund reorganizes and makes systematic the process of assisting immigrants arriving in New York. A fund of $400,000 is set aside for the project and a variety of organizations are brought together through the American Committee for Ameliorating the Conditions of Russian Immigrants. ORGS: The American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) is founded in New York. Like similar ethnic organizations, it seeks to preserve records and record the history of the group to demonstrate that Jews have long resided in the country and contributed substantially to its development. History serves as a tool to counteract antiSemitism, especially that associated with new immigrants. Although much of what is written and published in its Proceedings during its first half century glorifies the past, the periodical— which is renamed first American Jewish Historical Quarterly and then American Jewish History— becomes the premier, scholarly journal in the field. The AJHS archive is perhaps the most complete available on American Jewry.


ORGS: The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeiter Ring is established and then reorganized in 1900 as a national organization. This fraternal organization typifies many such socialist and secular mutual aid societies that reflect European allegiances and tools that help immigrants adjust to America. Although socialist, many members remain religious; thus such organizations illustrate both divisions and blurred boundaries within the immigrant community. The Workmen’s Circle also stresses Yiddish culture, another unifying force. ORGS: Dr. Joseph Bluestone, a Russian immigrant and graduate of New York University Medical School, establishes a chapter of Choveve Zion in New York City. Bluestone also edits and publishes Shulamith, the first Zionist periodical in the United States. Bluestone is later first vice president of the Federation of American Zionists’ New York chapter, the first secretary of Mizrachi, and three times grand master of the Order of Sons of Zion. SPOR: As the physical education director of Smith College, a women’s institution, Senda Berenson introduces women’s basketball. In keeping with Victorian images of femininity, the goals include cooperation, sportsmanship, and good health but not competition. The women’s teams have more players than men’s teams, and the court is divided in thirds so that players do not have to run from one side of the court to another. Berenson helps spread the game across the country. 1893 CULT: Rabbi Henry Berkowitz of Kansas City, following the Methodist model, organizes the Jewish Chautauqua Society to educate Jews and non-Jews about Judaism through speakers. The organization continues its ecumenical program until the late 1930s, when the National Federation of Temple Brotherhoods absorbs it. ORGS: Community leaders, including Jacob Schiff and Isidor Strauss, bring together three New York organizations into what becomes

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known as the Jewish education alliance. Borrowing from the settlement house model, alliances are geared toward Americanizing the new immigrants by providing such services as job training; cooking, English-language, and hygiene classes; sports; and socializing. They spread across the country, as do young men’s and young women’s Hebrew associations (YMHA/YWHA). These efforts are partly meant to counteract Christian missionary programs aimed at immigrants. ORGS: Jews participate in the Parliament of Religions at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. As an outgrowth of this experience, Jewish women led by Hannah Greenebaum and Sadie American organize the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW). Local sections (chapters) spread across the country, largely attracting established “German” Jewish women. The NCJW helps poor immigrants in the style of the Progressive-era settlement house movement. Programs stress “Americanization” and are viewed by many immigrants as condescending, even as they benefit from them. Breaking somewhat from the earlier ladies’ Hebrew benevolent societies, the sections interact with secular women’s clubs and actively lobby for legislation, especially laws related to enhancing the welfare of women and children. Sections in Chicago and New York influence the creation of juvenile courts. The NCJW members gain equivalent experience to Protestant women in missionary and prohibition societies, which they then funnel into support for passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and other women’s rights endeavors. African American and Catholic women later create parallel councils. SOCI: Camp Lehman, the first Jewish summer camp for youth, opens. 1894 ANTI: The Immigration Restrictive League, founded by Harvard University professor Robert Ward and including members from New England’s intellectual and upper classes, opposes immigration of what it perceives as undesirable


races and supports social exclusion of these groups, particularly Jews. COMM: Samuel Gompers successfully lobbies Congress to declare the first Monday in September a national holiday, Labor Day. EDUC: Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf of Philadelphia’s Kenesseth Israel opens the National Farm School in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to provide agricultural training to new immigrants in the hopes that they will move from the big cities to farms. 1895 LIT: Rosa Sonneschein edits The American Jewess. Lasting only until 1899, as the title of this first English-language, Jewish women’s periodical indicates, the monthly journal appeals to established Jews comfortable with their mixed American and Jewish identities. ORGS: In Boston, several Jewish benevolent societies organized, run, and financed by Jews of central European descent come under the umbrella of the first federation of Jewish charities. In the Progressive-era spirit, the federation is designed to provide, systematic, efficient, and effective (“scientific”) assistance to the poor immigrants flooding the established Jewish communities. One financial campaign for funds replaces numerous organization solicitations. Free kindergartens and social settlements, National Council of Jewish Women sections, and Jewish education alliances typical come under federation oversight. The federation model spreads across the country. In some cities, including Baltimore, Jews of eastern and central European origin create separate federations. In other cities, such as Atlanta, federation boards bring together Jews from different national backgrounds. PHIL: Lillian Wald establishes the Henry Street Settlement in New York to provide immigrants with medical assistance and the full range of settlement house programs that continues today. Wald ultimately helps establish the National Child Labor Committee and the Women’s Trade Union League. Middle- and upper-class Jewish and Christian women, as exemplified by Wald,

gradually expand the boundaries of their gender-defined roles moving from family nurturers to political activists. RELI: The UAHC establishes a circuitpreaching plan. Based on the model of the Methodist Church, rabbis are encouraged to attend to the needs of small-town congregations that are not large enough to support full-time rabbis. In the next decade, five rabbis carve the state of Texas into five circuits to tend to the religious needs of small-town Jews. Martin Zielonka’s circuit goes from his congregation in El Paso 600 miles west to Los Angeles. Benjamin Papermaster serves the rabbinical needs of western Minnesota as well as the entire state of North Dakota. RELI: The mid-1890s represents a turning point for the Reform movement and the Reform rabbinate. Congregations with Jews of central European origin that had wavered between the Reform and traditional views accept the Reform position. Newly ordained rabbis cement the decision and tend to serve the same congregations for decades. They become the representative Jews through their ecumenical work, social service activism, and educational and cultural contributions to general society. 1896 LIT: Adolph S. Ochs, owner of the Chattanooga (Tennessee) Times, purchases The New York Times. Ochs and the family members who succeed him downplay and even ignore many Jewish-identified issues. ORGS: In Chicago, Hannah Solomon founds the Bureau of Personal Service. Jewish women investigate the loan needs of immigrant women, provide information on tenement conditions to authorities, and cooperate with settlement houses. 1897 EDUC: After a bequest from Hyman Gratz, a college opens in Philadelphia to train teachers for Jewish schools. Through the decades Gratz College expands to include undergraduate and graduate programs in Jewish and Middle Eastern studies.


LIT: Abraham Cahan establishes Forverts, which becomes the most popular and important Yiddish socialist newspaper in America. This and other Yiddish and socialist newspapers (an estimated 150 are founded between 1870 and 1915) ease the immigrants’ adjustment to America. Besides other endeavors, Cahan writes a classic of American immigration fiction, The Rise of David Levinsky (1919), which delves into conflicts of tradition versus acculturation and materialism. INTL: Theodor Herzl convenes the first World Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. A Chicago Zionist society sends Leon Zolotkoff as its delegate. An acculturated Austrian Jew, Herzl is appalled at the wrongful conviction for treason of French Captain Alfred Dreyfus in 1894. Zionists like Herzl support a country to which persecuted Jews could emigrate to flee persecution. Herzl writes Der Judenstaadt (“The Jewish State”), which follows on the publication of Leon Pinsker’s Auto-Emancipation (1882). ORGS: The Knights of Zion, the first interstate Zionist society, is established in Chicago. ORGS: B’nai B’rith Women is created to serve as the female counterpart to the fraternity. 1898 INTL: Jews actively participate in the Spanish– American War at home and abroad. MIGR: Gold is discovered in Alaska, and Jews flock to the territory. The Guggenheim family helps build the mining industry, but most Jews supply merchandise to those working in the fields. ORGS: Gradually numerous Zionist societies emerge in Europe and the United States. Most of those groups in the United States come under the banner of the Federation of American Zionists (later renamed the Zionist Organization of America [ZOA]), which is led by Rabbis Richard Gottheil as president and Stephen S. Wise as secretary. These societies attract eastern European and Sephardic Jews but only a minority of American Jews of German descent. Most of the latter support aid for persecuted Jews in Europe,

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Palestine, and America, but either oppose or remain neutral on the creation of a Jewish homeland. They fear charges of dual loyalty and believed American is their “promised land.” ORGS: David Blaustein is appointed director of the New York educational alliance. The alliance is open to immigrant culture and Yiddish, and less concerned with rapid Americanization. It becomes a center of immigrant life. ORGS: The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations (the Orthodox Union) is established as a counterpart to the UAHC. Nonetheless, leaders including Rabbis Bernard Drachman and Henry P. Mendes recognize the need to adapt so that the new group can attract acculturating immigrants. Two years later the Orthodox Union creates the Jewish Endeavor Society as a youth auxiliary. RELI: Richmond, Virginia’s original Congregation Beth Shalome essentially dies, its members having largely joined Beth Ahabah. 1899 SCI: The Jewish National Hospital for Consumption opens in Denver, Colorado. The B’nai B’rith sponsors this facility and the Leo N. Levi Consumption Hospital (1914) in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Consumption (tuberculosis) is a debilitating and deadly respiratory disease whose transmission is promoted by overcrowded living and working conditions. People who work in the clothing industry are especially susceptible. The disease is widespread before the 1940s, especially among Jews, other immigrants, and African Americans. Circa 1900–1920 BUSI: Jews account for approximately 20 percent of Cincinnati’s liquor makers and wholesalers. In Louisville, Kentucky, this figure rises to 25 percent. BUSI: Joseph Barondess, “king of the cloak makers,” joins the National Civic Federation as spokesperson for workers on the Lower East Side of New York. During the next decade he is appointed to the board of education. During a career spanning half a century, David Dubinsky


rises from a clothing cutter to become president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (established in 1900) and vice president of the American Federation of Labor. BUSI: Jewish farmers in the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains of New York pioneer in establishing farmers’ cooperatives and credit unions in rural areas. They take in Jewish vacationers as boarders who are not accepted in Christian-owned resorts. Between 1900 and 1910, Jews from New York City purchase 1,000 farms near Ellenville as summer boarder houses and vacation homes. A series of resorts, including Brown’s, the Concord, Grossinger’s, Kutcher’s, the Pines, and Nevele, flourish into the 1960s (but decline thereafter). This “Borscht Belt” produces numerous comedy acts that receive national attention and is even the subject of the 1980s movie, Dirty Dancing, staring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Beale. GOVT: Henry Goldfogle represents the Lower East Side of New York in Congress. The following year, Jacob Cantor is elected Manhattan borough president, and the Democrats choose Aaron Levy as their leader in the New York legislature. IMMI: Approximately 75,000 Sephardic Jews from the Ottoman Empire, Greece, and the Balkan countries arrive in the United States. They use Ladino, a language mixing Spanish with Hebrew, and follow different foodways and culture from the Jews who emigrated from other countries to the United States. Members of this group create large communities with their own institutions and press in New York and Los Angeles, and smaller enclaves in Atlanta, Montgomery; Washington, D.C.; and elsewhere. By 1914, 600 Sephardim live in Seattle, which ranks second only to New York as a population center of these immigrants. BUSI: Modern Sephardic immigrants typically peddle merchandise, open grocery stores and delicatessens, work as shoemakers, and run clothing cleaning and hat pressing businesses. PERF: Jewish immigrants build eight major movie companies that gain control of movie

theaters as well as the production and distribution of movies. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox, and United Artists take an industry that most business people view as marginal and uncultured, and turn it into “Hollywood.” In later decades, Harry Cohn, William Fox, Jesse Lasky, Carl Laemmle, Marcus Loew (movie theaters), Dore Schary (RKO), the Schenck brothers, and Irving Thalberg also move the industry forward. POPU: Chicago, which houses 10,000 Jews in 1880, is home to 80,000 Jews in 1900 and more than 250,000 Jews by 1920. The vast majority are eastern European immigrants, who typically start up the economic ladder as peddlers. Philadelphia’s Jewish population rises from 12,000 in 1880 to 75,000 in 1900 to 250,000 by 1925. Boston’s Jewish population goes from 7,000 in 1880 to 60,000 in 1907. Los Angeles has 400 Jews in 1880, 7,000 in 1907, and 65,000 by 1927. RELI: The twentieth-century Sephardic newcomers tend to practice Orthodox Judaism but with their own chants. Initially divided among themselves based on country and even town of origin, they quickly beginning working together, partly because of their small numbers and their relative isolation from other Jews. Like most eastern European American Jews, they support Zionism. RELI: By 1890, the number of Orthodox congregations in America far exceeds the number of Reform congregations. Two decades later, 90 percent of America’s 2,000 congregations are Orthodox. Although nominally Orthodox, the practices in these congregations and, even more, the adherence to Jewish law of the members vary dramatically. Many congregations organize as landslayt shuls composed of individuals who come from the same areas in Europe. 1900 PHIL: The National Conference of Jewish Charities holds its first conference. Jews routinely participate in secular social work conferences. Such conferences and the move from amateur “home


visitors” to professional social workers and welltrained, professional staffs reflect business progressive trends and values. 1901 GOVT: Labor lawyers Morris Hillquit and Meyer London, Victor Berger of Milwaukee, and non-Jew Eugene V. Debs organize the Socialist Party of America. In 1910, Berger wins election to Congress, as does London in 1913, 1916, and 1918. RELI: The Reform Temple in Cleveland experiments with the synagogue-Jewish center format, as does Chicago’s Temple Sinai a few years later. The concept is to bring Jews together to socialize, study, and otherwise interact within a congregational community. This movement gains force later under Mordecai Kaplan and Herbert S. Goldstein and expands nationally. 1902 BUSI: When kosher meat prices in New York rise from 12 to 18 cents per pound, Jewish women organize a boycott against the “Beef Trust,” then break into the stores and destroy the meat. Women are arrested for disorderly conduct, but the boycott spreads to other cities and ultimately prevails. Jewish women organize meat strikes in Cleveland in 1906 and Detroit in 1910. With the recession of 1907, they launch a rent strike. The women’s actions reflect the growing political consciousness of immigrants and presage a series of meat boycotts, rent strikes, and the rise of labor union activism. EDUC: The Jewish Theological Seminary experiences difficulty surviving. Six of the only 17 graduates by 1900 serve Reform congregations. Cyrus Adler convinces Reform Jews, including Daniel and Simon Guggenheim, Louis Marshall, Jacob Schiff, and Mayer Sulzberger, of the need to retain traditional Jewish culture and traditions. Adler raises $500,000 to reinvigorate the seminary. A renowned Romanian-born scholar, Solomon Schecter, comes from Cambridge University in England to New York to preside over JTS. Schecter draws outstanding educators to the seminary who blend respect for tradition

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with modern scholarship and a strong sense of ethnic identity. RELI: The Jewish Theological Seminary gradually becomes the intellectual and educational center of the Conservative movement. In 1904, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis ex-communicates JTS. Reform’s Hebrew Union College is equally hostile to the organization. RELI: Rabbis Bernard Drachman and Henry P. Mendes help organize Congregation Shomrei Emunah in Harlem, New York. The congregation is a model of modern Orthodoxy designed to attract Americanized Jews while remaining committed to traditional Judaism. Services are conducted with decorum. A second Orthodox Union synagogue, Mount Sinai, is established in Harlem in 1904. Rabbis Philip Hillel Klein, Henry Morais, and Henry Schneeberger join with Drachman and Mendes to form Young People’s synagogues to attract unaffiliated Jews with prayers in English and orderly services. RELI: The Agudath Harabonin (Union of Orthodox Rabbis) is formed to reinforce the European roles of the rabbi and attempt to rejuvenate Orthodox practices among eastern European Jewish immigrants, who typically acculturate rapidly. It is designed to counter both the Reform Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Orthodox Union; in fact, this organization denounces the new, modern Orthodox congregations. 1903–1906 BUSI: Many members of the Bund, a socialist labor union, emigrate from Russia. By 1906, the Bund boasts 3,000 members in the United States. EDUC: Kaufmann Kohler becomes president of Hebrew Union College after I. M. Wise’s death. He purges the faculty of Zionists. GOVT: Jewish community leaders lead by Leo N. Levy and Simon Wolf of the B’nai B’rith effectively lobby the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt. An extensive petition is signed by prominent Jews and Christians protesting the Kishinev massacre, stressing


human rights, and requesting that the Russian government prevent future incidents. Russian officials refuse to accept the document when an American ambassador presents it to them. IMMI: Jews participate in the unsuccessful Russian Revolution of 1905. Dissent is harshly repressed. Yet curiously Galicia and Lithuania, where violence is limited, experience a very high rate of emigration, whereas relatively few Jews leave violence-torn Ukraine until after 1917. Economic hardship and dislocation are apparently the most important factors driving emigration among Jews, as is true for non-Jews. Even so, Jews represent approximately 50 percent of Russian immigrants, 60 percent of Galician immigrants, and 90 percent of Romanian immigrants to the United States between 1881 and 1910. In Romania, anti-Semitism is widespread, long-term, and systematic. The massacre and beating of Jews in Kishinev begins three years of intensive violence in which thousands are beaten, raped, and murdered with the tacit support of the Russian government. Thus prejudice and persecution act as major factors promoting emigration. RELI: Rabbi David Willowski emigrates to Chicago to become chief rabbi of Orthodox congregations. He quits after a year and moves to Palestine. In the following years chief rabbis achieve greater success in Boston, Cincinnati, Detroit, Louisville, and Philadelphia, where they resolve disputes in religious courts and oversea the butchering of meat according to ritual. 1904 EDUC: The Isadore Newman Manual Training School opens in New Orleans to meet the needs of children from the Jewish orphanage. From the beginning, the school is open to everyone and its high standards attract Jewish and Christian students from middle- and upper-class backgrounds, who quickly outnumber the orphans. In 1931, the school newspaper wins first place in a Columbia University journalism competition. That year, the school becomes the first academy in Louisiana to receive accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. The school drops “Manual Training”

from its name. It continues to operate as a fine college prep school today. 1906 EDUC: Jewish students with Russian backgrounds establish the Menorah Society at Harvard University. Chapters spread across the country. GOVT: To appeal to Jewish voters, President Theodore Roosevelt appoints Oscar S. Straus Secretary of Commerce and Labor. Straus is the first Jewish cabinet member. He has previously served as minister to Constantinople and performs government service under Presidents Cleveland, McKinley, and Taft as well as Roosevelt. ORGS: New York attorney Louis Marshall advocates creation of a new national Jewish organization to respond to anti-Semitism in a more unified fashion than what had occurred in relation to the Kishinev massacres. He and other upperclass Jews create the American Jewish Committee to oppose anti-Semitism at home and abroad. To some extent, this organization counterbalances the power of the more representative B’nai B’rith. 1907 LIT: Henry James’s novel The American Scene attacks what he perceives as the negative impact of Jewish immigrants in the cities on American culture and the destruction of the English language. ORGS: Many established “German” Jews view the large influx of eastern European Jews with trepidation, fearing that their foreign ways and appearance will foment anti-Semitism especially in the big cities like New York, where the newcomers tend to congregate. In an attempt to disperse the immigrants throughout the Midwest and West before they settle in New York, Kuhn, Loeb, & Company financier and philanthropist Jacob Schiff, Baron Maurice de Hirsch of Germany, and others organize the Galveston Plan to redirect emigrants departing from Bremen, Germany, to the Texas port. Rabbi Henry Cohen or one of his co-workers typically meets the immigrants at the Galveston immigration center. Roughly 12,000 people are dispersed through


this program, but its problems are similar to those encountered by the IRO. Its activities end when World War I erupts in Europe, halting the flow of emigrants. RELI: Ardent Zionist Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who is refused access to the pulpit at the prestigious Temple Emanu-El, starts New York’s Free Synagogue, where he is free to speak out on any subject without a board of trustees overseeing him and where anyone can attend without paying fees. During the 1930s, Wise fights the antiSemitism of Father Charles Coughlin, the “radio priest,” and opposes Adolph Hitler. Nonetheless, his close association with President Franklin D. Roosevelt tends to muffle his appeals to the administration on behalf of Jews persecuted by the Nazis. SCI: Prussian immigrant Albert A. Michelson is the first American to receive a Nobel Prize in science. A Naval Academy graduate, Michelson calculates the speed of light and devises the interferometer to accurately measure distances in space. He serves as professor of physics and head of the Ryerson Laboratories at the University of Chicago for 37years. He presides over the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1910) and the National Academy of Sciences (1923–1927). 1908 COMM: New York police commissioner Theodore A. Bingham writes that immigrant Jews, who account for 25 percent of the city population, commit 50 percent of the crimes. Although this figure is proven to be wrong, Bingham’s view reflects public opinion. Prostitution, gambling, extortion, fraud, arson, fencing stolen goods, and forgery thrive in immigrant, low-income areas. “Dopey Benny” (Benjamin Fein), “Gyp the Blood” (Harry Horowitz), and “Kid Dropper” (Nathan Kaplan) are well-known Jewish gangsters. The Hertz family led by “Mother Rosie” runs an assortment of brothels for three decades. Established Jews fear an anti-Semitic backlash. Conditions are far different in smaller Jewish communities throughout the country, where Jewish criminality is almost unknown.

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EDUC: Students at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (established in 1897) go on strike to force the Orthodox school to teach English. They want to be able to meet the needs of the immigrants’ children. ORGS: Partly in response to Police Commissioner Bingham’s report, the New York Kehillah is established. Loosely based on the communal model of Europe, it brings hundreds of organizations under its umbrella. Until its demise in 1922, the Kehillah fosters education and coordinated philanthropy, although it never effectively controls the ghetto nor does it end friction between diverse groups. Its Board of Education (1910) investigates the low level of Jewish education in New York, and its Bureau of Social Morals (1912) attempts to eliminate prostitution among Jews. Judah Magnes, its leader, eventually moves to the Holy Land to head Hebrew University (1921). 1909 AFRI: A biracial group including Rabbis Stephen S. Wise, Lillian Wald, and Joel Springarn and African American William E. B. Dubois establishes the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). During the next several decades, Jews serve as the organization’s president, as members, as major financial supporters, and as attorneys battling for civil rights and justice. After World War I, Jews also become deeply committed to the Urban League. BUSI: Clara Lemlich rises to prominence as a leader of the strike against Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Fannia Cohn, Therea Malkiel, Pauline Newman, Rose Pastor Stokes, Rose Schneiderman, and Rose Pesotta are other important Jewish labor union leaders. LIT: Israel Zangwill writes The Melting Pot. The play presents an image of immigrants leaving behind European traits and culture as they become assimilated into the larger American society. It reflects the hopes of secular society and the established Jewish community. In articles published in The Nation (1915) and in Culture and Democracy (1924), University of Wisconsin Professor Horace Kallen effectively challenges


Zangwill’s views. Kallen develops the concept of cultural pluralism, in which a variety of ethnic groups maintain their distinctiveness while simultaneously enhancing society. He encourages Jewish education and culture to benefit American democracy. 1910–1924 BUSI: Kuhn, Loeb (1911), Goldman, Sachs (1914), and Lehman Brothers (1924) accept non-Jewish partners. The era of sectarian finance-banking firms slides into decline. MIGR: The Jewish Agricultural Society establishes a farm colony in Delaware. The 25 people who settle there pioneer Jewish life in Dover, although their first formal congregation is not established until 1936. ORGS: Orthodox Jews become divided over the issue of Zionism. Some believe that a Jewish national homeland must await the coming of the messiah. Those who believe that it can become a reality before then start Mizrachi, the religious or Orthodox Zionist society. 1910 BUSI: Approximately 47 percent of the country’s clothing factories are located in New York. Jewish immigrants account for 60 percent of the milliners, 68 percent of the tailors, 75 percent of the furriers, and 80 percent of the hat and cap makers. Jews also enter other skills crafts as cigar makers, bookbinders, and watchmakers, besides peddling, becoming used clothes and junk dealers, working in construction, and meeting ethnic business needs. Jewish women typically work in the factories and sweat shops until they marry. After marriage, they supplement the family income by taking in boarders or pushcart peddling. Work is long and hard, and pay is low. In Chicago, only a minority of Jews work in the garment industry. BUSI: Strikes of Jewish workers against Jewish employers became widespread. In 1910, the “Great Revolt”—a long-term strike by 65,000 cloak makers’ union workers, most of who are Jewish—is finally mediated by Louis Brandeis and Louis Marshall. In the “Protocol of Peace,” workers gain higher wages, better conditions,

and a union shop, and agree to the use of an arbitration board as they lose the right to strike. BUSI: In Chicago, Jewish and Italian garment workers strike against Hart, Shaffner, and Marx and other clothing manufacturers. Through the New York “Protocol for Peace” and the successful settlement of the Chicago strike, a new model of impartial arbitration emerges—one that is also implemented three years later in Philadelphia. BUSI: Jacob Blaustein drops out of college so that he can sell kerosene by wagon on the streets of Baltimore for his father Louis’s new business, the American Oil Company, later known as Amoco. The Blausteins open the country’s first drive-in service stations, pioneer the “visible gas pump” (which allows drivers to see how much gas is pumped), and run E-Z Lube stores, making Amoco one of the nation’s most successful oil companies. Their antiknock gasoline is used by Charles Lindbergh to fly across the Atlantic and by racecar drivers. When the Standard Oil Company of Indiana purchases the company in the 1930s, Jacob Blaustein becomes a major stockholder and member of the board. Over the course of half a century, he presides over the American Jewish Committee, advises five presidents, influences the United Nations and several foreign governments on petroleum and human rights issues, and plays a major role in settling restitution claims for Holocaust victims. IMMI: The Dillingham Commission established by Congress publishes a 40-volume report allegedly demonstrating the superiority of what are called the old immigrants over the new immigrants. The report characterizes the new immigrants as poor, uneducated, radical, and clannish. Because of these and other traits, it suggests, they cannot easily be assimilated into American society. The report highlights fears that the end of the great Melting Pot, in which prior immigrants readily became assimilated into the larger society, is nearing and implicitly endorses the end of the open door to what it perceives as inferior peoples. LIT: La America begins its 15-year run as a newspaper for Ladino-speaking Sephardim. SCI: The Flexner Report, published by the Rockefeller Foundation, transforms medical education


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Labor union activities bring together workers from different immigrant backgrounds. The description of this circa 1910 photograph reads: “Workers holding Yiddish, Italian, Russian, and English language placards. One English sign reads ‘In Unity is our strength. ’ ” The reverse side reads: “from the Inheritance.” The workers speak different languages but voice the common language of protest against poor and dangerous working conditions, low wages, and seasonal employment. Collective action is the only way that workers can effectively make factory owners address their needs. Although this picture depicts men, women also participate actively in and lead strikes. The clothing of the strikers reflects their striving for middle-class status. (Courtesy of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documents and Archives, Martin P. Catherwood Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY [International Ladies Garment Workers Photographs (1885–1985), Records Number 5780; item number 5780PB33F3E])

in the United States. Abraham Flexner publishes Modern Schools (1916), which advocates progressive education. He conducts groundbreaking research on prostitution in Europe and teaching in America. Flexner heads the Rockefeller General Education Board and creates and directs Princeton University’s Institute of Advanced Study (1930).

relay teams, he dominates many track and field events. An Olympic medalist, he wins induction into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame.

