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1654
Jacob Barsimon and Solomon Pietersen arrive in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam from Holland in the summer of 1654. They are the first Jews in this town of only a few hundred inhabitants but they are not the first Jews to step foot on the shores of North America. In 1649, the merchant Solomon Franco had arrived in Boston, where he was granted a weekly stipend by the Puritan authorities on the condition that he leave on the next available passage to Holland.
1654
The Portuguese regain control of Brazil from the Dutch, and expel all Dutch subjects, including Jews. Most set sail for Amsterdam. Others head for the Caribbean.
1654
Twenty-three Jewish refugees from Brazil arrive in New Amsterdam in September. Their intended destination is unknown but they had almost certainly not been planning on coming to this port. They are destitute. Ten are adults. Thirteen are children of various ages. Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New Netherland, writes to the Dutch West India Company, rulers of the colony, asking for permission to expel them. In his letter he calls Jews a "deceitful race" who profess an "abominable religion." Stuyvesant also wishes to exclude from his colony all Lutherans and Quakers.
1654
Several of the refugees, including Asser Levy, a registered burgher of Amsterdam and the son of a merchant in Frankfurt, Germany, ask their friends and relatives in Amsterdam to petition Jewish stockholders of the Dutch West India Company to intervene on their behalf.
1655
The Dutch West India Company orders Governor Peter Stuyvesant to permit the Jewish refugees from Recife, Brazil (who had arrived the year before) to settle permanently in New Netherland.
1655
Oliver Cromwell, responding to a request from the Amsterdam Jewish community, states that he favors the settlement of Jews in England, from which they have been officially excluded for almost 400 years.
1656
The Dutch West India Company, ruler of New Amsterdam, orders Governor Peter Stuyvesant to let the colony's Jews trade freely and own real estate. They are still barred from civic office and denied the right to publicly practice their religion. Some establish commercial links with Jewish merchants in Curacao.
1656
The Jewish community of New Amsterdam acquires its first cemetery.
1657
Governor Peter Stuyvesant decrees that the Jews of New Netherland are eligible for full burgher (civic) rights in the colony. After a two-year campaign, Asser Levy (one of the original group of 23 Jewish refugees from Recife who had arrived in 1654) wins the right to serve in the militia of New Amsterdam.
1657
Emboldened by Oliver Cromwell's 1655 statement in favor of Jewish settlement in England, the small community of Jews in London (about 34 families of mostly Spanish and Portuguese extraction) begin to worship openly.
1658
A few Dutch Jews arrive in Newport, Rhode Island, possibly from Curacao.
1659
"David the Jew" is arrested for peddling goods in Connecticut to children whose parents were absent from home. This is the first record of a Jewish presence in that strictly Puritan colony.
1661
Asser Levy (one of the original group of 23 Jewish refugees from Recife who had arrived in 1654) purchases a house in New Amsterdam, thus becoming the first Jew in North America to own a house. Unlike most of his fellow Jewish settlers, who soon leave the colony, Levy will remain in the region for the rest of his life, as will many of his descendants.
1661
King Charles II of England grants the rights and privileges of "natural born subjects of England" to all settlers on the island of Jamaica and their children. Remarkably, this policy extends to Jamaican Jews as well. It sets a precedent for England's other colonies in the New World.
1663
All of the original group of 23 Jewish refugees from Recife who had arrived in 1654 -- except for Asser Levy and Abraham De Lucena -- have left New Amsterdam.
1664
An English expeditionary force conquers New Netherland. The articles of capitulation that formalize the takeover include a clause guaranteeing freedom of conscience to all inhabitants of the colony. The territory is renamed New York but retains its Dutch flavor for many years. Jews are granted broad rights, including freedom of worship.
1665
The legislature of Rhode Island enacts a law permitting Jews and Catholics to vote and hold public office. This law would, however, be omitted from later codifications of Rhode Island law.
1669
The founding fathers of the colony of South Carolina draft a constitution stating that Jews are welcome as settlers.
1674
The Duke of York formally grants full religious liberty to all inhabitants of New York.
1674
A tax list in Boston includes the names of two Jews, the first indication of Jewish residents in the strictly Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1677
A few Jews from Barbados settle in Newport, Rhode Island. The Jewish community in Barbados, founded by refugees from Brazil in 1655, numbers about 300.
1678
The Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, buy land for a cemetery. It will be the oldest Jewish cemetery in the U.S. to survive until modern times. Newport's Jewish community lasts for more than a decade but eventually disbands.
1682
In the late 1670s and early 1680s, a new group of Jews settle on New York's Manhattan Island, eventually necessitating the purchase of land for a second cemetery.
1683
The Charter of Liberties of New York extends the right of public worship to Christians only.
1689
After invading England at the invitation of its leading citizens, William of Orange, the head of the Dutch military, and his wife Mary, who is of English royal blood, become coregents of England. William's invasion had been underwritten by Antonio Lopez Suasso, a prominent Jewish merchant in The Hague and a large shareholder of the Dutch West India Company.
1689
England's new rulers accept the Toleration Act, granting freedom of worship to non-Anglican Protestants, and the landmark Bill of Rights, which recognizes the inviolable civil and political rights of English citizens and the primacy of a democratically elected Parliament.
1689
The influential English philosopher John Locke proclaims: "If we may openly speak the truth [...] neither Pagan nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion."
1692
Witch trials are held in Salem, Massachusetts. In a six-month period from May to October, a special court condemns and hangs 19 women as witches. 150 people are imprisoned until colonial authorities step in to dissolve the court and release the prisoners.
1692
Jews in New York hold their first public service, in a rented room on Beaver Street.
1693
90 Jews are purported to have arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, fleeing an epidemic in Curacao.
1697
The legislature of South Carolina adopts a law allowing Jews to naturalize and vote. Four Jewish settlers living in Charleston are naturalized. Over the next 50 years, only 15 adult Jewish men are known to live in this city.
1700
The Jewish population of Amsterdam reaches about 8,000, its ranks swollen by Jews expelled from German lands in the wake of the Thirty Years War and by an influx of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe.
1700
There are about 100-150 Jews in New York out of total population of about 5,000. The Jewish population of all English colonies in North America amounts to no more than 200 or 300. The total population of the colonies has reached about 250,000.
1700
Jewish settlement throughout the Caribbean is nearing a high point. Curacao alone has more than 125 families (more than all the Jews in all the English colonies on the mainland of North America). There are also significant communities on Barbados, Jamaica, and St. Eustatius, and in Surinam. The following year, more than half the spring shipments from New York's Jewish merchants go to Barbados. They include textiles, cocoa, rum, wine, and fur.
1711
Jewish businessmen in New York, including the "hazan" (prayer leader) of the Jewish congregation, contribute funds to build the steeple of Trinity Church.
1711
The ships of New York Jewish merchants travel to England, Holland, Newfoundland, St. Thomas, South Carolina, Curacao, Jamaica, and St. Christopher with cargoes that include salt, sugar, slaves, bottles, bricks, coconuts, pork, textiles, tobacco, and onions. By 1713, there are 140 Jewish families on Curacao, making up almost one third the white population of the island. There are also significant communities on Barbados, Jamaica, and St. Eustatius, and in Surinam.
1714
The Spaniard Luis Gomez purchases land five miles north of Newburgh, New York. He will build a stone house on the plot which will serve as a seasonal trading post. It will become one of the oldest continuously lived-in residences in the U.S. and the oldest surviving Jewish residence in North America. Gomez's family had fled to France from the Spanish Inquisition. When the Huguenots were driven from France (1685) his family moved to England. In 1705, Luis obtained papers of denization (rights of citizenship) from the British crown. Once he and his family came to America these papers guaranteed him commercial rights in all British colonies, including the right to own land, own ships, and engage in trade.
1715
The legislature of New York passes a measure offering naturalization to all immigrants who own real estate or who have been in the colony for more than 32 years. Thirteen Jews will become citizens under this act.
1717
The Spaniard Luis Gomez purchases land five miles north of Newburgh, New York. He will build a stone house on the plot which will serve as a seasonal trading post. It will become one of the oldest continuously lived-in residences in the U.S. and the oldest surviving Jewish residence in North America. Gomez's family had fled to France from the Spanish Inquisition. When the Huguenots were driven from France (1685) his family moved to England. In 1705, Luis obtained papers of denization (rights of citizenship) from the British crown. Once he and his family came to America these papers guaranteed him commercial rights in all British colonies, including the right to own land, own ships, and engage in trade.
1720
Renewed activity of the Inquisition in Portugal drives as many as 1,500 New Christians (forced Jewish converts or their descendants) to London. Some of them continue on to the American colonies.
1720
The total population of Philadelphia reaches 10,000. The total population of New York is 7,000.
1720
Over the next decade the number of Ashkenazic Jews (those of Eastern or Central European background) in the American colonies comes to exceed that of Sephardic Jews (those of Spanish or Portuguese background). The Jewish population remains small and still numbers only a few hundred.
1721
South Carolina restricts voting rights to white propertied Christians.
1722
Judah Monis, a naturalized citizen of New York (1715) who moved to Boston, converts to Christianity and is publicly baptized. One month later, he is appointed instructor in Hebrew at Harvard College, a post he will hold until 1760. In the following year, he will be awarded a Master of Arts degree from Harvard College.
1730
The Jewish community of New York reaches about 200 in number. They are organized into a congregation, Shearith Israel, which dedicates its new synagogue, the first in North America, in a building on Mill Street in New York, on land purchased two years earlier. They are assisted by contributions from the Jewish community on Curacao. The following year, a school building will be constructed near the synagogue.
1733
London's impoverished community sends 42 Jews to the new colony of Georgia, the last of the 13 original American colonies to be established (1732). They settle in the fledgling community of Savannah, constituting perhaps a third of its early population. Many of them will move on to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1740-1741, but a handful of families will stay to form the core of a small community.
1733
Abigail Franks, wife of New York merchant Jacob Franks, begins a correspondence with her son Naphtali, who has gone to England for employment. This series of letters, spanning the years 1733-1748, discuss politics, private matters, and the family's transatlantic business. They are notable for revealing the thoughts of a colonial Jewish woman trying to remain dedicated to Jewish identity while participating in the culture at large -- a dilemma almost entirely unfamiliar to Jews outside the American colonies.
1735
Judah Monis, an instructor in Hebrew at Harvard who had been born Jewish but been baptized in 1722, publishes "A Grammar of the Hebrew Tongue" for use in his courses. Hebrew type is imported from London and one thousand copies of the book are printed. It is the first book with Hebrew type published in America.
1737
Two Jewish brothers, Isaac and Nathan Levy, arrive in Philadelphia from New York to serve as commercial representatives for their family interests. They are the first Jews to become permanent inhabitants of the city.
1739
A German Lutheran minister visits Georgia and comments: "The Englishmen, nobility and common folks alike, treat the Jews as their equal. They drink, gamble and walk together with them; in fact, let them take part in all their fun. Yes, they desecrate Sunday with them, a thing no Jew would do on their Sabbath to please a Christian!"
1740
The British Parliament passes the Plantation Act, which offers naturalization to foreign Protestants and Jews who reside permanently in the colonies for at least seven years. Jews in the colonies thereby receive greater toleration than in England, where naturalization is forbidden. Naturalization does not, however, confer the right to vote or hold public office.
1740
In New York, Rachel Levy marries Isaac Mendes Seixas, the son of Ashkenazic parents. The marriage causes an uproar among the Sephardic Seixas clan and other New York Sephardim (Jews of Spanish or Portuguese background). In subsequent years, intermarriage between Ashkenazim (Jews of Central and Eastern European descent) and Sephardim will become widespread in the American colonies. In other countries, it remains all but unheard of.
1742
Philadelphia has a total population of 13,000. The Jewish community of Philadelphia grows as people arrive from New York and Europe. By the 1740s, the community has its own cemetery and conducts services.
1742
New York has a total population of 11,000 and Boston's population is 16,000.
1748
A Swedish university professor visiting New York observes its Jews and comments: "They enjoy all the privileges common to other inhabitants of this town and province."
1749
A Jewish community is formed in Charleston, South Carolina. Over the next 30 years, about 50 different Jewish family names appear in the records of Charleston.
1750
England has a Jewish population of about 8,000. Three quarters of them are Ashkenazic Jews from Poland, Germany, or Holland. They are barred from public office and universities, but so are Catholics and Protestant Dissenters, groups that are the target of most religious hostility in England.
1750
Portuguese is used for the last time in the official records of the congregation Shearith Israel of New York. The Jewish community of New York numbers a little more than 200.
1750
Curacao has a population of 250 Jewish families, more than 1,300 people, most of whom have relatives in Amsterdam. This community is a vital trading link for Jewish communities in the English colonies of the North America.
1752
Aaron Lopez arrives in Newport, Rhode Island, fleeing the Inquisition in Portugal. Within a decade he will be one of Newport's most successful merchants. Vessels that he owns visit ports in Western Europe, in the English colonies of North America, and in the Caribbean and South America.
1752
Newport is the fourth most important port for the transatlantic slave trade, though it is far outdistanced by the British ports of Liverpool, London, and Bristol. Though a few Jewish merchants in Newport will become important slave traders, it is the city's Christian merchants who are by far the most important slave traders in North America. They dominate the extremely lucrative triangle trade, shipping Rhode Island rum and other goods to Africa in exchange for slaves that are sold in the Caribbean and southern colonies in exchange for sugar and molasses that are brought to Rhode Island to be used in the manufacture of rum.
1755
A great earthquake strikes Lisbon, Portugal, destroying most of the city. Many New Christians (forced Jewish converts or their descendants) escape the prisons of the Inquisition. They and other New Christians flee Portugal for more tolerant lands in Europe. A few make their way to the North American colonies. In the years of rebuilding that follow, the Inquisition ceases its pursuit of Judaizers (secret Jews) in Lisbon. Two decades later, New Christians will be granted rights equal to other citizens of Portugal.
1755
New York's congregation Shearith Israel expands its school's hours to five days a week in both winter and summer. Spanish, English, writing, and arithmetic are added to the curriculum.
1759
The Jewish community in Newport, Rhode Island, begins developing plans for a synagogue.
1759
Rabbi Moses Malki of Safed, Palestine, spends more than four months in New York. It is possible that he helps Shearith Israel, which has no rabbi, arrange its religious affairs. He also travels to Newport, where he meets with the Christian scholar Ezra Stiles. Malki is the first Palestinian emissary to the New World.
1761
Aaron Lopez and Isaac Elizer, both of Newport, Rhode Island, apply for naturalization under the British Plantation Act of 1740. The Rhode Island Assembly dismisses their petition on religious grounds.
1761
Aaron Lopez sends his first ship to Africa to obtain slaves for sale in the New World. Over the course of his lifetime he will engage in 21 shipments of slaves, representing approximately 10 percent of his total commercial activities. (Until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Newport's Jewish merchants will engage in a combined total of 27 shipments of slaves as part of the triangle trade. During the same period, Newport's Christian merchants will make a total of 320 shipments of slaves.)
1761
Isaac Pinto, a New York merchant, does the first translation of a Jewish prayer book into English. His "Evening Services for Rosh-Hashanah and Yom Kippur" is printed in New York.
1762
The Superior Court of Rhode Island upholds the decision of the Rhode Island assembly to reject Aaron Lopez' and Isaac Elizer's application for naturalization, submitted a year earlier. The two apply in neighboring colonies and are accepted.
1763
The Treaty of Paris ends the French and Indian Wars (1689-1763), in which the British and French had fought for control of colonial territory in North America, with the British finally gaining all of Canada. The last eight years of this conflict drain the British coffers and result in escalating taxes on the English landed gentry.
1763
The Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, dedicate their first synagogue, designed by Rhode Island's leading architect, Peter Harrison. Designed in Palladian style, it reflects the latest trends in architectural fashion. It will become known as the Touro Synagogue after its first "hazan" (prayer leader) Isaac Touro and his sons Abraham and Judah, who provide funds for its maintenance.
1765
To help meet the cost of defending the North American colonies, the British Parliament passes the Stamp Act, levying a tariff throughout the colonies on legal writs, newspaper advertisements, and ships' bills of lading. The colonial economy had already been suffering as a result of the French and Indian War (1689-1763). Now, mobs riot in Boston and other towns and eject stamp distributors from their posts. Embargoes are planned against British goods.
1765
Philadelphia's Jewish community numbers 25 families. In protest of the Stamp Act, ten of Philadelphia's Jewish merchants join another 375 merchants of that city in signing a pledge to stop all imports from England. They protest the "restrictions, prohibitions, and ill-advised regulations" of British policy.
1767
Two years after passing the Stamp Act, the British impose duties on a wide range of goods imported by colonies, in another attempt to raise money. Committees are organized throughout the colonies to limit the importation of British goods.
1768
The Jewish community of Montreal establishes the first congregation in Canada. They call it Shearith Israel and adopt the practices of New York's Shearith Israel congregation.
1768
Gershom Mendes Seixas is appointed "hazan" (prayer leader) of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York. He is the son of Isaac Mendes Seixas, a Sephardic Jew (of Spanish or Portuguese background) and Rachel Levy, an Ashkenazic Jew (of Eastern/Central European background), whose marriage had created a scandal among New York's Sephardim in 1740. Seixas is the first native-born Jewish religious leader.
1770
The British repeal duties on all goods imported to the colonies except tea.
1770
There are hardly more than a thousand Jews out of the two million inhabitants of the British colonies of North America. More than 80 percent of the colonial population is British.
1770
In New York City, over the period from 1688 to 1770, 57 Jews have attained "freeman" status, the rough equivalent of "freeholder" in rural areas. This status has allowed them to vote in municipal elections and to be eligible for election to municipal office. New York is, however, the only community to consistently grant Jews civic rights.
1771
Philadelphia's Jewish community rents quarters for worship.
1771
Savannah, Georgia, has a total population of 3,000. It is home to 16 Jews.
1773
The British Parliament passes the Tea Act to help the East India Company out of financial difficulties. It grants the company a monopoly on the sale of all tea in the North American colonies. In protest, a party of Bostonians dumps tea worth 10,000 pounds sterling into Boston Harbor. The British Parliament will respond by closing the port of Boston and appointing a new government for the colony.
1773
Rabbi Hayyim Carigal of Hebron, Palestine, who had first arrived in Philadelphia a year earlier, delivers a sermon in the synagogue of Newport, Rhode Island. It is attended by the colonial governor, Joseph Wanton, and is the first recorded presence of an American official at a Jewish religious ceremony.
1773
While in Newport, Carigal becomes friends with the theologian Ezra Stiles, later the president of Yale College, who comes several times to hear Carigal speak in the synagogue. During his six-month stay in Newport, Carigal meets with Stiles more than 28 times. They discuss kabbalah, the Hebrew and Arabic languages, Turkish-Jewish relations in Palestine, and numerous other subjects. Carigal tutors Stiles intensively in Hebrew, and by the end of his stay they have begun a written correspondence in Hebrew that will continue until Carigal's death in 1777.
1774
A Continental Congress is established to coordinate the colonial response to British actions. All the colonies except Georgia send delegations. It includes among its members Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Adams, and Samuel Adams. The goal of most delegates is to resolve colonial grievances and reestablish amicable relations with Great Britain.
1774
Francis Salvador, a recent arrival from England, is elected to the General Assembly of South Carolina. He is the first Jew to hold so high an elective office in the colonies. He is also elected to South Carolina's revolutionary Provincial Congress.
1774
King's College in New York (est.1754) graduates its first Jewish student, Isaac Abrahams. After the Revolution the school will be renamed Columbia College.
1775
In April, British forces clash with Massachusetts' militia at Lexington and Concord. A full-scale military conflict ensues and quickly spreads to other colonies.
1775
The Second Continental Congress convenes and includes among its new members Thomas Jefferson, representing Virginia, and Benjamin Franklin, representing Pennsylvania. In May, the congress places the colonies on a war footing. A continental army is created and in June, George Washington is made its commander in chief.
1775
In Savannah, Georgia, the committee enforcing the decisions of the American patriots against British interests is chaired by Mordechai Sheftall, a merchant and son of one of the Jewish colonists who arrived in 1733. Another member of the committee is Philip Minis, also a son of one of the original Jewish colonists.
1776
In the spring, the Continental Congress recommends that the colonies establish new governments, and it appoints a committee to draft a declaration of independence. The American Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, is adopted and signed on July 4 in Philadelphia by members of the Continental Congress. It proclaims, among other things, that "all men are created equal."
1776
Tens of thousands of British and Hessian troops begin to arrive in August to crush the revolution.
1776
A few Jews are royalists, but most American Jews support the Revolutionary cause. Approximately 100 Jews throughout the colonies (about 8 percent of the Jewish population) volunteer for military service, including about 30 in South Carolina and 22 members of New York's Jewish community.
