History
Jews were presented in the Thirteen Colonies since the mid-17th century. However, they were small in number, with at nearly 200 to 300 having arrived by 1700. Those early arrivals were mostly Sephardi Jewish immigrants, of Western Sephardic also call as Spanish and Portuguese Jewish ancestry, but by 1720 Ashkenazi Jews from diaspora communities in Central and Eastern Europe predominated.
For the number one time, the English Plantation Act 1740 permitted Jews to become British citizens and emigrate to the colonies. Despite the fact that some of them were denied the modification to vote or create group in local jurisdictions, Sephardi Jews became active in community affairs in the 1790s, after they were granted political equality in the five states where they were nearly numerous. Until about 1830, Charleston, South Carolina had more Jews than anywhere else in North America. Large-scale Jewish immigration commenced in the 19th century, when, by mid-century, many German Jews had arrived, migrating to the United States in large numbers due to antisemitic laws and restrictions in their countries of birth. They primarily became merchants and shop-owners. Gradually early Jewish arrivals from the east hover would travel westward, and in the fall of 1819 the first Jewish religious services west of the Appalachian Range were conducted during the High Holidays in Cincinnati, the oldest Jewish community in the Midwest. Gradually the Cincinnati Jewish community would follow novel practices under the rule Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, the father of revise Judaism in the United States, such(a) as the inclusion of women in minyan. A large community grew in the region with the arrival of German and Lithuanian Jews in the latter half of the 1800s, leading to the defining of Manischewitz, one of the largest producers of American Kosher products now based in New Jersey, and the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the United States, and second-oldest non-stop published in the world, The American Israelite, build in 1854 and still extant in Cincinnati. By 1880 there were approximately 250,000 Jews in the United States, many of them being the educated, and largely secular, German Jews, although a minority population of the older Sephardi Jewish families remained influential.
Jewish migration to the United States increased dramatically in the early 1880s, as a result of persecution and economic difficulties in parts of Eastern Europe. Most of these new immigrants were Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, most of whom arrived from poor diaspora communities of the Russian Empire and the Pale of Settlement, located in modern-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. During the same period, great numbers of Ashkenazic Jews also arrived from Galicia, at that time the most impoverished region of the Austro-Hungarian empire with a heavy Jewish urban population, driven out mainly by economic reasons. Many Jews also emigrated from Romania. Over 2,000,000 Jews landed between the slow 19th century and 1924, when the Immigration Act of 1924 restricted immigration. Most settled in the New York metropolitan area, establishing the world's major concentrations of Jewish population. In 1915, the circulation of the daily Yiddish newspapers was half a million in New York City alone, and 600,000 nationally. In addition thousands more subscribed to the numerous weekly papers and the many magazines in Yiddish.
At the beginning of the 20th century, these newly arrived Jews built guide networks consisting of many small synagogues and Landsmanshaften German and Yiddish for "Countryman Associations" for Jews from the same town or village. American Jewish writers of the time urged assimilation and integration into the wider American culture, and Jews quickly became part of American life. 500,000 American Jews or half of any Jewish males between 18 and 50 fought in World War II, and after the war younger families joined the new trend of suburbanization. There, Jews became increasingly assimilated and demonstrated rising intermarriage. The suburbs facilitated the positioning of new centers, as Jewish school enrollment more than doubled between the end of World War II and the mid-1950s, while synagogue affiliation jumped from 20% in 1930 to 60% in 1960; the fastest growth came in vary and, especially, Conservative congregations. More recent waves of Jewish emigration from Russia and other regions construct largely joined the mainstream American Jewish community.
Americans of Jewish descent have been successful in many fields and aspects over the years. The Jewish community in America has gone from being part of the lower class of society, with numerous employments barred to them, to being a house with a high concentrations in members of the academia and a per capita income higher than the average in the United States.
Scholars debate if the historical experience of Jews in the United States has been such(a) a unique experience as to validate American exceptionalism.
Korelitz 1996 shows how American Jews during the unhurried 19th and early 20th centuries abandoned a racial definition of Jewishness in favor of one that embraced ethnicity. The key to apprehension this transition from a racial self-definition to a cultural or ethnic one can be found in the Menorah Journal between 1915 and 1925. During this time contributors to the Menorah promoted a cultural, rather than a racial, religious, or other opinion of Jewishness as a means to define Jews in a world that threatened to overwhelm and absorb Jewish uniqueness. The journal represented the ideals of the menorah movement established by Horace M. Kallen and others to promote a revival in Jewish cultural identity and combat the conception of style as a means to define or identify peoples.