1911–1915 SPOR: Abel Kiviat sets world record times in 600 yard, 1,000 yard, and 1,500 meter races. In these individual runs and as a member of American

BUS: When a fire breaks out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York, many of the fire exits are blocked and 146 young women perish. Rose Schneiderman exemplifies the men and

1911 ANTI: Irish youth crying “Death to all the Jews” beat immigrants in Malden, Massachusetts, and vandalize businesses.


women dedicated to reform through union activism. Although Jews often dominate membership and leadership of the clothing unions, they work with Italian Americans and other immigrants. COMM: Anna Hertzberg, whose husband runs a jewelry store chain, presides over the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs. She supports married women’s property rights laws and is a founder of the San Antonio Tuesday Music Club and the Women’s Club. Through her organization work, she helps establish San Antonio’s first public library and first symphony orchestra. INTL: Led by Louis Marshall and the American Jewish Committee, Jewish leaders successful lobby Congress and President William H. Taft to abrogate the U.S./Russian Treaty of 1832, which required that American Jews receive special permission of the Russian interior minister to enter Russian territory—a constraint not applied to other Americans.

minded.” Such “scientific racism” fosters cries for restrictions on immigration. LIT: Mary Antin writes The Promised Land, her autobiography highlighting her upward mobility in Boston, where the public schools act as a catalyst in her success. Antin’s nonfiction and fiction works, illustrating the freedom and potential of America as seen through immigrant eyes, reach a wide readership. 1913 ANTI: Leo Frank, raised and educated in New York but managing a pencil factory in Atlanta,

ORGS: The National Desertion Bureau is created in New York with the mission of locating immigrant husbands who have deserted their families, many of whom then became dependent on community assistance. Divorce rates also rise dramatically as husbands acculturate faster than their wives and as financial and other pressures bear down on traditional marriages. RELI: Rabbi Charles Fleischer of Boston’s Temple Israel abandons Judaism and establishes the Community Church to promote “free religion.” To him, this is the logical outgrowth of the universal message of Reform Judaism. Few congregants join him. 1912 AFRI: Influenced by Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, head of Sears, Roebuck, subsidizes the building of 5,300 schools for African American children from 1912 to 1932 in the South. Local African American communities help build the schools, which become centers of community pride and socializing in the segregated South. ANTI: Mental testing pioneer Henry Goddard determines that 83 percent of the Jewish immigrants he tests on Ellis Island are “feeble-

Henrietta Szold with nurses in Haifa, circa the 1920s. Daughter of a Philadelphia rabbi, Szold is a career woman who bends gender boundaries to the point of breaking. She becomes editor at the Jewish Publication Society and, after a trip to the Holy Land, decides to start a women’s Zionist organization for the purpose of improving health conditions in Palestine for Jews and Arabs. This international organization’s mission of assisting especially women and children in need could be viewed as within the woman’s sphere. Yet Szold refuses to relinquish control of Hadassah to the maledominated Federation of American Zionists. Hadassah far outstrips the Federation of American Zionists’ abilities to raise funds, increase membership, and retain the members’ enthusiasm. (Courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Maryland, Baltimore [1992.242.007.046])


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Personality Profile: Henrietta Szold In 1912, following a visit to the Holy Land, Henrietta Szold, secretary of the Federation of American Zionists and an editor at the Jewish Publication Society, establishes Hadassah. This Zionist women’s organization emphasizes practical aid especially in medicine and public health to Jews in Palestine, although it also serves the Arab population. Szold refuses to be dominated by the male-led Zionist movement. Hadassah draws American women of eastern European, German, and Sephardic backgrounds and even non-Zionists, who unite to expand their nurturing role for effective overseas aid. Hadassah flourishes for decades even as male-dominated Zionist organizations struggle.

is accused of murdering Mary Phagan, a young employee. Frank is falsely convicted on contradictory evidence, largely based on the testimony of Jim Conley, a janitor. It is highly unusual during this era of segregation and racism for the testimony of an African American to convict a white man, but Jews are viewed as an “inbetween” race. The conviction and ultimately the lynching of Frank in 1915 reflect conflicts in a changing South undergoing industrialization and urbanization. GOVT: Woodrow Wilson is elected president. His close association with Louis Brandeis, his progressive policies, and support for the Balfour Declaration bring many Jews into the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, many Jews tend to vote Republican on the national level, as in the presidential election of 1924. ORGS: In 1915, the Ku Klux Klan is revived in Atlanta in response to the Leo Frank case as well as the recent release of the racist movie, Birth of a Nation. A national organization, the modern Klan opposes blacks, Jews, Catholics, labor unions, and other groups it perceives as challenging the status quo. Partly also in response to the Leo Frank case, B’nai B’rith establishes its AntiDefamation League (1913) to combat antiSemitism. Through the 1920s, rabbis and Jewish newspaper editors such as Louis Jaffe of Norfolk, Virginia, who wins a Pulitzer Prize (1929), fight the Klan and oppose lynching. ORGS: Carrie Simon, wife of the rabbi of Washington Hebrew Congregation, helps found the

Reform movement’s Federation of Temple Sisterhoods. Nationally, the organization sponsors the building of a dormitory at Hebrew Union College and supports the Jewish Braille Society, among other projects. The sisterhoods replace the old temple auxiliaries and, with the National Council of Jewish Women, the ladies’ Hebrew benevolent societies, although a few of the latter continue to function. A few congregations allow sisterhood presidents ex officio membership on their boards and then gradually full voting membership. ORGS: Twenty-two congregations, stressing “tradition without Orthodoxy,” form the United Synagogue of America (USA) as the congregational arm of the emerging Conservative movement. The movement appeals especially to upwardly mobile acculturated eastern European immigrants and their children, although it has a small following among Jews of central European origin. It is also more Zionist than either the Orthodox or Reform movement. In most Conservative congregations, families sit together rather than having men and women sit apart. RELI: Jewish Theological Seminary students create the Young Israel movement to appeal to the children of recent immigrants. 1914 BUSI: Chicago and New York tailors form the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, a federation of labor unions, under Sidney Hillman. INTL: The Balkan Wars are followed by the outbreak of World War I in Europe. Much of the


ORGS: Attorney Louis D. Brandeis chairs the new Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs, which conducts the affairs of the World Zionist Organization. Because of his stature in the general community and by equating being a good American with being a good Zionist, Brandeis makes Zionism more acceptable to many old-guard German Jews, who tended to reject Zionism partly because they feared charges of dual loyalty. His Progressive-era efficiency and pragmatic-oriented approach create opponents as well as bring in supporters.

Leo Frank in jail. Born in Texas but raised and educated in New York, Frank came to Atlanta to manage a relative’s National Pencil factory. Thirteenyear-old Mary Phagan, an employee, is murdered in the factory on Confederate Memorial Day in 1913. Frank is accused of the crime and convicted largely on the testimony of a company janitor, James Conley. It is one of the few times in the South during the Jim Crow era that the word of an African American is accepted over that of a white man, although Frank’s religious/ethnic identity places him in a perceived inbetween racial category. Appeals of Frank’s death sentence that raise questions about anti-Semitic mob influence on the impartiality of the jury go unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court. Frank becomes a symbol of industrialization, Northern influence on the South, and the outsider making profit from poor workers. Governor John Slaton, after reviewing the case, commutes Frank’s sentence from death to life in prison, but Frank is taken from the state penitentiary in Milledgeville without a shot being fired and lynched in Marietta by a mob led by prominent citizens. (Courtesy of the Cuba Archives of the Breman Museum, Atlanta)

fighting in both wars affects approximately 1.5 million Jews, many of who become refugees. World War I also temporarily ends wide-scale emigration.

ORGS: Several American Jewish organizations are created to aid European Jews in need both during and after the war. These organizations are divided based on country of origin within Europe and between Reform and Orthodox groups, with three major organizations in the lead. The Reform and Orthodox organizations unite to form the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the “Joint”) to make fund raising and distribution of funds more efficient and effective. Hundreds of thousands of European Jews are assisted by the organization. 1915–1924 SOCI: Eastern European immigrants and their children move up economically, as illustrated by the lessening need for assistance. The number of children in orphanages (many of whom were given up by parents who could not afford them), the number requiring free burials, and the number of juvenile delinquents substantially decline. 1915 EDUC: Bernard Revel, born in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, a center of Jewish learning that provides numerous rabbis to American congregations, becomes the president of Rabbi Isaac Elchanon Theological Seminary. In 1928, this school merges with Yeshiva Etz Chaim to form Yeshiva College (later University). Revel’s school melds Orthodox Judaism and contemporary scholarship and culture to educate modern Orthodox rabbis. The university ultimately includes Albert Einstein Medical College and Benjamin Cardozo School of Law.


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non-Mormon to win election as governor of Utah. LIT: Henry Hurwitz and other Harvard University students publish the Menorah Journal as the periodical of the Menorah Society. 1916 GOVT: President Woodrow Wilson appoints Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court. A Zionist leader, Brandeis has a reputation as a liberal, pro-labor lawyer, partly based on the sociological brief he presents to the Court supporting an Oregon law regulating women’s work. GOVT: Fifty-five percent of Jewish voters support Woodrow Wilson’s reelection. They support his policies of neutrality and remaining out of World War I. After the United States enters the war, they support his Fourteen Points and, after the war, the League of Nations.

The 1914 Zionist pamphlet, “Call to the Educated Jew,” with a picture of its author, Louis Brandeis, one of the most important American Jews of the twentieth century. A labor lawyer who opposes corporate abuses and develops the concept of the individual’s right of privacy, Brandeis helps Woodrow Wilson define his New Freedom agenda and is appointed by President Wilson to the Supreme Court, the first Jew to hold a seat on this Court. Brandeis brings a pragmatic approach to the Provisional Executive Committee for Zionist Affairs, which he heads for a several years before resigning in a policy dispute. By relating Zionism to American values, he challenges the issue of dual loyalty and, by doing so and because of his stature, makes Zionism more acceptable to many Jews who would otherwise reject it. (Courtesy of Frank B. Gilbert and Alice Popkin and of Brandeis University / Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University)

GOVT: Moses Alexander, owner of a chain of clothing stores, begins his first of two terms as governor of Idaho. He has previously (1888) won election as mayor of Chillicothe, Missouri. After Alexander’s election as governor, Charles Himrod becomes the first Democrat and first

LIT: Histadruth Ivrit promotes Hebrew culture. This central agency publishes Hadoar, a weekly newspaper. RELI: Rabbi Alfred Geiger Moses of Mobile, Alabama, publishes Jewish Science. In this periodical and a subsequent book, Jewish Science: Psychology of Health, Joy and Success or the Applied Psychology of Judaism (1920), Geiger counters the claims of Mary Baker Eddy concerning Christian Science that had attracted many Jews and provides a Jewish alternative. During the 1920s, his views win him supporters in New York. 1917 IMMI: During a period marked by dramatic changes within the United States and challenges abroad, many Americans feel threatened by the huge influx of emigrants from eastern Europe and the Caribbean, whom they blame for many urban problems. Prejudicial racial theories underpin this fear. Congress passes a literacy test requirement for entrance into the United States. Nonetheless, Yiddish and Hebrew are considered acceptable languages for meeting this test, and refugees from religious persecution are exempt.


INTL: The United States enters World War I. Before the war, Jews of German descent tend to support the Axis Powers. Once America declares war, however, Jewish support for American entry is overwhelming. Many people change their German last names as anti-German feeling runs rampant. The wartime crackdown on dissent leads to jail and then exile during the post-war Red Scare for Jewish anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, two of numerous individuals persecuted for their pacifism and ideological beliefs. INTL: British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour issues a letter to Lord Edmund Rothschild recognizing Palestine as the “national home” of the Jewish people. This Balfour Declaration, endorsed by President Woodrow Wilson, adds legitimacy to Zionism and holds promise for the future. MILI: Sergeant Benjamin Kaufman fights in the Argonne and receives the Congressional Medal of Honor and awards for valor from eight foreign countries. After the war, Kaufman serves as National Commander of the Jewish War Veterans. ORGS: The Jewish Welfare Board is established to assist the tens of thousands of Jews who enter the military. It merges with four other agencies in 1941 to form the United Service Organizations (USO). RELI: Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein opens the Institutional Synagogue in Harlem, expanding on the earlier model of the synagogue as Jewish center. With their social halls and recreation facilities, institutional congregations attempt to bring Jews back to the synagogue. 1918 EDUC: Jews represent 53 percent of New York’s high school students. INTL: Several Jews participate in the Paris peace talks ending World War I. They sometimes cooperate and other times conflict over what are the best means to aid Jews suffering in Europe, how to establish rights for Jews in the emerging

countries of eastern Europe, and whether to press claims for Jews in Palestine. ORGS: Partly through the leadership of Louis Brandeis, the first meeting of the American Jewish Congress takes place in Philadelphia. Initially the elite American Jewish Committee opposes the new organization because it represents many different groups, acts more democratically, tends to be pro-Zionist, and is more likely to resort to open, mass protests. Yet American Jewish Committee leaders participate in the founding of the Congress, an organization designed to assist Jews in the United States and abroad. Women are included in the vote to elect representatives. PERF: During the 1880s, Russia’s Art Theater movement begins. Ben Ami’s production of A Secluded Book introduces this repertory format to American audiences in New York. The following year, Ami establishes the Jewish Art Theater (later renamed Naye Theater). 1919 ANTI: Methodist minister George A. Simons, who has recently returned from Russia, falsely testifies before congressional committees that the vast majority of leaders of the Russian revolution were nonpracticing Jews and that 19 of every 20 communists in the United States are Jews. The broad association of Jews with communism is a primary aspect of popular and elite antiSemitism, even though only a small minority of Jews are actually communists. GOVT: Jewish women actively participate in the fight to gain the right to vote, culminating in the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. After the battle is won, many commit their efforts to the League of Women Voters. GOVT: Passage of the Volstead Act follows the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Among Jews, alcoholism is minimal but Jews use wine for many religious ceremonies and some Jews own liquor stores. Although the use of wine for sacramental purposes is exempt, most Jews, like most Catholics, oppose Prohibition. Some Jews, including “Waxey” Gordon, “Dutch” Schultz, and “Longy” Zwillman, become bootleggers. False rabbis in


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Personality Profile: Gertrude Weil Born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and educated at Smith College, Gertrude Weil epitomizes the liberal clubwoman who transcends ethnic, religious, and racial lines. A Reform Jew, she is a Zionist who serves as vice president of Hadassah for the eastern seaboard region, and helps found and presides over the North Carolina Association of Jewish Women. In 1914, she organizes and then presides over the Goldsboro Equal Suffrage League. In this role, she leads the state league in lobbying for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Founder and first president of the North Carolina League of Women Voters, Weil advocates fair labor laws for women and children and supports striking union workers. Weil directs the Wayne County Bureau of Social Services and strongly supports desegregation and the civil rights movement. California and New York sell wine designated for religious purposes. ORGS: The Jewish Theological Seminary establishes the Rabbinic Assembly, the organization of Conservative rabbis. 1920s ANTI: In his newspaper Dearborn Independent, automaker Henry Ford scurrilously attacks Jews

as international bankers out to control the world. He serializes the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion and then publishes it as The International Jew. Although his publishing enterprises are popular with a large readership, Ford stops his attacks in the face of a libel suit brought by Aaron Sapiro, attorney for the Farmers’ Cooperative Marketing Association, in a compromise forged by attorney Louis Marshall. Ford insists that

Gertrude Weil (far left) with other suffragettes circa 1910. Born into an affluent family in Goldsboro, North Carolina, she is the first Smith College graduate from her state. Following the activist tradition of her mother and aunt, Weil organizes and leads numerous women’s secular and Jewish organizations locally and on the state level, including the League of Women Voters, thereby unifying women from diverse backgrounds. Both a Reform Jew and a Zionist, she leads the local Bureau of Social Service for decades. Weil advocates for women’s, children’s, workers’, and African Americans’ rights for decades. Her volunteer activities illustrate those of middleand upper-class women of her generation. (Courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, NC [N.74.4.86])


Sapiro led a conspiracy of Jewish bankers to control the international food supply. Ford accepts a special medal from Adolph Hitler in 1938. ANTI: Western Union, the New York Telephone Company, banks, hospitals, law firms, and numerous other employers refuse to hire Jews. Restrictive covenants limit housing options for African Americans and Jews. Christian fundamentalisms routinely refer to the United States as a Christian nation. CULT: Columbia University Professor Melville Herskovits pioneers cultural anthropology and emphasizes the African origins of African American culture. Herskovits launches the first African studies center at a college in the United States. He and his students attempt to understand diverse societies from their own perspectives in opposition to the prevailing notions of racial and cultural hierarchies. Anthropologist Franz Boas also stresses culture and adaptation over biological definitions of race. German-born Boas heads the first department of anthropology at an American university, as he takes charge of the program at Columbia University. EDUC: The children of eastern European Jewish immigrants attend colleges in disproportionate numbers. In 1920, 93 percent of the students at New York University’s Washington Square campus are Jewish. At Hunter College and at the College of the City of New York, the percentages increase from 80 percent to 90 percent. At Columbia University, 40 percent of students are Jewish; at Harvard, 20 percent are Jewish. New York University establishes a quota limiting the number of Jews admitted. In the following years, Columbia, Yale, and other elite schools also adopt quotas, although Harvard uses more subtle policies to limit Jewish enrollment. EDUC: Largely barred from fraternities, Jews create their own Greek system. These groups include Zeta Beta Tau and Alpha Epsilon Pi. GOVT: The Democratic and Republican Parties both have foreign-language departments that enable them to appeal to immigrant voters who have become citizens. Although based on religion and not language, Jewish departments are established

by the political parties as well. Many established Jews reject the concept of a Jewish voting bloc but during the next two decades anti-Semites use the concept as evidence of a Jewish conspiracy to control America and the world. Nonetheless, Jews are divided in their political loyalties during the 1920s, as they are in most areas. Jews of central European origin tend to vote Republican, while those from eastern Europe tend to vote socialist, third-party reform, or Democrat. Five Jewish Republicans and one Jewish Democrat hold seats in the sixty-sixth Congress (1919–1921). MIGR: Jews move into the suburbs of cities across the country, as the descendants of central European Jews, the newer immigrants, and especially their children experience economic success. They tend to continue to live in ethnic clusters, and their synagogues and other institutions tend to follow them out of the inner cities. ORGS: In the progressive tradition, the Bureau of Social Research is created to gather and analyze statistical data on American Jewry. 1920 COMM: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is a co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization Jews tend to support because of its positions on free speech and especially separation of church and state. INTL: The World Zionist Organization, under the leadership of Chaim Weizmann, creates Keren Hayesod as its fund-raising and distribution unit. Louis Brandeis opposes the move, because it takes control of expenditures away from American Jews who are the largest contributors, and places it in the hands of European leaders. POPU: Forty-six percent of America’s foreignborn population, the majority of whom are Catholic and Jewish, comes from southern and eastern Europe. RELI: Hebrew Union College has been ordaining many second-generation eastern European Jews. They and others gradually push the Central Conference of American Rabbis toward Zionism. Its 1920 convention accepts the San Remo protocol, which supported the Balfour Declaration’s


promise of a Jewish homeland. Three years later, the convention supports Jewish settlement in the Holy Land. 1921 ACCT: Congress approves the Lodge-Fish resolution, which supports the Balfour Declaration’s promise of a Jewish national home in Palestine. ANTI: John E. Rankin (Democrat–Mississippi) wins election to Congress, where he serves until 1952. During his career Rankin blames Jews for American entry into World War II, for controlling the world’s gold supply and banking, for communism, for the civil rights movement, and for what he calls “race mixing.” GOVT: Jews support the Washington naval arms limitation agreement and other peace efforts. Jewish women are devoted to the secular women’s league for peace and disarmament. IMMI: Congress passes the Johnson Immigration Restriction Act, which establishes quotas for immigrants based on nationality. A number of immigrants equal to 3 percent of each national group as represented in the U.S. census of 1910 are allowed to enter the country. This policy dramatically limits emigration from Africa, Asia, and southern and eastern Europe. ORGS: At the organization’s Cleveland conference, Louis Brandeis and his supporters resign from their offices in the Zionist Organization of America under pressure from the members who want direct action and see Zionism as the path to a flourishing Jewish culture. Brandeis stands for business efficiency. Hadassah supports the Brandeis faction. It withdraws from the ZOA and independently joins the World Zionist Organization in 1923. With the exception of Hadassah, the American Zionist movement does not fare well during the next decade. Membership in the ZOA drops from 200,000 in 1918 to 13,000 in 1929. Facing a deficit, ZOA invites the Brandeis group to rejoin. It does so, but with the stipulation that the ZOA reorganizes in keeping with Brandeis’s approach. SOCI: The Guggenheim family, which has achieved success with copper mines and finance

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banking, is one of four wealthiest families in the United States. 1922 ANTI: Robert Rosenbluth is indicted for allegedly murdering his military commanding officer four years earlier. It takes two years for Rosenbluth to be found not guilty amid an environment of anti-Semitism promoted by Henry Ford. BUSI: Concealing his Jewish identity, Gerard Swope is president of General Electric from 1922 to 1940. Generally the corporate world remains closed to Jews over the next half century. EDUC: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise starts the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York as a seminary independent of the Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative movements. Nonetheless, in 1949 it merges with Hebrew Union College, a Reform institution. EDUC: The Hebrew Theological Seminary opens in Illinois. This Orthodox institution is unusual in that its rabbis typically take pulpits in the Midwest, where mixed seating of men and women is permitted contrary to tradition. Numerous other small seminaries and Orthodox schools flourish. INTL: V. I. Lenin and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) turn approximately 1 million Jewish petit merchants in the old Pale of Settlement into disenfranchised outcasts. The Joint Distribution Committee tries to resettle these people as farmers in the Crimean area in an attempt to make their occupations acceptable to the Soviet authorities, who support the plan. Many groups, including Zionists, oppose the plan, although 200,000 people are ultimately resettled. The Zionists want Russian Jews to move to Palestine because the Soviet Union is hostile to Judaism. The plan fails in 1929 and finally ends four years later as the new Soviet leader, Josef Stalin, collectivizes agriculture. LIT: Muckraking journalist Burton J. Hendrick publishes articles in World’s Work that are collected in The Jews in America. Hendrick attacks


Personality Profile: Mordecai Kaplan In 1922, Mordecai Kaplan, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary and head of its Teachers Institute, establishes the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. Raised and educated as an Orthodox Jew, Kaplan questions the presence of God in daily affairs (to him, God is an ongoing process) and other traditional beliefs. Although he does not set out to create a separate movement, he is recognized as the force behind Reconstructionist Judaism. In Judaism as a Civilization (1934) and in his other writings and speeches, Kaplan stresses the importance of Jewish history, culture, ethnic identity, Zionism, a holistic view of an evolving Jewish civilization, and ethical behavior. Emphasizing Hebrew and tradition, in succeeding decades the Reconstructionist movement also plays a pioneering role in effecting social change, particularly with respect to the roles of women, gays, lesbians, and interfaith couples. Kaplan’s ideas exert tremendous influence over the Reform movement and especially the Conservative movement. Kaplan’s followers include rabbis Ira Eisenstein, Eugene Kohn, and Milton Steinberg, although Steinberg remains within the Conservative fold. the character of Polish Jews, whom he expects to invade America as emigrants. RELI: The number of Reform and Conservative congregations multiplies fivefold between 1912 and 1922. Gradually more families belong to Conservative congregations than to Reform congregations, as immigrants and especially their children rise into the middle class and move to the suburbs. Attendance at services and adherence to religious practices and observance declines overall, even among those who consider themselves Orthodox. SOCI: Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan conducts a bat mitzvah (“daughter of the commandments”) ceremony for his daughter Judith, the first such coming-of-age rite for a Jewish girl in the United States. Judith Kaplan pursues classes as an adult at the Jewish Theological Seminary but is not allowed to be ordained as a rabbi. The bat mitzvah spreads gradually, first to a few Reconstructionist congregations and then among Conservative congregations during the 1940s and thereafter. During the twentieth century, even some adult women who had not undergone the ceremony as 12- or 13-year-olds have bat mitzvahs. 1923 COMM: After campaigning for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Naomi Cohen is one of two founders of the Virginia Women’s Council on State Legislature. Like other suffragettes,

Cohen uses the vote to lobby for laws to improve women’s working conditions and to abolish child labor. GOVT: Reform and Conservative rabbinical organizations endorse President Warren G. Harding’s call for a world court. GOVT: President Calvin Coolidge appoints Eugene Meyer, Jr., to the Federal Farm Loan Board. ORGS: The Reform movement’s National Federation of Temple Brotherhoods is organized. ORGS: Rebecca Kohut establishes the International Jewish Women’s Organization to assist Jews in Europe. 1924 BUSI: Jews own 90 percent of the scrap metal business in the United States. The total value of this industry is estimated at $300 million per year. BUSI: Morris Zale starts a chain of retail jewelry stores that bear his last name in Wichita Falls, Texas. Two decades later, its headquarters moves to Dallas. Many Jews have entered the jewelry business in the United States, dating back to the pre-Civil War era. When eastern European Orthodox Jews find refuge in the United States during the World War II era, they bring experience in diamond cutting and contacts with Jews in the diamond industry in South Africa and


Holland. They help turn New York into America’s diamond center. EDUC: B’nai B’rith establishes Hillel as an organization to foster Jewish identity among college students. GOVT: Alfred Smith uses several Jewish advisors, including Henry and Belle Moskowitz, Joseph Proskauer, and Robert Moses, in his unsuccessful bids for the presidency in 1924 and 1928. He also opposes immigration restriction and the Ku Klux Klan. Smith receives 72 percent of the Jewish vote in 1928. Jews vote overwhelmingly Democrat in every presidential election thereafter. The Ku Klux Klan opposes Smith in both elections. GOVT: Twenty-two percent of Jewish voters cast their ballots for Progressive Party candidate Robert LaFollette. Fifty-one percent vote for Democratic candidate Davis. Four years earlier, Republican Warren G. Harding received 43 percent of the Jewish vote. IMMI: Congress passes the Immigration (Johnson-Reed) Act, which establishes 2 percent quotas for immigration based on the percentage of the total U.S. population represented by a specific immigrant group in the 1890 census. This census replaces that of 1910, the target date of the previous law; by 1910, a substantial number of new immigrants already resided in the United States. With a total cap of 150,000 people per year, the act limits immigration of people perceived as belonging to “inferior races” especially from southern and eastern Europe, but also from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Japanese immigrants are totally banned. The quota for emigrants from the Baltic countries, Poland, Romania, and Russia is set at less than 9,500

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annually. Large-scale immigration to the United States is essentially halted until 1965. The end to substantial immigration dramatically affects the American Jewish community. With few working-class and Orthodox Jews entering the country, the process of acculturation and the rise into the middle class of the earlier eastern European Jewish immigrants accelerates. LIT: Edna Ferber wins the Pulitzer Prize for So Big, a secular novel about life in the Midwest. Her autobiography, A Peculiar Treasure (1939), describes growing up as a Jew in Wisconsin. Other Jewish authors during the interwar years depict their experiences in a variety of locations: Myron Brinig, Singermann (Montana); Sidney Miller, Roots in the Sky (California), and Meyer Levin, The Old Bunch (Chicago). ORGS: Cyrus Adler, Herbert Lehman, Louis Marshall, and Horace Stern convene a conference of 150 wealthy and influential non-Zionist delegates at New York’s Astor Hotel to encourage them to donate money to Jews in Palestine and cooperate with Chaim Weizmann and the Jewish Agency. Three years later, Marshall and Weizmann reach agreement for “A Union of All Jewish Forces for the Upbuilding of Palestine.” Nonetheless, conflict continues within Zionist circles, between Zionists and non-Zionists, and between American and European Zionists over funding, purpose, power, and methodology. PERF: Radio Corporation of America (RCA) establishes the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Columbia Broadcasting System is created three years later. Jews lead in the founding of these first radio networks. William S. Paley and David Sarnoff expand their radio companies and move into television after World War II.