1776
In one of the earliest engagements of the Revolutionary War, Francis Salvador is killed while fighting in the militia of South Carolina. He is the first Jew to die in the war.
1776
Most of New York's Jews flee when the British occupy the city. Most of Newport, Rhode Island's Jews also flee British occupation. Only seven Jewish royalists remain in Newport.
1777
A German mercenary in the British forces in New York comments that the Jews in America "are not like the ones we have in Europe and Germany, who are recognizable by their beards and their clothes, for these are dressed like other citizens."
1777
The newly drafted constitution of New York State reaffirms freedom of religion and extends voting rights to "every male inhabitant of full age" without religious restrictions. It is the only state constitution adopted during the war that permits Jews to vote or hold public office.
1777
Yale graduates the brothers William and Solomon Pinto, sons of one of the first two Jewish inhabitants of New Haven, Connecticut. Their father had settled in New Haven in the 1750s and married a Christian woman. He never converted, and the boys were raised as Deists.
1778
Merchant Mordechai Sheftall, who had become chair of the committee representing patriot interests in Savannah, Georgia, in 1775, is appointed Deputy Commissary General for the federal troops stationed in Georgia and South Carolina. Late in the year, as Savannah's defenses are overrun by British troops, many American soldiers escape by swimming across the Savannah River. British troops capture Sheftall who has stayed behind with his teenage son, Sheftall Sheftall.
1779
Solomon Bush, son of a Philadelphia merchant, serves as lieutenant colonel in the Continental army, the highest rank held by any Jewish officer at this time.
1779
Philip Minis and Levi Sheftall serve as guides to French and American forces in their attempt to recapture Savannah from the British. Minis is a member of Savannah, Georgia's patriot committee and Sheftall is the son of Mordechai Sheftall (Deputy Commissary General for the federal troops stationed in Georgia and South Carolina who had been captured by the British a year earlier).
1780
Following the British evacuation of Philadelphia in 1778, the city becomes a haven for hundreds of Jews, a large percentage of the total Jewish population of the colonies.
1780
Gershom Mendes Seixas, "hazan" (cantor and prayer leader) of Shearith Israel in New York, a refugee together with most of his congregation in Philadelphia, becomes "hazan" of Philadelphia's Mikveh Israel congregation until the end of the war.
1780
The company of soldiers raised by Captain Richard Lushington in Charleston, South Carolina, includes 26-28 Jews, almost half his men, and comes to be known as the "Jew Company."
1780
American general Benedict Arnold informs the British of American military plans and plots to surrender the fort at West Point, New York. Discovered, he flees to the British side. His aide-de-camp David Salisbury Franks (from a Philadelphia Jewish family) and other of Arnold's aides request a court of inquiry to clear their names. The court finds them innocent of all wrongdoing. Franks remains in the military, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and becoming a diplomatic courier and occasional confidant of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
1780
The widow Shinah Etting and five of her children move to Baltimore, Maryland, from York, Pennsylvania. She opens a boarding house "for gentlemen" on Market Street. Her sons Solomon and Reuben will become prominent Baltimore citizens.
1781
Haym Salomon, a Polish Jewish immigrant who had arrived New York in 1772, and who had acted as supplier to American troops and as paymaster general to French forces assisting the revolutionaries, becomes assistant to Robert Morris in raising funds to finance the patriot cause. Salomon lends money at nominal rates to impecunious members of the Continental Congress, among them James Madison. Solomon will be bankrupt. It will be claimed by his heirs that the U.S. government still owed him in excess of $350,000.
1781
In early October, the British commander in the southern colonies, General Lord Cornwallis, surrenders his entire army to combined American and French forces at Yorktown, Virginia. This ends most hostilities of the war and makes an American victory all but certain.
1782
The Jewish community in Philadelphia, with a population dramatically increased by refugees from other cities, constructs its first permanent synagogue. Savannah merchant Mordechai Sheftall, who had served as Deputy Commissary General for the federal troops stationed in Georgia and South Carolina during the war, is one of the leaders in this effort. Haym Salomon, a financier of the revolution, is a major financial contributor. The congregation invites the governor and lieutenant governor to the dedication ceremonies.
1782
On his way home to Newport, Rhode Island, from his wartime refuge in Massachusetts, merchant Aaron Lopez drowns in a freak accident when his horse bolts into a pond. He dies bankrupt, the war having wiped out his once sizable fortune.
1783
Britain formally recognizes the independence of the U.S. when it signs the Paris Peace Treaty in early September.
1783
As British forces finally withdraw from New York, that city's Jewish community returns after an absence of seven years.
1783
Mordechai Sheftall, who had served as Deputy Commissary General for the federal troops stationed in Georgia and South Carolina during the war, returns to Savannah and writes to his son that now that all hostilities between England and the U.S. have ended "we have the world to begine [sic] again."
1784
David Salisbury Franks (once aide-de-camp in the revolutionary forces, and subsequently a diplomatic courier carrying documents to Benjamin Franklin in Paris and to John Jay in Madrid) is made vice-consul in Marseilles, France. He is the first Jew to serve in a U.S. diplomatic post.
1784
Gershom Mendes Seixas, "hazan" (cantor and prayer leader) of the Shearith Israel congregation, becomes a member of the board of trustees of Columbia College in New York. He will serve until 1815.
1786
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson, is enacted into law by the General Assembly of that state thanks to the efforts of James Madison. It provides for freedom of worship and separation of church and state, and it assures equal civil rights to all, regardless of religious opinions or beliefs. It will serve as a model for the freedom of religion clauses in the federal constitution. Jefferson will ask that he be remembered on his tombstone not for any of the high offices he held but, instead, for his authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Religious Liberty.
1786
The Jewish community of Charleston, South Carolina, is split when a group of Sephardim secede from Congregation Beth Elohim, where the Ashkenazi rite is followed, and form Congregation Beth Elohim Unveh Shallom. The split proves only temporary, but it is a sign of things to come.
1786
Jews in Philadelphia establish the U.S.'s first immigrant aid society.
1787
The Confederation Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance, which establishes rules for governance of the Northwest Territory and the states that might emerge from it. Among the requirements of such new states is that they ensure civil and religious liberty. Article I states in its entirety: "No person, demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments, in the said territory."
1787
Richea Gratz, daughter of Philadelphia merchant Michael Gratz, is among the first class of students at Franklin College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is the first Jewish woman in America to attend a formal secondary school.
1788
The federal constitution is ratified by a majority of the states. Article IV states in part: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the United States." Although not binding with respect to state office holders, this clause will be emulated by many states in their new constitutions. Maryland, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, however, continue to insist upon religious qualifications for state office for several decades.
1788
After most Jewish refugees have returned to their homes in other cities, Philadelphia's Jewish community is so diminished that it makes an appeal to non-Jews for financial help in maintaining the synagogue.
1788
In a great parade in Philadelphia to honor Pennsylvania's ratification of the U. S. Constitution, the "hazan" (cantor and prayer leader) of the synagogue marches arm and arm with two clergymen. At the public feast that accompanies the celebration there is a table with kosher food, despite there being so few Jews present. One participant would remember its being supplied with "soused salmon bread and crackers, almonds, raisins, etc."
1789
A mob in Paris, France, storms the Bastille prison and launches a revolution. The National Assembly abolishes the vestiges of feudal order in France and publishes the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen," proclaiming liberty, equality, the inviolability of property, and the right to resist oppression.
1789
George Washington is elected president of the newly formed republic of the United States. His inauguration is held at Federal Hall on Wall Street in Manhattan. Gershom Mendes Seixas, "hazan" (cantor and prayer leader) of New York's Jewish congregation, is one of 14 religious leaders who attend the ceremonies.
1789
Only ten Jewish families live in Newport, Rhode Island, one of the most thriving centers of Jewish life before the American Revolution. Richmond, Virginia, which before the war was home to only one Jew, now has 30 Jewish families and is organizing a congregation.
1790
The economy of Curacao starts to experience severe disruption because of the wars between England, France, and the U.S. Its importance to American Jewish merchants quickly begins to fade.
1790
The first national census estimates that there are between 1,300 and 1,500 Jews in the U.S. out of a total population of 3,893,900. New York City has the largest Jewish population with 242, followed by Charleston, South Carolina, with 200. Savannah, Georgia, has only 12 Jewish families.
1790
With the exception of Maryland, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, all the original states have embraced the principle of religious freedom.
1790
The Jewish communities of Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, and Richmond, Virginia, send a joint letter of congratulations and good wishes to President George Washington. He replies warmly and concludes: "May the same temporal and eternal blessings which you implore for me, rest upon your congregations."
1790
In response to a letter from the small Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island, George Washington writes "the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens."
1791
All Jews of France are granted full rights of citizenship.
1791
The states ratify the Bill of Rights as a series of ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment states in part: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
1792
The Jews of Charleston, South Carolina, begin to construct a synagogue. Its cornerstone dedication ceremony is performed as a Masonic rite because many of the local Jews are Freemasons.
1792
Services cease in the synagogue of Newport, Rhode Island, where the Jewish community has dwindled.
1792
The organization that will become the New York Stock Exchange is founded. Among the 24 traders who gather at 68 Wall Street to sign the so-called Buttonwood Agreement that sets the rules for trade are Benjamin Seixas, brother of Gershom Mendes Seixas, "hazan" (cantor and prayer leader) of Congregation Shearith Israel, and Ephraim Hart, an immigrant from Bavaria who will become a business associate of John Jacob Astor and serve in the New York Senate from 1816-1822.
1793
The French king Louis XIV is beheaded and a "Reign of Terror" begins in France. The radical Jacobins seize power and institute a dictatorship headed by Robespierre. Almost 200,000 people will be arrested; 17,000 will be executed; and another 10,000 will die in prison as suspected "enemies of the people."
1793
Jonas Phillips, a veteran of the American Revolution and a Jewish merchant in Philadelphia, is fined ten pounds by a Philadelphia court for refusing to testify on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.
1794
In a grand ceremony in Charleston, South Carolina, that includes many non-Jews, Congregation Beth Elohim dedicates its new synagogue. The building looks, on the outside, like an English parish church. It will be destroyed in the great Charleston fire of 1838. Its replacement, built in 1840 in Greek Revival style, will survive to the present day, the oldest synagogue in the U.S. in continuous use.
1794
The first American play to feature a Jewish character, Susanna Haswell Rowson's musical "Slaves in Algiers," has a Jewish villain, Ben Hassan, with a beautiful daughter who wants to convert to Christianity.
1795
Ratification of the Jay Treaty between the U.S. and England causes a controversy over such concessions as limits on American trading rights in the West Indies and the repayment of pre-revolutionary debt to British merchants. Federalist defenders of the treaty make anti-Semitic attacks on their opponents, the Democratic Republicans (the party of Jefferson, and one with which many Jews are affiliated). A debate results in the press as several Jews defend themselves and non-Jewish Democrats join in their defense.
1796
Dr. Levi Myers of Georgetown, South Carolina, is the first Jew elected to serve in a state legislature in the new republic.
1797
The French army under Napoleon Bonaparte conquers northern Italy and the Netherlands.
1797
Solomon Etting, a Baltimore businessman, and his father-in-law Barnard Gratz, a Philadelphia merchant, unsuccessfully petition the General Assembly of Maryland asking that the state's constitution be amended to abolish the requirement that all public officials take a Christian oath.
1797
"The Algerine Captive" by Royall Tyler features the first Jewish character in an American novel. This tale of an American doctor captured by Algerian pirates portrays certain Muslims and a Jew, Adonah Ben Benjamin, as more civil than most Americans or Europeans. Ben Benjamin, however, ultimately betrays the hero and robs him. Tyler will become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Vermont in 1800.
1798
A furor erupts when it is learned that French agents had solicited a huge bribe the previous year as a precondition for negotiating a commercial treaty with the U.S. The so-called "XYZ Affair" puts the U.S. on the brink of war with France. A series of laws are passed to suppress political dissent. Jeffersonian Republicans generally disapprove of the laws and are castigated by their Federalist opponents. Some Jews, affiliated with the Jeffersonian party, are drawn into the debate.
1799
A group of Ashkenazim (Jews of East or Central European descent) secede from the Mikveh Israel congregation in Philadelphia. In 1802, they will form their own congregation, Rodeph Shalom. This fragmenting of a local community, though uncommon in Europe, will become the norm in America.
1800
After a Jeffersonian Republican convention in Philadelphia, the local Federalist paper, the "Gazette of the United States," publishes an abusive account of the meeting. It describes the attendees as "Jacobins" representing the "very refuse and filth of society." It refers to one African American in attendance as "Citizen Sambo," and calls one Jew "Citizen N__, the bankrupt Jew" and ridicules him for his poverty. The Jew in question is Benjamin Nones, who fought as a patriot in the American Revolution, serving in Count Casimir Pulaski's legion in its defense of Charleston, South Carolina. Nones writes an impassioned defense, which the "Gazette" refuses to publish. It appears in the local Jeffersonian paper instead. In it, Nones states: "I am a Jew, and if so for no other reason, for that reason I am a republican.... in republics we have rights, in monarchies we live but to experience wrongs."
1800
In the novel "Arthur Mervyn" by the Philadelphia author Charles Brockden Brown, the hero marries a rich Jewish widow after having transferred his affections from a simple Christian girl. The novel is set in Philadelphia during the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793 and is told in the first person from its hero's point of view.
1800
The total world Jewish population is about 2,500,000, roughly one-third of one percent of the total world population. There are 1,000,000 in the Near East; 800,000 in Russia and Poland; 300,000 in Austria; 80,000 in France; 50,000 in Holland; and 2,000 in the U.S. (total population 5,309,000).
1800
In the following decade, the Jewish community of Charleston, numbering about 500, becomes the largest of all U.S. Jewish communities.
1801
Thomas Jefferson is elected president of the U.S.
1801
Jefferson appoints Reuben Etting as U.S. Marshall for Maryland. Long active in the Jeffersonian Republican party, Etting is the first Jew to become a federal official in the new republic.
1801
The Jewish community of Charleston, South Carolina, establishes the Hebrew Orphan Society, one of the earliest Jewish communal philanthropies in America.
1801
Rebecca Gratz, daughter of Philadelphia merchant Michael Gratz, after having helped her mother nurse her bedridden father, joins with her mother and a group of some 20 Jewish and non-Jewish women to found the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances. It is the first non-sectarian women's charitable organization in Philadelphia and serves as a model for many of the women's organizations Gratz will help establish in later years.
1801
David Emanuel, who has served as president of the Georgia state senate, becomes governor of Georgia to complete the previous governor's term. If he is Jewish, as some of his descendants will claim, he is the first Jewish governor of a state. Two years after his death a Georgia county will be named in his honor.
1802
West Point, a national military academy first suggested by George Washington, opens its doors in New York. Simeon M. Levy of Baltimore, Maryland, is among the first class of West Point cadets.
1807
The first known Jewish settler in St. Louis, Missouri, Joseph Philipson, opens a store. He will go on to buy a brewery, a distillery, a sawmill, and stock in the city's second bank. The city remains, however, without a Jewish community.
1808
James Madison is elected president of the U.S. after Thomas Jefferson finishes his second term and retires to his estate in Monticello, Virginia.
1808
John Adams, the second U.S. President (1797-1801), writes a letter criticizing the attitude of the French philosopher Voltaire toward the Jews. He states: "How is it possible [that he] should represent the Hebrews in such a contemptible light? They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a Bauble in comparison of the Jews. They have given religion to three quarters of the Globe and have influenced the affairs of Mankind more, and more happily, than any other Nation ancient or modern."
1808
Jacob Henry is elected to the state legislature of North Carolina despite a provision in that state's constitution that requires an occupant of office to swear to the divinity of the New Testament. A year later an opponent challenges him on this ground. He makes an eloquent appeal and is able to retain his seat on a technicality. In subsequent years, Catholics, Jews, Quakers, and Deists will hold legislative seats in North Carolina before the restrictive clause is officially revoked in 1868.
1809
Jacob Mordecai, a failing merchant in Warrenton, North Carolina, establishes and runs the Warrenton Female Academy, a private high school, with the support of local townspeople. It is the first Southern private school for girls, and it becomes famous throughout the South for its innovative curriculum, which is the first to provide women with a full liberal arts education.
1812
James Madison is reelected President of the U.S.
1812
The U.S. declares war on England, beginning the War of 1812 (1812-1814). The hostilities are begun because of anger that the British are blockading American ships from French ports and are continuing to stop American ships on the high seas and impress their sailors into the British navy.
1812
As many as 128 Jews join in the war effort, serving in the army, the navy, and in state and local militia. Unlike the Jews who served in the revolutionary war, many of whom were immigrants, almost all of those who fight in the War of 1812 are native-born Americans.
1812
Uriah Phillips Levy joins the U.S. Navy. His naval career will span almost 50 years. A fifth-generation American, he will not shy from controversy. His unorthodox methods and quarrelsome nature will lead to a series of six courts-martial, but he will eventually rise to the rank of Commodore, becoming the first Jew to reach that level of command in the Navy. One reason for both his unpopularity and his lasting fame will be his championing a law to prohibit corporal punishment in the navy. An admirer of Thomas Jefferson, Levy will purchase Jefferson's abandoned home, Monticello, from the Jefferson estate in 1836 and will spend large sums of money to restore and preserve it as a public historical monument. Monticello will remain in the Levy family until 1923.
1812
Hannah Adams, generally thought to be the first American woman to support herself by writing, publishes "History of the Jews from the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Present Time." In her work, she includes information about the Jewish community in America. An advocate of converting Jews to Christianity, she fears that the lack of faith among some American Jews might undermine the faith of American Christians.
1813
Mordecai Manuel Noah of Philadelphia, a journalist who campaigned on behalf of James Madison, is appointed by the president to the post of Consul at Tunis. He is the first American Jew named to a diplomatic post of this level. During his years in office, Madison names several other Jews to government posts.
1814
British forces capture Washington, D.C., and burn the White House. U.S. ships defeat the British on Lake Champlain, and the two countries sign a peace treaty ending hostilities.
1814
In Philadelphia, the printer William Fry reprints a version of the Hebrew Bible first printed in Amsterdam. He uses fonts imported from Amsterdam by Dr. Jonathan Horwitz, who had hoped to do the printing himself. Fry's bible is the first Hebrew Bible printed in the U.S.
1815
The armies of Napoleon are defeated at Waterloo.
1815
At the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), diplomats from Russia, Austria, Great Britain, and France redraw the map of Europe in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. The question of Jewish rights is raised for the first time in an international conference, but no effective action is taken.
1815
Many countries revoke constitutions written under French influence, and in many places Jews lose their newly won rights of citizenship.
1815
The U.S. Department of State recalls Mordecai Manuel Noah from his post as Consul to Tunis. Secretary of State James Monroe explains "At the time of your appointment, as Consul at Tunis, it was not known that the religion which you profess would form an obstacle to the exercise of your Consular functions." President Madison explains his recall was necessary because of "the ascertained prejudice of the Turks against his Religion, and it having become public that he was a Jew." Suspected of misappropriating funds, Noah is fully cleared after an investigation.
1816
James Monroe is elected President of the U.S.
1816
Two Jews are elected to the city council of Richmond, Virginia. One year earlier a Jew had been elected recorder, the next highest office under mayor. Richmond's small Jewish community will remain highly integrated into the town's civic life for decades to come.
1816
Between 1816 and 1819, 37 out of 97 Jewish businessmen, artisans, and wage earners in New York City list themselves as "merchants," but almost none are involved in shipping, a marked change from pre-revolutionary days.
1817
Joseph Jonas, an English-born watch-maker, settles in Cincinnati (pop. 6,000), becoming the first Jew to settle permanently in the state of Ohio.
1817
The Supreme Court of the state of Pennsylvania upholds the conviction of Abraham Wolf, a practicing Jew, for having worked on a Sunday. The court's opinion reads in part: "The invaluable privilege of the rights of conscience secured to us by the constitution of the commonwealth was never intended to shelter those persons, who, out of mere caprice, would directly oppose those laws for the pleasure of showing their contempt and abhorrence of the religious opinions of the great mass of the citizens."
1817
The New York stock market is reorganized as the New York Stock and Exchange Board. One of those who participate in this reorganization is Bernard Hart, a New York merchant whose grandson by his first marriage (in 1799) to a non-Jew, Catherine Brett, will be the American author Bret Harte.
1818
A new synagogue is founded in Hamburg, Germany, the first dedicated to the principles of Reform Judaism, a movement that has been developing in Berlin over the previous decade. Its services are abbreviated and accompanied by a choir and organ. Sermons and prayers are spoken in the vernacular. This new movement will soon have a major influence on congregations in the U.S.
