Jews in the building of the United States

The history of Jews in the United States begins in 1654 with the arrival in New Amsterdam (future New York) of a small group of Sephardic Jews fleeing the Portuguese reconquest of Brazil. During the colonial period and in the aftermath of independence, the community remained modest, structured around Sephardic congregations such as that of Newport, to which George Washington addressed a celebrated letter in 1790 guaranteeing religious freedom. Immigration from Central Europe, predominantly German-speaking, transformed the community in the mid-nineteenth century and gave rise to American Reform Judaism. Then, between 1880 and 1924, more than two million Jews from Eastern Europe, fleeing pogroms and poverty, settled in major cities, notably in the Lower East Side of New York. The constitutional separation of Church and State offered Jews a framework for integration without equivalent in Europe, enabling them to play a leading role in the economy, politics, the arts, the sciences, and the law.

Sources & resources

• Jewish Virtual Library ↗
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan