American Jewry to 1881
The American Jewish experience was unique in certain respects, but also
combined elements of the Dutch, English, and French, and German Jewish
experiences. The United States was the first country born of the principles of
the European Enlightenment, and free from a medieval legacy: royalty, aris-
tocracy, an established church, or any tradition of hereditary privilege.
Because it was a frontier, all available human resources were needed to build a
new world; thus, there was less room for discrimination against minorities
such as Jews.
By the eve of the Revolutionary War, approximately 3,000 Jews lived in
North America, mostly of Sephardic descent. They generally lived inconspic-
uously. Occasionally they played a prominent role in public life, such as
Hayim Solomon, who financed the Revolutionary War.
Legally, American Jews were never emancipated. Owing to legal acts such
as the Virginia Act of 1785 and then the First Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, they enjoyed legal equality as Americans from the beginning of
the republic. There were exceptions. Some states maintained religious restric-
tions. In New Hampshire, no non-Protestants could hold office until 1877.
In Maryland, a Jew Bill in 1819 reflected the fact that equal rights for Jews
were still not a foregone conclusion.
Most Jews in early America lived on the eastern seaboard; the largest
Jewish communities were in Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston. In
general, there was little in the way of organized Jewish life. There were no
rabbis, and only a few cantors and ritual slaughterers. The Jews were highly
acculturated and religiously lax. There were isolated attempts toward com-
munal organization, notably by Rebecca Gratz. By 1820, most synagogues
were Sephardic, but the majority of Jews were Ashkenazic Jews from central
Europe pretending to be Sephardic.
In retrospect, America Jewry probably would have disappeared through
assimilation and intermarriage if a second, larger wave of around 250,000
Jewish immigrants had not arrived between the 1820s and the 1880s. These
Jews arrived as part of a larger wave of nearly 3 million Europeans who
arrived in America during the mid-nineteenth century. Most of the Jews
came from Bohemia, Moravia, and the German states to escape the renewed
restrictions on Jews after the defeat of Napoleon, or in search of economic
opportunity. Generally these Jews were poorer than those who had come
before 1820. Most were engaged in petty commerce, and were moderately
traditional but acculturated. Most were German speaking with some secular
education, particularly the Jews from Bohemia and Moravia, many of whom
had studied in one of the Normalschulenset up by Joseph II.
Whereas the earlier wave of Jews settled on the eastern seaboard, those
belonging to this wave moved west with the general westward movement,
founding Jewish communities west of the Appalachians such as those of Albany
The age of enlightenment and emancipation, 1750–1880 165