1818
New York's Congregation Shearith Israel builds a new synagogue. Its opening is attended by Governor DeWitt Clinton. Invitations are also extended to the president, the mayor, and other non-Jewish notables.
1819
Riots break out in southern Germany as mobs attack Jewish communities, breaking windows and looting stores. The so-called "Hep Hep" riots start in Bavaria but spread to major cities throughout Germany. Military force is used to suppress them. Among the factors behind the riots are tensions over extending equal rights to Jews.
1819
In Philadelphia, Rebecca Gratz helps establish the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society to provide needy Jewish women and their children with food, fuel, and shelter. It is the first Jewish women's charitable organization in America independent of a synagogue.
1819
The Scottish author Sir Walter Scott publishes the novel, "Ivanhoe," which features two prominent Jewish characters, a moneylender Isaac, who is of noble character, and his beautiful daughter Rebecca, who is the true heroine of the tale. She nurses the hero Ivanhoe back to health, and when taken captive by a villainous Knight Templar she articulates the moral vision of her people and condemns the false values of medieval chivalry. It is rumored that the character of Rebecca was inspired by Rebecca Gratz of Philadelphia, about whom Scott had heard from his friend, the American author Washington Irving.
1820
James Monroe is reelected President of the U.S.
1820
Women of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York follow the lead of Philadelphia's Jewish women and found their own Female Hebrew Benevolent Society.
1820
Joseph Samuel Christian Frederick Frey establishes The American Society for Meliorating the Conditions of the Jews, an organization devoted to proselytizing American Jews. Frey had been born Joseph Samuel Levy in Germany, but converted and was baptized in 1798. He had been a missionary to Jews in England before coming to America in 1816. His new organization publishes a periodical entitled "Israel's Advocate" and survives for a number of years with little demonstrable success.
1820
The national census suggests a total of between 2,650 and 2,750 Jews in the U.S., a mere three one-hundredths of one percent of the total population. Most live in Charleston, South Carolina (700); New York (550); Richmond, Virginia (191 people in 32 families); Baltimore, Maryland (125); Savannah, Georgia (94 people in 21 families); and Philadelphia (500).
1820
The Jewish community of Savannah constructs its first synagogue. The dedication service is accompanied by a choir and music played on an organ by the organist of the local Presbyterian church. The ceremony of laying the cornerstone, which had taken place a few months earlier, had been an elaborate Masonic ritual attended by Jews and non-Jewish Freemasons.
1820
The community of Richmond builds its first synagogue.
1822
The Torah scrolls of the Newport synagogue are removed to Shearith Israel in New York. Not a single Jew remains in the Newport.
1822
Journalist and ex-diplomat Mordecai Manuel Noah, after associating himself with the Tammany Society, becomes high sheriff of New York City.
1823
Solomon Henry Jackson begins publication of a monthly periodical entitled "The Jew; being a Defense of Judaism against all Adversaries and Particularly against the Insidious Attacks of 'Israel's Advocate'." Its purpose is to counter the attacks being made by Christian evangelists, particularly by "Israel's Advocate," an evangelical publication founded in 1820. The tone of "The Jew" is forthright and tough, and Jackson does not hesitate to denounce Christians where he sees fit. Though it survives only two years, it is the first Jewish periodical in America and evidence of the confidence Jews feel about engaging in public debate.
1825
The first Jewish congregation in Cincinnati, Ohio, Bene Israel, marks its first year.
1825
Congregation Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina, is split when Isaac Harby leads a breakaway group to found the Reformed Society of Israelites, the first attempt at Reform Judaism in America. Like German Jewish reformers, the group seeks shorter, more decorous services and increased use of the vernacular.
1825
The Jewish community of New York splits into two congregations, with the older Shearith Israel continuing to follow the Sephardic ritual, and the newer, B'nai Jeshurun, following the Ashkenazic ritual. The split does not reflect a division between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews, the latter of whom had been more numerous in the community for a century, but rather a division between old colonial families and newer arrivals.
1825
The flamboyant journalist Mordecai Manuel Noah announces with great fanfare the founding of "Ararat," a Jewish colony on Grand Island near where the newly completed Erie Canal meets the Niagara River. This proposed "city of refuge" is laid out on 2,000 acres of land he has recently purchased, and he invites American Indians to join in the enterprise (thinking them members of the Lost Tribes). The plan is generally ridiculed by the Jewish press and, despite a few expressions of interest, no one ever settles there.
1826
The Maryland legislature passes a "Jew Bill" that permits Jews to take public office without making a Christian oath. The culmination of a decade-long struggle by Solomon Etting, the bill is enacted after heated debate only because of the steadfast support of the Hagerstown delegate, Thomas Kennedy, a non-Jew. Jews are allowed to substitute a declaration of belief in "a future state of rewards and punishments" for the usual Christian oath. A few months later, Solomon Etting and Jacob I. Cohen, Jr. are elected to the Baltimore City Council.
1827
Jacob da Silva Solis, a pious merchant active in New York and Wilmington, visits New Orleans and discovers that its 25 adult Jewish male residents have not organized into a congregation. He is instrumental in bringing them together to found a new congregation, Shaarei Chessed. Among the contributors to the congregation is Judah Touro, a local merchant whose father had been "hazan" (cantor and prayer leader) of the Jewish community in Newport, Rhode Island. Touro, however, never becomes a member of the congregation and remains generally uninterested in Jewish matters.
1828
New York's newest congregation, B'nai Jeshurun, is split when a group of Dutch, German, and Polish Jews breaks away to form the congregation Anshe Chesed.
1829
Isaac Leeser (1806–1868) becomes "hazan" (cantor and prayer leader) of Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia. Having arrived from Germany in 1824 to work with his uncle in Richmond, Virginia, Leeser attracted notice in 1828 when an article he wrote defending Judaism was published in a Richmond paper. In the coming decades he will become the most prolific Jewish writer in America and one of the most creative forces in defining American Judaism.
1830
The 1830s marks the continuation and intensification of the wave of immigration of Jews from Central Europe to the U.S. that began in the 1820s. By the 1880s, tens of thousands of Jews will have immigrated to the U.S. Though the immigrants of this era would later be referred to as "German Jews," in reality, they come from many lands and regions and may have included many whose everyday language was Yiddish rather than German.
1830
During the 1830s-40s, various proposals to acquire land in America to build German and Polish Jewish colonies are put forth by European Jews. In 1840, a Berlin pamphlet entitled "Neu-Judaea" calls for the creation of a Jewish state in the Midwestern or Western U.S.
1830
The Jewish community of Baltimore, which has been growing for more than three decades, finally forms its first congregation.
1830
Congregation Bene Israel (Children of Israel), the oldest congregation west of the Allegheny Mountains, is incorporated in Cincinnati by the Ohio legislature. In the mid-19th century, Cincinnati will become America's third largest Jewish community and the center of the American Reform movement.
1831
Isaac Leeser, the cantor and spiritual leader of Philadelphia's Congregation Mikveh Israel, is the first American congregational leader to introduce regular English-language sermons during weekly Sabbath services.
1833
"Fancy's Sketch Book," a volume of poems by Penina Moise of Charleston, South Carolina, is the first book by a Jewish woman to be published in the U.S. (and the first book of poetry by a Jewish author to be published in the U.S.). Moise later writes 190 original hymns for Charleston's Congregation Beth Elohim, thus becoming the first American Jewish woman to make a significant contribution to synagogue liturgy.
1833
The conviction of Alexander Marks for keeping his store open on Sunday is upheld by the Supreme Court of South Carolina. Sunday laws put Jewish merchants at a disadvantage, as observing the Jewish Sabbath means that they are unable to conduct business two days out of every week.
1837
A lack of capital to support newly issued paper money causes about 33,000 U.S. banks to close. German-born August Belmont arrives in U.S. to establish himself as a private banker and to serve as American agent for the House of Rothschild, a fiscal agent of the U.S. since 1834. Belmont later becomes an important U.S. diplomat and politician.
1837
The first American Passover haggadah is printed in New York by Solomon Henry Jackson.
1837
Moses Cohen founds "Sholom," a Jewish farming colony in Wawarsing, Ulster County, New York. The many ideas and proposals for Jewish agrarian settlements attract some immigrants from Europe. But most European immigrants prefer to settle in cities, where they work in petty trade and in jobs in newly emerging industries.
1838
The first Jewish Sunday school is established in Philadelphia by Rebecca Gratz and Anna Marks Allen. Run entirely by women, the coeducational school is open to all Jewish children regardless of class or whether their families hold formal membership in a synagogue. Lessons are taught in English instead of Hebrew. Isaac Leeser, the cantor and spiritual leader of Congregation Mikveh Israel, publishes "The Hebrew Reader," the first American Hebrew primer for children.
1840
The Damascus blood libel prompts organized protests by 15,000 American Jews in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Cincinnati, Savannah, and Richmond on behalf of seven Syrian Jews accused of ritual murder. In response to the protests, U.S. President Martin Van Buren orders the U.S. consul in Egypt to dispute the blood libel.
1840
American officials are eager to encourage the establishment of banks as a way of ratifying the financial chaos of the colonial period and of increasing the development of business and industry. By 1840, the Rothschilds, the German Jewish banking family who have been doing business in the U.S. since 1920, have set up affiliates in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
1840
Abraham Rice from Bavaria arrives in the U.S. to become the first traditionally ordained rabbi to officiate in America. He assumes the pulpit at the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. During the 1840s-1860s, other rabbis from Central Europe (such as Leo Merzbacher, Max Lilienthal, Isaac Mayer Wise, Bernhard Felsenthal, David Einhorn, Samuel Adler, and Kaufmann Kohler) begin arriving in America. They provide religious leadership to the new American Jewish communities, and are active in promoting Reform Judaism.
1840
When a slim majority of the congregation votes in favor of having an organ, Charleston's Congregation Beth Elohim becomes one of the first Jewish congregations in the U.S. to formally adopt elements of Reform ritual. The decision causes traditionalists to secede, after which the remaining members vote in even more reforms, including prayers in English.
1840
Disagreements over ritual and other issues lead a group of Polish Jews in New York to break away from the established German-speaking congregations B'nai Jeshurun and Anshe Chesed and form Congregation Shaaray Zedek, the first Polish Jewish congregation in New York. New congregations are also formed in other cities, including Boston, Chicago, and Pittsburgh, as a result of similar secessions from existing synagogues.
