The history of the Jews in the United States dates back to the 1600s and 1700s. Jewish communities have existed in the United States since colonial times, and Jewish individuals lived in various cities before the American Revolution. Early Jewish communities were primarily composed of Sephardi immigrants from Brazil, Amsterdam, or England, many of them fled from the Inquisition.
Private and civically unrecognized local, regional, and sometimes international networks were noted in these groups in order to facilitate marriage and business ties. This small and private colonial community largely existed as a community of undeclared and non-practicing Jews, a large number of them decided to marry non-Jews. Later on, the much larger community of Ashkenazi Jews which would populate New York, New Jersey, and other regions of what would become the United States altered these demographic trends.
Until the 1830s, the Jewish community of Charleston, South Carolina, was the largest in North America. In the late 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, many Jewish immigrants arrived from Europe. For example, many German Jews arrived in the middle of the 19th century, established clothing stores in towns across the country, formed Reform synagogues, and were active in banking in New York. Immigration of Eastern Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, in 1880–1914, brought a new wave of Jewish immigration to New York City, including many who became active in socialism and labor movements, as well as Orthodox and Conservative Jews.
Refugees from diaspora communities in Europe settled in the United States both during and after the Holocaust and after 1970, Jews from the Soviet Union settled in the United States. Politically, American Jews have been especially active as part of the liberal New Deal coalition of the Democratic Party since the 1930s, but recently, a conservative Republican constituent has emerged within the Orthodox Jewish community. They have displayed high education levels and high rates of upward social mobility compared to several other ethnic and religious groups inside America. The Jewish communities in small towns have declined, with the population becoming increasingly concentrated in large metropolitan areas. Antisemitism in the U.S. has endured into the 21st century, although numerous cultural changes have taken place such as the election of many Jews into governmental positions at the local, state, and national levels.
In the 1940s, Jews comprised 3.7% of the national population. , at about 7.1 million,An estimated figure, as the following sources claim the number to be either slightly higher or lower:
the population is 2% of the national total—and shrinking as a result of low birth rates and Jewish assimilation. The largest Jewish population centers are the metropolitan areas of New York (2.1 million), Los Angeles (), Miami (), Washington, D.C. (), Chicago (), and Philadelphia ().
Jewish immigration
The Jewish population of the U.S. is the product of waves of immigration primarily from diaspora communities in Europe; emigration was initially inspired by the pull of American social and entrepreneurial opportunities, and later was a refuge from the peril of ongoing antisemitism in Europe. Few ever returned to Europe, although many have made aliyah to Israel.Hasia Diner, The Jews of the United States (2004) Statistics demonstrate that there was a myth that no Jews returned to their previous diasporic lands, but while the rate was around 6%, it was much lower than for other ethnic groups.
From a population of 1,000–2,000 Jewish residents in 1790, mostly Sephardic Jews who had immigrated to Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, the American Jewish community grew to about 15,000 by 1840,Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 366 and to about 250,000 by 1880. Most of the mid-19th century Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants to the U.S. came from diaspora communities in German-speaking states, in addition to the larger concurrent Christian German migration. They initially spoke German, and settled across the nation, assimilating with their new countrymen; the Jews among them commonly engaged in trade, manufacturing, and operated dry goods (clothing) stores in many cities.
Between 1880 and the start of World War I in 1914, about 2,000,000 Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews immigrated from diaspora communities in Eastern Europe, where repeated pogroms made life untenable. They came from Jewish diaspora communities of Russia, the Pale of Settlement (modern Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova), and the Russian-controlled portions of Poland. The latter group clustered in New York City, created the garment industry there, which supplied the dry goods stores across the country, and were heavily engaged in the trade unions. They immigrated alongside non-Jewish eastern and southern European immigrants, which was unlike the historically predominant American demographic from northern and western Europe; records indicate between 1880 and 1920 that these new immigrants rose from less than five percent of all European immigrants to nearly 50%. This change caused renewed nativist sentiment, the birth of the Immigration Restriction League, and congressional studies by the Dillingham Commission from 1907 to 1911. The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 established immigration restrictions specifically on these groups, and the Immigration Act of 1924 further tightened and codified these limits. With the ensuing Great Depression, and despite worsening conditions for Jews in Europe with the rise of Nazi Germany, these quotas remained in place with minor alterations until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
Jews quickly created support networks consisting of many small synagogues and Ashkenazi Jewish Landsmannschaften (German for "Territorial Associations") for Jews from the same town or village.
