Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The earliest known Jewish colonist, Elias Legardo, came to Va. in 1621. In September 1654, 23 Portuguese Sephardim founded the first Jewish community at New Amsterdam. Until 1775, most Jewish newcomers were Sephardic. An estimated 180,000 Jews, mostly German-speaking Ashkenazim, immigrated from 1800 to 1880, when there were 250,000 US Jews, and by 1900, there were 1,000,000. Between 1882 and 1924, about 2,300,000 Jews entered the country, primarily from Poland and Russia, and raised the group's population to 4,200,000. Because the Russian Revolution cut off a major source of immigration and the N ational O rigins A ct allowed few eastern Europeans (of any religion) into the US, only 576,000 Jews entered the US from 1925 to 1975. In 1990 the 3,416 US synagogues included 5,944,000 practicing Jews (2.4 percent of the population). ... log in or subscribe to read full text