1841
In response to what he sees as a decline in religious observance and education, traditionalist Isaac Leeser, spiritual leader of Philadelphia's Congregation Mikveh Israel, proposes a plan for a united federation of American synagogues and a network of Jewish schools. His proposal meets with rejection by proponents of Reform, who view it as an attempt by traditionalists to strengthen their control over American Jewish religious life.
1841
James Joseph Sylvester, a British Jewish mathematician, becomes a professor of mathematics at the University of Virginia, but three months later flees back to England, under attack because of his abolitionist views, the anti-Semitism of college and state officials, and his violent behavior toward an insolent student.
1841
Alfred Mordecai writes the first U.S. Army ordnance manual, standardizing U.S. weapons manufacture. During the Civil War, Mordecai will resign from the army in order to avoid choosing sides between the Union Army and his own Southern, Confederate family.
1842
Congregation B'nai Jeshurun of New York establishes the New York Talmud Torah and Hebrew Institute, an afternoon school (later converted to an all-day school) offering the most advanced Jewish religious instruction then available in the U.S.
1842
Baltimore's Har Sinai Verein is founded by a breakaway group from the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation to become the first Jewish congregation in the U.S. explicitly formed as a Reform congregation. From the beginning of its existence, Har Sinai Verein uses the German-published Hamburg Reform prayer book and an organ to accompany prayer.
1842
Congregation Ohabei Shalom is established as Boston's first synagogue.
1843
In tsarist Russia, the Pale of Settlement where Jews are legally permitted to live is further narrowed, displacing approximately 150,000 Jews, some of whom eventually emigrate to the U.S.
1843
B'nai Brith, the first American Jewish fraternal organization, is established in New York. The organization gains branches in other places, and in many small towns without synagogues, it serves as the backbone of the Jewish community. Based on the idea of Jewish "peoplehood" rather than religion, B'nai Brith develops into both a mutual benefit society and a social organization.
1843
Isaac Leeser, cantor and spiritual leader of Philadelphia's Congregation Mikveh Israel, founds the first Jewish monthly in the U.S., "The Occident and American Jewish Advocate."
1844
Mordecai Manuel Noah speaks before Catholic and Protestant leaders in New York and pleads for the Christian world to help the Jews resettle in Palestine. His treatise on this topic, "Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews," is published the same year.
1844
The Jews of Charleston, South Carolina, protest Governor James H. Hammond's Christian-oriented Thanksgiving message, which invites citizens of all denominations to offer thanks to Jesus Christ. Hammond refuses to apologize, averring that the U.S. is a Christian land. While overtly religious speech is not uncommon among American elected officials during the 19th century, Hammond's refusal to conciliate with the Jewish community is more the exception than the rule.
1845
Florida joins the Union, and David Levy Yulee is elected senator, becoming the first Jew to serve in the U.S. Senate. He will resign in 1861 at the start of the Civil War to become a member of the Confederate Congress.
1845
Isaac Leeser, cantor and spiritual leader of Philadelphia's Congregation Mikveh Israel, publishes his translation of the Pentateuch from Hebrew into English. This first American translation of the bible becomes the standard Jewish translation, and is widely used for over 70 years. Leeser's complete translation of the Hebrew bible will be published in 1853. In the same year, he founds the Jewish Publication Society, the first organization in the U.S. devoted exclusively to the publication of Jewish books. It flourishes only briefly, but issues a few booklets before dissolving in 1851. Several other organizations of the same name will be established later in the century.
1846
A potato famine begins in Ireland. Within four years, as many as one million will die and over one million will emigrate, with the U.S. serving as their most common destination.
1846
Reverend Isaac Mayer Wise, who will become the leading pioneer of American Reform Judaism, arrives in the U.S. from Bohemia to serve as the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth El in Albany, New York. Among the reforms he will attempt to introduce are mixed seating, a choir, and confirmation ceremonies instead of the traditional bar mitzvah.
1846
The first Jewish congregation in Chicago, Kehillath Anshe Ma'ariv (The Congregation of the People of the West) is founded.
1846
The United Order of True Sisters, the first German Jewish women's lodge, is founded in New York by members of the newly formed Congregation Emanu-El. It models itself on the lodges of the men's fraternal organization, B'nai Brith.
1847
Rabbi Max Lilienthal organizes a short-lived "bet din" (rabbinic court) in New York to act as an advisory committee to all American congregations. The "bet din" meets only once before it is disbanded.
1847
Leopold Eidlitz, the first Jewish architect to practice in the U.S., is hired by Congregation Shaarey Tefila in New York to build its Romanesque-style synagogue on Wooster Street. In 1868, Eidlitz will build the grand Gothic/Moorish-style synagogue, Temple Emanu-El, on Fifth Avenue.
1847
The Harmonie Club, an elite social club for Jews, is founded in New York City.
1848
Uprisings and riots break out across Central Europe. Among the fighters for democracy and egalitarianism are Jews who also hope that the revolutions will bring about increased civil rights for Jews. When the revolutions fail, some of these activists will emigrate to the U.S.
1848
The conviction of shopkeeper Solomon Benjamin for doing business on a Sunday is upheld by a South Carolina court. Sunday laws put Jewish merchants at a disadvantage, as observing the Jewish Sabbath means that they are unable to conduct business two days out of every week.
1848
Feminist and social reformer Ernestine Rose, a Polish-born Jew, campaigns for women's rights in Seneca Falls, New York. She later helps organize the 1850 National Woman's Rights Convention in Massachusetts.
1848
Isaac Leeser, cantor and spiritual leader of Philadelphia's Congregation Mikveh Israel, founds the Hebrew Education Society of Philadelphia to establish schools devoted to secular subjects, as well as Hebrew language, literature, and religion. A year later, he opens the first Hebrew high school in the U.S.
1849
The Gold Rush brings an influx of Jews from all over the world to California, mainly to San Francisco, where they work mainly as merchants and storekeepers. By 1878, there will be about 18,600 Jews in California, making up about 8 percent of the total population.
1849
The first High Holiday services in California are held in a tent in San Francisco.
1849
Upset by his congregants' lax religious observance -- which includes desecration of the Sabbath, eating unkosher foods, and engaging in intermarriage -- traditionalist rabbi Abraham Rice resigns from his Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. For the next decade, he will hold the only daily service in the city in his private congregation, Sherith Israel.
1850
The U.S. negotiates a commercial treaty with Switzerland, but several Swiss cantons at this time prohibit Jews from residing and/or doing business within their borders. American Jews protest with petitions, newspaper articles, public meetings, and letters to congressmen and win the support of Secretary of State Daniel Webster. In 1855, however, the treaty is signed.
1850
Captain Uriah Phillips Levy is one of only a few naval officers to support a bill prohibiting corporal punishment in the navy.
1850
Isaac Mayer Wise refuses to accept dismissal by his Albany synagogue, Beth El, whose leaders strongly disagree with his pro-Reform positions. After a melee on Rosh Hashanah is broken up by the police, Wise's supporters break away to form a new Reform congregation, Anshe Emeth. It becomes the first synagogue to institute the mixed seating of men and women, though this may be partly out of convenience, as the congregation had just purchased a former church with family pews and it is too expensive to change them.
1850
San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-el, the oldest congregation west of the Mississippi, is founded.
1852
Judah P. Benjamin, a noted lawyer from Louisiana, is elected to the U.S. Senate. During the Civil War, Benjamin will resign from the Senate to join the cabinet of the Confederate government.
1852
One of the earliest Eastern European synagogues in New York, Beth Hamedresh (House of Study), is established by Lithuanian and Polish immigrants.
1852
Jews' Hospital, the first Jewish hospital in America, is founded on West 28th Street in New York. During the Civil War, the hospital's facilities will be expanded to care for wounded Union soldiers. In the 1860s, Jews' Hospital will begin accepting non-Jewish patients, and in 1866 it will change its name to Mount Sinai Hospital.
1852
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writes the poem "Jewish Cemetery at Newport," an elegiac poem about what he sees as the inevitable disappearance of Judaism in America. The poem reflects the 19th-century idea that "inferior" cultures such as American Indians and Jews will vanish if they do not adapt to the realities of the modern world.
1852
Artist and Jewish communal leader Solomon Nunes Carvalho serves as the first official photographer of an exploratory expedition to map out the best route for the transcontinental railway. His published memoir of the journey, "Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West" (1854), will include reproductions of his portraits and paintings.
1853
The seeds of what will one day become known as Conservative Judaism are sown when Baltimore's Congregation Ohab Shalom is founded by German immigrants as a moderate alternative to what they see as the radical Reform practices and rigid, traditional Orthodoxy of other local congregations.
1853
Isaac Leeser, cantor and spiritual leader of Philadelphia's Congregation Mikveh Israel, completes his translation of the Hebrew bible into English, less than 10 years after publishing his translation of the Pentateuch.
1853
Rebekah Gumpert Hyneman publishes her acclaimed poetry collection, "The Leper and Other Poems," which includes many poems with Jewish themes.
1854
In his will, New Orleans merchant Judah Touro bequeaths several hundred thousand dollars to Jewish and non-Jewish charitable institutions in the U.S. and Palestine, the largest sum to date that an American philanthropist has given to charity.
1854
Reform activist Isaac Mayer Wise leaves Albany to become the rabbi of Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in Cincinnati, where he will remain until his death. He begins publication of the English-language weekly "The Israelite," later called "The American Israelite."
1854
The first Young Men's Hebrew Association is founded in Baltimore, inspiring a nationwide YMHA movement that will combine Jewish literary and cultural activities with sports and exercise.
1854
In response to the attendance of many non-Jews at Jewish ritual events and celebrations, Simon Tuska, a Jewish student at the University of Rochester, writes a book entitled "Stranger in the Synagogue" to provide information about Jewish worship.
1854
Edward Bloch of Cincinnati founds the Bloch Publishing Company, the first commercial Jewish publishing company in America. Bloch publishes Isaac Mayer Wise's periodicals "Die Deborah" and the "Israelite," as well as novels and other literature on Jewish themes. It also imports and reprints Jewish books from Europe.
1855
A Jewish firm in Santa Cruz, California, refuses to sign a petition in favor of statewide Sunday closing laws. In retaliation, William Stowe, the legislative sponsor of the petition, proposes a special head tax on Jews to discourage their settlement in California. Local Jews defend their rights boldly in the press and in public protest meetings.
1855
Reform activist Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise convenes a rabbinical conference in Cleveland, Ohio, aimed at organizing American Jewry religiously on a national scale. Disputes between proponents of Reform and more traditionalist rabbis, however, make unity impossible, and no organization that can claim to represent all Jewish religious interests is formed.