SETTLING IN, THE HOLOCAUST, AND ISRAEL: 1925–1948 1925–1948 AFRI: Jewish musicians such as Benny Goodman are among the first to record with Billie Holiday and other black artists. Black activist A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters interacts with Jewish labor union leaders, including Jacob Potofsky and Joseph Schlossberg. Many Jews join local chapters of the Urban League and belong to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Nonetheless, some African Americans charge Jews with predatory business practices, and some oppose allowing Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Germany to enter into the United States for economic reasons. African Americans loot Jewish stores in particular during a riot in New York in 1935 and again in Harlem and Detroit in 1943. Yet leaders like William E. B. Du Bois associate racism in the United States with Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. ANTI: During and between the two world wars, anti-Semitism reaches a crescendo. Jews are often barred from employment in banking, hospitals, law firms, Wall Street brokerage houses, and other businesses. Numerous suburbs and cities such as Miami allow restrictive housing covenants barring Jews and African Americans. At the beginning of the era, only one bank in the Middle Atlantic states and one bank in New England offer loans to Jews. ART: Throughout the mid-twentieth century, Jewish artists such as Leonard Baskin, Ben Shahn, and Saul Steinberg contribute to representative art, while

others including Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko lead the Abstract Expressionism school. CULT: In the 1930 census 1.75 million people list Yiddish as their native language. The number declines by 500,000 a decade later. The circulation of the Yiddish press declines by almost 200,000 from its 1916 peak of 717, 146 readers. EDUC: More rigidly Orthodox Jews who are wedded to their eastern European roots establish religious day schools, such as the Rabbi Jacob Joseph Yeshiva, and a series of small seminaries including Mesifta Torah Vodaas. The Mirrer and Telche yeshivot and other European schools flee Hitler’s persecution and relocate to the United States both before and after World War II. These institutions rejuvenate strict Orthodoxy during an era seemingly characterized by decline. GOVT: During the 1920s, many Jews run for office as candidates for political machines that are often run by Irish or Italian political bosses. For example, Sol Bloom wins election to Congress with support from Tammany Hall, the New York Democratic Party organization. INTL: As head of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin attacks religion and subverts Jewish culture. As his dictatorial policies become more vicious, many American Jewish socialists and communists grow disillusioned with the Soviet system. LIT: The Yiddish press is gradually replaced by English-language, Jewish-oriented periodicals. Between 1920 and 1940, 44 newspapers and magazines and 58 organization-based journals


are published. Only 13 of these publications had appeared before 1920. Jacob Adler provides reporting services through the Jewish Telegraph Agency. LIT: A group of transitional Jewish intellectuals come into prominence, bridging the move from Yiddish culture to the secular mainstream. The group includes Hayim Greenberg, who writes essays and edits Yiddisher Kemfer; Nahman Syrkin, who lectures and writes; and Chaim Zhitlovsky, who promotes a cultural awakening. LIT: In 1926, Menorah Journal begins publishing on a bimonthly basis under its managing editor Elliot E. Cohen. In the following decades, the periodical publishes essays by Sidney Hook, Clifton Fadiman, Horace Kallen, Lewis Mumford, Ludwig Lewisohn, Henry Rosenthal, Tess Schlesinger, Harry Wolfson, and other authors renowned in secular culture. During the 1930s and beyond, a group called the New York Intellectuals further influences American culture. LIT: The Partisan Review publishes Jewish authors on secular topics. LIT: Heyward Broun, S. J. Kaufman, and Simeon Strinsky are famous newspaper columnists and Rube Goldberg emerges as a popular cartoonist. Alfred S. Knopf, Simon and Schuster, and Viking are among Jewish-owned publishing companies. Jewish publishers introduce innovative marketing techniques such as the Modern Library, the Book-of-the-Month Club, and the Literary Guild. PERF: Jews excel in music and musical theater. The Algonquin Circle associated with Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, and Dorothy Parker strongly influences American theater. Choreographer Jerome Robbins and composers and lyricists Aaron Copland, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Arthur Laurents, Richard Rogers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Lorenz Hart, and others lay the foundation for Jerry Bock, Jules Styne, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, and Robyn Goodman in succeeding decades. Such musicians followed Irving Berlin’s lead—epitomized by such songs as “God Bless America,” “Easter Parade,” and “White Christmas”—in

universalizing patriotism and religion, thereby encouraging pluralism and acceptance of Jews and Judaism into the mainstream. PERF: Yiddish theater gradually declines as a result of acculturation, the rise of an Americanized second generation of Jews originating in eastern European, and movement away from the first areas of settlement into the suburbs. Another cause as well as a symbol of the transformation is the integration of Jewish performers into the mainstream. Many Yiddish art theater actors work in Stella and Luther Adler’s Group Theater. During the Depression era, the Group Theater produces English-language, socially conscious productions, often starring Jewish actors and written by Jewish playwrights. In these and succeeding decades, playwrights including Moss Hart, Lillian Hellman, and Clifford Odets stand out for their secular productions. PERF: Jewish actors include John Garfield, Paulette Goddard, and Edward G. Robinson. PHIL: Eleanor Roosevelt and prominent social reformers advocate the replacement of orphanages with foster care and direct assistance to families in need who would otherwise be forced to place children in orphan asylums. Jewish orphanages close their doors in light of these modern ideas about social services. RELI: As the eastern European immigrants and especially their children move into the middle class and become acculturated, many stop following religious practices. They seek decorum in the services, the replacement of Yiddish and Hebrew with English, and more cultural and social Judaism rather than adherence to ritual. While the wealthiest and most acculturated Jews or those in small towns are accepted into Reform congregations, the Conservative movement benefits most from these trends. Numerous Orthodox congregations switch their affiliations to the Conservative movement in the decades after 1935. SOCI: Conflict often develops between the immigrants who arrived as adults and their acculturated children over values, traditions, culture, and ways of life. Family and religious ties loosen.

Settling in, the Holocaust, and Israel: 1925–1948

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Jewish women benefit from gradual expansion of the roles of women and greater freedom.

frustrations of new immigrants to America during the early twentieth century.

SOCI: Eastern European Jews and their children who Americanize and rise into the middle class are not accepted in either non-Jewish or German Jewish social clubs. They organize their own social clubs, often named Progressive Clubs. Over time, distinctions based on country of origin in eastern Europe gradually decline and, by the end of the era, so do differences between Jews of central and eastern European origin.

ORGS: Orthodox women organize American Mizrachi Women to aid Jews in Palestine and encourage the building of a Jewish homeland.

SPOR: Benny Leonard is one of many wellknown Jewish boxers. SPOR: Children of eastern European immigrants are deeply involved in baseball and other athletic activities, particularly through participation in Jewish education alliances and young men’s and young women’s Hebrew association teams. They frequently compete in league competitions facing non-Jewish opponents. Such activities reflect and foster acculturation, as do participation in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts troops. Yet, many who participate in these activities do so within Jewish organizations, thereby indicating that they are both continuing and changing their ethnic identity. 1925 ANTI: A dozen men break into a North Carolina jail and kidnap Joseph Needleman. They then mutilate him because of personal animosity and anti-Semitism. Such horrible actions are usually reserved for African Americans in the racist South. In this case, the perpetrators are tried in court and convicted. BUSI: Czech-born John D. Hertz establishes the Yellow Cab Company and later expands his business to car rentals. COMM: John Scopes is tried and convicted of teaching evolution in the Tennessee public schools. Most Jews support Scopes’ position and accept evolution as valid. They fear Christian fundamentalist interference in the public schools. LIT: Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, an autobiographical novel, depicts the hardships and

ORGS: The Jewish National Fund, the Palestine Foundation Fund, Hadassah, and Mizrahi cooperate in fund raising through the new United Palestine Appeal. 1926–1929 SOCI: Bribery, extortion, and other crime in New York’s kosher chicken industry run rampant, and many people are tried and convicted of these offenses. SOCI: A garment workers strike in New York contributes to the rise of labor racketeers, including Jack “Legs” Diamond and gambler Arnold Rothstein, when both sides resort to violence and intimidation. Rothstein is assassinated in 1928. 1926 INTL: Vladimir Jabotinsky splits from the mainstream Zionist movement. He advocates the creation of a Jewish army and the use of violence against the British colonial forces in Palestine. He fails to attract many American followers. ORGS: Rabbi Leo Jung leads in the creation of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), an organization composed largely of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary/Yeshiva College graduates. Jung, Joseph Lookstein, and others nurture modern Orthodoxy during the interwar years. In 1942, the Hebrew Theological College of Chicago joins the RCA. However, more traditional Orthodox rabbis oppose it. 1927 ACCT: Thirty-nine Christian and Jewish organizations form the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ). In the following decades, many rabbis participate in NCCJ’s “Brotherhood Week” and other ecumenical activities to encourage understanding and tolerance across religious lines. Rabbis also host radio programs drawing Christian audiences to a better understanding of


Judaism and exchange speaking engagements with ministers. The concepts of religious pluralism and a Judeo-Christian heritage gain traction.

Harvard philosophy professor Harry A. Wolfson fills the only other chair in Jewish studies prior to World War II.

ORGS: The Texas Kallal of Rabbis brings together clergy in far-flung communities for planning and social and intellectual stimulation.

INTL: Arab rioters in Palestine kill many Jews, including students at the Hebron branch of the Slobodka yeshiva. They resort to violence again in 1936. Opposition to Jewish settlement raises questions about the ability of Jews and Arabs to live together in peace in the Holy Land. The United Palestine Appeal becomes the United Jewish Appeal when non-Zionists join in response to the tragedy, but contributions decline dramatically during the Great Depression.

PERF: The Jazz Singer, an early, full-length, talking motion picture, features Al Jolson as the son of an immigrant, Orthodox cantor. Jolson’s character seeks fame as a popular singer, thereby rejecting tradition and the wishes of his father, who wants the son to follow in his footsteps. The popularity of the movie and its star reflects a growing acceptance of Jews and immigrants, although the theme emphasizes acculturation into the melting pot. SOCI: The Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union finances a cooperative housing project in the Bronx, New York. In the following years, other unions also build affordable housing for working-class families. 1928 ANTI: When four-year-old Barbara Griffith disappears in Massena, New York, on Yom Kippur eve, townspeople accuse Jews of murdering her so that they could use her blood for their ceremonies. Even after the girl comes out of the woods where she had been lost, the mayor organizes a boycott of Jewish businesses. This “blood libel” (the ancient, false attack on Jews because they supposedly sacrifice Christians to use their blood for rituals) incident ends a few weeks later when the mayor apologizes under pressure, yet his prejudices do not prevent his subsequent reelection. CULT: Louis Wirth publishes The Ghetto, a sociological study that stresses group identity and the tendencies of all ethnic groups to bond as separate entities. 1929 EDUC: Columbia University receives an endowment for the first chair in Jewish history in the United States. Salo W. Baron fills the position.

INTL: The Jewish Agency for Palestine expands to include non-Zionist members. Late 1920s–1930s BUSI: Jewish population surveys disclose that at least 40 percent of Jews work in commerce and trade. The percentage is even higher outside of the industrial cities of the Northeast. In San Francisco, 4,000 of the 10,000 employed Jewish men either manage or own businesses. In Detroit, approximately half of the 29,300 Jewish workers conduct trade. Between 10 percent and 15 percent are professionals. In Pittsburgh and San Francisco, Jewish doctors, lawyers, and judges outnumber non-Jewish members of these professions by three to one. In small and midsize cities, between 7.8 percent and 12 percent of Jews in the work force are professionals. Jews are three times as likely to be employed in commercial businesses as non-Jews. Jewish women become bookkeepers, secretaries, social workers, teachers, and government employees as well as attorneys. By the beginning of the Great Depression, less than 10 percent of the Jewish work force is unskilled and semiskilled, and the majority work in white-collar positions. Nevertheless, corporations largely bar Jews from employment, just as they do African Americans. BUSI: The stock market crash ushers in the Great Depression. Many Jews lose their jobs, businesses, and savings. Pledges of financial support to Jewish social services agencies and synagogues go unmet, even as the demand for assistance skyrockets. Rabbis go without salaries.


In 1932, 50,000 Jews are unemployed in Chicago alone. At the height of the Depression, 12 percent of Jewish heads of households are unemployed, a high figure but substantially lower than that of the general population. New Deal agencies assume most of the charity needs formerly met by private organizations. The Federal Theater Project even supports a Yiddish Division. Many of the unemployed young people live with their parents and attend college, thus setting the stage for economic rebound once the economy starts to improve. Because Jews are often owners of small businesses, managers, and professionals, they are not hit as hard as members of the working class. With more appropriate work experience and education than average Americans, many find employment in schools and the government as the economy gradually improves and federal programs expand. BUSI: In 1930, the Bank of the United States, which was established in 1913 by Jews and caters to Jewish immigrants living on the Lower East Side of New York, fails and the bank officers are indicted. Approximately 40,000 customers, mostly Jewish depositors, lose their savings. Of the old-line Jewish finance banks, August Belmont and Company (1930) and Speyer and Company (1939) dissolve, and Seligman Company (1939) dramatically cuts investments. Few Jews are employed in secular banks because of discriminatory practices.

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PHIL: During the first decades of the twentieth century, Jewish social services federations have become charter members of community chests (later called the United Way). During the Depression, especially in small and medium-size communities such as Atlanta, Georgia, the federations often provide leadership and a model for effective and rational giving and distribution of aid to these secular organizations. POPU: Numerous Jewish communities conduct population studies fostered by the local Jewish social services federations. RELI: A synagogue building boom takes place, as the number of congregations increase and the immigrants and especially their children rise into the middle class. In 1927, for example, 34 synagogues are being constructed as an additional 67 are finished. This creates difficulties paying mortgages when the Depression hits in 1929. 1930s AFRI: Anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker applies the field approach she had employed with an earlier study of Papua, New Guinea, culture to race relations in Indianola, Mississippi. The study undermines the arguments made in favor of segregation.

CULT: Animator Grim Natwick creates the comic book character Betty Boop. Betty Boop comic strips appear during the 1930s and again in the 1980s. She is also the star of a series of films. In 1932, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel create the character Superman, who appears in comic books, television programs, movies, and video games up through the present. These artists/ authors represent a sampling of the many Jewish pioneers of the comic book.

ANTI: Father Charles Coughlin spews hatred against Jews in his radio broadcasts, which attract an audience of 14 million listeners. Fritz Kuhn is the fu¨hrer of the German-American Bund, a Nazi organization boasting 25,000 members. On February 22, 1939 (George Washington’s birthday) the Bund holds a massive rally in support of Nazi Germany in Madison Square Garden. Gerald Winrod, Gerald L. K. Smith (who runs for the presidency as a third-party candidate in 1944), and Charles Sylvester lead some of the estimated 120 anti-Semitic organizations, many of which receive materials and funding from Adolph Hitler. William Dudley Paley heads the Silver Shirts.

GOVT: Jewish membership in the Communist Party increases in response to the Great Depression and the failure of capitalism that it represents, although the vast majority of Jews reject communism.

BUSI: Jewish farmers in New Jersey concentrate on poultry. Vineland in the southern part of the state is nicknamed the “Egg Basket of the East.” The farms are manned largely by succeeding waves of emigrants—first emigrants from


Russia during the late nineteenth century, and then German and Polish refugees fleeing from Nazi persecution. After the mid-1950s, this form of Jewish economic activity dramatically declines. CULT: Sociologists and social psychologists fleeing Nazi Germany as part of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research include Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Leo Lowenthal, Herbert Marcuse, and Friedrich Pollock. Known as the Frankfurt Circle, several of these men become associated with Columbia University and exert extensive influence on American and European ideas, especially concerning Critical Thinking. After the war, Horkheimer edits Studies in Prejudice, a publication sponsored by the American Jewish Committee. The five-volume series investigates the nature of prejudice and authoritarian systems and raises fears about the rise of anti-Semitic demagoguery in the United States. Marcuse serves as a guiding light of the 1960s counterculture. EDUC: Jews account for 3.5 percent of the total population of the United States but 10 percent of all college students. An extremely high percentage of immigrants attend night school during the years between the world wars. Education is viewed as the means to climb into the middle class. In 1930, six of the nine editors of the Columbia Law Review and almost half of the members of Phi Beta Kappa are Jewish. EDUC: Hebrew is introduced on a trial basis as a foreign language in two Brooklyn, New York, high schools. The next year, a full sequence is put into effect. By the end of the decade, thousands of students take Hebrew in Boston, Chicago, New York, Saint Louis, and Schenectady. IMMI: Entry of individual Jews fleeing Hitler into the United States is sponsored by American Jews. The number of these immigrants is extremely small compared to those eventually exterminated, owing to immigration quotas and State Department policies. Some Jewish intellectuals, scientists, and religious leaders find refuge in the United States. These include Hasidic and yeshiva leaders with some of their followers, who help rejuvenate Orthodoxy in America. In

1939, Rabbi Joseph Brauer emigrates from Germany to Washington Heights, New York. His K’hal Adath Jeshurun synagogue attracts 800 families. He also establishes a yeshiva and other institutions. Historically black colleges employ several Jewish professors, as do other schools. PERF: Jews own only three of the eight largest motion picture companies and continue innovating. Adolph Zukor introduces the factory system, which brings together stars, stories, production, distribution, and beautiful movie theaters. Leonard Goldenson revitalizes Paramount Pictures. PHIL: As Jews lose their livelihoods, property, and educational opportunities under Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies and many are beaten and murdered, Jewish philanthropy shifts its emphasis from domestic to international needs. The movement from federations of Jewish charities toward coordinated Jewish welfare funds, community relations councils, and social services federations, which had begun during the 1920s, dramatically accelerates from 1936 to 1941 to meet the challenge. Annual campaigns organized around fund-raising divisions—for example, women’s, trades, retail, scrap metal, and professional groups—raise ever-larger donations to meet specific financial goals. Various levels of giving are recognized to apply pressure on individuals to increase their donations. As the charity and Americanization needs of the wave of eastern European immigrants from the previous generation decline, domestic spending shifts to culture, education, and recreation. Zionism becomes popular again and even more widespread than earlier, as American Jews recognize the need for a Jewish refuge from Nazi persecution. SOCI: Meyer Lansky rises as the brains and business manager of organized crime. Murder, Inc., in New York and the Purple gang in Detroit illustrate the urban criminal violence that involves a minority of Jews, including Louis “Lemke” Buchalter, “Dutch” Schultz, “Bugsy” Siegel, and Abe “Kid Twist” Reles. Members of Murder, Inc., are contracted to kill those who break the code between criminals. German, Irish, Italian, and Jewish criminals sometimes fight one another, but more often work together. Criminals


create negative images for each of the ethnic groups, however much those groups oppose and try to marginalize them. SPOR: Max Baer holds the world heavyweight boxing title during the middle of the decade. He wears a Star of David on his trunks. 1930 IMMI: President Herbert Hoover issues a directive advocating strict implementation of the provisions of the immigration laws that exclude immigrants who are “likely to become a public charge.” This policy is enforced during the 1930s and into the 1940s, even as Adolf Hitler persecutes Jews in Germany and the other countries he conquers. LIT: Michael Gold writes Jews Without Money, a communist critique of poverty among Jews. 1931 GOVT: After making a fortune in the stock market, Eugene Meyer serves two years as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board under President Herbert Hoover. He later purchases the Washington Post newspaper. 1932 AFRI: Attorney Samuel Leibowitz helps the Scottsboro Boys get their rape conviction overturned by the Supreme Court. The nine young men had been unjustly accused of the rape of two white girls in Scottsboro, Alabama. GOVT: Tracing his roots in American to the colonial Sephardim, Benjamin N. Cardozo succeeds Oliver Wendell Holmes as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Democrat is chosen by Republican President Herbert Hoover and wins confirmation by unanimous voice vote of the Senate. Cardozo has previously served on the New York Court of Appeals and his father, Albert J. Cardozo, served as a judge on the New York State Supreme Court. GOVT: Herbert Lehman begins the first of three terms as New York’s governor. PHIL: Almost 70 local organizations create the national Council of Jewish Federations and

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Welfare Funds (CJF). As a result of its fundraising ability and power to distribute funds, the CJF gains substantial influence over almost all other Jewish organizations in the following years. Power also shifts from congregation rabbis to the professional staffs of the local federations and welfare funds and to the large contributors. 1933 CULT: City College of New York philosophy professor Morris Raphael Cohen organizes the Conference on Jewish Relations with historian Salo Baron, physicist Albert Einstein, law professor Felix Frankfurter, and others to encourage social scientific research into Jewish American life. In 1939, the conference sponsors a scholarly journal, Jewish Social Studies. GOVT: In the 1932 election, 82 percent of Jewish voters cast their ballots for Franklin D. Roosevelt. Several Jews are members of President Roosevelt’s “brain trust,” a key group of economic and social advisers, and Henry J. Morgenthau, Jr., serves as his Treasury Secretary. Jews also obtain positions in various New Deal agencies; journalist Louis Untermeyer coins the term “New Deal.” All of these people are appointed because of their abilities and not because they are Jewish. Few have spoken out or exerted influence on issues of particularly Jewish concern—for example, attempting to intervene with Hitler’s policies. Nonetheless, anti-Semites attack what they call the “Jew Deal,” referring to Jewish influence in the White House, and even erroneously decry Roosevelt as a Jew. Herbert H. Lehman (New York), Henry Horner (Illinois), Julius Meyer (Oregon), and Arthur Seligman (New Mexico) serve as governors. INTL: Adolph Hitler comes to power as chancellor of Germany. Almost immediately he starts to impose anti-Semitic injunctions against Jews. LIT: Ludwig Lewisohn returns from a 10-year stay in Europe to write an essay in The Nation about the rise and dangers of the Nazi Party in Germany. Lewisohn moves from being largely acculturated to evincing a strong Jewish and Zionist identity. He recognizes that acceptance of majority culture does not prevent anti-


Semitism and emphasizes this point in his writings, including Upstream and The Island Within. ORGS: The Jewish War Veterans and the American Jewish Congress organize a boycott of German goods to protest Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies. The boycott expands internationally under the leadership of Samuel Untermeyer. It is ineffective. Several Jewish organizations in the United States and Germany oppose the boycott for fear of antagonizing the Roosevelt administration, which supports free trade with Germany, even while it is under the leadership of Hitler. Zionist groups oppose the boycott because they fear it will end the Transfer Agreement through which German Jews are allowed to immigrate to Palestine with some of their assets in the form of German goods. German American groups launch a counter-boycott. ORGS: The B’nai B’rith, American Jewish Committee, and American Jewish Congress create the Joint Consultative Council to coordinate efforts to aid German Jews. Cooperation breaks down, and the organization falls apart in 1936. SCI: Albert Einstein departs his native Germany for the United States shortly after Hitler assumes power. In 1939, the atomic physicist, who is renowned for the theory of relativity (1905), advises Franklin D. Roosevelt of the possibility of creating an atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project, which the president creates for that purpose, includes Enrico Fermi, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, and other Jewish scientists, several of whom receive Nobel Prizes for physics. Einstein ultimately becomes a pacifist and a Zionist. At the end of the millennium, Time magazine names Einstein the “Person of the Century.” SPOR: Hank Greenberg, a future Hall of Fame slugger, breaks into baseball’s major leagues as a Detroit Tiger. He is the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1935 and 1940. Greenberg joins the military immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the first athlete in major league baseball to do so. Jews view Greenberg as a hero, especially because he refuses to participate in a playoff game in 1934 played on Yom Kippur.