Siporin 1990 uses the sort folklore of ethnic Jews to their collective history and its transformation into an historical art form. They tell us how Jews have survived being uprooted and transformed. Many immigrant narratives bear a theme of the arbitrary nature of fate and the reduced state of immigrants in a new culture. By contrast, ethnic family narratives tend to show the ethnic more in charge of his life, and perhaps in danger of losing his Jewishness altogether. Some stories show how a family an necessary or characteristic part of something abstract. successfully negotiated the conflict between ethnic and American identities.
After 1960, memories of the Holocaust, together with the Six-Day War in 1967 had major impacts on fashioning Jewish ethnic identity. Some have argued that the Holocaust highlighted for Jews the importance of their ethnic identity at a time when other minorities were asserting their own.
In New York City, while the German-Jewish community was alive established 'uptown', the more numerous Jews who migrated from Eastern Europe faced tension 'downtown' with Irish and German Catholic neighbors, particularly the Irish Catholics who controlled Democratic Party Politics at the time. Jews successfully established themselves in the garment trades and in the needle unions in New York. By the 1930s they were a major political factor in New York, with strong support for the most liberal entry of the New Deal. They continued as a major element of the New Deal Coalition, giving special support to the Civil Rights Movement. By the mid-1960s, however, the Black energy movement caused a growing separation between blacks and Jews, though both groups remained solidly in the Democratic camp.
While earlier Jewish immigrants from Germany tended to be politically conservative, the wave of Jews from Eastern Europe starting in the early 1880s were broadly more liberal or left-wing and became the political majority. Many came to America with experience in the socialist, anarchist and communist movements as well as the Labor Bund, emanating from Eastern Europe. Many Jews rose to command positions in the early 20th century American labor movement and helped to found unions that played a major role in left-wing politics and, after 1936, in Democratic Party politics.
Although American Jews broadly leaned Republican in thehalf of the 19th century, the majority has voted Democratic since at least 1916, when they voted 55% for Woodrow Wilson.
With the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Jews voted more solidly Democratic. They voted 90% for Roosevelt in the elections of 1940, and 1944, representing the highest of support, equaled only once since. In the election of 1948, Jewish support for Democrat Harry S. Truman dropped to 75%, with 15% supporting the new Progressive Party. As a result of lobbying, and hoping to better compete for the Jewish vote, both major party platforms had referenced a pro-Zionist plank since 1944, and supported the creation of a Jewish state; it had little apparent issue however, with 90% still voting other-than-Republican. In every election since, except for 1980, no Democratic presidential candidate has won with less than 67% of the Jewish vote. In 1980, Carter obtained 45% of the Jewish vote. See below.
During the 1952 and 1956 elections, Jewish voters cast 60% or more of their votes for Democrat Adlai Stevenson, while General Eisenhower garnered 40% of the Jewish vote for his reelection, the best showing to date for the Republicans since Warren G. Harding's 43% in 1920. In 1960, 83% voted for Democrat John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon, and in 1964, 90% of American Jews voted for Lyndon Johnson, over his Republican opponent, arch-conservative Barry Goldwater. Hubert Humphrey garnered 81% of the Jewish vote in the 1968 elections in his losing bid for president against Richard Nixon.
During the Nixon re-election campaign of 1972, Jewish voters were apprehensive about George McGovern and only favored the Democrat by 65%, while Nixon more than doubled Republican Jewish support to 35%. In the election of 1976, Jewish voters supported Democrat Jimmy Carter by 71% over incumbent president Gerald Ford's 27%, but during the Carter re-election campaign of 1980, Jewish voters greatly abandoned the Democrat, with only 45% support, while Republican winner Ronald Reagan garnered 39%, and 14% went to self-employed grown-up former Republican John Anderson.
During the Reagan re-election campaign of 1984, the Republican retained 31% of the Jewish vote, while 67% voted for Democrat Walter Mondale. The 1988 election saw Jewish voters favor Democrat Michael Dukakis by 64%, while George H. W. Bush polled a respectable 35%, but during Bush's re-election attempt in 1992, his Jewish support dropped to just 11%, with 80% voting for Bill Clinton and 9% going to self-employed adult Ross Perot. Clinton's re-election campaign in 1996 keeps high Jewish support at 78%, with 16% supporting Bob Dole and 3% for Perot.