1855
The same year, Wise begins publishing the German-language weekly, "Die Deborah," which will become the most important and widely read Jewish newspaper in pre-Civil War America. "Die Deborah" is the first Jewish journal in the U.S. to address women publicly and to discuss the role of women in the community.
1855
Rebecca Gratz and Anna Marks Allen establish the Philadelphia Jewish Foster Home and Orphan Asylum, the first Jewish orphanage in the U.S.
1856
August Bondi and his business partners Theodore Weiner and Jacob Benjamin join John Brown's abolitionist forces in Kansas and take part in the massacres of Black Jack and Osawatomie against pro-slavery forces.
1856
Sabato Morais, rabbi of Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia, delivers anti-slavery sermons from his pulpit.
1857
American Jewish actress Adah Isaacs Menken leads a protest against the exclusion of Jews from the English Parliament.
1857
Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise publishes his prayer book "Minhag America," one of the first prayer books written for American Jews. It is quickly adopted by most congregations of the Western and Southern states and becomes a seminal text of the Reform movement.
1857
Elizabeth D.A. Cohen becomes the first woman physician to practice medicine in Louisiana.
1858
Two thousand Jews in New York City (and countless others around the country) rally to demand U.S. intervention on behalf of Edgar Mortara, an Italian Jewish child abducted from his home and forcibly converted to Catholicism. President James Buchanan refuses the requests of American Jews to intercede with the Vatican on the grounds that it might alienate Irish Catholics who are loyal Democratic supporters. (Mortara is never returned to his family and eventually becomes a Catholic priest.)
1858
In New York, Rabbi Samuel Myer Isaacs begins publication of "The Jewish Messenger," which takes a traditionalist, anti-Reform position in religious matters and identifies itself closely with the Board of Delegates of American Israelites. It also speaks out strongly against slavery.
1859
The international uproar over the Mortara Affair a year earlier inspires representatives of 25 congregations from 14 cities to create the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, the first national Jewish political organization. The Board will attempt to represent the views of the American Jewish community to the government and will coordinate Jewish responses to both overseas and domestic situations in which Jewish interests are at stake.
1859
Naval officer Uriah Phillips Levy serves for six months as commodore of the U.S. fleet.
1859
The Netherlander Israelitisch Sick Fund Society, the first New York "landsmanshaft" (immigrant mutual aid society), is founded by Dutch Jews to serve newcomers to America. Similar associations of Jews from individual towns and regions in Europe will form throughout the 1860s in the U.S.
1860
The first international Jewish defense organization, the Alliance Israelite Universelle, is founded in France to promote Jewish solidarity, oppose anti-Semitism and religious discrimination, and provide aid to suffering or persecuted Jews.
1860
Rabbi Morris Raphall of New York's B'nai Jeshurun congregation becomes the first rabbi to deliver a rabbinic invocation at the opening session of the U.S. Congress.
1860
In his popular Yiddish novels, Vilna Jewish writer Isaac Meyer Dick praises America as a land of promise for Jews and exhorts his readers to move there. Letters sent to Europe from immigrants also paint a positive picture of life in the U.S.
1861
The Southern states join to form the Confederate States of America, with Jefferson Davis as president. The Civil War breaks out as these states attempt to secede from the Union.
1861
Louisiana senator Judah P. Benjamin is appointed attorney general for the Confederacy. A year later he is appointed secretary of state, after serving briefly as secretary of war. Florida Senator David Levy Yulee resigns from the U.S. Congress to become a member of the Confederate Congress. David Camden De Leon, known as "the Fighting Doctor," is appointed as the first surgeon general of the Confederate Army. Alfred Mordecai, who drafted the first U.S. Army Ordinance Manual in 1841, is one of a number of Southern officers who resign from the army, unwilling to take sides between the Union and the South.
1861
Rabbi Morris Raphall of New York's Congregation B'nai Jeshurun gives a sermon in which he attacks abolitionists and states that nothing in the Jewish Bible prohibits slavery. The sermon is widely publicized. While it receives praise in the South, it is roundly attacked in the North. Rabbi David Einhorn, an ardent abolitionist, speaks out from the pulpit and is forced by an angry mob to flee Baltimore for Philadelphia.
1862
In the Union Army, Company C of the 82nd Regiment of the Illinois Volunteers consists entirely of Jews from Chicago, armed and financed by the Chicago Jewish community.
Colonel Edward Selig Salomon, a German Jewish immigrant and Chicago alderman, leads the 82nd Regiment.
1862
Congress amends a law specifying that army chaplains must be ministers of "some Christian denomination" to read that they must be ministers of "some religious denomination," thus permitting the appointment of Jewish military chaplains.
1862
President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in territories under rebellion as of January 1, 1863. The Civil War continues.
1862
In December, General Ulysses S. Grant, succumbing to the anti-Jewish prejudice of military officers and civilian officials, issues Order No. 11, the most blatantly anti-Jewish measure ever taken by American officialdom, expelling the Jews "as a class" from the military area under his command, including Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Jewish leaders and organizations protest, and the order is revoked less than a month later.
1862
Romanian explorer and writer Israel Joseph Benjamin publishes "Drei Jahre in Amerika" (Three Years in America), a chronicle of his three-year visit and travels throughout the U.S. He reports that there are Jewish communities in all parts of the country, including small towns and large cities.
1863
A delegation of Jews led by Cesar Kaskel of Paducah, Kentucky, a town from which Jews were expelled under General Grant's Order No. 11 in 1862, meets with President Abraham Lincoln to protest the discriminatory order. Lincoln directs the order to be rescinded.
1865
The U.S. Congress approves the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, officially abolishing slavery. A few months later, Confederate troops surrender to the Union Army, ending the Civil War.
1865
B'nai Brith launches the first of many overseas philanthropic projects and raises $4,522 for victims of a cholera epidemic in Palestine.
1865
The Hebrew Free School Association opens its first American Jewish day school in New York, teaching general and Jewish subjects to immigrant children.
1866
Jews' Hospital, founded in 1852, changes its name to Mount Sinai Hospital.
1866
San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-El builds a magnificent, domed temple at a cost of $134,000. Forty years later, the building will be destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake.
1866
17-year-old Emma Lazarus publishes her first book of poems, "Poems and Translations Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Sixteen."
1867
The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary (which includes Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, Slovakia, Hungary, and other regions) is created as a federation between the kingdom of Hungary and the Austrian Empire under the Hapsburgs. Laws in the new empire grant extensive civil rights to Jews.
1867
Diplomat and Jewish communal leader Benjamin Peixotto advocates the immigration of Romanian Jews to the U.S. He is one of the first American Jews to publicly advocate planned mass European Jewish emigration and resettlement in the U.S.
1867
Maimonides College, the first rabbinical school and theological seminary in America, is founded by Isaac Leeser, cantor and spiritual leader of Philadelphia's Congregation Mikveh Israel.
1867
Rabbi Benjamin Szold introduces a new prayer book, "Avodat Yisrael," as a moderate alternative to traditional prayer books and Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise's "Minhag America." "Avodat Yisrael" will be adopted by many congregations throughout the U.S.
1867
Dr. Nathan Mayer's book "Differences" is the first novel to directly examine American Jewish life. Set during and after the Civil War, it describes Jewish life and commerce in both the North and the South, and includes an account of army life during the war that is likely based on Dr. Mayer's own participation as a Union Army doctor.
1868
An amendment to the North Carolina state constitution modifies the religious test for office, requiring officeholders to attest to a belief in God but not have to be sworn in with an explicitly Christian oath. This change permits Jews in that state to hold public office for the first time. After granting office-holding rights to African-Americans under the terms of Reconstruction, the legislature is embarrassed to withhold similar rights from Jews, and so the amendment passes despite earlier failures to get it enacted.
1868
Leopold Eidlitz, the first Jewish architect in the U.S., builds the grand Gothic/Moorish-style synagogue, Temple Emanu-El, on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
1869
The international Jewish aid organization Alliance Israelite Universelle establishes a committee in Koenigsberg, Prussia to provide assistance to Jews seeking to emigrate from places where they have suffered discrimination.
1869
Responding to a plea from communal leader Simon Wolf and a delegation of American Jews, President Ulysses S. Grant intervenes with tsarist authorities to prevent the expulsion of 20,000 Jews from Bessarabia in southwestern Russia.
1869
Under the leadership of Reform rabbis Samuel Hirsch and David Einhorn, the first official conference of religious leaders identifying as Reform rabbis convenes in Philadelphia, where it publishes the first comprehensive statement on Reform Judaism in America.
1869
In Cincinnati, Jews, along with Catholics and freethinkers, fight to have bible readings permanently abolished in the public schools and to keep the schools religiously neutral.
1870
Benajmin Peixotto is appointed U.S. Consul in Romania to help monitor the escalating persecutions of Jews there. His salary is paid by B'nai Brith, the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, and other wealthy American Jews, and his presence helps prevent pogroms and new anti-Semitic legislation.
1870
J.K. Buchner, an immigrant from Prussia to New York, publishes "Juedische Zeitung" (Jewish Newspaper), the first Yiddish newspaper in America. The paper offers news, politics, and literature from a traditionalist (anti-Reform) perspective, and is targeted to a working class readership of recent immigrants.
1870
Harvard University graduates its first Jewish student. Hunter College (later known as the "Jewish girls' Radcliffe") is founded as Normal College of the City of New York. The public, tuition-free school becomes a haven for Jewish women students and others who either cannot afford or are refused admission to other schools.
1871
The first Hebrew periodical in the U.S., "Ha-Zofeh ba'Arez ha-Hadashah" (The Watchman in the New Land), edited by Zvi Hirsch Bernstein, begins publication as a weekly.
1871
Emma Lazarus's second book, "Admetus and Other Poems," is published to critical acclaim.
1871
Esther Levy publishes the first American Jewish (kosher) cookbook, "Jewish Cookery Book on Principles of Economy Adapted for Jewish Housekeepers with Medicinal Recipes and Other Valuable Information Relative to Housekeeping and Domestic Management." Targeted to affluent women, it indicates the high level of economic mobility and financial achievement of a significant number of American Jews in the late 19th century.
1871
The American Jewish Publication Society is founded in New York and supported by the Reform congregation Temple Emanu-El. The society publishes anti-evangelical literature and books about Jewish history.
