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© John Kerrigan 2006
Jewish Emigration
In 1882 an extensive
programme of emigration to
America
was organized and directed from
Liverpool;
and during the year of the Russo-Jewish persecutions 6,274 persons were sent, at
a cost which amounted to over £30,000 ($50,000), to the
United States
and
Canada
in thirty-one steamships from the
Port of
Liverpool.
The ports of
Le Havre,
Antwerp,
Rotterdam,
Genoa and especially
Liverpool
were all important ports of emigration. However, around 1900
Hamburg did become a front-runner
in the race to attain the status of biggest emigration harbor,
but was easily surpassed by
Liverpool.
Source: linktoyourroots.hamburg.de.
American Emmigration
American Jewish history is characterized by three waves of
immigrants from three different parts of
Europe. The
economic, social and religious mores of the three groups were distinct from one
another.
Following the spread of the Inquisition to the
New World, the first Jews in the
United States came from Portuguese-ruled
Brazil. In 1654, twenty-three adult Spanish-Portuguese (Sephardic)
Jews arrived in
New Amsterdam. The environment they found there was scarcely hospitable.
In 1655, more Jews arrived from
Holland. Nine years later, the British took over what would become
New York and the situation regarding freedom of worship improved
from that time.
In colonial times, Jews settled along the Atlantic coast and
in several southern states. During the 17th century,
Rhode Island was the only
New
England colony which allowed a
permanent Jewish community. That settlement was in
Newport, where the Touro Synagogue, built
in 1773, still stands as a memorial to the patriot and philanthropist
Judah Touro.
Other
early Spanish-Portuguese Jewish communities were established in
Charleston,
South Carolina, and
Savannah,
Georgia. The
Philadelphia congregation (Congregation Mikveh
Israel) was organized about 1745. The
Richmond community was established after the Revolution.
The second period in American Jewish history was dominated
by German Jewry. Coming out of an assimilated, emancipated background, German
Jews were prompted to emigrate by the scarcity of land, rural poverty and
government restrictions on marriage, domicile and employment. Although there
were German Jews in
America before the early 19th Century, it is after that time that
they became the predominant Jewish cultural group. Coming to
America in a period of rapid geographic expansion, the German Jews
became part of the developing
Midwest. They spread west, following the route of the
Erie Canal.
Communities were established in
Chicago,
Cincinnati,
Indianapolis and
St. Paul. Wherever they settled, they formed a congregation and
bought land for a cemetery.
The first German Jews to emigrate were mostly young men.
They entered thinly scattered networks which consisted of relatives and neighbors from the same European communities. The second
group came after the failed German revolution (1848). They were somewhat older
than the first and more educated. These German Jews often went into peddling
and petty trade, endeavors calling for small outlays
of capital. From small starts, many went on to build substantial businesses andy were absorbed into the American middle class.
These immigrants came to
America in search of democracy. This is reflected in their overall
concern for Jewish communal conditions. Religious, philanthropic and fraternal
organizations were founded during this period. Many German-Jewish immigrants
were part of the Reform Movement and the religious life of American Jews was coloured by that connection. Founded in
Hamburg, Reform Judaism aimed at winning civic equality and social
acceptance in the modern world.
The third wave of Jewish immigrants into the
United States was also the largest. Jews fleeing restrictions and extreme
persecutions (pogroms) came from
Poland and
Russia. In 1904, the Tsarist Government established the Pale of
Settlement, an area stretching from the
Baltic Sea to the
Black Sea. Jewish
settlement in the Empire was restricted to that area. These Jews were largely
urban, having lived in towns and villages, called shtetls.
Among such communities were
Warsaw,
Odessa,
Lodz and Vilna -- names later to be obliterated by the
Holocaust. Jews in the Pale also had restrictions placed on their means of
employment; the majority were merchants, shopkeepers and craftsmen.
The
Russian pogroms (1881-84 and 1903-06) resulted in heavy Jewish emigration to
Western Europe and the
United States.
Because of the pogroms, the profile of the Russian Jewish
immigrant differed greatly from that of the German Jew. The latter came largely
as single men; the former were entire family groups. Within the Russian Jewish
masses who came to
America were groups of Hasidic Jews.
Most Hasidim who immigrated to the
United States in this time period maintained a strict, orthodox way of
life.
Russian Jews comprised the last great wave of immigrants
coming to
America and they settled in the urban centers.
Predominantly industrial proletariat, many raised capital and
proceeded to go into business. They brought with them a rich Yiddish
culture expressing itself through journalism, fiction, poetry and the theater. As the Sephardim had once regarded the middle
class German Jews as upstarts, the German Jews now felt more
"American" than the working class Russian Jews. Class standing was
not the only point of difference between the two groups. Accustomed to the
insular life of the Pale, Russian Jews formed cohesive communities. They
strongly upheld a sense of religiosity which permeated their lifestyle and
offended their assimilationist co-religionists. Their
development and maintenance of a Yiddish culture (Yiddishkeit)
also served to uphold their cultural differences.
Further information
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