(Greenberg’s decision is a compromise because a cooperative rabbi found a loophole in interpretation allowing him to play on Rosh Hashanah.) When he comes close to breaking Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in 1938 (Greenberg hits 58 home runs), the first baseman considers it a blow against Hitler. In 1945, he is the first veteran to rejoin the major leagues. His batting average leads the majors, although he does not have enough plate appearances to receive the batting title. Throughout his career, hecklers in the bleachers and on opposing clubs attack him as a Jew. 1934 ART: Architect Frank Lloyd Wright builds Falling Water, one of the most beautiful and unique homes constructed in the United States, for the Edgar J. Kaufman family in Pennsylvania. Five years later, the only house he builds in Alabama is completed. Representing his Usonian style, this house in Florence for Stanley and Mildred Rosenbaum is reasonably priced for the middle class. The Rosenbaums press Wright to design an addition in 1948 as their family grows. Wright also designs synagogues. EDUC: While serving as rabbi of a Brookline, Massachusetts, congregation, recent immigrant Joseph Dov Soloveitchik starts a supplementary, coeducational religious school for elementary and high schools students. Three years later, he opens the coeducational Maimonides day school. In 1941, he becomes the senior Talmudic scholar at Yeshiva College. During the decades he fills this position he ordains numerous rabbis. The model of the modern Orthodox rabbi, Soloveitchik values Zionism, secular learning, and interaction with the modern world within an Orthodox framework. LIT: Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep analyzes the problems of acculturation and the losses immigrants endure while living in the Lower East Side of New York. ORGS: Unions establish the Jewish Labor Committee to fight anti-Semitism in America and Europe. After World War II, the committee runs


orphanages in Europe to care for children whose parents have perished in the Holocaust. ORGS: The National Coordinating Committee is established to assist the anticipated flow of refugees. Three years later, it becomes the National Refugee Service. SPOR: World welterweight boxing champion and war hero Barney Ross refuses to reschedule a fight planned to take place on Rosh Hashanah. 1935 GOVT: A key Roosevelt advisor, Harvard Law School Professor Felix Frankfurter, helps draft the Social Security Act. During the 1920s, Frankfurter supports Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant anarchists who are accused and convicted of armed robbery and murder. IMMI: The Alien Deportation and Exclusion League advocates the deportation of immigrants and an end to further immigration. In 1938 and 1938, Fortune magazine public opinion polls indicate that overwhelming majorities of Americans support a total ban and reject the idea of accepting refuges in numbers greater than the established quotas. INTL: The Nuremberg laws take away citizenship for German Jews. ORGS: The Jewish Federation of Delaware is organized. Only the Jewish populations in Dover, Newark, and Wilmington are large enough to support Jewish organizations. Typically federations of Jewish social services organizations are created on the city level. In locations with relatively small Jewish populations, including Arkansas, cooperation on a statewide basis is more practical. ORGS: The Rabbinical Council of America brings together American-trained, Orthodox rabbis. RELI: The Coca-Cola Company grants Tobias Geffen, a native of Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, who serves as rabbi for an Atlanta congregation for 70 years, access to the secret Coca-Cola formula to determine if it meets kosher guide-

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lines. He recommends two changes, which the company makes, thereby making the soft drink acceptable even on Passover for Jews who keep the religious dietary laws. The desire for Orthodox Jews to drink or eat like other Americans demonstrates adjustment to American life, especially by the children of the immigrant generation. 1936 EDUC: The English department of Columbia University terminates Lionel Trilling’s appointment because he is a Freudian, Marxist, and Jew. Trilling goes on to an illustrious career as a literary critic, but the termination of his academic appointment illustrates the prejudices against Jewish academics between the wars. GOVT: Many Jews are dissatisfied with local political party machine politics. In Boston, 8 of 10 Jews elected to the Massachusetts General Court run as Republicans. INTL: Fascists and republicans confront one another in the Spanish civil war, in which Germany and Italy support the fascist dictator Francisco Franco. Jews account for 35 to 40 percent of the Lincoln Brigade, Americans who fight on the side of the republic. ORGS: The World Jewish Congress attempts to unify Jewish organizations around the globe to confront the threat of Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies and other issues of concern. The American Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, AntiDefamation League, B’nai B’rith, Jewish Labor Committee, and Jewish War Veterans create a committee on cooperation, but its functioning quickly breaks down amidst squabbling. In 1938, the General Jewish Council for Jewish Rights is created and again fails to unify diverse organizations. SPOR: Award-winning fencer Helene Mayer Ring, a German native who moves to Los Angeles, participates in the Berlin Olympics on the German team at Hitler’s invitation. This highly controversial move allows Hitler to avoid the boycotts threatened by some nations in reaction to his anti-Semitic policies.


1937 BUSI: Jews own 104,000 retail and wholesale businesses and two thirds of the factories in New York City, but two thirds of their workers are not Jewish. Eastern European immigrants and especially their children move from the working class to the middle class. GOVT: Nine Jewish Democrats and one Jewish Republican hold seats in the seventy-fifth Congress (1937–1939). ORGS: The Reform movement organizes the National Federation of Temple Youth. POPU: Jews represent approximately 4 percent of the country’s total population. RELI: Reform rabbis approve “Guiding Principles of Reform Judaism.” This Columbus Platform replaces the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885. By this point, many members of the Central Conference of American Rabbis come from eastern European backgrounds and support Zionism. The platform advocates the rebuilding of Palestine as a center for Jewish renewal and a refuge for Jews facing persecution. SOCI: Half of the Jewish families in America have two or fewer children. 1938 ACCT: The Fair Labor Standards Act mandates a five-day workweek for many industries, thereby allowing traditional Jews to refrain from work on the Sabbath. IMMI: President Roosevelt convenes an international refugee conference in Evian, France, but only the Dominican Republic expands its welcome to Jews. The Joint Distribution Committee finances the Dominican Republic Settlement Association, and 500 German refugees relocate to Sosua. Zionists oppose the program because they want the money to help develop Palestine as the refuge. INTL: Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues are destroyed and Jews beaten and murdered throughout Germany on November 9, Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”). The event marks turning points both in Nazi brutality and

in American Jewish consciousness of the crisis facing German Jews. The following year, Roosevelt reaches an agreement with Germany that all remaining Jewish property will be confiscated. Germany promises to issue bonds based on this property that will then be purchased by Jews outside of that country. In essence, Germany demands a ransom to allow Jews to depart with German goods so that the emigrants will be allowed into other countries; Jews who accede to the demands will be financing the German military build-up. The war intervenes, so nothing comes of this program. ORGS: The majority of the major Jewish organizations establish the National Emergency Committee for Palestine in recognition of the need for a refuge for Jews who have been persecuted by Hitler and his Nazi followers. ORGS: The National Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs is created to influence public opinion and lobby. In 1943, it is reconstituted as the American Zionist Emergency Committee. 1939–1945 GOVT: Virtually all efforts to convince the Roosevelt administration to ease immigration restrictions fail. Jewish communal leadership is divided. Anti-Semitism remains widespread, and Jewish influence is limited. Key insiders including Rabbi Stephen S. Wise are hesitant to confront Roosevelt. 1939 AFRI: The Legal Defense Fund, which Arthur Springarn, Jack Greenberg, Milton Konvitz, and other Jews helped establish, separates from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). GOVT: President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominates Felix Frankfurter to be a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Frankfurter wins Senate confirmation IMMI: Polls indicate that almost two thirds of the American public opposes lifting immigration quotas to allow 20,000 Jewish children to enter the United States from Europe. The public rejects expansion of immigration in general.


INTL: Great Britain issues a White Paper calling for a halt to Jewish immigration into Palestine and limited land sales in this area to Jews. It also calls for the eventual partition of Palestine into one Jewish state and one Palestinian state. The Jews accept the latter formula, but the Arab nations reject it. INTL: Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin sign a nonaggression pact that leads to the invasion and partition of Poland and the beginning of World War II. The majority of American Jews who had supported communism and socialism become disillusioned with Russia. ORGS: Agudath Israel of America is rejuvenated and blooms with the arrival of ultra-Orthodox refugees fleeing Hitler’s persecution. Two years later, the international headquarters relocates from London to New York. ORGS: The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) is reorganized and unifies the fund-raising campaigns of the Joint Distribution Committee, the United Palestine Appeal, and the National Coordinating Committee Rescue Fund in response to Kristallnacht. Whereas the three organizations separately managed to raise a total of $7 million before unification, the UJA raises $16 million its first year. The Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Boards (later renamed the United Jewish Communities) supervises the fund-raising efforts. 1940 COMM: The UAHC creates a Committee on Social Action that takes a leadership role in the black civil rights movement and on behalf of other social causes. CULT: The Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO), established in Vilna, Lithuania, during the mid1920s, is reconstituted in New York. Now called YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, its library expands dramatically after the war, when the U.S. State Department and military contribute Jewish books and manuscripts that the Nazis stole. YIVO offers classes and serves as the major research center of European history and culture, besides publishing a scholarly yearbook. Yiddish language authority and YIVO head Max Weinreich emigrants from

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Vilna to New York, where future Nobel Prize (literature) winner Isaac Bashevis Singer and author Chaim Grade join him. GOVT: The major candidates for the presidency, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie, emphasis religious toleration when it is feared that the German government is financing antiSemitic groups within the United States. Roosevelt includes freedom of religion as one of the four freedoms essential for world peace, and Willkie rejects the endorsement of Father Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semitic “radio priest.” IMMI: The President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees creates a list of important political and cultural leaders who are eligible to receive emergency visas. Some 3,200 “cultural carriers” are allowed into the United States before the State Department terminates the program in 1941. IMMI: Joseph I. Schneerson, the rebbe (rabbi leader) of the Lubavitcher Hasidic sect, flees Europe and arrives in the United States. The following year, the Satmar rebbe, Yoel Teitelbaum, is ransomed out of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He immigrates to Palestine before arriving in Brooklyn in 1946. Other key religious leaders who immigrate to America and make major contributions to American Jewish culture include Leo Baeck, Shlomo Carlbach, Moshe Feinstein, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Alfred Gottschalk, Esther Jungreis, W. Gunther Plaut, Joachim Prinz, Alexander Schindler, and Zalman Schacter. German Jewish refugees create their own ethnic cluster of more than 22,400 people in Washington Heights, New York, where they build synagogues and other institutions. INTL: The S. S. Quanza sails from Lisbon, Portugal, with more than 300 refugees. Those with visas are allowed to disembark in New York. After travelling to Vera Cruz to little avail, the ship goes to Virginia. Eleanor Roosevelt convinces her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to allow the refugees temporary landing permits. Although they are allowed to remain in the United States, American policy toward acceptance of more refugees from Nazi persecution hardens.


INTL: Aliyah Bet agents desperately try to rescue European Jews. The British navy accidentally sinks the S. S. Patria, a ship with Jewish refugees that is illegally attempting to enter Palestine. The following year, the S. S. Struma mysteriously explodes after Turkish officials tow the refugee ship out of the Istanbul harbor. LIT: Zalman Schocken, who had emigrated from Berlin to Palestine, moves to New York and starts a publishing house specializing in Jewish topics. PERF: Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator attacks Nazi anti-Semitism. POPU: According to the U.S. census, the majority of Jews are American born, a fact that reflects the closing of the open door to immigration during the 1920s. 1941 ACCT: President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the Commission on Fair Labor Employment Practices. The commission investigates discrimination based on race and religion. ANTI: Charles A. Lindberg, who has become an American hero after flying solo across the Atlantic, gives an isolationist speech to an America First audience in Des Moines, Iowa, denouncing Jewish influence on President Roosevelt to enter World War II. Senator Burton K. Wheeler (Republican–Montana) warns against Jewish “Hollywood Hitlers” who are conspiring to lure America into the war. Two novels written during the war, Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and Irwin Shaw’s The Young Lions, describe anti-Semitism within the army. Regardless of Hitler’s racist policies, prejudice against Jews and African Americans remains high during and after World War II. Both groups face discrimination in housing, banking, and industry. In addition, their opportunities for admission to elite universities, law schools, and medical schools remain limited. BUSI: Civil service jobs account for 14.5 percent of Jewish employment, and the professions, another 10.5 percent.

COMM: The Jewish Welfare Board creates a Bureau of War Records to document Jewish contributions to the war effort. INTL: Following Germany’s invasion of Russia, Adolph Hitler conducts a meeting at Wannsee at which the Nazis decide to eradicate European Jewry. LIT: Budd Shulberg writes What Makes Sammy Run, a novel that depicts the vicious rise of an office boy to Hollywood movie production chief. Schulberg’s book follows a pattern of works from authors who experience the Depression and view their parent’s values and American experiences negatively. These publications include Ben Hecht’s A Jew in Love, Jerome Weidman’s I Can Get It for You Wholesale and What’s in It for Me?, and Michael Gold’s, Jews Without Money. In 1954, Shulberg writes the screenplay for the Elia Kazan–directed On the Waterfront. Marlon Brando portrays a failed boxer in the movie, which wins eight Academy Awards. LIT: A Guide to Jewish Ritual brings together changes in beliefs and ritual observance supported by the Reconstructionist movement. A Sabbath Prayer Book follows four years later. The Orthodox Agudath HaRabbanim calls the prayer book “blasphemous” and ex-communicates Mordecai Kaplan and several of his supporters. The ex-communication has little impact beyond hurt feelings. MILI: The United States enters World War II. More than half a million Jews serve in the military during the war, a level of participation far beyond their proportion of the overall U.S. population. Approximately 6,000 are killed in action. One receives the Medal of Honor, and 74 receive the Distinguished Service Cross. Major General Maurice Rose commands the Third Armored Division during the invasion of Germany. 1942 INTL: The plans for Hitler’s “Final Solution” to eradicate European Jewry become known, although U.S. government officials and leading


newspapers discount the reports. On March 9, 1943, some 40,000 people attend a demonstration and show, We Will Never Die, in Madison Square Garden to protest Nazi policies and urge the Roosevelt administration to act. Later in the year, Orthodox rabbis lead a march on Washington, D.C., but fail to obtain President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s agreement to even meet with them to discuss a rescue plan. Hillel (also known as “Peter Bergson”) Kook, Samuel Merlin, and Eri Jabotinsky—all of whom are members of Irgun Z’vai Leumi (the military arm of the revisionist Zionist movement)—use public opinion, lobbying, and mass protest rallies in America to dramatize the plight of European Jewry and support the idea of forming a Jewish army to fight against Hitler. The Bergson group attracts many celebrities and politicians. Although united in its desire to aid their brethren in distress, the American Jewish community is divided in leadership, specific goals, and means. In an environment fraught with antiSemitism and indifference at home, and in a situation in which winning World War II had to be the country’s primary goal, relatively little is accomplished to prevent the murder of 6 million Jews. ORGS: The Joint Emergency Committee on European Jewish Affairs is established to unify the American Jewish response to the news of Hilter’s Final Solution. The organization falls apart within six months, as a result of ongoing bickering. ORGS: As news of Nazi atrocities expands, the Zionist Organization of America conducts the Biltmore Convention, in which it advocates the creation of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. This issue further divides American Jewish organizations, most of which advocate rescue and relocation to any safe haven. In stark contrast, the ZOA emphasizes allocation of effort and resources to the Holy Land. 1943 EDUC: Finding refuge in the United States in 1941 through a special visa issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Aharon Kotler opens Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood,

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New Jersey. This advanced seminary caters to strictly Orthodox Jews in the eastern European mold. Fifty years later, the seminary boasts 37 branches. Kotler rejects secular learning and society as well as interaction with Reform and Conservative organizations. He supports government assistance to parochial schools. Prior to America’s entry into World War II, the famed Talmudic institutions from Bialyskok, Lublin, Mir, and Radun move to America. The Telshe Yeshivah relocates to Ohio after the war. GOVT: The Roosevelt administration and the British government under Winston Churchill reach an Anglo-American Declaration accepting the 1939 British White Paper that froze immigration to Palestine and continuing British policy until after the war. The declaration condemns Zionist pressure to open the doors to refugees as a distraction to winning the war. INTL: Representatives of Great Britain and the United States meet in Bermuda to discuss the refugee and rescue crisis in Germany. Nothing is done. INTL: Jews rise up to fight the Nazis in the Warsaw, Poland, ghetto. Amazingly, the uprising lasts over a month as the German army and air force burn and bomb the ghetto. It is one of several resistance efforts by persecuted European Jews, although the vast majority of victims go to their deaths without the ability to fight back. MILI: Four chaplains of various denominations die when the S. S. Dorchester is sunk. Rabbi Alexander Goode and the others give their life preservers to shipmates. The picture (featured on a postage stamp in 1948) of them clasping hands together as the ship goes down becomes a symbol of toleration. ORGS: Henry Monsky of B’nai B’rith calls for national elections to send representatives to an American Jewish Conference at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to establish an on-going organization. At the urging of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, a resolution is passed overwhelming advocating the creation of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. The American Jewish Committee and


the Jewish Labor Committee leave the new organization in protest. Other organizations refuse to participate. ORGS: The American Council for Judaism (ACJ) is formed by classical Reform Jews opposed to the Columbus Platform’s acceptance of Zionism. The endorsement of a Jewish army by the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1942 sparks the creation of the ACJ. Leadership of the ACJ includes Morris Lazaron and Lessing Rosenwald. 1943 PERF: The Office of War Information encourages the production of films such as Air Force (1943), Bataan (1943), Guadalcanal Diary (1943), Pride of the Marines (1945), and A Walk in the Sun (1945), which feature soldiers from different backgrounds fighting together for a tolerant America. These platoon movies counteract the anti-Semitic claim that Jews have avoided military service. Typically, the actor playing the Jewish soldier voices the hope for a better America in the future. In 1949, John Wayne’s movie, The Sands of Iwo Jima, portrays a Jewish soldier dying after reciting the Sh’ma, a prayer affirming religious faith. The message is that one can be both a good Jew and a good American. 1944 ORGS: Jewish communities throughout the country begin planning for post-war needs and determining how best to address them. The process unfolds over the next decade under the guidance of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds. Communal surveys identify the number of Jews in each community, their demographic characteristics, and their interests. Professionals analyze a variety of issues. Jewish community centers with a clientele crossing old divisions replace the Jewish education alliances that had been geared toward the needs of immigrants. Bureaus of Jewish education attempt to raise standards. Jewish family and children’s services agencies attend to general demands at a time when financial aid is no longer required by most American Jews, except for assistance to refugees from the Holocaust. The latter are provided with aid and Americanization programs, typically

administered by the local sections of the National Council of Jewish Women. Whereas in previous generations most elderly have been cared for in people’s homes, now new old-age homes sprout across the country. The building of synagogues and other facilities delayed by the Depression and World War II resumes at a rapid pace. 1944 EDUC: Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz creates the National Society of Hebrew Schools (Torah Umesorah), which brings 500 schools of Orthodox Jewish learning under its umbrella. Between 1938 and 1946, the number of ultra-Orthodox yeshivot multiplies from 14 to 84. The number of students at these facilities increases almost four and one half times to 17,500 pupils. GOVT: Congress establishes the War Refugee Board. Largely financed by the Joint Distribution Committee, the board attempts to rescue Hungarian Jews, the final significant Jewish community in Europe. Immigration restrictions are finally lifted for this purpose. Fewer than 1,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi oppression enter the country and are housed in a camp in Oswego, New York. Half of the Jews of Hungary and most of the remaining Jews in Slovakia are slaughtered. During Hitler’s reign of terror, only about 110,000 Jewish refugees have found haven in the United States. GOVT: Both the Democratic and Republican national conventions endorse the concept of a Jewish commonwealth as planks in their campaign platforms. ORGS: The American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and a variety of local community relations councils form the National Community Relations Advisory Council to more effectively fight discrimination. Despite this joint effort, the organizations continue to compete and disagree. 1945 ACCT: The daughter of poor, east European Jewish immigrants, Bess Myerson is chosen Miss America. She becomes a symbol of post-war Jewish acceptance into the mainstream society.


INTL: Allied soldiers liberate concentration camps as they gradually conquer Germany. The murder of gypsies, homosexuals, the physically and mentally handicapped, and those who dissented or are considered racially inferior by the Nazis is overwhelming, yet the 6 million Jews (including 1 million children) who met their deaths surpass all other victims in number. The tragedy leads some people to question the existence of a fair and caring God, and to turn pessimistic concerning human nature. INTL: President Harry S. Truman is convinced by a report he requests from Earl G. Harrison to aid Holocaust survivors in Europe who have been classified as displaced persons. He unsuccessfully attempts to pressure Great Britain to open the doors of Palestine to immigrants. LIT: The American Jewish Committee sponsors Commentary, a magazine on topics of interest to American Jews geared toward sophisticated readers. Under the editorship of Elliott E. Cohen, the monthly vehemently opposes communism and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. LIT: The periodical Conservative Judaism begins publication under the editorship of Robert Gordis. POPU: As a result of the Holocaust, 40 percent of all Jews in the world (5 million people) live in the United States. When Hitler first rises to power in 1933, American Jewry accounts for only 29 percent of the world’s Jewish population. Even that figure has been amplified from the 5 percent in 1875 by immigration into the United States and factors in European history. The United States emerges as the intellectual, cultural, and financial center of world Jewry. SPOR: Hank Greenberg hits a grand slam home run in the ninth inning to win the American League pennant for the Detroit Tigers. He hits over .300, drives in seven runs, and hits two homers as the Tigers win the World Series. Although not based on Greenberg, Bernard Malamud later writes The Natural, a novel glorifying the all-American sport. The novel is the basis for a later movie starring Robert Redford.

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1946 LIT: Reform Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman writes an inspirational book, Peace of Mind, that sells more than 1 million copies and reaches number one on The New York Times bestseller list. ORGS: The United Jewish Appeal raises $131 million for the post-war needs of American Jews and especially world Jewry. Supplies for Overseas Survivors (SOS) campaigns employ military terms and slogans to raise funds. When Israel declares its independence two years later, the funds raised skyrocket to $200 million. The social services federation heads who are responsible for raising these funds are recognized as pivotal community leaders. SPOR: Hank Rosenstein is one of eight Jews on the New York Knickerbockers basketball team that plays against the Toronto Huskies in Toronto. The game marks the beginning of the Basketball Association of America (BAA). In 1949, the BAA merges with the National Basketball League to form the National Basketball Association (NBA). Some people consider the Knicks/Huskies game to be the first in NBA history. 1947 CULT: Historian Jacob Rader Marcus establishes the American Jewish Archives at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, which becomes a major repository of primary sources in the field. Marcus also inaugurates a scholarly journal of the same name. He is often called the dean of American Jewish history. PERF: Two movies, Crossfire and Gentleman’s Agreement (based on Laura Z. Hobson’s bestselling novel), attack anti-Semitism in America. In the latter film, which won the Academy Award for best picture, Gregory Peck plays a journalist who pretends to be Jewish so that he can expose prejudice among the upper class in a magazine article. The following year, Prejudice and Open Secret continue the genre of portraying prejudice against Jews as un-American. SPOR: The Conservative movement creates summer programs for young people through Ramah camps.


1948 ACCT: The Supreme Court declares discrimination in housing to be unconstitutional. This decision, in essence, outlaws restrictive covenants and targeted real estate policies that have discriminated especially against African Americans and Jews. CULT: The Congress for Jewish Culture in New York preserves and continues Yiddish culture. It publishes books by authors who were murdered by the Nazis and materials concerning the Holocaust. EDUC: Brandeis University opens in Waltham, Massachusetts, under the presidency of Abram L. Sachar, as the first Jewish-sponsored, nonsectarian American university.

IMMI: Polls indicate that a majority of Americans want a limit to the number of Jewish displaced persons admitted to the United States. Opinion—especially among Christian evangelicals—tends to support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, not only because of the Holocaust but also to relieve pressure on immigration into the United States. INTL: President Truman is convinced by his old friend and former Kansas business associate Eddie Jacobson to discuss the creation of Israel with Chaim Weizmann. Truman promises early recognition of the new nation; he does so on May 14, 11 minutes after David Ben-Gurion announces statehood.

THE MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY: 1949–PRESENT 1949–2010 ACCT: Anti-Semitism dramatically declines during the 1950s and 1960s, and Jews become one of many religions and ethnic groups. Quotas and job discrimination all but disappear. Yet until the 1990s Jews and Christians typically do not socialize in upper-class society. American Jews who continue to feel insecure give generously to and join Jewish defense organizations, including the new Simon Weisenthal Center in Los Angeles. The message from the Holocaust—that one must always be vigilant and that antiSemitism can rise to hellish proportions even in a civilized society like Germany where Jews seemingly fit in—reverberates at least until late in the twentieth century. BUSI: Jews excel as real estate developers and help build the skylines and then suburbs of numerous cities. Americans can purchase cosmetics from Esteé Lauder, Max Factor, and Helena Rubenstein; buy clothing designed by Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Isaac Mizrahi. Manufacturers in Miami produce swimwear and golf garb. The Levi Strauss Company, which first introduced jeans in the 1850s for California gold miners, now caters to suburban shoppers. In a different fashion statement, Elvis Presley begins buying clothing at Lansky Brothers on Beale Street in Memphis for his high school prom and continues to do so as a rockand-roll superstar. Hollywood’s Nudie Cohen designs most of Presley’s flashy stage outfits. Americans join the computer age with Oracle (Larry Ellison), Dell (Michael Dell), Facebook

(Mark Zuckerberg), Google (Sergey Brin), Intel (Andrew Grove), and Qualcomm (Andrew Cohen, Irwin Jacobs, Andrew Viterbi, and others) products. Several of the innovators in these companies are emigrants from such countries as Hungary, Italy, and the former Soviet Union. CULT: A new wave of Jewish intellectuals, including Daniel Bell, Leslie Fiedler, Nathan Glazer, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Irving Howe, Seymour Martin Lipset, Alfred Kazin, Irving Kristol, Richard Pipes, Norman Podhoretz, and Delmore Schwartz, influences American culture and politics. This group of people includes both liberal and conservative academics and pundits. Many of the latter—including the core of the Neoconservative (“Neo-con”) movement—became disillusioned with liberalism, socialism, and/or communism because of the actions of Josef Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, and other factors. CULT: Jews, including Milton Freidman, represent a major component of the “Chicago School of Economics”—academics at the University of Chicago, many of whom receive the Nobel Prize for their work on capitalism and the free market system. Edward Shils and other sociologists at the same university pioneer in their field. Austrian immigrant Paul Lazarsfeld, the father of modern empirical sociology, directs Columbia University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research, one of four such institutes he founds, for three decades and presides over the two major American sociological societies. Noam Chomsky transforms


the modern study of linguistics as a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for half a century. Chomsky, often a critic of American foreign policy especially in Vietnam, links generic grammar to mathematical and logical principles. Other academic luminaries include Bruno Bettleheim (psychologist who worked with emotionally disturbed children), Eric Erickson (psychologist and psychoanalyst who developed theories of social development and coined the phrase “identity crisis”), and Abraham Maslow (founder of humanistic psychology, well known for his concept of a “hierarchy of human needs”). CULT: Dr. Theodore Geisel, a World War II political cartoonist (many of whose cartoons criticized Nazi Germany), enchants generations of children with his Dr. Seuss books. EDUC: Numerous Conservative congregations sponsor Solomon Schechter schools after World War II. By 1980, 500 Orthodox schools have enrolled more than 100,000 students. The National Society for Hebrew Day Schools, or Torah Umesorah, assists these schools. By the twenty-first century, Jewish day schools associated with the three major branches of Judaism as well as schools bridging the divide coexist and compete in numerous cities. Affiliated and unaffiliated summer camps also flourish across America. LIT: Numerous Jewish authors contribute to the American literary landscape, including Saul Bellow, Michael Chabon, Paddy Chayefsky, Alfred Kazin, Tony Kushner, Bernard Malamud, Arthur Miller, Cynthia Ozick, Chaim Potok, Elmer Rice, Philip Roth, Henry Roth, Neil Simon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Lionel Trillings, Alfred Uhry, and Wendy Wasserstein. Several receive the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and other honors. Critics like Irving Howe and Louis Rubin, Jr., augment the long list. Dear Abby (Abigail Van Buren), Ann Landers, and “Dr. Ruth” Westheimer give advice on life, family, and sexual behavior. LIT: Walter Annenberg, Carl Bernstein, David Broder, David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, David Kraft, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Anthony Lewis, Walter Lippmann, Victor Navasky, Martin Peretz, A. M. Rosenthal, A. H. Raskin,