1872
Central Synagogue (today the oldest Jewish house of worship in continuous use in New York City and one of the oldest in the U.S.) is built in New York City. Designed by Henry Fernbach in high Victorian, Moorish style, the building is built to accommodate 1,000 people, although, at the time, the congregation numbers only 150.
1873
The Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now known as the Union for Reform Judaism) is founded in Cincinnati by 28 congregations from Western states. Isaac Mayer Wise, one of its founders, intends for the UAHC to include congregations from across the religious spectrum, but it soon evolves into a strictly Reform federation, and later becomes the umbrella organization of Reform synagogues throughout the U.S. and Canada.
1874
The first New York branch of the Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) is founded. With its elaborate sports and entertainment facilities and its extensive schedule of classes and activities, it becomes the prototype for the over 120 branches established throughout the U.S. by 1890. By 1955, there will be 345 "Ys" in 216 cities.
1874
The United Hebrew Charities is established in New York to provide aid to poor Jewish families.
1875
In Cincinnati, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise founds Hebrew Union College, one of the first Jewish institutions of higher education in America. It will evolve into the rabbinical seminary for Reform Judaism.
1875
Evangelist Dwight L. Moody includes the charge of deicide (the claim that Jews murdered Jesus Christ) in sermons delivered at mass revival meetings held across the U.S.
1876
In Europe, Yiddish dramatist and composer Abraham Goldfaden establishes himself as the founder of modern, professional Yiddish theater by writing dialogue and continuity for the Broder Singers, a traveling troupe in Jassy, Romania. Goldfaden will later enlarge the troupe and tour Europe, and will open a theater in New York in 1887.
1876
Felix Adler founds the Society for Ethical Culture in New York, a non-theistic religious movement that advocates a humanistic, ethical worldview and works for the advancement of social justice for all.
1876
American author Herman Melville publishes his long poem "Clarel," whose characters include Ruth, a Jewish girl with whom the protagonist, Clarel, falls in love.
1877
New Hampshire becomes the last state in the union to repeal its requirement that state officeholders be practicing Protestants, thus granting political equality to Jews and Catholics.
1877
Joseph Seligman, a prominent Jewish banker, is refused admission to the Grand Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York. Author Bret Harte (who is one-quarter Jewish) writes a satirical poem ridiculing the distinction between "acceptable Hebrews" and "unacceptable Jews" made by Henry Hilton, the Grand Hotel's business manager.
1878
The New England Women's Medical Society, co-founded by Jewish surgeon Fanny Berlin, is formed to promote the idea that women physicians should be allowed to practice in Massachusetts hospitals (then open only to male doctors). Berlin later becomes chief surgeon at the New England Hospital.
1879
A group of mostly American-born young Jews from New York and Philadelphia begin publishing "The American Hebrew," an intellectually-oriented Jewish newspaper aimed at elevating the spirit of Judaism and bridging the gap between traditional Judaism and Reform.
1880
The Union of American Hebrew Congregations publishes the first census of the American Jewish population, estimated at 250,000.
1881
Russian revolutionaries assassinate Tsar Alexander II. Violent anti-Jewish pogroms ensue in 225 cities and towns across Russia. The pogroms and new, restrictive anti-Jewish laws that will be enacted the following year cause a sharp rise in the already high volume of Jewish emigration from the Russian Empire. By 1924, about 2.5 million Jews (one-third of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe) will have left. The majority of those who emigrate will settle in the U.S.
1881
Responding to the crisis, Jews in New York City create the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society to provide assistance to the immigrants.
1881
Kasriel Sarasohn transforms a Yiddish weekly into the first Yiddish daily in the U.S., the "Teglikhe Gazeten" (Daily Gazette). Traditionalist in outlook and written in a formal, Germanized Yiddish far removed from the everyday language of most of the recently arrived immigrants, the newspaper is soon forced by financial troubles to return to a weekly format. In 1885, Sarasohn will succeed in establishing a more long lived daily, the "Yidishes Tageblat" (Jewish Daily News), which will remain in circulation until 1928.
1882
A year after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, the new tsar, Alexander III, responds to the political unrest in the Russian Empire by rescinding many of the liberal reforms of his predecessor. A set of statutes known as the May Laws order the expulsion of Jews from villages and force them into the larger market towns ("shtetls"), and prohibit them from doing business on Sundays. The laws cause widespread dislocation and economic hardship, as well as a feeling of hopelessness about the future. The wave of Jewish emigration from the Russian Empire intensifies.
1882
Members of the Jewish agriculturalist movement Am Olam establish the first Jewish agricultural colony in the U.S. on Sicily Island, Louisiana. Though it is soon wiped out by a flood, it heralds the establishment of other Jewish colonies throughout the U.S., the most successful of which will be the communities of Alliance, Carmel, Woodbine, and Rosenhayn in southern New Jersey, which are sponsored by the German Jewish philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch.
1882
Journalist Abraham Cahan delivers the first Yiddish socialist speech ever given in America, speaking for two hours on Marx's theories in the back of a German beer saloon in New York City.
1882
"Koldunye," the first professional Yiddish theater production in the U.S., is staged on New York's Lower East Side. Featuring the Golubok brothers from London, the production is organized by Boris Thomashefsky, a 13-year-old immigrant cigar maker, who will go on to become one of Yiddish theater's most famous actors and directors.
1883
Inspired by the Russian Jewish refugees she meets as a relief worker, poet Emma Lazarus writes "The New Colossus," as her contribution to an art auction to raise money for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. In 1903, her poem, which welcomes all immigrants with the words, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free," will be engraved on a memorial plaque on the statue's base.
1883
At the first ordination banquet for graduates of the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College (HUC), unkosher food is served, causing shock and outrage among some of the attendees. Several congregations resign from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the umbrella congregation founded in 1873. The event, known as the "trefa [unkosher] banquet," becomes a symbol of the growing divide between proponents of Reform and those who will seek a more moderate solution to reconciling Jewish observance and tradition with modern life.
1884
Julia Richman, a first-generation American and daughter of Bohemian immigrants, is the first Jewish woman to be appointed as a principal in the New York City public school system.
1884
To boost ailing ticket sales at New York City's Metropolitan Opera House, conductor Leopold Damrosch proposes replacing the Italian opera company with a German company and repertoire. The Met's first German opera season, which Damrosch directs, is a smash success. At the end of the season, Damrosch himself dies from exhaustion and pneumonia.
1885
Eighteen rabbis meet in Pittsburgh to formulate a statement of principles for Reform Judaism. Known as the Pittsburgh Platform, the document espouses that "Judaism represents the highest conception of the God-idea," and assigns Judaism the mission of joining with other religions to combat the injustices of modern times in order to hasten the coming of the Messianic age. It rejects some Jewish laws, such as "kashrut" (kosher regulations), as incompatible with modern living; and explicitly rejects the idea of Jewish nationhood, preferring the definition of Jews as a "religious community." The Pittsburgh Platform will remain the most important statement of Reform Jewish beliefs until it is superseded by the Columbus Platform in 1937.
1885
Jewish intellectuals in New York City attempt to organize the Jewish working class by creating the "Yidisher arbeter fareyn" (known variously in English as the Jewish Workingmen's Association, Jewish Workmen's Society, Jewish Workers' Verein), a radical political organization.
1886
Oscar Straus, a career diplomat and future U.S. cabinet member, publishes "The Origin of the Republican Form of Government in the United States," developing a thesis that the ancient Jewish commonwealth was the model for the form of government and the political institutions of the early American colonies.
1886
Trade unionist Samuel Gompers, born in London of Dutch-Jewish parentage and a leader of the cigar workers' union, is elected president of the newly formed American Federation of Labor, a position he will hold almost without interruption until his death in 1924.
1886
The socialist Yiddish newspaper "Naye tsayt" (New Era), edited by Abraham Cahan, is founded in New York City. "Naye tsayt" and other radical Yiddish periodicals -- among them "New yorker yidisher folkstsaytung" (New York Jewish People's News), "Arbayter tsaytung" (Workers News), "Zukunft" (Future), "Fraye gezelshaft" (Free Society), and "Freie Arbeiter Stimme" (Free Voice of Labor); as well as Zionist publications such as "Shulamis" and "Di Tsayt" (The Times) -- reflect a rise of political activism among Jewish immigrants of this period.
1886
Yeshiva Etz Chaim is founded on New York City's Lower East Side as a place for young immigrant boys to receive an Eastern European-style Talmudic education. Beginning in 1897, graduates of the yeshiva will be able to continue their education at the newly founded Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), the first center for advanced Talmudic studies in the U.S. The two institutions will merge in 1912, and will later be absorbed into Yeshiva University.
1886
A coalition led by two prominent Sephardic rabbis, Dr. Sabato Morais and Dr. H. Pereira Mendes, found the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), as an alternative to Reform and Orthodox rabbinical academies. JTS's founders represent a broad cross section of American Jews, ranging from Orthodox leaders who are only grudgingly willing to accept modernizing trends, to others, who refer to themselves as "Conservative" or "Historical" and are willing to accommodate many more changes. All are united by their rejection of what they see as the radicalism of Reform Judaism.
1886
Congregation Adas Jeshurun (est. 1850s) builds a new synagogue on Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side. It is the first synagogue building erected by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The synagogue (which will become a National Historic Landmark in 1996) is built in the Moorish style, with a 70-foot-high vaulted ceiling, magnificent stained glass rose windows, elaborate brass fixtures and brightly colored frescoes.
1886
Lyman Bloomingdale and his brother, Joseph, open Bloomingdale Brothers Department store on its present site in mid-town Manhattan.
1887
The overcrowding and unsanitary conditions in the tenements in which most immigrants reside in New York City become a focus of attention for concerned citizens, who worry about outbreaks of contagious disease. Some are also disturbed to discover that tenement landlords are charging exorbitant rents. Reformers, including Felix Adler, founder of the Ethical Culture Society, form the Tenement House Building Company, which erects six improved "model" tenements and rents apartments in them for $8-14 a month.
1887
Rabbi Gustav Gottheil of Temple Emanu-El in New York City organizes the first Sisterhood of Personal Service, an organization of women charity workers. One of the goals of the Sisterhood is the bridging of class differences within the Jewish population. Within a few years, most of the congregations in New York will follow Emanu-El's example and establish their own Sisterhood of Personal Service associations.
1887
Isidor and Nathan Straus, partners with R.H. Macy since 1874, become sole owners of Macy's, which will eventually become the world's largest department store.
1887
The Hebrew Actors Union is established to advocate for higher wages for actors on the Yiddish stage.
1887
Abraham Goldfaden, known as the f