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refugees
from Portuguese Brazil who arrived in New Amsterdam in the summer of 1654 were
the first Jews to settle in the American colonies. At the time of the
Revolution, the American Jewish population numbered no more than 1500. There
were no more than five or six Jewish congregations in the colonies, no Jewish
newspapers, and not a single rabbi.
During the early 19th century, the Jewish
population remained small. By 1812, New York City had the new nation's largest
Jewish population--just 50 families. In 1816, the first organized Protestant
efforts to convert Jews to Christianity began. These efforts sensitized
American Jews to their distinctive identity and encouraged Jewish communities
to establish their own schools, hospitals, and synagogues and appoint foreign
rabbis as religious leaders.
By 1850, migration from central and western
Europe increased the Jewish population from approximately 2,000 to 50,000.
Thousands of immigrants from Germany, Poland, and Hungary in the 1850s tripled
the size of the Jewish population to 150,000 in 1860.
A major challenge American Jews confronted with
adapting religious orthodoxy to the realities of American life. Most early 19th
century Jews lived in small towns where it was impossible to obey traditional
laws--towns lacked synagogues, a mikvah (ritual bath), a ritual circumciser,
and a kosher butcher. Many Jews also found it impossible to refrain from
working on the Jewish Sabbath, Saturday.
As early as 1824, a group of Jews in Charleston,
S.C., organized one of the country's first Reformed congregations. Their aim
was to modify "such parts of the prevailing system of Worship, as are
inconsistent with the present enlightened state of society, and not in accordance
with the Five Books of Moses and the Prophets." Contrary to Orthodox
practice, they worshipped from an English language prayer book, with their
heads uncovered, while listening to instrumental music. In later years, many
other congregations "Americanized" their rituals by playing organ
music during services, permitting men and women to worship side by side,
allowing men to prayer without the traditional prayer shawl and head covering,
and establishing confirmation ceremonies for boys and girls.
American Jews avidly formed community and
charitable institutions. Even small towns that lacked Jewish congregations had
a B'nai B'rith, a lodge and benevolent society founded in 1843, or a Young
Men's Hebrew Association (the first was formed in 1854), as well as separate
orphan asylums and burial societies.
Jews experienced less discrimination and
persecution than Catholics or Mormons in part because of their small numbers
and in part because the Jewish community was scattered and decentralized--and
therefore did not provoke fears of conspiracy. Equally important, Jews shed
distinctive dress and shaved long sideburns that set European Jews apart. But
Jews vigorously resisted threats to their identity, strongly opposing state laws that limited membership in state
legislatures to Christians and that banned commerce on the Christian Sabbath,
as well as efforts of Christian missionaries to convert them and the recitation
of Christian prayers in public schools. Pre-Civil War Jews engaged in an uneasy
balancing act: they struggled to shed the appearance of foreignness and
modernize Jewish traditions while sustaining Jewish distinctiveness.