Daniel Schorr, I. F. Stone, Cyrus L. Sulzberger, and Mortimer Zuckerman are among the leaders in print and television journalism. Their views span the political spectrum, although most tend to be liberal. MIGR: Jews, along with other Americans, move from small towns into the cities and from the cities into the suburbs. The Jewish-owned department and other retail stores in small towns and many inner cities gradually succumb to competition from Walmarts, malls, and the availability of credit cards. White flight in response to the black civil rights movement and desegregation also contribute to the decline of downtown businesses. Children go to college or get married and do not return to small towns that offer relatively few economic, social, and cultural opportunities. Migration away from the small towns repeats a familiar pattern of Jewish movement to communities with more ethnic institutions and potential partners for their children. Congregations and other Jewish institutions follow their clienteles’ geographic mobility. By the last quarter of the twentieth century, federations previously serving cities assume the titles and responsibilities of metropolitan/regional organizations. MIGR: William Leavitt pioneers the mass production of moderate housing in the suburbs. Leavittown homebuyers often obtain financing from G.I. Bill loans. The expansion of automobile ownership, the construction of the interstate highway system under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and pent-up desire from the Depression and World War II also spur the homeownership trend. Ethnic clusters in the suburbs gradually replace the inner city Jewish enclaves. PERF: Lee Strasberg’s Method School exerts tremendous impact on serious acting in the movies and theater. Actor Leonard Nimoy contributes to the Star Wars craze generated by television and movies when, as Dr. Spock, he bases the Vulcan hand greeting with separated fingers in a Jewish ritual blessing gesture. PERF: Paul Simon, Art Garfunckle, Burt Bacharach, Leonard Bernstein, Hal David, Neil Diamond, Bette Middler, Barry Manilow, Barbra

The Multicultural Society: 1949–Present

Streisand, Sophie Tucker, and Zero Mostel exemplify Jewish performers who excel as composers and singers. Shows like the Broadway hit Fiddler on the Roof universalize the immigrant Jewish struggle in balancing tradition with change. Arthur Murray and his studios teach dancing. Jews are deeply involved with the music industry, including folk and country music. Brothers Leonard and Philip Chess nurture the blues with their Chess Records label. Itzhak Perlman and Yasha Haifetz are perhaps the most renowned classical violinists. PERF: Jack Benny, Red Buttons, George Burns, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Eddie Cantor, Danny Kaye, the Marx Brothers, Sammy Levinson, Jerry Lewis, Jackie Mason, Henny Youngman, and other Jewish comedians take the vaudeville and borscht-belt (the Jewish hotel circuit in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York) tradition into pioneering television and movie comedy. This trend continues into the twenty-first century with such actors as Adam Sandler and Jerry Seinfeld. Early TV series like the Molly Goldberg Show (adapted from radio as television’s first sitcom) Americanize the Jewish immigrant experience. Comedian Lenny Bruce, Beat poet Alan Ginsberg, folk singer Bob Dylan, and actor/director Woody Allen critique society. Jewish movie stars include Lauren Bacall, Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas, and Eli Wallach. PHIL: Giving to Israel is a major source of Jewish identity, as is support for the Jewish state. Purchasing Israeli bonds and donating to the United Jewish Appeal become more important to many American Jews than attending services and observing ritual. Nonetheless, American Jews often disagree with and divide over Israeli policies. POPU: By the mid-1960s, six out of seven American Jews have been born in the country. As they move into the middle class and their educational levels rise, the number of children per family declines to virtually zero population growth. The dramatic expansion of intermarriage, especially during the last quarter of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, contributes to the low population growth. From the late 1940s into the 1950s, approximately 160,000 Jewish

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refugees/displaced persons from Europe augment the natural increase in the U.S. Jewish population. Tom Lantos, a survivor of the Holocaust, is later elected to the U.S. Congress. POPU: Jewish populations in the suburbs skyrocket. Miami’s Jewish population increases from 13,500 to 140,000 over a period of 20 years, as former soldiers stationed in south Florida during the war return after the war, as discrimination in housing ends, and as the area becomes a vacation haven. By 1975, the Jewish population reaches 250,000 in Miami. The Jewish population in Los Angeles goes from 160,000 in 1945 to 500,000 by 1965. RELI: Similar to their suburban Christian neighbors, Jews affiliate with congregations at higher levels than before. A seemingly inevitable movement toward Reform and especially Conservative congregations accelerates. In 1937–1938, the UAHC reports 290 Reform temples with 50,000 families. In 1956, these numbers increase to 520 temples with 255,000 families. By 1975, the UAHC counts 700 temples as members. Individuals establish 450 new Conservative congregations—more than the total of both Reform and Orthodox congregations—between 1945 and 1965. By the late 1950s, approximately 60 percent of the American Jewish population is affiliated with a synagogue. Yet the numbers do not reflect the reality that congregation membership often fails to translate into attendance or observance. RELI: European-born, Brookline, Massachusetts, Rabbi Joseph Sloveitchik and others interpret Orthodox Judaism as a compatible practice in modern America. In Man Is Not Alone (1951), Abraham Joshua Heschel argues for faith in God in the aftermath of the Holocaust. SCI: Richard Feynman receives a Nobel Prize as a physicist. Numerous Jews win Nobel Prizes for their contributions to science and medicine. SOCI: The rise into the middle class and the trend toward suburbanization begun during the years between the World Wars dramatically accelerate in the decades after World War II. These changes are dramatically accelerated by the


building of affordable housing and by increases in the number of Jews attending college, partly owing to passage of the G.I. Bill. 1940s–Mid-1960s AFRI: Kivie Kaplan and other Jewish philanthropists give to the NAACP and other African American organizations. Most major national Jewish organizations support the civil rights movement. In 1965, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel walks with Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and others across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in the walk to Montgomery. Jews are the majority of whites who participate in the Freedom Rides to desegregate the interstate bus system and in the Freedom Summers to educate Southern African Americans so that they can pass literacy tests and subsequently vote. They work for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Some Jewish activists come to the civil rights movement from broad concepts of social justice; others, from what they perceive as the prophetic mission of Judaism. Many believe that the fighting for African American rights supports human rights in general, a position that benefits Jews as well. ANTI: George Lincoln Rockwell leads the small American Nazi party. He travels from community to community, trying to instigate trouble. Local Jewish communities divide over their response to his efforts. Established communities leaders tend to want to ignore his visits so that Rockwell does not get publicity from confrontation. Remembering their ordeal under Hitler, Holocaust survivors openly protest against Rockwell. LIT: Although first published in 1942, the [Charlotte, North] Carolina Israelite draws its greatest circulations during the 1950s and 1960s before its demise in 1968. The paper’s editor, Harry Golden is a transplanted New Yorker who develops a love/ hate relationship with the South. He becomes a national figure by using humor to undercut racism and segregation. For example, he observes that blacks and whites often stand in line together but cannot sit together. To solve the problem and

achieve integration, his vertical integration plan advocates removing chairs from schools and lunch counters. The author of several books on Southern Jewish history, Golden also reaches the best-seller list with collections of his columns. 1950s CULT: Downplaying conflict and controversy, Daniel Boorstin (later head of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institute), Louis Hartz, and Richard Hofstadter (whose father is Jewish) lead the “consensus school” interpretation of American history. 1950 BUSI: Fifteen percent of all U.S. Jewish workers are employed in technical and professional fields. This percentage doubles by 1970. EDUC: Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Institute of Religion merge. Two years earlier, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations headquarters has moved from Cincinnati to New York City. GOVT: Joseph R. McCarthy (Democrat–Wisconsin) attacks alleged communists in speeches and through his Senate committee. Jewish fears that he will link them as a group with the Red Menace prove unwarranted. Roy Cohn serves as one of McCarthy’s principal advisors. Brooklynborn Rabbi Benjamin Schultz leads the American Jewish League Against Communism and supports McCarthy, as do many others. Some Jews give testimony when called before McCarthy’s committee, while others refuse to do so while citing their constitutional rights. Although McCarthy does not attack Jews as such, many movie and television writers who are Jewish are tainted with communism and blacklisted. INTL: Israel’s Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and the president of the American Jewish Committee Jacob Blaustein exchange statements outlining the post-state relationship between Israel and American Jewry. According to these statements, American Jews will support Israel financially and politically but will not meddle in internal affairs. Israeli officials will no longer treat American Jews as if they are living in exile and


will stop claiming that the only way to fulfill oneself as a Jew is to move to Israel. The agreement, which is reaffirmed by Ben-Gurion and his two successors, reflects the acceptance of the American Jewish establishment of a Jewish state, the major place the American Jewish Committee will take in relation to the Federation of American Zionists, and the desire of Israel to obtain widescale support. Although American Jews do attempt to influence Israeli policies and Israeli leaders continue to call for aliyah to Israel, the Blaustein/Ben-Gurion statements encourage positive interactions. LIT: Theodor Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality views prejudice as a psychological disorder. Criticized over many issues, it relates fascism to capitalism and raises unwarranted fears about antiSemitism inherent within the United States. MILI: Anna L. Rosenberg serves as assistant secretary of defense overseeing the military’s service personnel needs under General George C. Marshall. She helps draft the Universal Military Service and Training Bill. Rosenberg receives the Medal of Freedom (1945) and the United States Medal of Merit (1947)—the first woman to be so honored—for previous service. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson appoints her to the Commission on Income Maintenance that supervises welfare programs. RELI: Conservative and Reform rabbis influenced by Mordecai Kaplan’s ideas organize the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Fellowship. Its launch is followed by the creation of the Fellowship of Reconstruction Congregations in 1958, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1968. Into the twenty-first century, Reconstruction remains a small but important and innovative movement within Judaism. RELI: The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly issues a directive that allows members of Conservative congregations to ride cars to Sabbath services if they live beyond a reasonable distance from their synagogue. Conservative Jews can now also use electricity on the Sabbath. Both decisions break with the traditional bans concerning work on the Sabbath, reflect the realities of suburban lifestyles and practices, and further

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differentiate Conservative and Orthodox standards, as do mixed seating of men and women. RELI: Paula Ackerman replaces her husband as spiritual leader of Temple Beth Israel in Meridian, Mississippi, when he dies. Although lacking ordination, Ackerman is the first woman to serve in this capacity. 1951 LIT: Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny is published. The following year it receives the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It is later performed as a play and a movie. A decorated naval veteran of the Pacific and an Orthodox Jew, Wouk writes about maintaining traditional values and equating being Jewish and American in such books as This Is My God (1959), Marjorie Morningstar (1955), The Winds of War (1971), and War and Remembrance (1978). The two last novels become the basis for popular television miniseries. PHIL: Israel’s Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion inaugurates the State of Israel Bonds program in America. The proceeds of the bonds are used to develop Israel. Billions of dollars are raised through this program, which continues today. American communities routinely hold Israel Bonds dinners honoring community individuals. Giving and participating in the program both represents and acts as an important source of ethnic identity. RELI: Menahem Mendel Schneerson becomes the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, the head rabbi of a Hassidic sect centered in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Thought of as possibly the messiah at the time of his death (1993) by many followers, he dramatically expands the sect’s education and outreach efforts throughout the country and, with it, Orthodox spirituality into the twentyfirst century. Habad Lubavitcher college programs, study groups, congregation building, and public presence outpace those of the four major Jewish movements and illustrate the growing vibrancy and increased practice of traditional Judaism, somewhat paralleling the rise of Christian evangelicalism. Schneerson’s father-in-law and predecessor Rabbi Joseph Schneerson had transplanted the


group from Russia in 1940. Other Hasidic groups, including the Satmar and Karlin-Stolin, also immigrated to Brooklyn during the World War II era. Yehuda Bauer and his Volozhin Yeshiva move from Europe to China to escape the Holocaust and finally to the United States. The Crown Heights and Williamsburg sections of Brooklyn as well as Borough Park are home to large concentrations of Hasidic Jews. 1952 PERF: Two years after John Hersey’s novel The Wall, which deals with the Warsaw ghetto, appears, The Diary of Anne Frank is published in America. The book, which was written by a young Jew from Holland who perished in a Nazi concentration camp, is followed by a Pulitzer Prize–winning play adapted from the book. The diary humanizes the terror and inhumanity of the Holocaust. Partly because of the diary and partly through later testimonies and writings of survivors exemplified by future Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, American Jews deal openly with the calamity, which also enters into Christian consciousness. SCI: Selman Waksman wins the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for discovering streptomycin, a medication used to combat tuberculosis and other diseases. In 1943, Waksman’s experiments with chicken diseases and the soil unearth what he calls antibiotics—microorganisms that produce substances that kill germs in human beings. Waksman’s other experiments as head of Rutgers University’s department of microbiology and then founder and director of its Institute of Microbiology (1949) lead to the discovery of additional antibiotics. 1953 COMM: After their conviction in a trial in which the judge, prosecutor, and attorneys are Jewish, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed for disclosing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II. The case divides the American Jewish community. Many oppose the harsh sentence, but others fear the taint of communism in this era, which is characterized by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hearings and the Cold War. Most

Jewish organizations support the conviction. During an era in which American Jews are a part of the middle class, and coinciding with Soviet Union’s attempt to destroy Jewish culture and the Slansky trial in Czechoslovakia, the Rosenberg case places Jewish leftist radicals on the defensive. The final disillusionment comes three years later, when Nikita Khrushchev discloses the murderous nature of Stalin’s rule over the Soviet Union. LIT: Morris Kertzer publishes What Is a Jew? In this and other writings, the rabbi attempts to explain the basics of Judaism to a popular audience. ORGS: Isaiah Kenen starts the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs. Later renamed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel American lobby organization boasts more than 100,000 members in the first decade of the twenty-first century. 1954 EDUC: Stern College opens as the women’s college of Yeshiva University. Max Stern endows it in memory of his parents. Stern had emigrated from Germany in 1926 and started a bird seed and accessories company named for his native Hartz Mountains. He imports singing canaries and parakeets into the United States for pets. The company expands under his son Leonard to supply goods for other household pets. Leonard Stern owns the Village Voice, a New York cultural periodical. LIT: New York intellectual Irving Howe publishes Dissent, a short-lived democratic socialist quarterly that attacks McCarthyism and the conformity of the Eisenhower era. Howe later writes important histories in which he emphasizes the Yiddish culture, socialism, and labor union activities of eastern European Jews in New York. MILI: The Nautilus, the first atomic-powered submarine, crosses under the Arctic polar ice cap. Three years later it runs under the North Pole. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover leads the endeavor as head of the Navy propulsion division. A maverick who pushes Congress and the Navy for funding of these ships, he becomes known as the father of America’s nuclear submarine force. Rickover graduates at the top of his


Naval Academy class (1922) and retires 60 years later. He exerts influence on future president James E. “Jimmy” Carter, who serves under him and awards him the Medal of Freedom (1980). RELI: Yaacov Joseph Twersky, the Skverer rebbe, purchases land near Spring Valley, New York, as a community for his Hasidic followers. Named New Square in honor of the original location in Hungary, the town is incorporated seven years later. In 1974, the Satmar Hasidim establish Kiryas Joel, named for their leader, in upstate New York. 1955 ACCT: Will Herberg writes the best-selling Protestant–Catholic–Jew. The book, which compares the three religious heritages, both reflects and nurtures a change in American attitudes toward religious pluralism. In succeeding decades, the concept of a “Judeo-Christian tradition” gains wide-scale acceptance. In public opinion polls, most Americans report that they perceive Judaism as one of several religious and no longer define Jews as a separate race. LIT: The Herzl Institute begins publishing Midstream under the editorship of Shlomo Katz to foster discussion of challenges facing American Jews and Jewry. ORGS: The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations attempts to build consensus and bring together more than 50 agencies to speak with unity. ORGS: The Council of Jews from Germany establishes the Leo Baeck Institute on German Jewry with centers in Jerusalem, London, and New York. RELI: The Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative movement authorizes women to recite the prayers before the Torah reading and to read from the Torah during services. In 1973, it permits women to be counted in the 10 adults required for services. In these controversial actions and the earlier allowance for people to drive to synagogue on the Sabbath, Conservative Judaism breaks with tradition in an effort to maintain and expand membership. SCI: Immunologist Jonas Salk formulates a vaccine using dead virus to combat infantile

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paralysis (polio). In 1961, Albert Sabin develops an oral vaccine using live virus that promises lifetime immunity. The disease that has debilitated thousands of people each year is largely eliminated in the United States and much of the rest of the world through use of the Salk and Sabin vaccines. Salk founds and directs the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1963) in La Jolla, California, and conducts research on the immunological control of HIV/AIDS during the 1980s. 1956–1958 AFRI: A minority of Southern Jews are openly segregationists. These individuals include attorney Charles Bloch of Macon, Georgia, and speaker of the South Carolina house of representatives Solomon Blatt. A number of Southern rabbis and southern Jewish women openly support the civil rights movement and efforts to keep public schools open, but most of them prefer to work behinds the scenes than to march and demonstrate. They fear violence and boycotts of Jewish businesses. Several synagogues and Jewish community centers in the South are, in fact, bombed between these dates as well as the home of Jackson, Mississippi, Rabbi Perry Nussbaum. The bombings result from the racists’ perception that Jews support and lead the black civil rights movement. Some synagogues with outspoken rabbis are not threatened, whereas a few with rabbis who remain largely silent are attacked—a factor that underlines the anti-Semitic forces at work. Yet when Rabbi Jacob Rothschild’s Atlanta temple is bombed in 1958, Mayor William B. Hartsfield and the community rally around the congregation. Rothschild provides key leadership in the initially controversial, integrated dinner honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., when the latter receives the Nobel Peace Prize. Rabbi James Wax confronts the Jewish mayor concerning the garbage workers’ strike when King goes to Memphis, Tennessee, and is assassinated. Racists and anti-Semites, often one and the same people like J. B. Stoner of the Columbians and other organizations, claim that Jews and communists are behind the civil rights


movement. Thus many southern Jews remain silent and pressure national Jewish organizations to limit their efforts and alter their methodology. King attacks moderate ministers, including a rabbi, for their failure to speak out more forcefully in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” 1956 IMMI: Approximately 10,000 Jews emigrate from Hungary to the United States after the Soviet military puts down an attempted revolution. INTL: With the blessing of France and England, Israel attacks Egypt across the Suez Canal because Egypt limits passage through the Suez Canal to its allies. To the surprise and chagrin of many Israeli and American Jews, President Dwight D. Eisenhower pressures Israel to end hostilities and give up the Sinai. SOCI: Actress Marilyn Monroe marries playwright Norman Mailer. Just before the ceremony, Monroe converts to Judaism. The marriage symbolizes acceptance of American Jews and intermarriage, although the marriage ends in divorce and skeptics question the depth of Monroe’s conversion. Similar issues arise with Elizabeth Taylor’s conversion when she marries Mike Todd. 1958 AFRI: James J. Kirkpatrick, editor of the Richmond News Leader, links the NAACP with Jewish leadership. This claim is symptomatic of the anti-Semitic currents within the segregationist movement. LIT: Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought begins publication. 1959 ANTI: The first chapter of the John Birch Society opens. With anti-Semitic overtones, Robert Welch, the founder, perceives a communist conspiracy to overthrow the American government. BUS: Twenty-two-year-old Leon Levine opens the first Family Dollar Store in Charlotte, North Carolina. As a national chain, it eventually becomes a Fortune 500 company. Jews excel in the chain-store era of the last decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. Their companies include Baskin-Robbins,

founded by two brothers-in-law in Glendale, California; Shoney’s restaurants; and Federated Department Stores. IMMI: Fidel Castro overthrows Fulgencio Batista and becomes the communist dictator of Cuba. Jews, among many other Cubans in the middle and upper classes, flee the country. Many initially settle in Miami and create their own congregations. LIT: Philip Roth depicts the movement of Jews from Newark, New Jersey, into the suburbs in Goodbye, Columbus. In Portnoy’s Complaint and his other novels, Roth illustrates the disjunction of second-generation life. Feminists protest his depiction of suburban Jewish women. 1960–2010 AFRI: Many Jews and Jewish organizations are actively committed to the civil rights movement, and African American members of Congress tend to support Israel. Yet, divisions between the two groups become apparent. The Black Power movement repudiates white (largely Jewish) support. The perceptions and relationships turn negative when the civil rights movement moves North, confronting issues such as busing and local school control versus teacher unions. Violence in the cities often targets Jewish businesses, and the two groups clash over control of some neighborhoods. Many Jews oppose affirmative action programs because of their negative experience with quotas. Many African Americans agree with the “Zionism is Racism” resolution of the United Nations as they associate their struggle with the plight of the Palestinians. Jews are blamed for the resignation of Andrew Young as the American ambassador to the United Nations when they protest his meeting with Yasir Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Many Jews are disturbed by what they perceive as the anti-Semitic harangues of Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam and of the failure of African American leaders to repudiate his remarks, and they chafe at anti-Semitic comments made by the Reverend Jesse Jackson when he runs for the Democratic presidential nomination. All of these and other incidents are symptoms of underlying differences between the Jewish


Americans and African Americans. Anti-Semitism in American history is mild in contrast to persecution of Jews in Europe, and discrimination in the United States against African Americans, Native Americans, Catholics, and other groups. American Jews have arguably been the most successful ethnic/minority group in raising themselves upward economically and politically. This experience gives them a positive image of American possibilities. The experiences of slavery, segregation, and violent oppression with the continuation of discrimination even after the passage of civil rights laws and the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court provide a very different perspective for most African Americans. It is most difficult for each to feel the other’s sense of historical pain and suffering— which is the “greater victim”?—however much that tends to bring the two together. Moreover, the cooperation in the civil rights movement is not perceived as an equal partnership, although many Jews believe that by fighting for black rights they are also fighting for all minority rights, including their own. Even with their ongoing disagreements, few other groups are as liberal and loyal to the Democratic Party as African Americans and Jews. They tend to agree on most issues into the twenty-first century. BUSI: Beginning in 1960, Herbert and Melvin Simon of Indianapolis build shopping malls. By 2009, the Simon Property Group fully or partially owns 300 malls scattered across the United States, Europe, and Japan. Forbes magazine estimates Melvin Simon’s worth at $1.3 billion. The brothers also own the Indiana Pacers basketball team. COMM: Born in Fitzgerald, Georgia, attorney Morris Abram spearheads the effort to overturn the county unit system that gave disproportionate representation to rural districts in Georgia and other southern states. He presents the winning side before the Supreme Court in Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), one of the decisions that establish the “one man, one vote” principle. Abram later serves as president of the American Jewish Committee and the Council of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. He also

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serves as Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations in Geneva, as vice chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Human Rights, and as chairperson of the United Negro College Fund. He also founds Human Rights Watch. Abrams’ positions reflect both the ups and downs of black–Jewish relations from the 1950s through the 1980s. A strong supporter of civil rights, he nonetheless opposes quotas and puts down protests as president of Brandeis University. CULT: Bernard Bailyn wins two Pulitzer Prizes for history. In this and ensuing decades, other Jewish historians win the award and also preside over the major scholarly organizations in the field. The most partial listing is like a “who’s who” in the field—Herbert Aptheker, Sacvan Berkovitch, Stanley Elkins, Eric Foner, Herbert Gutman, Oscar Handlin, Michael Kammen, Gerda Lerner, Lawrence Levine, Leon Litwack, and August Meier—and ignores those who study American Jewish history. Jewish professors make major contributions in numerous other fields as well. Alan Dershowitz, for example, is a renowned attorney and Harvard law school professor. IMMI: Thousands of well-educated Jews emigrate from Israel to the United States for educational and economic opportunity. Unlike virtually every other Jewish immigrant group, these immigrants are not widely supported by Jewish communal organizations because their departure implies weaknesses in Zionism and Israel. LIT: Several moderate white Southern editors counsel their readers to accept Supreme Court civil rights decisions, including the integration of public schools as ordered in the Brown v. Board of Education case (1954). In their memoirs, several of these editors, including Hodding Carter in Mississippi, Harry Ashmore in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Ralph McGill in Atlanta, point to the influence of individual Jews or Jewish families early in their lives in opening their minds to cosmopolitan ideas and opposition to religious and racial persecution. Extremely close to a Jewish family in Chattanooga, McGill is also dramatically influenced by his experience in


Europe as a Rosenwald Fellow in 1938. McGill relates Hitler’s persecution of Jews to racism in the South. Later, this editor of the Atlanta Constitution writes a book on his travels to Israel. MIGR: Although the general movement of Jews has been from the small towns into the cities and then suburbs, many small-town Jewish communities thrive during the last decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. They include college towns that draw Jewish academicians, areas with medical centers that attract Jewish physicians, and retirement and vacation communities that appeal to maturing baby boomers. 1960s BUSI: At least 20 percent of Jewish males are professionals, according to Jewish population surveys conducted in numerous cities. In Boston, this percentage reaches one third. An estimated 27 percent to 54 percent are business owners. COMM: Many Jews are deeply involved in the variety of social and political movements associated with this decade. For example, Mark Rudd leads protests and demonstrations at Columbia University and heads the Students for a Democratic Society. Jews are actively involved in the black civil rights movement, in feminism, and in protests against American involvement in the Vietnam War. Some of the Chicago Eight tried for protests during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 are Jewish, as are their attorneys, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass. In many ways, the actions of these people against injustices and inequality reflect liberal and leftist forces within American society. Yet the disproportionate number of Jews also harks back to the radical/liberal tendencies of many in the first generation of eastern European Jewish immigrants. Many young people, too, perceive a disjunction between the social justice precepts inculcated in the post–World War II era in contrast to the materialism and complacency of their parents’ suburban, middle-class lifestyles. EDUC: Jewish studies programs open on many college campuses. They benefit from the black civil rights movement, the creation of African