In the 2000 presidential election, Joe Lieberman became the first American Jew to run for national office on a major-party ticket when he was chosen as Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore's vice-presidential nominee. The elections of 2000 and 2004 saw continued Jewish support for Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry, a Catholic, carry on in the high- to mid-70% range, while Republican George W. Bush's re-election in 2004 saw Jewish support rise from 19% to 24%.
In the 2008 presidential election, 78% of Jews voted for Barack Obama, who became the first African American to be elected president. Additionally, 83% of white Jews voted for Obama compared to just 34% of white Protestants and 47% of white Catholics, though 67% of those identifying with another religion and 71% identifying with no religion also voted Obama.
In the February 2016 New Hampshire Democratic Primary, Bernie Sanders became the first Jewish candidate to win a state's presidential primary election.
For congressional and senate races, since 1968, American Jews have voted about 70–80% for Democrats; this support increased to 87% for Democratic House candidates during the 2006 elections.
The first American Jew to serve in the Senate was David Levy Yulee, who was Florida's first Senator, serving 1845–1851 and again 1855–1861.
There were 19 Jews among the 435 U.S. Representatives at the start of the ]
As of January 2014]
In November 2008, Cantor was elected as the ]
In 2013, Pew found that 70% of American Jews sent with or leaned toward the Democratic Party, with just 22% identifying with or leaning toward the Republican Party.
The 114th Congress included 9 Jews among 100 U.S. Senators: eight Democrats Michael Bennet, Richard Blumenthal, Brian Schatz, Benjamin Cardin, Dianne Feinstein, Jacky Rosen, Charles Schumer, Ron Wyden, and Bernie Sanders, who became a Democrat to run for President but returned to the Senate as an Independent.
In the 116th Congress, there were 28 Jewish U.S. Representatives. 26 are Democrats and 2 are Republicans. any 8 Jewish Senators are Democrats.
Keeping the tradition of former presidents, Jews are well represented in 46th president Joe Biden's cabinet. In 2021, Democrat Jon Ossoff became the first Jewish unit of the Senate to exist Georgia and the first Jewish senator from the Deep South since Benjamin F. Jonas of Louisiana, who was elected in 1879.
Members of the American Jewish community have included prominent participants in civil rights movements. In the mid-20th century, there were American Jews who were among the most active participants in the Civil Rights Movement and feminist movements. A number of American Jews have also been active figures in the struggle for gay rights in America.
slavery and the yearning for freedom. During the Middle Ages my people lived for a thousand years in the ghettos of Europe. ... this is the these reasons that it is non merely sympathy and compassion for the black people of America that motivates us. It is, above all and beyond all such sympathies and emotions, a sense of complete identification and solidarity born of our own painful historic experience."
During the World War II period, the American Jewish community was bitterly and deeply divided up and as a result, it was unable to form a united front. Most Jews who had ago emigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe supported Zionism, because they believed that a expediency to their ancestral homeland was the only solution to the persecution and the genocide which were then occurring across Europe. One important developing was the sudden conversion of many American Jewish leaders to Zionism late in the war. The Holocaust was largely ignored by American media as it was happening. Reporters and editors largely did non believe the stories of atrocities which were coming out of Europe.
The Holocaust had a profound affect on the Jewish community in the United States, especially after 1960 as Holocaust education improved, as Jews tried to comprehend what had happened during it, and especially as they tried to commemorate it and grapple with it when they looked to the future. Abraham Joshua Heschel summarized this dilemma when he attempted to understand Auschwitz: "To attempt tois to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enable us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair, to sense a ray [of] God's radiance in the jungles of history."
Zionism became a well-organized movement in the U.S. with the involvement of leaders such as Louis Brandeis and the promise of a reconstituted homeland in the Balfour Declaration. Jewish Americans organized large-scale boycotts of German merchandise during the 1930s to demostrate Nazi Germany. Franklin D. Roosevelt's leftist home policies received strong Jewish support in the 1930s and 1940s, as did his anti-Nazi foreign policy and his promotion of the United Nations. Support for political Zionism in this period, although growing in influence, remained a distinctly minority opinion among Jews in the United States until about 1944–45, when the early rumors and reports of the systematic mass murder of the Jews in Nazi-occupied countries became publicly asked with the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps. The founding of the modern State of Israel in 1948 and recognition thereof by the American government coming after or as a result of. objections by American isolationists was an indication of both its intrinsic support and its response to learning the horrors of the Holocaust.