The History of Jewish Life in America

Jews have lived in the United States since 1654 — before the states were even united — when twenty-three Sephardic settlers fled to New Amsterdam. Today, the Jewish population of America stands at 7.5 million.

Overcoming brutal sweatshop conditions, assimilationist pressure, antisemitic regulations and even lynchings, American Jews have helped positively shift the country’s politics and economics.
Though they weren’t always welcomed with open arms, and despite the challenges they have faced over time, American Jews have flourished in what is now home to the world’s second largest community of Jews.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:37 Jews during the American Colonial Era
01:37 General Ulysses S. Grant and Antisemitism
02:04 Jewish success in the mid-1800s
02:26 Russian Jewish immigration and textile industry sweatshops
03:19 Jewish involvement in the working class struggle
03:53 Redefining Jewish identity and changing Jewish rituals
04:18 The American Reform Movement
04:39 The Pittsburgh Platform and Conservative Judaism
05:16 Antisemitism in America
05:40 False conviction and lynching of Leo Frank
06:02 The Johnson-Reed Act Jewish immigration quotas
06:56 Jewish activism and success
07:24 American Jewish representation today
07:43 Outro

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Recommended video—Who are the Jewish US Supreme Court Justices?

Let’s connect:

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Co-Executive Producers:
- Melinda Goldrich
- Shmuel Katz

Gold Level:
- Goldrich Family Foundation

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Image and footage credits:
– Ajay Suresh
– T’ruah
– Israel GPO-Fritz Cohen
– German Fuentes pavez
– eHillel
– Temple Emanu-El NYC
– Kasala Productions
– Justin Kroger
– Allison Graham

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About The Jewish Story: Understand three thousand years of Jewish history in these short videos based on the book Letters to Auntie Fori: The 5,000-Year History of the Jewish People and Their Faith by the renowned historian Sir Martin Gilbert. Learn the Jewish story from the ancient Israelites of the Bible to Hellenization, the Jews of the Middle Ages to modern day, and more.

About Unpacked: We provide nuanced insights by unpacking all things Jewish. People are complex and complicated — yet we’re constantly being pushed to oversimplify our world. At Unpacked we know that being complex makes us more interesting. Because of this, we break the world down with nuance and insight to drive your curiosity and challenge your thinking.

#AmericanJews #jewish #antisemitism

[MrOrientalism]

First country that made first declaration of human rights including Jews’s rights, was Persia, during Cyrus the Grate

[JosesRants]

Hayim Solomon in PA funded the American Revolution, he died bankrupt because of it, you also forgot the Spanish Portuguese Jews accepted into Savannah GA before the Revolution and before Catholics were allowed there.

[klarinausach]

This video is great. I do wish you would have included that many Jews changed their last names to sound less Jewish because of the antisemitism they were facing since many people explicitly refused to allow Jews.

[awk]

Washington wrote the letter to whats now the Touro Synagogue in Newport RI, not Providence. Otherwise great video!

[kristoffliftoff]

My family came as Sephardi Jews in the 17th century. I was just in Philly and saw how much Jewish history (primary Portuguese Jews) were involved in the revolution alone.

[mikeylejan]

May America will always be a home to the Jewish people, may their progeny thrive in future generations.

[jewishbusinessadvice]

Really amazing video
Very informative!!!

[YaakovEzraAmiChi]

My great great (great great) Grandfather came here to America in early 1900s (before 1914) and his immigration paper says he came here to get away from Tzar Nicholas (the second iirc)

And today I think I want to go and live in Israel instead.

[sugarkane]

And it might be worth remembering. Who owned the sweatshops. Other Jews.

[USA_]

May we be a strong country & culture!
For, America is a Westernized multi-ethnic country with a Westernized multi-ethnic culture - always has been always will be.
God Bless America 🇺🇲❤️☺️🕉️✝️✡️

[NuNugirl]

My Grandma told me she stood on the street and saw what happened, as the Triangle Shirt Factory burned. 😮horrible. She was one of those picketers. She was only 21 and new to America. She retired from the Garment Manufacturing Industry ( rag trade) working hard most of her life. Grandma I miss you❤and think of you often. I was brought up mostly as a Hungarian American Jew. My Mom’s side came to America much earlier. My Grandma Sadie and Grandpa Jerry were old style New Yorker ( Manhattan) Jews 😂 My Mom was probably one of the original “JAPs”.

[Lumenig]

Good video, thanks! But small mistake at 2:36
Aleksandr the III, not the II.

[wikilee]

Jews are very special and very smart people.

[akirafudo]

I would love to see a video of middle eastern Jews like Syria or Iraq

[jrutt]

The narrator sounds like the wife of the program Technican of one for Israel! There is more like 15 million Jews in the U.S. there are 6.5 million Jews in the top 10 states of the U.S.A.