American studies departments, and growing acceptance of ethnic pluralism. GOVT: Jews win election as mayors of Atlanta, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Portland, Omaha, New York, San Francisco, and numerous smaller cities. LIT: In 1960, Norman Podhoretz begins editing Commentary magazine. Initially he rejects the hard-line anticommunism pursued by his predecessor and supports a progressive agenda. But after Israel’s Six-Day War of 1967, he shifts to a Neoconservative agenda. To Podhoretz and those he publishes, the Holocaust message of the necessity of Jewish survival and the essential nature of the continued existence of a Jewish homeland with strong American support are paramount. RELI: Innovations are introduced to meet the challenges of declining religious observance, identity, and affiliation. Similar to the smallgroup fellowships for learning, dialog, and prayer introduced by Mordecai Kaplan, Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Encino, California, creates havurot, or fellowships within his congregation. In 1968, Havurat (“community of friends”) Shalom is established in Somerville, Massachusetts, by Rabbi Arthur Green. Small groups of Jews gather together to enhance spirituality and the knowledge and practice of Judaism, to pray and to socialize. In 1973, Havurat Shalom publishes The Jewish Catalog: A Do-It-Yourself Kit. The havurot movement draws on 1960s values to create and nurture ties to the religion beyond formal synagogue services. RELI: Many Jewish community organizations fear the participation of some young Jews in cults. To some extent, such participation suggests a lack of perceived spiritual outlets in mainstream Judaism. 1960 PERF: Otto Preminger directs the movie Exodus, based on Leon Uris’s best-selling novel published two years earlier. The film stars Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint. The positive box office response to this fictional account of a real event underscores American support for Israel. Movies such as this and Cast a Giant Shadow and other


books on Israel depict Jews as courageous freedom fighters in opposition to typical Holocaust images as submissive victims. Uris also writes Mila 18, a novel depicting the Warsaw ghetto uprising. 1961 COMM: The popular liberal Senator Abraham Ribicoff (Democrat–Connecticut) declines President John F. Kennedy’s offer of the U.S. Attorney General nomination because of fear of an anti-Semitic backlash and its impact on the first Catholic president. Ribicoff and Arthur Goldberg serve in Kennedy’s cabinet. Kennedy appoints Goldberg to the Supreme Court (1962). The election of a Roman Catholic to the presidency and the way in which Kennedy confronts the issue of allegiance during the campaign are positive signs of the decline of religious discrimination. COMM: The UAHC opens its Social Action Center in Washington, D.C. 1962 BUSI: Alex Grass purchases the Thrift D Discount Center in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He adds 50 stores in 6 years and changes the name to Rite Aid pharmacy when the chain goes public. Grass’s experiences are somewhat typical. Ritz photography stores are a later example of Jews creating chains in numerous fields since World War II. 1963 AFRI: Berlin-born Rabbi Joachim Prinz addresses the March on Washington audience and compares American racism with Nazi antiSemitism. ART: Maurice Sendak writes and illustrates what becomes a classic children’s book with serious themes, Where the Wild Things Are. His career as an author and illustrator spans the next half century. COMM: Betty Friedan writes The Feminine Mystique, which challenges the limits placed on women in their roles as housewives and mothers. Friedan founds the National Organization of

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Women with other activists. Jewish women, including Friedan, Susan Brownmiller, Phyllis Chesler, Andrea Dworkin, Shulamith Firestone, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin, serve in the forefront of the women’s rights movement during succeeding decades. EDUC: Reflecting its acceptance of Zionism, Hebrew Union College establishes a Jerusalem campus. After 1970, all rabbinical students are required to study for a year in Israel. In 1977, the Association of Reform Zionists of America is created. LIT: Hannah Arendt writes Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil concerning the kidnapping (1960) and trial (1962) by Israel of Adolph Eichmann, a key architect of the Holocaust. In her book, she attempts to explain how average individuals could resort to inhumane behavior and explain it as just following orders. This theme is brought out in movies that appear during the twenty-first century, including The Reader featuring Kate Winslett. Arendt’s emphasis on Jews accepting their fate instead of fighting back strikes a negative cord with many people. It is counteracted with pride in Israel’s continued survival against extreme odds, remembrances of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, and in popular culture through films such as one dealing with Jewish partisans, Defiance (2008). RELI: Rabbi Zalman Schachter starts B’nai Or (Sons of Light; later changed to P’nai Or [Faces of Light]) as a spiritual outreach program. In ensuing decades, Schachter launches the Jewish Renewal program, fostering prayer and spirituality with communities in numerous states and several foreign countries. His ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal sponsors a retreat center for workshops, meditation, and prayer in the Catskill Mountains. Schachter explores a variety of religious expressions and becomes especially taken with Tibetan Buddhism. 1964–1989 IMMI: The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry are founded to aid Jews who seek to emigrate from the Soviet Union. The battle waged by Soviet, American, and Israeli Jews, and supported by Senator Henry Jackson, among others, increases


in potency during the late 1960s and 1970s. More than 1.5 million Soviet Jews ultimately depart for the United States and Israel. Divisions over this wave of emigration abound between Jewish organizations, between these organizations and Israel, and within the American government. The emigrants leave both to seek economic opportunity and to flee Soviet oppression, but they are also divided in allegiance to Jewish practices, country of destination, and reception to assistance provided by American Jews. Nonetheless, marches and demonstrations supporting the “refuseniks” reflect new senses of empowerment and acceptance in the United States for American Jews. POPU: During the 1970s and 1980s, approximately 100,000 Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union to the United States. 1964 AFRI: The Civil Rights Act bars racial and religious discrimination in public accommodations. Hotels and restaurants that have previously excluded African Americans and Jews are forced to integrate. Three young activists—Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney (the first two Jewish and the third African American)—are murdered in Mississippi during Freedom Summer. Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Cleveland, Ohio, among others, is brutally beaten by opponents of the civil rights movement. GOVT: Senator Barry Goldwater (Republican– Arizona) runs for the presidency of the United States. Goldwater’s grandfather ran a dry goods store in Nevada. His father is Jewish but his mother is Protestant, and he is raised in her faith. LIT: Journalist/author David Halberstam wins the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Vietnam War. He reports on the civil rights movement and numerous other issues during a highly respected career. 1965 ACCT: In 1959, Pope John XXIII convenes Vatican Council II to reconcile tradition with contemporary conditions. Among the issues is interaction between Catholics and Jews. Representing the American Jewish Committee,

Abraham Joshua Heschel attempts to influence the Vatican II “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions” section of Nostra Aetate, to have the Church denounce anti-Semitic teachings (especially the charge of Jewish communal guilt for the crucifixion of Christ), and to accept Judaism as a legitimate religion whose followers should not be targeted for conversion. Although Heschel is not totally successful, a new era of dialog and cooperation ensues. An Orthodox rabbi, Heschel is nonetheless criticized by ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, who rejects interaction with Christians because he believes they ultimately want to convert Jews. COMM: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Protestant minister Richard J. Neuhaus, and Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan create Clergy Concerned About Vietnam. The organization, which advocates an end to the Vietnam War, quickly expands. During the next few years, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Synagogue Council also protest the war. Because President Lyndon B. Johnson strongly supports Israel and because Communist regimes reject religion, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations endorses America’s involvement in the war. GOVT: President Lyndon B. Johnson appoints Abraham Fortas to the Supreme Court. SPOR: Sandy Koufax, who shines as a future Hall of Fame left-handed pitcher, refuses to pitch the opening game of the World Series because it falls on Yom Kippur. His Los Angeles Dodgers lose the game. 1967 INTL: Israel wins the Six-Day War against seemingly overwhelming odds, as its forces are vastly outnumbered by the Arab armies. Israel takes control of the West Bank of the Jordan River, Syria’s Golan Heights, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, and the Old City of Jerusalem. The war gives American Jews a great sense of pride as Jews and enhances their feeling of solidarity with Israel. They raise $240 million in 1967 to aid Israel. Popular American support


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Personality Profile: Shlomo Carlebach In 1949, refugees Shlomo Carlebach and Zalman Schachter begin traveling to college campus on behalf of Lubavitch Rabbi Joseph I. Schneersohn. During the next several decades, Carlebach develops a huge following for his storytelling, songs, and spiritual outreach activities in behalf of the Lubavitch movement. In 1959, Carlebach releases his first album of songs mixing Hasidic and American folk traditions. In 1966, he sings at the Berkeley Folk Festival along with Joan Baez; Peter, Paul, and Mary; and Pete Seeger. Shortly thereafter, Carlebach starts the House of Love and Prayer in Haight-Asbury to meet the spiritual needs of the San Francisco counterculture. In 1977, he transplants many of his hippie followers to a moshav in Israel. Carlebach is the twentieth century’s most prolific and influential composer of Jewish music and a key ambassador of spirituality, especially to Jewish youth. He breaks boundaries, for example, by embracing women’s rights, protesting apartheid in South Africa, and associating with eastern religions (especially Buddhism). He symbolizes Orthodox outreach and the spiritual renewal espoused by many Jews during the last few decades. for Israel burgeons in this modern-day battle of “David versus Goliath.” Yet the long-term conflict over the land brings ups and downs in a complex web of various relationships. 1968 LIT: Robert Morse writes While 6 Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy. The book indicts the U.S. government and American Jewry for failing to save more Jews from the Holocaust. Other books taking similar positions, including those by David Wyman, follow. Wyman establishes an Institute for Holocaust Studies to foster understanding of U.S. government and American Jewish responses to the Holocaust. ORGS: Brooklyn Rabbi Meir Kahane establishes the Jewish Defense League to fight anti-Semitism and press American Jews to go to Israel. Kahane’s militancy draws some conservative followers, but mainstream Jewry views him as too radical. RELI: The Reconstructionist movement accepts as Jewish the offspring of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother so long as the child is raised as a Jew. Although contrary to traditional Jewish law, this position attempts to deal with the realities of intermarriage. 1969 CULT: The Association of Jewish Studies is organized to nurture this academic field.

PERF: Max Yasgur rents his 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskill Mountains 100 miles north of New York City as a music venue. The Woodstock music festival symbolizes the freedom of the hippie culture to some observers and its decadence to others. 1970s BUSI: According to the National Jewish Population Survey (1971), 60 percent of Jewish workers older than age 25 years are administrators, managers, professionals, or technicians. Studies completed in Boston, Massachusetts, and Columbus, Ohio, in 1975 find 70 percent of Jewish men and 50 percent of Jewish women are employed as managers, professionals, and proprietors. Jewish family income is double and triple, respectively, that of the general population in the same locations. EDUC: Reflecting the movement of Jews to southern California, Hebrew Union College, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Yeshiva University support campuses in Los Angeles. PERF: Early in the decade, some Jews protest the television program Bridget Loves Bernie, which stars a real-life couple, David Birney and Meredith Baxter Birney, for its positive and humorous portrayal of intermarriage. RELI: A gradual shift begins toward a “Jewish revival” or renewal that continues into the


twenty-first century. Many Jews and Jewish organizations turn toward spirituality, ethnic identity, and tradition. As part of the “identity politics” of the era, sectarians concerns seem to hold sway over the general social action agenda of the 1950s and 1960s. Counteracting this trend are declining rates of affiliation and declining religious practice and identity among many Jews. 1970 COMM: Bella Abzug (Democrat–New York) wins a seat in Congress. Abzug exemplifies the Jewish women of the 1960s generation who are active in women’s rights, workers’ rights, and social justice. She authors or co-authors the Sunshine Act, the Freedom of Information Act, the Right to Privacy Act, numerous laws protecting women against discrimination, and comprehensive child care legislation. CULT: Jews account for 20 percent of the historians at top universities. Before World War II, few could find jobs at the same schools. LIT: Author Cynthia Ozick issues “Toward a New Yiddish,” a manifesto encouraging literature that engages central traditions in Jewish identity and notes the continuing impact of American Jews on the larger American culture. 1971 ORGS: Mostly young, Conservative Jewish women establish Ezrat Nashim to lobby for the rights of women within Judaism, more equal participation, and elevation of women to positions of power. Jewish women apply feminism to the synagogues. 1972 RELI: Sally Preisand is the first America woman ordained as a Reform rabbi when she graduates from Hebrew Union College. This Reform rabbi is followed by Sandy Sasso in the Reconstructionist movement (1974) and Amy Eilberg in the Conservative movement (1985). By the twentyfirst century, women constitute more than half of the students at Hebrew Union College, and numerous women are trained and employed as cantors. SPOR: Swimmer Mark Spitz wins seven gold medals at the Munich Olympics and is viewed

as an American hero. Yet glory mixes with tragedy, as Arab terrorists murder 11 Israeli athletes during the Games. Thus the Olympics reflect both acceptance of Jews and continuing international anti-Semitism. 1973 BUSI: In 1973, Irving S. Shapiro is appointed chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the Du Pont Corporation of Wilmington, Delaware. Three years later, he chairs the Business Roundtable. Both positions mark major turning points for Jewish entrance into the U.S. corporate ranks after decades of discrimination. During this and ensuing decades, Jews hold important positions at Bank of America, Chrysler Motors, Colgate-Palmolive, Disney Studios, McDonald’s, and other corporations. They create and head companies including National Service Industries. During the 1980s, Warren Phillips serves as chief executive officer of the Wall Street Journal. GOVT: Henry Kissinger receives the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho, for brokering the end of American participation in the Vietnam War and the return of American prisoners of war. Kissinger serves as President Richard M. Nixon’s National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State. Kissinger and Nixon oversee the beginnings of de`tente with China and the Soviet Union, and initiate the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT; 1969). INTL: Its Arab neighbors attack Israel in the Yom Kippur War. After initial fear that the country will be over-run, many Americans take great pride in Israel’s victory and identify with Israel. President Richard Nixon gains Jewish support when he provides armaments to the Israeli forces, and he and Henry Kissinger mediate peace between Egypt and Israel thereby ending the Yom Kippur War. LIT: Carl Bernstein and Robert Woodward (who is not Jewish) receive the Pulitzer Prize for their reporting concerning Richard Nixon and Watergate. The Washington Post reporters write All the President’s Men (1974) and The Final Days


(1976), which focus on the scandal, corruption in the Nixon White House, and Nixon’s resignation. 1974 ORGS: The Jewish Feminist Organization is established (1974–1977). POPU: Wilmington is home to 96 percent of the estimated 7,000 Jews in Delaware. The state still boasts the eighteenth largest Jewish population in the country. 1976 EDUC: An estimated 80 percent of Jews attend college after high school. This rate far surpasses the next highest percentage for a religious group. At the time, less than 50 percent of the general population goes on to college after secondary school. INTL: Israeli forces rescue more than 100 Jewish hostages who are being held by pro-Palestinian terrorists at the Entebbe, Uganda, airport. American-born Jonathan Netanyahu is the only Israel soldier to die. The successful operation brings pride to American and Israeli Jews, who associate it with the celebration of America’s Declaration of Independence. 1976 LIT: Lillith magazine begins publication as a feminist journal. PERF: The first modern klezmer music recording is made. 1977 ANTI: Conflict bursts out in Skokie, Illinois, when neo-Nazis attempt to parade through a city where many Holocaust survivors live. Jews who normally support the American Civil Liberties Union now question its position on absolute freedom of speech in support of the neo-Nazis. CULT: Harriet Zuckerman conducts a survey in which she finds that Jews account for 27 percent of all American-raised Nobel laureates. INTL: President Jimmy Carter negotiates the Camp David Accord with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar

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Sadat. Israel returns the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, and decades of conflict between the two countries ends. Begin and Sadat receive Nobel Peace Prizes. SCI: Rosalyn Yalow receives the Nobel Prize in medicine for developing the RIA test to measure minute substances in tissues and blood for immunology. A physicist and engineer, Yalow conducts pioneering research in nuclear medicine. 1978 ACCT: The President’s Commission on the Holocaust brings added attention to Nazi atrocities. The following year, annual Holocaust commemorations begin in the Capitol Rotunda. BUSI: Arthur Blank and Bernard Marcus are the driving force behind the building of Home Depot. Launched in Atlanta, the company becomes the largest building supply chain in the world. Both men make major philanthropic contributions. After retirement in the twenty-first century from active management of the company, Marcus builds a center for autism and the Atlanta Aquarium, among other endeavors. Besides managing his family foundation, Blank purchases the Atlanta Falcons football team. PERF: The television mini-series, Holocaust, dramatizes the horrors of Nazi Germany. 1979 IMMI: The Shah of Iran is overthrown and virtually all of the country’s Jews flee to the United States (approximately 20,000) and Israel. RELI: The Conservative movement publishes Guide to Religious Practices, which emphasizes traditional observance, as does its statement of principles. 1980–2010 ART: Annie Leibovitz is perhaps the most renowned celebrity photographer. BUSI: The number of Jewish women attending college, graduate, and professional schools and then joining the work force increases dramatically. They find employment in the professions and in business, and also become congregation administrators, Jewish educators and school


Personality Profile: Shoshana Shoubin Cardin In 1965, Shoshana Shoubin Cardin presides over the Federation of Women’s Organizations of Maryland. In 1983, she becomes the first woman to head Baltimore’s Associated Jewish Charities. Her leadership is such that she is elected president of the national Council of Jewish Federations (the first woman to reach that height in the organization) and serves in both positions simultaneously for six months. Cardin goes on to chair or preside over the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (CLAL), the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, Jewish Telegraph Agency, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, and the United Jewish Appeal. On the secular side, Cardin is elected as a delegate to the Maryland Constitutional Convention (1967), fills governors’ appointments to state commissions, and serves in leadership positions at numerous colleges. She works on women’s rights issues as well as education, unemployment, health, welfare, and peace. Along the way Cardin advises, cajoles, and confronts presidents and heads of foreign governments. She establishes a leadership institute and a Jewish community high school. This is only a very partial listing of her activities and accomplishments. She is an ardent, although not uncritical, supporter of Israel and a strong advocate for Jewish identity and culture. Born in Tel Aviv, Shoshana Shoubin emigrates at an early age with her family. She obtains much of her education in Baltimore, marries Jerry Cardin (an attorney, real estate developer, and banker), teaches school, and then raises her children. Seemingly a totally modern woman representing the success of the woman’s right movement, Cardin is actually a transition figure. She lives the life of the volunteer and is supported by her husband’s business interests; people are required to ask and obtain his permission before she considers accepting a position. Nonetheless, she opens numerous doors and serves as a role model. directors, and directors of Jewish communal institutions. BUSI: George Soros makes a fortune as a hedge fund manager. Typical of the Jews in his socioeconomic class, the billionaire gives substantial donations to charity. COMM: Wall Street scandals involving Jews including Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken raise fears among some Jews about an anti-Semitic backlash. In reality, as happens again during the first decade of the twentieth century with Bernard Madoff and other financial miscreants, the public responds with anger toward the individuals and but not against Jews as a group. EDUC: In 1980, Michael I. Sovern is chosen president of Columbia University. Seven years later, Harold Shapiro becomes president of Princeton University. Jews will also serve as presidents of Bard College, the University of Chicago, the University of California, Harvard University, Dartmouth University, Massachusetts

Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, and numerous other colleges and universities, many of which had previously limited Jewish student enrollment. Symbolic of broad acceptance and continued committee to education, Jewish enrollment at select universities has already skyrocketed, as has the number of Jewish faculty. GOVT: Jews in public office include the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Secretary of Commerce, eight U.S. Senators, and approximately 30 members of the House of Representatives. Jews are elected to Congress across the country. Madeline Kunin serves as governor of Vermont, even though Jews are a tiny minority of the state’s population. Although most are liberal Democrats, Chip Hecht (Republican–Nevada) and Warren Rudman (Republican–New Hampshire) represent moderate conservatives. California and Wisconsin elect Jews to the Senate—Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, and Russell Feingold and Herb Kohl— repeatedly.


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Krauthammer, link their positions to strenuous, conservative support for Israel. ORGS: As more women work, they have less time for volunteering in Jewish clubs. Bars are also removed from their participation in secular women’s organizations. These trends are reflected in, for example, the decline in the number of National Council of Jewish Women sections and declining membership in Hadassah. Conversely, Jewish women assume positions formerly held only by men, including the presidencies of congregations, Jewish social services agencies, and national Jewish organizations. PERF: Several television situation comedies (sitcoms) portray intermarriages and positive relationships between Jews and non-Jews, including thirtysomething, Chicken Soup, and L.A. Law. Jewish characters appear regularly on many television comedies and dramas without protest from general viewers or Jewish organizations. Intermarriage and interaction are normal events. Shoshana Shoubin, age 14 or 15, photograph taken by German refugee Hayim Kutzer, circa 1941. Born in Palestine and raised in Baltimore, Shoshana Shoubin Cardin exemplifies a transition in American Jewish women’s history since World War II. Male leaders must request permission from her husband for her to assume important positions, even as she presides over local and then national Jewish federations, and, from there, most of the major national Jewish organizations. Shoubin negotiates with presidents and foreign heads of state on behalf of Israel, Soviet Jewry, and numerous other causes, and promotes Jewish tradition, educational and leadership programs, and universal rights. By the 1980s, women routinely serve as congregation and Jewish federation presidents, hold offices in national Jewish organizations, and staff Jewish organizations. Part of the secular women’s rights movement, they also actively participate in secular organizations and work outside of the home. (Courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Maryland, Baltimore [1987.196.001])

GOVT: Although the majority of Jews continue to identify with and vote for the Democratic Party and a liberal agenda, the ranks of conservative Republican Jews expand and become outspoken. Many of these people, like columnist Charles

PHIL: Reflecting back on the Nazi destruction of much of European Jewry, many Jews stress the message that such a tragedy should not happen again and insist that they will not remain silent in the face of these violations, as so many had done during the Holocaust. They become activists protesting apartheid in South Africa, and mass deaths and genocide in areas ranging from Rwanda to Darfur. PHIL: Many congregations open or support facilities for the homeless. POPU: In 1937, Jews make up approximately 3.7 percent of the American population. This share declines to approximately 3 percent in 1961 and to 2.5 percent at the beginning of the 1990s. The actual population decline estimates range between 250,000 and 400,000 from 1970 to the mid-1980s. Many of the Russian immigrants are only nominally Jewish because of decades of non-observance in the Soviet Union. Jews tend to marry later than other groups, and many Jews either remain single or divorce. Other than the high birth rate within the Orthodox community, Jews are not reproducing in sufficient numbers to sustain the population. They have the


lowest birth rate of any identifiable group in the United States. Conversely, the average age of Jews is older than that of the general population. Many Jewish organizations establish more senior citizens and singles programs, and fear for the survival of American Jewry. RELI: For all of the increases in Jewish adult education, Jewish day schools, the expansion of Orthodoxy, and especially the Lubavitcher movement, the rate of intermarriage with non-Jews rises to more than 50 percent, and synagogue affiliation rates plummet. Wide-scale acceptance of multiculturalism and the concomitant decline in anti-Semitism translate into very divergent choices as it did many times in American history, but never more so than during the last decades of the twentieth century. At the same time, the ranks of Orthodoxy expand with entrance of especially young Jews who had not been raised in Orthodox homes or previously followed strict tradition through Esther Jungreis’s Hineni (1972) outreach organization and Blu Greenberg’s efforts, among other activities. SOCI: Although some, especially elderly Jews are poor, most are members of the middle and upper classes. When Forbes magazine publishes its lists of the 400 richest Americans, Jews account for approximately 25 percent of the total. Factory work among Jews is essentially a thing of the past. SOCI: The rising divorce rate, rising intermarriage rate (reflecting trends in almost all American religious and ethnic groups), and low birth rate among Jews suggest the breakdown of the Jewish family and decline of ethnic identity. Reactions to Israel’s changing policies are also often mixed. Numerous Jewish organizations discuss these issues, conduct studies, develop outreach programs, and otherwise attempt to stem what is perceived as a decline in values and sense of ethnic identity. It becomes difficult for many Jews to perceive themselves as a persecuted minority of outsiders, regardless of the continued pleas for support from the various Jewish defense organizations. Some individuals and Jewish organizations question the very survival of Judaism in America’s future, while others applaud the acculturation of American Jews and their wide-scale acceptance

into America. Although initially a troubling decision, more Reform rabbis begin to perform mixed marriages in the hopes that the Jewish mate will not become alienated from the religion and that the children of the marriage will be more likely to be raised as Jews. 1980 ANTI: The president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Reverend Bailey Smith, states that God does not hear Jews’ prayers. Televangelist Jerry Falwell later supports this position at a convention of National Religious Broadcasters. Nonetheless, Falwell, his Moral Majority, and other evangelicals ardently support Israel. CULT: Aaron Lansky establishes the National Yiddish Book Center. SCI: Carl Sagan’s prize-winning PBS series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, begins. Sagan has served as a scientist for the space program from its inception during the 1960s. He makes numerous discoveries in astronomy, and heads Cornell University’s Laboratory of Planetary Studies before becoming associate director of that university’s Center for Radio Physics and Space Research. Sagan acts as the public face and popularizer of the natural sciences, especially astronomy and astrophysics, across four decades. 1982 INTL: Israel invades Lebanon in an attempt to halt the latter country’s attacks. Many American Jews experience a moral dilemma about continuing to support Israel when Lebanese Christian allies of Israel massacre Palestinians in two refugee camps. 1983 RELI: In a controversial move, the Reform movement recognizes children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers as Jewish so long as the children perform “formal acts of identification” such as attending Jewish schools. Negating matrilineal tradition, the action reflects the reality of widespread intermarriage and a desire to retain the children within Judaism. Nonetheless, the Reform movement also moves toward tradition with the reintroduction of bar mitzvahs for boys who


reach age 13 and greater use of Hebrew in services, among other practices. Conflict arises when Conservative and Orthodox leaders refuse to accept patrilineal descent and Israel rejects the right of return to persons with non-Jewish mothers. Under the leadership of Rabbi Alexander Schindler, the Reform movement creates a Commission on Reform Jewish Outreach that launches a campaign to encourage conversion of nonJewish spouses. Again Conservative, Orthodox, and Israeli religious leaders reject the program and refuse to accept such conversions. RELI: The faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary votes to accept women into the rabbinical school on the track to obtain ordination as rabbis. A splinter group opposing the decision creates the Union for Traditional Conservative Judaism in 1984. It later drops the word “Conservative” from its title. In 1989, this group establishes the Institute of Traditional Judaism as a seminary to train male rabbis. 1984 ANTI: Denver, Colorado, radio personality Alan Berg is murdered by extremists. Fear spreads about terrorist groups, especially those active in the western states, including the Posse Comitatus and the Aryan Nation. 1985 COMM: President Ronald Reagan presents Holocaust survivor and famed author Elie Wiesel with the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement. Wiesel gently chides the president for his forthcoming visit to a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, that includes the graves of Nazi Waffen SS troops. The following year Wiesel receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to combat world hatred. EDUC: The Union of American Reform Congregations endorses Reform Jewish day schools. RELI: The Wexner Heritage Program, which is followed by the Florence Melton Adult MiniSchools (1986) and the Me’ah (“100 [hours]”) Program (1994), reflects the dramatic growth in adult education and interest in Jewish learning.

