One of the first Jews to arrive in what is now the United States was a group of 23 men, women, and children fleeing Recife, Brazil, who landed in 1654 in New Amsterdam, present-day New York. Later, Ashkenazi and Sephardi traders arrived in the American colonies. By 1730, the majority were Ashkenazi, although synagogues were governed by Sephardi ritual and customs, which combined modern aesthetics with ancient traditions. Order, decorum, rationality, and refinement prevailed.

The next major wave of immigrants were German Jews, who began arriving in the 1840s. They left Germany because of its restrictive laws, poor economic situation, and the failure of political movements seeking change in German society. They settled in the Midwest, West, and South of the American Union. Especially in Cincinnati, home to Isaac Mayer Wise, the first leader of the American Jewish Reform movement. In addition to promoting Reform Judaism, German Jews created institutions such as B’nai B’rith (1843) and the American Jewish Committee (1906).

By 1880, Eastern European Jews began immigrating to the United States in large numbers. They were fleeing overcrowding, oppressive laws, antisemitism, and poverty. Between 1880 and 1924, more than two million Jews from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Austria, Hungary, and Romania arrived in the United States. They settled in the working-class neighborhoods of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago. They worked as laborers, especially in the garment industry. Therefore, they supported union movements to improve their working conditions. Yiddish culture, expressed in plays, journalism, and literature, flourished in the immigrant neighborhoods. They brought with them ideological principles that influenced American Judaism, such as socialist ideas, liberal politics, and Jewish nationalism.

Generally speaking, Jews from Eastern Europe were uncomfortable with Reform Judaism. They insisted on maintaining their traditions but in a modern context, which contributed to the establishment of Conservative Judaism and the continuity of Orthodox Judaism. However, many of them relaxed the strict religious discipline they had experienced in Europe to adapt to the conditions of a new culture. Judaism in America became pluralistic, and its observance now depended on the individual. There was no chief rabbi or central religious organization. Instead, a wide range of religious movements emerged, competing for adherents, each insisting that its ideas were the best for the survival of Judaism. In any case, America was not Europe; America was America.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The American Jewish Experience through the XIX Century, by Jonathan D, Sarna and Jonathan Golden. History of the American