Leaders of the time urged assimilation and integration into the wider American culture, and Jews quickly became part of American life. During World War II, 500,000 American Jews, about half of all Jewish males between 18 and 50, enlisted for service, and after the war, Jewish families joined the new trend of suburbanization, as they became wealthier and more mobile. The Jewish community expanded to other major cities, particularly around Los Angeles and Miami. Their young people attended secular high schools and colleges and met non-Jews, so that intermarriage rates soared to nearly 50%. Synagogue membership, however, grew considerably, from 20% of the Jewish population in 1930 to 60% in 1960.
The earlier waves of immigration and immigration restriction were followed by the Holocaust that destroyed most of the European Jewish community by 1945; these also made the United States the home for the largest Jewish diaspora population in the world. In 1900 there were 1.5 million American Jews; in 2005 there were 5.3 million. See Historical Jewish population comparisons.
The most recent Jewish communities to immigrate to the United States en masse are Iranian Jews, who primarily immigrated to the United States in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, and Soviet Jews who came after the fall of the Soviet Union.Jewish Migrations to the United States in the Late Twentieth Century,
On a theological level, American Jews are divided into a number of Jewish denominations, of which the most numerous are Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism and Orthodox Judaism. However, roughly 25% of American Jews are unaffiliated with any denomination.National Jewish Population Survey 2000-2001, Conservative Judaism arose in America and Reform Judaism was founded in Germany and popularized by American Jews.
Colonial era
Luis de Carabajal y Cueva, a Spanish conquistador and converso first set foot in what is now Texas in 1570. The first Jewish-born person to set foot on American soil was Joachim Gans in 1584. Elias Legarde (a.k.a. Legardo) was a Sephardic Jew who arrived at James City, Virginia, on the Abigail in 1621.The Jews in America 1621-1977, A Chronology & Fact Book" Compiled and edited by Irving J. Sloan. Published in 1978 by Oceana Publications, Inc. Dobbs Ferry, New York. According to Leon Huhner, Legarde was from Languedoc, France, and was hired to go to the Colony to teach people how to grow grapes for wine.William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, Volume 25, The College, 1917, Page 297 Elias Legarde was living in Buckroe in Elizabeth City in February 1624. Legarde was employed by Anthonie Bonall, who was a French silk maker and vigneron (cultivator of vineyards for winemaking), one of the men from Languedoc sent to the colony by John Bonall, keeper of the silkworms of King James I.volume 31 of The New England Historical and Genealogical Register published 1877, By David Clapp, 1877, page In 1628, Legarde leased on the west side of Harris Creek in Elizabeth City.Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary Josef Mosse and Rebecca Isaake are documented in Elizabeth City in 1624. John Levy patented of land on the main branch of Powell's Creek, Virginia, around 1648, Albino Lupo who traded with his brother, Amaso de Tores, in London. Two brothers named Silvedo and Manuel Rodriguez are documented to be in Lancaster County, Virginia, around 1650.American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Volume 20 American Jewish Historical Society, 1911 None of the Jews in Virginia were forced to leave under any conditions.
Solomon Franco, a Jewish merchant, arrived in Boston in 1649; subsequently, he was given a stipend from the Puritans there, on the condition that he leave on the next passage back to Holland. In September 1654, shortly before the Jewish New Year, twenty-three Jews from the Sephardic community in the Netherlands, coming from Recife, Brazil, then a Dutch colony, arrived in New Amsterdam (New York City). Governor Peter Stuyvesant tried to enhance his Dutch Reformed Church by discriminating against other religions, but religious pluralism was already a tradition in the Netherlands and his superiors at the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam overruled him.In one of his letters, Stuyvesant wrote: "The deceitful race—such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ—be not allowed to further infest and trouble this new colony." A year later, he informed the Dutch West India Company of the status of the Jews: "Considering the Jewish nation with regard to trade: They are not hindered, but trade with the same privilege and freedom as other inhabitants. Also, they have many times requested of us the free and public exercise of their abominable religion, but this cannot yet be accorded to them. What they may be able to obtain from your Honors time will tell." In 1664 the English conquered New Amsterdam and renamed it New York.
Religious tolerance was also established elsewhere in the colonies. The charter of the colony of South Carolina granted liberty of conscience to all settlers, expressly mentioning "Jews, heathens, and dissenters."Charleston, S.C. As a result, Charleston, South Carolina has a particularly long history of Sephardic settlement, and and which, in 1816, numbered over 600—then the largest Jewish population of any city in the United States.Charleston, S.C. Sephardic Dutch Jews were also among the early settlers of Newport (where Touro Synagogue, the country's oldest surviving synagogue building, stands), Savannah, Philadelphia and Baltimore.See 1, 2 , etc. In New York City, Congregation Shearith Israel is the oldest continuous congregation started in 1687 having their first synagogue erected in 1728, and its current building still houses some of the original pieces of that first.
Revolutionary era