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1986 LIT: Michael Lerner establishes Tikkun magazine as a left-wing alternative to Commentary and as a device to revitalize Judaism through social action. The magazine tends to be critical of Israeli policies and pro-Palestinian rights. SCI: The first Jewish astronaut and second American woman in space, Judith Resnick perishes in the Challenger disaster along with six others. Resnick had previously served as a mission specialist on the shuttle Discovery (1984). 1987 ACCT: Anne and Jonathan Pollard are convicted of espionage for providing classified U.S. government documents to the Israeli government. Regardless of communal fears, the case does not noticeably increase anti-Semitism or charges of dual loyalty. GOVT: Edward I. Koch is elected mayor of New York City, a position he holds for 12 years, and during which time he emerges as a national figure. Michael Bloomberg serves in the same capacity during the twenty-first century. INTL: The Palestine Liberation Organization launches the first intifada, or sustained use of violence against Israel and Israeli policies. 1988 ANTI: Former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and Louisiana legislator David Duke runs for the presidency of the United States in a campaign with racist and anti-Semitic overtones. Four years later, he unsuccessfully seeks the Republican nomination for the presidency. SPOR: Swimmer Dara Torres competes in her first of five Olympics. She ultimately wins four gold, four silver, and four bronze medals. 1988–1989 EDUC: At least 670 Jewish day schools enroll more than 184,000 students, twice as many as in the late 1960s. Paralleling Catholic and Protestant experiences, the parents seek outstanding educations for their children in an atmosphere geared toward retention of Jewish identity.


1989 POPU: Approximately 500,000 Israeli Jews reside in the United States. This wave of emigration reflects the competition for jobs and down cycles in the Israeli economy. Many of these emigrants, including those attending university, remain in the United States for short periods of time and then return to Israel. 1990–2010 GOVT: Jewish and Catholic justices constitute the majority on the United States Supreme Court. The Jewish justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter (who retires in 2009), and Stephen Breyer lean toward liberal and moderate decisions. Former Harvard Law School Dean and U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan joins the Court in 2010. IMMIG: As African majority rule takes place in South Africa and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Jews, among many other white Africans, flee the countries. Thousands of these emigrants settle in America. Like immigrants from Israel, their educations, economic experience, and Englishlanguage backgrounds ease their transition into American society. POPU: Like the general population, Jews have been moving from the snowbelt to the sunbelt South and Southwest and to the West. Whereas in the late 1940s only one-third of America’s Jews live outside of the Northeast, by 1990 almost half live in other regions. The Jewish population of the Washington, D.C., area increases from almost 20,000 to 165,000 during the 1990s as a consequence of dramatic expansion of and Jewish employee in the federal government in the decades after World War II. The Jewish population of California—particularly in San Francisco and Silicon Valley to the north, and the Los Angeles area to the south—skyrockets, as does the Jewish population along the southern coast of Florida. SPOR: Several Jews own major sports franchises. Allan “Bud” Selig serves as commissioner of major league baseball (1992 to the present) and David Stern as commissioner of the National Basketball Association (1984 to the present).

1990s GOVT: During President William “Bill” Clinton’s presidency, Alan Greenspan heads the Federal Reserve, and first Robert Rubin and then Lawrence Summers preside over the Treasury Department. 1991 AFRI: A Hasidic driver accidentally runs over seven-year-old Gavin Cato in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. African Americans attack Hasidim in protest and kill a student. 1993 ACCT: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opens in Washington, D.C. The museum, memorials throughout the country, annual remembrance days (Yom HaShoah), and the acclaim greeting the movie Schindler’s List, which is produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and depicts the story of a Christian factory owner in Germany who protects his Jewish workers during World War II, illustrate extensive interest in the Holocaust and a different sense of identity for American Jews. One of Hollywood’s most important producers and directors, Spielberg sponsors a Shoah project to record the stories of Holocaust survivors. (Into the twentyfirst century, Spielberg, David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg join together to found and manage Dreamworks, an entertainment production company.) Numerous survivors’ and children of survivors’ groups are created. During the twentyfirst century, movies on the Holocaust appear regularly and vie to obtain Oscar awards. INTL: The Oslo Peace Accords call for negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The accords are intended to lead to peace and a two-state solution. SOCI: The Reconstructionist movement defines homosexuality and heterosexuality as “normal expressions of human diversity.” 1995 CULT: The Jewish Women’s Archives is established in Boston. It becomes a major research and learning center on American Jewish women’s history.


EDUC: More than 700 colleges and universities offer Jewish studies courses. 1996 EDUC: The University of Judaism, the western branch of the Jewish Theological Seminary, separates from the parent body and starts a competing seminary, the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, partly because of its opposition to the ordination of women. GOVT: Richard Holbrooke, assistant secretary of state for Europe and former ambassador to Germany, helps broker the Dayton Accords to resolve the war in Bosnia. He is President Barack Obama’s special emissary to Afghanistan and Pakistan when he dies in 2010. 1999 RELI: The controversial Statement of Principles of Reform Judaism adopted in Pittsburgh by Reform rabbis supports return to ritual observance and tradition. Twenty-First Century CULT: Thousands of Jewish young adults visit Israel under the auspices of Birthright Israel, a program designed to strengthen their association with Israel and their identity as Jews. 2000 COMM: An Orthodox Jew, Senator Joseph Lieberman wins the Democratic vice- presidential nomination. Four years later, he is unsuccessful in his bid to gain the party’s presidential nomination. Lieberman’s rise and his support for President George W. Bush’s policies and Republican 2008 Presidential nominee John McCain symbolize the decline of anti-Semitism, but also exemplify a split within Jewish ranks that had been almost solidly Democrat since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Lieberman retains his Senate seat by running as an independent. Bush begins his term surrounded by “Neo-cons” (Neo-conservatives) including Scooter Libby, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz, all of whom influence his policies. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Jews continue to vote Democrat and liberal.

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INTL: President William “Bill” Clinton attempts to negotiate a settlement between Yasir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Ehud Barak, Israel’s Prime Minister. Arafat does not agree to the terms, although Barak is willing to give the PLO most of what it wants. The PLO launches the second intifada, or violent outbreak against what it views as Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. Israel violently retaliates. In the ensuing years, public opinion frequently goes against Israeli policies. The major American Jewish organizations advocate a united front in support of Israel. They tend to see the struggle as one for the very survival of Israel. POP: An estimated 5.5 million Jews account for approximately 2 percent of the nation’s total population. Twenty-one percent reside in the South, 22 percent in the West, 46 percent in the Northeast, and much of the rest in the Midwest. 2003 INTL: Israel builds a security wall separating Palestinian areas of the Gaza Strip and West Bank from Israel proper. World opinion tends to condemn the move but suicide bombings against Israelis decline dramatically. 2004 COMM: President George W. Bush and Congress support the celebration of 350 years of Jewish communal life in America. Such commemorations honor the early presence and contributions of Jews to the country. 2006 INTL: Hezbollah kidnaps Israeli soldiers, and, in return, Israel attacks Hezbollah, a group supported by Iran and Syria, in Lebanon. In 34 days of blooding fighting, Israel fails to destroy what the United States defines as a terrorist organization. After the ceasefire, Hezbollah refuses to disarm and gains greater power within Lebanon. LIT: Former President Jimmy Carter writes Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, and travels the country touting the book, although he refuses to debate his critics. Carter blames the Israeli–Palestinian conflict largely on Israel’s West Bank settlements and other policies that he equates with apartheid


in South Africa. He also lambasts American Jewish lobbying on behalf of Israel and what he considers the muzzling of criticism. He book receives widespread support but also substantial criticism.

those overseas with rehabilitation and training programs. Two years later, the organization celebrates its 130th anniversary.

ORGS: J Street is created to lobby on behalf of peace between Israelis and Palestinians based on a two-state solution. J Street is willing to openly disagree with Israeli policies and break ranks with the unified front that most major American Jewish organizations prefer to present. Through the J Street PAC, the group supports candidates for office who take similar positions.

2008 SPOR: Swimmer Jason Lezak wins an Olympic gold medal as the anchor of the 4-by-100 relay race. Two years later at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, Steve Meisler wins a gold in the fourman bobsled, and Charlie White claims a silver in ice dancing. White had followed the lead of Ben Agosto, who came in fourth in Vancouver but claimed the silver medal in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games.

2007 INTL: Hamas, which is defined by the United States as a terrorist organization, wins an American-supported election in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Hamas refuses to denounce violence and accept Israel’s right to exist, and Israel and the United States refuse to accept the legitimacy of Hamas. Hamas and Fatah (the PLO) fight over power; Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, while Fatah controls the West Bank (both under Israel). Israeli removal of Jewish settlements in Gaza—a move that is controversial in Israel—is welcomed by Hamas as a victory. ORGS: American ORT and Women’s American ORT merge into ORT America to better assist

2009 COMM: President Barack Obama appoints numerous Jews to his administration, including Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and economic advisor Lawrence Summers. Benjamin Bernanke heads the Federal Reserve Board. CULT: The National Museum of American Jewish History opens in Philadelphia. ORGS: The United Jewish Communities changes its name to the Jewish Federations of North America.

GLOSSARY Adjunta. The Sephardic name for a congregation’s board of trustees. Aliyah. Going up. It can mean going up to say a prayer during Torah service or moving to Israel. Anglican. The Anglican Church or Church of England; the Protestant church established by Henry VIII when he broke from the Catholic Church during the 1500s. It was accepted by the government as the established or government-supported, official church in Britain. Anti-Semitism. Prejudice or discrimination against Jews. It is not unusual for scholars today to spell the term “antisemitism” because it is somewhat misleading—there are many Semitic peoples besides the Jews. Ashkenazim. Jews from central and eastern Europe or their descendants. Ashkenzic. Having to do with Jews from central and eastern Europe or their descendants. Bar mitzvah. A coming-of-age ceremony for 13-year-old boys, who typically recite prayers, the Torah portion for the week, and possibly other aspects of the service. After bar mitzvah, the boys can be counted as part of a minyan. Bat Mitzvah. A coming-of-age ceremony for 12- or 13-year-old girls (although sometimes adult women also go through the ritual), who typically recite prayers, the Torah portion for the week, and other aspects of the service. The ceremony reflects changes from tradition. The first such ceremony in the United States took place in the 1920s, with the practice only gradually spreading among Reconstructionist, Reform, and Conservative congregations. Today it is widely accepted within these movements. Cantor. A person who chants or sings a Jewish religious service. Charter. The means by which British Parliament and kings and queens of England governed the 13 colonies in early America. Charters were initially given to individuals, groups of individuals, or companies. Conversos (New Christians). Jews who converted to Catholicism under pressure from the Inquisition in Spain and then Portugal. Crypto-Jews. Jews who outwardly converted to Catholicism to avoid torture, death, or expulsion at the hands of the Catholic Inquisition first in Spain and then in Portugal, but secretly practiced as much Jewish ritual as they could. The Inquisition used spies and torture to hunt down, condemn, and murder these individuals, so Crypto-Jews continued to flee the Iberian Peninsula.

130 Glossary

Dutch Reform Church. A Protestant church in Holland that followed the teachings of John Calvin. It was accepted by the government as the established or governmentsupported, official church. Enlightenment. A European intellectual movement during the 1600s and 1700s stressing individual rights and freedoms, limitations on government power, and checks and balances. Established Church. Historically, the religion accepted by a government as the official religion of the country. Typically, all people of that country, regardless of their religious beliefs, pay taxes that support the church; however, only church members can vote and hold office, and laws and policies reflect the teachings of the religion. Often members of other religions are targets of discrimination. Ghetto. A separate section of a city typically marked by poverty and discrimination. Haham. The Sephardic name for rabbi. Hazan (pl. Hazanim). The Sephardic name for cantor/reader. Huguenots. French Protestants who were often persecuted by Catholics. Inquisition. An investigation started by the Catholic Church to find and eliminate heretics— that is, those who disagreed with the teachings of the Catholic Church. Judaizers. During the Inquisition, some Crypto-Jews encouraged New Christians to secretly practiced Judaism. Such Judaizers became major targets of the Inquisition. Kahal Kadosh (K. K.). A Hebrew phrase meaning “holy congregation”; the term was typically used by colonial congregations. Kashruth. Jewish dietary laws that include, for example, rules and rituals for the slaughter of animals and the types of animals and fish that Jews are allowed to eat. Kosher. Food and foodways acceptable under Jewish dietary laws. Kristallnacht. Crystal Night; “The Night of Broken Glass.” On November 9, 1938, Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were destroyed and Jews beaten and murdered throughout Germany. This event marked a turning point in the Nazi assault on Jews and on American Jewish consciousness of the crisis. Landsmanshaften. Mutual aid societies that provide insurance, often religious services, and social interactions for people originating from the same eastern European communities. Matzo(s). Unleavened bread used by Jews during the Passover holiday to commemorate the idea that Jews fleeing Egyptian bondage under the Pharaoh did not have time to allow the dough to rise when making their bread. Minyan. Traditionally, the 10 Jewish men required to conduct formal religious services. Today, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform congregations also count women as meeting this quota. Moors. Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa. Parnas. The Sephardic name for a congregation president. Privateer. A person licensed or essentially authorized as a pirate by a government to prey on ships from other countries. Proprietor(s). One or more men who were given control under Parliamentary power over an English colony through a charter. The Lords Calvert, for example, were proprietors of colonial Maryland until their charter was taken away by Parliament.

Glossary

Rabbi. A Jewish religious leader, equivalent to a Protestant minister. Rabbis are traditionally ordained after they demonstrate sufficient knowledge of Jewish law and ritual. Rosh Hashanah. Literally “head of the year”; the Jewish New Year. Together Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur make up the High Holidays, the holiest days of the Jewish calendar. Sephardic. Having to do with Jews from Spain or Portugal or their descendants. The term is also used for Jewish culture from throughout the Mediterranean Sea area. Sephardim. Jews from Spain or Portugal or their descendants. The term is also used for Jews throughout the Mediterranean Sea area. Shammas or Sexton. A person who assists in the synagogue and helps maintain the building. Sukkoth. A Jewish holiday, also called the Festival of Tabernacles, that commemorates the wandering of Jews in the Bible after they left Egypt. Sutler. A person authorized to supply military troops. Synagogue. A building for Jewish worship. Reform Jews typically call their synagogues “temples”; Orthodox and Conservative Jews do not usually use this term because it refers back to the temples in ancient Jerusalem, which cannot be replaced today. The Yiddish word for synagogue is “shul.” Talmud. Centuries-old rabbinical commentaries on the Bible. Torah. The first five books of the Bible. Treyfa. Non-kosher food. This includes shellfish, pork products, meat not slaughtered according to Jewish law, and foods not prepared following religious guidelines. Trustees. Leaders of a colony under a trustee-type charter; specifically the leaders of the colony of Georgia. The trusteeship is a variation of the proprietary charter. A group of men are delegated power over the colony, but unlike other charters, their authority is limited to 21 years. Yiddish. A language mixing Hebrew and German used by Jews in Europe as a common language and brought over by immigrants to America. Yiddish culture, literature, and theater flourished in Europe and the United States and today are undergoing a revival. Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement). Part of the High Holidays, or the holiest days in the Jewish calendar along with Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year). Traditionally Jews fast from sundown to sundown on Yom Kippur and ask forgiveness for their sins. Zionism. Belief in a Jewish homeland in the area of the ancient nation of Israel. During the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, Zionism took a variety of forms and was hotly debated. Some people supported political Zionism (the creation of a nation), while others were cultural Zionists who saw a return to ancient Israel as part of a cultural renewal. Many Christian Zionists link the return of Jews to the Holy Land to the second coming of Christ. Many Zionists wanted Jews and Palestinian Arabs to live together in peace within one country, while others wanted to expand the borders to include all of the area of ancient Israel. Zionism acted as both a unifying and dividing force among American Jews, although the majority supported Israel when it declared its independence as a nation in 1948. Today most American Jews support Israel, although they may disagree concerning specific Israeli policies.

131


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134 Selected Bibliography

Ben-Ur, Aviva. Sephardic Jews in America. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Berlin, George L. “Solomon Jackson’s The Jew: An Early American Jewish Response to the Missionaries,” American Jewish History 71 (1981–1982): 100–28. Berman, Aaron. Nazism, the Jews and American Zionism, 1933–1948. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990. Berman, Lila Corwin. Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals and the Creation of an American Public Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Berman, Myron. Richmond’s Jewry, 1769–1976. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1979. Berrol, Selma. Immigrants at School: New York City, 1898–1914. New York: Arno Press, 1978. Berrol, Selma. Julia Richmond: A Notable Woman. Philadelphia: Balch Institute Press, 1993. Besmann, Wendy Lowe. A Separate Circle: Jewish Life in Knoxville, Tennessee. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2001. Best, Gary Dean. To Free a People: Jewish Leaders and the Jewish Problem in Eastern Europe, 1890–1914. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982. Biderman, Rose G. They Came to Stay: The Story of the Jews of Dallas, 1870–1997. Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 2002. Bingham, Emily. Mordecai: An Early American Family. New York: Hill & Wang, 2003. Bloom, Alexander. Prodigal Son: The New York Intellectuals and Their World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Blumberg, Stephan F. Going to America, Going to School: The Jewish Immigrant Public School Encounter in Turn-of-the-Century New York City. New York: Praeger, 1986. Bodian, Miriam. Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997. Borish, Linda. “ ‘The Cradle of American Champions, Women Champions . . . Swim Champions’: Charlotte Epstein, Gender and Jewish Identity, and the Physical Emancipation of Women in Aquatic Sports,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 21 (2004): 197–235. Borish, Linda. “ ‘An Interest in Physical Well-Being Among the Feminine Membership’: Sporting Activities for Women at Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Associations,” American Jewish History 87 (1999): 61–93. Borish, Linda. “Jewish American Women and Sport, 1880–1940s: An Historical Overview and Perspectives,” in Sport and Physical Education in Jewish History, G. Eisen, H. Kaufman, and M. Laemmer., eds. Netanya, Israel: The Wingate Institute, 2003, 56–69. Borish, Linda. “Settlement Houses to Olympic Stadiums: Jewish American Women, Sports, and Social Change, 1880s–1930s,” International Sports Studies Journal 22, no. 1 (2000): 5–24. Borish, Linda. “Women, Sports, and American Jewish Identity in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in With God on Their Side: Sport in the Service of Religion, Tara Magdalinksi and Timothy J. L. Chandler, eds. London: Routledge Press, 2002, 71–98. Borden, Morton. Jews, Turks, and Infidels. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Boyarin, Jonathan, and Daniel Boyarin, eds. Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Brandes, Joseph. Immigrants to Freedom: Jewish Communities in Rural New Jersey Since 1882. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1971. Breck, Alan DuPont. The Centennial History of the Jews of Colorado, 1859–1959. Denver: Hirschfield, 1961. Breibart, Solomon. Explorations in Charleston’s Jewish History. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2005.

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Brener, David. The Jews of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Lancaster, PA: Congregation Shaarai Shomayim and the Lancaster County Historical Society, 1979. Brietman, Richard, and Alan Kraut. American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987. Brilliant, Richard. Facing the New World: Jewish Portraits in Colonial and Federal America. New York: Prestel, 1997. Bristow, Edward J. Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight Against White Slavery, 1870– 1939. New York: Schocken Books, 1982. Burt, Robert. Two Jewish Justices: Outcasts in the Promised Land. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988. Cannato, Vincent J. American Passage: The History of Ellis Island. New York: Harper Collins, 2009. Cardin, Shoshana Shoubin. Shoshana: Memoirs of Shoshana Shoubin Cardin, Karen L. Falk, ed. Baltimore: Jewish Museum of Maryland, 2008. Caron, Vicki. Between France and Germany: The Jews of Alsace-Lorraine, 1871–1918. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. Cheyette, Bryan. Between “Race” and Culture: Representations of “the Jew” in English and American Literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Chyet, Stanley. Lopez of Newport: Colonial American Merchant Prince. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970. Cohen, Arthur A. A People Apart: Hasidism in America. New York: Dutton, 1970. Cohen, Beth B. Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007. Cohen, Martin. “The Sephardic Phenomenon: A Reappraisal,” American Jewish Archives 44 (Spring/Summer 1991): 1–80. Cohen, Naomi. American Jews and the Zionist Idea. New York: KTAV, 1975. Cohen, Naomi. Encounter with Emancipation: The German Jews in the United States. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1984. Cohen, Naomi. Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership. Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1999. Cohen, Naomi. Not Free to Desist: The American Jewish Committee, 1906–1966. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1972. Cohen, Sarah Blacher, ed. From Hester Street to Hollywood: The Jewish-American Stage and Screen. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1983. Cohen, Stan, and Keith Gibson. Moses Ezekiel: Civil War Soldier, Renowned Sculptor. Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co, 2007. Cohodas, Nadine. Spinning Blues into Gold: The Chess Brothers and Legendary Chess Records. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003. Cooney, Terry A. The Rise of the New York Intellectuals. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986. Cowett, Mark. Birmingham’s Rabbi: Morris Newfield and Alabama, 1895–1940. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1986. Davis, Moshe. The Emergence of Conservative Judaism: The Historical School in 19th Century America. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1963. Dawidowicz, Lucy S. On Equal Terms: Jews in America, 1881–1981. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1982. Dawidowicz, Lucy S. The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe. Boston: Beacon, 1967. Diamond, Sander E. The Nazi Movement in the United States, 1924–1941. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974. Diner, Hasia. Hungering for America: Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

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INDEX Abolitionism, 34, 39, 40, 42, 45, 47–48 Abram, Morris, 115 Abzug, Bella, 120 Ackerman, Paula, 111 Act Concerning Religion (1649), 3 Adams, John, 24, 26 Adler, Cyrus, 64–65, 69, 89 Adler, David and Solomon, 48–49 Adler, Felix, 57–58 Adler, Jacob, 68 Adler, Luther, 92 Adler, Stella, 92 Adorno, Theodor, 96, 111 African Americans, 36, 53, 126; civil rights movement, 85, 87, 101, 108, 110, 113–15, 116; in labor unions, 91; NAACP and, 77, 91, 100, 110, 114; schools for, 80; slavery and, 3, 7, 13, 17, 19, 22, 39, 42, 44, 47–48, 57, 58 Agudath Harabonin, 75 Agudath Israel of America, 101 Aleichem, Sholom, 68 ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, 117 Alexander, Abraham, 18 Alexander, Moses, 83 Alexander II, Tsar, 66 Alexander III, Tsar (Russia), 68 Alien and Sedition Acts, 26 Alien Deportation and Exclusion League, 99 Allen, Michael, 47 Amalgamated Clothing Workers, 81 American, Sadie, 71 American Council for Judaism (ACJ), 104 American Jewish Committee, 98, 110–11 American Jewish Congress, 66, 84, 98

American Jewish Historical Society, 70 American Jewish Publication Society, 42 American Mizrachi Women, 93 American Zionist Emergency Committee, 100 Ami, Ben, 84 Amoco, 78 Am Olam, 63, 66, 67 Anti-Defamation League, 81 Antin, Mary, 80 Arafat, Yasir, 127 Archdale, Joseph, 7 Arendt, Hannah, 117 Arthur, Chester, 67 Asch, Sholom, 68 Ashkenazim, 2; in Charleston, 18; conflict with Sephardim, 10, 14; ghettoization of, 3; governance and, 9; intermarriage by, 23; in New York, 8 Assimilation, 64, 77–78, 93 Avila, Abraham, 7

Baer, Max, 97 Bailyn, Bernard, 115 Balfour Declaration, 84 Bank of the United States, 95 Barak, Ehud, 127 Baron, Salo W., 94, 97 Barondess, Joseph, 73 Barsimon, Jacob, 4 Barton, Clara, 66–67 Baruch, Simon, 48 Bat mitzvahs, 88 Bauer, Yehuda, 112 Beef Trust, 75 Begin, Menachem, 121 Belasco, David, 65 Belmont, August, 37

Ben-Gurion, David, 106, 110–11 Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (Wallace), 59 Ben Israel, Menashe, 4 Benjamin, Jacob, 39 Benjamin, Judah P., 44 Berg, Alan, 125 Berger, Victor, 75 Berkowitz, Henry, 71 Berlin, Irving, 92 Berliner, Emile, 58 Bernheim, Isaac Wolfe, 55 Bernstein, Carl, 120–21 Berrigan, Daniel, 118 BetAliyah Bet, 102 Betto Boop, 95 Bierfield, S. A., 53 Bingham, Theodore A., 77 Blank, Arthur, 121 Blaustein, David, 73 Blaustein, Jacob, 78, 110–11 Bloch, Charles, 113 Bloch, Edward, 44 Blood libel, 40, 94 Bluestone, Joseph, 71 B’nai B’rith, Order of, 41, 53, 70, 73, 76, 99; Anti-Defamation League, 81, 104; German Jews and, 98; Hillel, 89 B’nai B’rith Women, 73 Board of Delegates of American Israelites, 47 Boas, Franz, 86 Boesky, Ivan, 122 Bondi, August, 39 Boone, Daniel, 20 Boorstin, Daniel, 110 Boxer, Barbara, 122 Brandeis, Louis, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87 Brauer, Joseph, 96 Brazil, 3 Breyer, Stephen, 126

150 Index Broun, Heyward, 92 Brown, David, 6 Brown, John, 39 Browne, Edward M. B., 58 Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 115 Buchanan, James, 46–47 Buffon, E. Gould, 45 Bush, George W., 127 Bush, Solomon, 21 Cahan, Abraham, 73 Camp David Accord, 121 Cantor, Jacob, 74 Cardin, Shoshana Shoubin, 122, 123 Cardozo, Benjamin N., 97 Cardozo, Isaac, 4 Carigal, Haim Isaac, 18 Carlebach, Shlomo, 119 Carolina Israelite, 110 Carter, Jimmy, 127–28 Carvalho, Solomon Nunes, 43–44 Castle Garden, 45 Castro, Fidel, 114 Catechisms, 32 Chaplin, Charlie, 102 Charter of Liberties of 1683, 6 Chicago Eight, 116 Chicago School of Economics, 107 Chomsky, Noam, 107–8 Circumcision, 2 Citizenship, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 21, 24, 28, 99 Civil Rights Act (1964), 118 Civil rights movement, 85, 87, 101, 108, 110, 113–15, 116 Civil War, 47–50 Clinton, Henry, 11 Clinton, William, 127 Coca-Cola Company, 99 Coddington, William, 6 Cohen, Henry, 76 Cohen, Isaac, 25 Cohen, Jacob I., 20, 22 Cohen, Jacob Raphael, 22 Cohen, Matilda Samuel, 38 Cohen, Morris Raphael, 97 Cohen, Moses, 7, 12 Cohen, Naomi, 88 Cohen, Nudie, 107 Cohn, Roy, 110 Columbus Platform, 100 Commentary, 105 Communism, 110 Concordia Societies, 51 Conference on Jewish Relations, 97 Congress for Jewish Culture, 106