[wvmsxvq]

Bad Jews – A History of American Jewish Infighting
Emily Tamkin, a Jewish writer from the UK who writes about American Jewry, has recently published a book titled Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities. The book’s publisher, Hurst, describes it as “A lively, thoughtful history of America’s Jews, exploring their complex relationships with national culture, identity, and politics—and each other.”
The book caused a bit of a stir among Jewish publications. JTA, for example, wrote that Tamkin “takes a different tack, tracing the history of American Jewry through the ways Jews on one side of social upheaval seek to discredit the very Jewishness of those on the other side.” The book itself focuses on what is happening in America, since “American Jewish history, ” writes Tamkin, “is full of discussions and debates and hand-wringing over who is Jewish, and how to be Jewish, and what it means to be Jewish.”
So, first, we need to realize where the word Yehudi (Jewish) comes from. There is the known answer, that Yehudi comes from Yohuda (Judah), the name of the tribe that lived in the land of Israel during the Second Temple. However, there is another meaning to the word: Yehudi also comes from the word Yechudi, meaning united. This makes perfect sense if you remember that we were pronounced a nation only after we committed to love each other “as one man with one heart” at the foot of Mt. Sinai, yet, for the most part, this explanation did not receive the notoriety it deserves.
If you look at being Jewish through the spectacle of Jewish unity, as I do, then being a good Jew means first and foremost that you want to unite with all the Jews, that this is what really matters to you, your prime value. If Jewishness is about unity, then a Jew is a person who knows, feels, understands, and even spreads the idea that the most important thing is to be connected in ties of love with all the Jews, regardless of denomination, customs, political views, or any other issue that currently divides and splinters the Jewish people.
The author wrote that one of the answers she got to the question about the meaning of being a bad Jew was “someone whose conception of Judaism doesn’t have applications to the wider world.” I understand where this answer comes from. It is with good reason Jews gave the correction of the world such a pivotal place in their identity. We even gave that mission its own Hebrew term, Tikkun Olam (Hebrew for “Correction of the World”).
However, we must know what it means to correct the world, to be responsible for it, or even to care about the world. Tikkun Olam are not simply words; they imply a very specific task, and until we accomplish it, we will not be “good Jews.”
At the “inauguration” of our people, we were commanded to unite “as one man with one heart, ” as RASHI interprets. Immediately after, we were declared a nation and were tasked with being “a light to the nations.”
In other words, our unity and our obligation to the world are indivisible. We cannot be a light to the nations if we are not united. At the same time, we cannot unite unless we do it in order to be a light to the nations.
When our ancestors united for the first time, under the guidance of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they were not a biologically related group. They were an eclectic crowd that was taken by the idea that all the people should unite, and we should not succumb to our ego. This is why Abraham advocated kindness and mercy, to teach people how to rise above their self-absorption and care for one another.
Abraham was a maverick, a pioneer, a trailblazer, but thanks to him, these noble ideas are now universal. As a nation that formed out of disparate tribes and clans, it was our duty to be the living proof of Abraham’s paradigm. This is why we became a nation only after we united, and not a moment prior.
Since our inception, we have known that unity is our “secret weapon.” However, we never understood why, what was the secret of the strength in our unity. The secret is not that unity itself makes us undefeatable, but that our unity dissolves the world’s hatred toward us and turns it into respect and awe. It gives the world the example of unity that it needs so that all of humanity can unite, as well.
Not only we received a message when we were at the foot of Mt. Sinai. At that moment, the nations of the world received the knowledge that we received the calling. Since then, they have been wait

[vipulrane]

I think India is the only country where no jews had to face these atrocities

[altoM]

Leans negative on America, concentrates on one lynching for example. That’s how you argue that something is bad, list negative characteristics and ignore most positive. Those who consider America a constitutional republic and not a joke for each generation to laugh at in their own way recognize the shocking fairness of America’s founding toward Jews. And regarding the negatives experiences, African Americans and Catholics had it harder than the Jews, one could argue. And the Protestants? They risked being a failing revolution and failed country early in, paying for America by being shot to death or stabbed on the battlefields of the early republic. Gratitude is a Jewish characteristic, it is the appropriate attitude toward the 🇺🇸 IMO.

[tylerlawlerDEVGRU]

Being a Jew myself, and being tired of discrimination, I'd like to make something perfectly clear: being a Jew is blood not religion. Being Jewish does not make someone a Jew. 'Jewish' is a religion. Scary book. I'm a Roman Catholic Jew.

-The Point Man of Zero Dark Thirty

[mottyk]

Unfortunately because of all these modernizations and calls to redefine there's been so much assimilation, People who embrace the original reform movement no longer have Jewish descendants

The problem didn't start in America, but ask yourself how is it that the number 7-8 million jews has pretty much stayed the same over the last 60-70 years and why orthodox Jewish percentages keep rising

Which in a way comes back to the big question, what does it mean to be Jewish?