History Of The Jews In The United States
The history of the Jews in the United States (United States of America), has been part of the American national fabric since colonial times.
Until the 1830s the Jewish community of Charleston, South Carolina was the most numerous in North America. With the large scale immigration of Jews from diaspora communities in Germany in the 19th century, they established themselves in many small towns and cities. A much larger immigration of Eastern Ashkenazi Jews, 1880–1914, brought a large, poor, traditional element to New York City. Refugees arrived from diaspora communities in Europe after World War II, and many arrived from the Soviet Union after 1970.
In the 1940s Jews comprised 3.7% of the national population. Today the population is about 5 million—under 2% of the national total—and shrinking because of small family sizes and intermarriage. The largest population centers are the metropolitan areas of New York (2.1 million in 2000), Los Angeles (668,000), Miami (331,000), Philadelphia (285,000), Chicago (265,000) and Boston (254,000).
Read more about History Of The Jews In The United States: Jewish Immigration, Colonial Era, Revolutionary Era, 19th Century, Progressive Movement, Americanization, Philanthropy, Rise To Affluence in The 20th Century, Lynching of Leo Frank, World War I, 1930s, Postwar, Current Situation, Antisemitism in The United States
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“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)
“We are told to maintain constitutions because they are constitutions, and what is laid down in those constitutions?... Certain great fundamental ideas of right are common to the world, and ... all laws of man’s making which trample on these ideas, are null and void—wrong to obey, right to disobey. The Constitution of the United States recognizes human slavery; and makes the souls of men articles of purchase and of sale.”
—Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842–1932)
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When Hitler attacked the Jews ... I was not a Jew, therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church—and there was nobody left to be concerned.”
—Martin Niemller (1892–1984)
“The United States is a republic, and a republic is a state in which the people are the boss. That means us. And if the big shots in Washington don’t do like we vote, we don’t vote for them, by golly, no more.”
—Willis Goldbeck (1900–1979)
“The people of the United States have been fortunate in many things. One of the things in which we have been most fortunate has been that so far, due perhaps to certain basic virtues in our traditional ways of doing things, we have managed to keep the crisis of western civilization, which has devastated the rest of the world and in which we are as much involved as anybody, more or less at arm’s length.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)