Consensus school of history, 110 Conservative Judaism, 105 Constitution, U.S., 24, 25, 57 Conversos, 1 Coolidge, Calvin, 88 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, 6 Cordwainers Case (1782), 22 Coughlin, Charles, 77, 95, 101 Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds (CJF), 97, 104 Cresson, Warder, 41 Cromwell, Oliver, 4, 5 Crypto-Jews, 1, 2, 4–5 DaCosta, Abraham, 21 DaCosta, Anthony, 9 Da Costa, Isaac, 12, 18 DaCosta, Joseph, 4 D’Acosta, Joseph, 4 DaCosta, Solomon, 7 Darmstadt, Joseph, 20, 24 Daughters of Israel, 56 Davis, Jacob, 44 Debs, Eugene V., 75 De la Motta, Isaac, 19–20 De Leon, David, 48 De Lucena, Abraham, 4 De Lyon, Abraham, 9 De Palacios, Joseph, 16 De Sequeyra, John, 12 De Solis, Daniel, 28 De Solis, Jacob, 28 Diary of Anne Frank, 112 Dias Arais, David, 13 Dillingham Commission, 78 Donnelly, Ignatius, 70 Drachman, Bernard, 73, 75 Dreyfus, Benjamin, 66 Dubinsky, David, 73–74 Du Bois, W. E. B., 91 Duke, David, 125 Dutch West Indies Company, 3–4 Dzialynski, Morris, 66 Eckman, Julius, 43 Education, 121; adult, 125; African American, 80; Brandeis University, 106; colleges, 57, 122, 127; eastern Europeans in, 86; Etz Chaim Yeshiva, 68; Harvard, 56; integration and, 118; Isadore Newman Manual Training School, 76; Jewish Theological Seminary, 69; medical, 78–79; Orthodox, 91, 104; prayer and, 38; of rabbis,

82; schools, 8–9, 23, 27, 42, 108; teacher training, 72; in the west, 119; women in, 37 Einhorn, David, 45, 54, 68 Einstein, Albert, 98 Entebbe hijacking (1974), 121 Entertainment industry, 92; Depression-era, 95; movies, 74, 81, 94, 96, 104, 105, 109, 116–17, 126; music, 91, 92, 108–9; radio, 77, 89, 93–94, 95, 101, 125; theater, 12, 27, 65, 67–68, 84, 92; TV, 119, 121, 122, 123 Erickson, Eric, 108 Ethical Culture Society, 57–58 Etting, Reuben, 27 Etting, Solomon, 35 Expulsions, 1, 2, 48, 87 Ezekiel, Moses, 54, 55 Fair Labor Standards Act (1938), 100 Falk, Joshua, 47 Falwell, Jerry, 124 Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, 81 Feingold, Russell, 122 Feinstein, Dianne, 122 Feminism, 117, 120, 121 Ferber, Edna, 89 Feynman, Richard, 109 Fischel, Arnold, 47 Fleischer, Charles, 80 Fleishman, Samuel, 53 Fleishmann, Charles, 69 Flexner, Abraham, 78–79 Flexner Report, 78–79 Ford, Henry, 85–86 Fortas, Abraham, 118 Franco, Simon, 3 Frank, Leo, 80–81, 82 Frank, Rachel “Ray,” 70 Frankel, Jacob, 48 Frankfurt Circle, 96 Frankfurter, Felix, 97, 99, 100 Franklin, Benjamin, 13, 22 Franks, Abigail, 11–12 Franks, David, 10, 12, 13, 21 Franks, Isaac, 21 Franks, Jacob, 7 Franks, Moses, 10, 11, 13 Franks, Naftaly Hart, 10 Franks, Phila, 11–12 Fraternities, 86 Freemont, John C., 44 Freiberg, Julius, 56 Freidman, Milton, 107

Index 151 French and Indian War (1756–1763), 12, 13, 14 French Revolution (1793), 26 Friedan, Betty, 117 Friedman, Max, 47 Froman, Charles, 65 Fromm, Erich, 96 Fundamental Constitutions of 1669, South Carolina, 6 Gans, Joachim, 2 Garment industry, 62, 64, 73–74; Levi Strauss Company, 44, 50, 61, 107; strikes, 70, 77, 78, 93; unions in, 74, 81, 94 Gaunse, Joachim, 2 Geffen, Tobias, 99 Geisel, Theodore, 108 General Jewish Council for Jewish Rights, 99 Gentleman’s Agreement (movie), 105 Georgia, 9, 10–11, 16 Gersoni, Henry, 56 Ghettoes, 3 G.I. Bill, 109, 110 Gilman, Daniel Coit, 56 Gimbel, Adam, 41 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 126 Glogowski, Herman, 68 Goddard, Henry, 80 Gold, Michael, 97 Goldberg, Rube, 92 Golden, Harry, 110 Goldenson, Leonard, 96 Goldfaden, Abraham, 67–68 Goldfogle, Henry, 74 Goldstein, Herbert S., 84 Goldwater, Barry, 118 Gomez, Benjamin, 25 Gompers, Samuel, 58, 72 Goode, Alexander, 103 Goodman, Benny, 91 Goodman, Morris, 43 Gordin, Jacob, 68 Gottschalk, Louis Moreau, 40 Grade, Chaim, 101 Gradis, Abraham, 14 Grant, Madison, 61 Grant, Ulysses S., 48, 53 Grass, Alex, 117 Gratz, Barnard and Michael, 7, 17 Gratz, Hyman, 72 Gratz, Rebecca, 27, 35, 36 Great Depression, 94–95, 97 Greenberg, Hank, 98, 105 Greenberg, Hayim, 92 Greenebaum, Hannah, 71 Greenspan, Alan, 126

Griffith, Barbara, 94 Group Theater, 92 Guggenheim family, 87 Guttheim, James J., 49–50 Hadassah, 80–81, 87, 123 Halberstam, David, 118 Hamas, 128 Harby, Isaac, 27, 33, 34 Harding, Warrn G., 89 Harmonie Societies, 51 Harrison, Peter, 15 Hart, Ephraim, 26 Hart, Harry, 58 Hart, Jacob, 17 Hart, Joel, 26 Hart, Max, 58 Hart, Philip, 20 Hartz, Louis, 110 Hasidic Jews, 44, 111–12, 126 Havurot fellowships, 116 Hayes, Isaac, 42 Hayes, Moses Michael, 17 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, 69 Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), 69 Hebrew Theological Seminary, 87 Hecht, Chip, 122 Hendrick, Burton J., 87–88 Hendricks, Harmon, 28 Henry, Jacob, 28 Hep! Hep! riots (1819), 31 Herberg, Will, 113 Hersey, John, 112 Herskovits, Melville, 86 Hertz, John D., 93 Hertzberg, Anna, 80 Herzl, Theodor, 73 Heschel, Abraham Joshua, 109, 110, 118 Hessians, 20 Hezbollah, 127 Hillel, 89 Hillman, Sidney, 81 Hillquit, Morris, 75 Himrod, Charles, 83 Hirsch, Emil G., 45 Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 39 Hirschl, Samuel, 43 Hitler, Adolf, 77, 86, 91, 95, 96, 97, 101, 102; Olympics and, 99, 100 Holbrooke, Richard, 127 Holocaust, 98–99, 100–105, 107, 123; literature on, 112, 117, 119; memorials, 126; President’s Commission on, 121 Home Depot, 121

Horkheimer, Max, 96 Hospitals, 12, 45, 46, 66, 73; Civil War, 48; discrimination in, 52–53, 86, 91 Howe, Irving, 112 Huguenots, 7 Hungreis, Esther, 124 Hurwitz, Henry, 83 Hyde, Orson, 40 Immigration (Johnson-Reed) Act (1923), 89 Immigration Restrictive League, 71–72 Industrial Revolution, 61, 63, 64 Inquisition, 1, 2, 8 Isaacs, Isaiah, 17, 20, 22 Isadore Newman Manual Training School, 76 Israel. See also Zionism: creation of, 106; emigration from, 115; financial support of, 109, 110–11; Hebrew Union College in, 117; Lebanon invasion, 124; Six-Day War, 118–19; Suez Canal and, 114; wall by, 127 Israel, Isaac, 4 Israel, Michael and Sarah, 13 The Israelite, 44 Jabotinsky, Vladimir, 93 Jackson, Henry, 35, 117 Jacobs, Lionel, 53 Jacobs, Mark, 53 Jacobs, Solomon, 28 Jaffa, Sam, 49 Jaffe, Louis, 81 Jamaica, 5 James, Henry, 76 James II (England), 5, 6 Jefferson, Thomas, 12, 22, 23, 27, 38, 40 Jewelry business, 88–89 Jewish Defense League, 119 Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 82 Jewish Labor Committee, 98–99 Jewish Theological Seminary, 69, 75, 81, 85 Jewish Widows and Orphans Home (New Orleans), 45, 46 Jewish Women’s Archives, 126 The Jews in America (Hendrick), 87–88 Jew stores, 20 Jofstadter, 110 John Birch Society, 114 Johnson, Lyndon B., 118

152 Index Johnson Immigration Restriction Act (1921), 87 Joint Emergency Committee on European Jewish Affairs, 103 Jolson, Al, 94 Jonas, Abraham, 48 Jonas, Joseph, 29 Joseph, Jacob, 69 J Street, 128 Judah, Abraham, 12 Judah, Jacob, 12 Jung, Leo, 93 Kagan, Elena, 126 Kahana, Meir, 119 Kallen, Horace, 77–78 Kaplan, Kivie, 110 Kaplan, Mordecai, 88, 111 Karpeles, Leopold, 49 Kaskel, Cesar, 48 Kaufman, Benjamin, 84 Kaufman, Sigismund, 51 Kaufman, S. J., 92 Kempner, Isaac, 64 Kenen, Isaiah, 112 Kennedy, John F., 117 Kertzer, Morris, 112 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 110, 113, 114 Kirkpatrick, James J., 114 Kissinger, Henry, 120 Kiviat, Abel, 79 Knights of Zion, 73 Know Nothing Party, 31 Kobrin, Leon, 68 Koch, Edward I., 125 Kohl, Herb, 122 Kohler, Kaufmann, 45, 75 Kohut, Rebecca, 88 Kotler, Aharon, 103 Koufax, Sandy, 118 Krauskopf, Joseph, 72 Krauthammer, Charles, 123 Kuhn, Conrad, 51 Kuhn, Fritz, 95 Ku Klux Klan, 31, 81, 89 Kunin, Madeline, 122 Kunstler, William, 116 Kursheedt, Gershom, 37 Kursheedt, Israel Baer, 28 Labor unions, 51, 58, 68, 69, 79; garment industry, 81; Jewish Labor Committee, 98–99; racism in, 91; women in, 77 Lansky, Aaron, 124 Lansky, Meyer, 96–97 Lantos, Tom, 109

Lazarsfeld, Paul, 107 Lazarus, Emma, 44, 67 League of Women Voters, 84 Leavitt, William, 108 Leeser, Isaac, 35–36, 40, 41, 42, 53 Legal Defense Fund, 100 Legardo, Elias, 3 Lehman, Herbert, 89, 97 Leibovitz, Annie, 121 Leibowitz, Samuel, 97 Leisler, Jacob, 6 Lemlich, Clara, 77 Lenin, V. I., 87 Leonard, Benny, 93 Lerner, Michael, 125 Levi, Primo, 112 Levine, Leon, 114 Levi Strauss Company, 44, 50, 61, 107 Levy, Aaron, 22, 74 Levy, Asser, 4, 7 Levy, Benjamin, 20 Levy, Esther, 56 Levy, Hayman, 13 Levy, Isaac, 10, 25 Levy, Leo N., 75 Levy, Moses, 21–22 Levy, Moses Elias, 33–34 Levy, Nathan, 10, 12, 27 Levy, Simon M., 27 Levy, Uriah Philips, 38 Lewisohn, Ludwig, 97–98 Lezak, Jason, 128 Liberty Bell, 10 Lieberman, Joseph, 127–28 Liebman, Joshua Loth, 105 Lilienthal, Max, 39, 53 Lillith magazine, 121 Lincoln, Abraham, 43, 44, 48 Lindberg, Charles A., 102 Lindo, Moses, 15 Literacy tests, 83 Locke, John, 6 London, Meyer, 75 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 44 Lopez, Aaron, 7, 17, 18 Lopez, Moses, 13 Lopez, Sally, 37 Lopez Suasso, Alvarez, 9 Loth, Moritz, 56 Lovers of Zion, 69 Lowenberg, Isaac, 66 Lowenthal, Leo, 96 Lucena, James, 13 Lucy, M. H., 53 Lumbrozo, Jacob, 5 Lushington, Richard, 21 Lyon, Robert, 43

Madanic, Ben, 69 Madanic, Hyman, 69 Magnes, Judah, 77 Mailer, Norman, 102, 114 Maimonides Library Association, 43 Manhattan Project, 98 Manuel I (Portugal), 2 Marcus, Bernard, 121 Marcus, Jacob Rader, 105 Marcuse, Herbert, 96 Marks, Albert “Roley,” 35 Marks, Bevis, 4 Marriage, 2, 6, 23, 25, 31, 80; divorce, 47, 80, 123, 124; intermarriage, 11–12, 35, 36, 109, 114, 119, 123, 124–25 Married Women’s Property Act (1848), 42 Marshall, Louis, 76, 80, 89 Maslow, Abraham, 108 Masons, 5, 14, 17, 20, 28, 40, 41 Matrikel, 31 Mayer, Nathan, 53 May Laws (Russia, 1882), 67 McCarthy, Joseph R., 110, 112 McGill, Ralph, 115–16 Meisler, Steve, 128 Mendes, Henry P., 73, 75 Mendes, Isaac, 15–16 Mendez, Simon, 6 Mendis, Jacob, 7 Mendlowitz, Shraga Feivel, 104 Menken, Adah Isaacs, 47 Menorah Journal, 92 Meyer, Eugene, Jr., 88, 97 Meyers, Isaac, 12 Michelbacher, Maximilian J., 41–42 Michelson, Albert A., 77 Miley, Emmaline Quentz, 41 Milken, Michael, 122 Minis, Abraham and Abigail, 9–10, 17 Minis, Philip, 20, 36 Moı¨se, Penina, 37 Monroe, Marilyn, 114 Monsanto, Isaac Rodrigues, 14 Monsky, Henry, 103 Moorish architecture, 51, 52 Moos, H. M., 47 Mordecai, Abram, 23 Mordecai, Alfred, 48 Mordecai, Mordecai Moses, 17 Mordecai, Samuel, 36 Mordecais, Jacob, 27–28 Morgenthau, Henry J., Jr., 97 Morse, Robert, 119 Mortara, Edgara, 46–47 Moses, Abraham, 5 Moses, Alfred Geiger, 83

Index 153 Moses, Raphael J., 58 Muhlenberg, Henry Melchior, 21 Munish Olympics (1972), 120 Murder, Inc., 96–97 Murray, Arthur, 109 Mutual aid societies, 64 Myers, Abraham C., 48 Myers, Gustavus A., 35 Myers, Henry, 36 Myers, Moses, 22 Myers, Myer, 23 Myers, Naftaly Hart, 10 Myers, Samuel, 24 Myerson, Bess, 104 Nast, Thomas, 38 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 77, 91, 100, 110, 114 National Community Relations Advisory Council, 104 National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ), 93–94 National Council of Jewish Women, 71 National Emergency Committee for Palestine, 100 National Federation of Temple Youth, 100 Natwick, Grim, 95 Naustedler, Adam S., 33 Navigation Acts, 7, 16 Nazism, 95, 96, 97–98, 99–105, 110 Needleman, Joseph, 93 Neo-conservatism, 107 Neo-Orthodox school, 39 Neuhaus, Richard J., 118 New Amsterdam, 3–4, 5–6 Nimoy, Leonard, 108 Nixon, Richard, 120 Noah, Mordecai Manuel, 33, 47 Nones, Benjamin, 27 Northwest Ordinance, 23–24 Nott, Josiah, 43 Nudelman, Joseph, 63 Nunes, Abraham I., 28 Nun˜es, Daniel, 10 Nunes, Moses, 12 Oaths of allegiance, 49–50 Obama, Barack, 128 Ochs, Adolph S., 72 Office of War Information, 104 Oglethorpe, James, 9 Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 98 Orthodox Judaism, 109 Oslo Peace Accords (1994), 126

Osterman, Rosanna Dyer, 53 Otterbourg, Marcus, 43 Ozick, Cynthia, 120 Pacheco, Rodrigo, 9 Paine, Thomas, 21 Palestine Liberation Organization, 125, 127, 128 Paley, William S., 89 Parliament of Religions, 71 Passing of the Great Race (Ross & Grant), 61 Peddlers, 55, 62, 63 Peixotto, Benjamin F., 53 Pember, Phoebe Yates, 48 Penn, William, 6 Perezt, I. L., 68 Phillips, James M., 56 Phillips, Manuel, 28 Picon, Molly, 68 Pietersen, Solomon, 4 Pinchback, Pinckney B. S., 57 Pinski, David, 68 Pinto, Hazan Joseph, 13–14 Pinto, Isaac, 14 Pittsburgh Platform, 68 Podhoretz, Norman, 116 Political parties, 86, 89, 99, 115, 127–28 Pollard, Anne and Jonathan, 125 Pollock, Friedrich, 96 Pollock, Solomon, 21 Population, 21, 25; Amsterdam, 3; Ashkenazim vs. Sephardim, 19; Brazil, 3; British America, 8; Charleston, 32–33; Civil War, 48; by employment, 94; England, 12; Iberian Peninsula, 1; New York, 6, 9; 19th-century, 39, 65; Philadelphia, 10; 20th century, 109, 123–24, 126, 127; urban, 59, 74; West Coast, 43 Powdermaker, Hortense, 95 Poznanski, Gustavus, 37–38 Preisand, Sally, 120 Preminger, Otto, 116 Prinz, Joachim, 117 Progressive Clubs, 93 Progressivism, 89 Prohibition, 84–85 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 85–86 Pulitzer, Joseph, 64 The Quiver, 27 Rabbinical Council of America, 93, 99 Racism, scientific, 80

Randolph, Philip, 91 Rankin, John E., 87 Raphall, Morris, 47 Reagan, Ronald, 125 Reconstruction, 49–50, 53, 55 Reconstructionist Judaism, 88, 102, 111, 119, 126 Red Cross, 66–67 Reformed Society of Israelites, 34 Reform Judaism, 28–29, 32, 34, 38–39, 42; central Europeans and, 72; Columbus Platform, 100; Einhorn and, 45; influence of, 52; on intermarriage, 124–25; national conferences, 54; Pittsburgh Platform, 68; prayer books in, 46; Statement of Principles of, 127 Resnick, Judith, 125 Revel, Bernard, 82 Rhode Island, 5, 6, 14–15, 16, 17 Ribicoff, Abraham, 117 Ribiero, Samuel Nun˜es, 9, 10 Rice, Abraham, 40, 41 Richmond, Julia, 68 Rickover, Hyman G., 112–13 Ring, Helene Meyer, 99 Rivera, Abraham Rodriguez, 15 Rivera, Jacob Rodrigues, 17, 18 Rivington, James, 26 Rockwell, George Lincoln, 110 Romania, 53 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 92, 101 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 77, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103 Roosevelt, Theodore, 75, 76 Rose, Ernestine, 42 Rosenberg, Anna L., 111 Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel, 112 Rosenbluth, Robert, 87 Rosenstein, Hank, 105 Rosenwald, Julius, 80 Ross, Barney, 99 Ross, E. A., 61 Roth, Henry, 98 Roth, Philip, 114 Rothschild, Jacob, 113 Ruch, Benjamin, 25 Rudd, Mark, 116 Rudman, Warren, 122 Ruffner, Henry, 35 Russia, 3, 39, 54, 59–60, 61–63; Am Olam movement, 63, 66, 67; immigration from, 31, 41, 43, 44, 46, 48, 56, 64, 95–96, 123; May Laws, 67; revolution in, 75–76, 84; Zionism in, 87

154 Index Sabin, Albert, 113 Sachar, Abram L., 106 Sadat, Anwar, 121 Sagan, Carl, 124 Salk, Jonas, 113 Salomon, Haym, 21, 23 Salvador, Francis, 9, 18 Salvador, Joseph, 7 Sanger, Lehman, 50, 51, 52 Sapiro, Aaron, 85–86 Sarnoff, David, 89 Schachter, Zalman, 117, 119 Schaffner, Joseph, 58 Schiff, Jacob, 71 Schindler, Alexander, 125 Schindler’s List, 126 Schneeberger, Henry W., 56 Schneerson, Joseph I., 101, 111–12 Schneerson, Menahem Mendel, 111–12 Schneiderman, Rose, 79–80 Schocken, Zalman, 102 Schurz, Carl, 43 Scopes, John, 93 Scott, Walter, 35 Scottsboro Boys, 97 Second Great Awakening, 28, 32 Seixas, Gershom Mendes, 8, 17, 21, 23, 26–27 Selig, Allan “Bud,” 126 Seligman, Joseph, 58 Sendak, Maurice, 117 Settlement houses, 69, 72 Shapiro, Harold, 122 Shapiro, Irving S., 120 Shaw, Irwin, 102 Sheftall, Benjamin, 10, 12, 13 Sheftall, Levi, 17, 20 Sheftall, Mordecai, 11, 17, 20, 21 Sheftall, Moses, 27 Sheftall, Sheftall, 20 Shils, Edward, 107 Shulberg, Budd, 102 Simon, Carrie, 81 Simon, Herbert, 115 Simon, Melvin, 115 Simon, Joseph, 11 Simons, George A., 84 Simon Weisenthal Center, 107 Simson, Solomon, 26 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 101 Six-Day War (1967), 118–19 Slavery and slave trade, 3, 7, 13, 17, 19, 22, 44, 57, 58; abolitionism and, 34, 39, 40, 42, 45, 47–48 Sloveitchik, Joseph, 109

Smith, Alfred, 89 Smith, Joseph, 40 Sobel, Jacob Zvi, 55–56, 58 Socialist Party of America, 75 Society for Destitute Strangers, 22 Society for the Advancement of Judaism, 88 Solomon, Hannah, 72 Solomons, Adolphus, 47, 66–67 Solomons, Alexander, 16 Solomons, Haym, 16 Soloveitchik, Joseph Dov, 98 Sonneschein, Rosa, 72 Soros, George, 122 Souter, David, 126 Sovern, Michael I., 122 Soviet Union, 87, 91, 105, 107, 112, 117–18, 123 Spanish Civil War, 99 Spielberg, Steven, 126 Spitz, Mark, 120–21 Stalin, Josef, 87, 91, 101, 107 Stamp Act, 16 Standard Clubs, 51 Stark, James, 36 Statute for Religious Freedom, 23 Steinmets, Charles, 65 Stern, David, 126 Stern, Horace, 89 Stern, Max, 112 St. George Society, 12 Stoner, J. B., 113–15 Stowe, William M., 45 Strasberg, Lee, 108 Straus, Oscar S., 76 Strauss, Isidor, 71 Strauss, Levi, 44 Strauss, Nathan, 66 Strinsky, Simeon, 92 Stuyvesant, Peter, 3–4 Sulzberger, Mayer, 65 Summers, Lawrence, 126 Surasky, Abram, 65 Sutro, Adolph, 64 Swope, Gerard, 87 Sylvester, James Joseph, 40 Syrkin, Nahman, 92 Szold, Henrietta, 80, 81

Taft, William H., 80 Test oaths, 22 Thirty Years War (1618–1648), 2 Tomashevsky, Bessie, 68 Tomashevsky, Boris, 68 Torres, Dara, 125 Touro, Isaac, 14, 21

Touro, Judah, 44–45 Triangle Shirtwaist Company, 77, 79–80 Trilling, Lionel, 99 Truman, Harry S., 105 Turner, Nat, 36 Tuska, Simon, 47 Twersky, Yaacov Joseph, 113 Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), 56, 72, 117 Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, 73 Union Prayer Book, 68 United Company of Spermaceti Candlers, 15 United Hebrew Charities, 54 United Jewish Appeal, 101, 105, 109 United Order of True Sisters, 42 United Palestine Appeal, 93, 94 United Service Organizations (USO), 84 United Synagogue of America, 81 Untermeyer, Louis, 97 Untermeyer, Samuel, 98 Urban League, 91 Uris, Leon, 116, 117 U.S./Russian Treaty (1932), 80 Valentine, Simon, 7 Van Buren, Martin, 40 Vance, Zebulon, 50 Vatican Council II, 118 Vietnam War, 118 Waksman, Selman, 112 Wald, Lillian, 72 Wallace, Lewis, 59 Ward, Robert, 71–72 War for Spanish Secession (1739), 10 War of 1812, 33 Washington, George, 24 Waterman, Sigmund, 40 Weil, Gertrude, 85 Weiner, Theodore, 39 Weinglass, Leonard, 116 Weinreich, Max, 101 Weizmann, Chaim, 86, 89, 106 Wesley, John, 10 Wheeler, Burton K., 102 Whitlock, Philip, 68 Wiesel, Elie, 112, 125 Willkie, Wendell, 101 Willowski, David, 76 Wilson, Woodrow, 81, 83

Index 155 Wirth, Louis, 94 Wise, Annie Teitlebaum, 68 Wise, Isaac Mayer, 39, 44, 46, 56, 57 Wise, Stephen S., 77, 86, 87, 100 Wolf, Simon, 47, 53, 75 Wolfson, Harry A., 94 Women’s Christian Temperance Union, 57 Women suffrage, 84, 88 Woodstock festival, 119 Woodward, Robert, 120–21 Workmen’s Circle/Arbeiter Ring, 71 World Jewish Congress, 99 World War I, 81–82, 84 World War II, 98–105

World Zionist Organization, 73, 82, 86, 87 Wouk, Herman, 111 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 98 Wyman, David, 119 Yalow, Rosalyn, 121 Yasgur, Max, 119 Yezierska, Anzia, 93 Yiddish, 32, 62, 83, 91, 106, 112; literature, 120; publishing in, 55–56, 58, 73, 91–92; theater, 67–68, 92 Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO), 101 Yom Kippur War (1973), 120 Young Israel movement, 81

Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 57, 71 Yulee, David Levy, 41–42 Zale, Morris, 88 Zangwill, Israel, 77–78 Zhitlovsky, Chaim, 92 Zionism, 40, 62–63, 73, 89, 93; Balfour Declaration and, 84; Brandeis and, 82, 83, 87; Central Conference in, 86–87; Hadassah in, 80–81; Lewisohn on, 97–98; Orthodox, 78; as racism, 114–15; Russian Jews and, 87 Zionist Organization of America, 103 Zuckerman, Harriet, 121 Zukor, Adolph, 96


About the Author MARK K. BAUMAN, Professor of History (retired) at Atlanta Metropolitan College and recipient of a Ph.D. degree from Emory University, is the author of biographies of Southern Methodist Bishop Warren A. Candler and Rabbi Harry H. Epstein as well as editor of Quiet Voices: Southern Rabbis and Black Civil Rights and Dixie Diaspora: An Anthology of Southern Jewish History. He received the Outstanding Career Service award from the Georgia Association of Historians and the Samuel Proctor Outstanding Career in Scholarship in Southern Jewish History award from the Southern Jewish Historical Society among other honors. Founding and current editor of Southern Jewish History, Bauman studies the interactions within and between ethnic/minority groups.

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