This book describes the assimilation and acculturation of a small minority who immigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century and again in the twentieth century. Gerhard Falk focuses on refugees who fled from Nazi tyranny in the 1930s, immigrated to America, and succeeded despite immense obstacles. This book includes a review of the most prominent academics that made major contributions to science, medicine, art, and literature in America. The German Jews in America demonstrates that America is still the land of opportunity for everyone who makes an effort, no matter what their religion, ethnicity, or race. In addition, this book is a key to understanding immigration and the role of community in providing the support needed in becoming an American.

German Jews and Migration to the United States, 1933–1945 is a collection of first-person accounts, many previously unpublished, that document the flight and exile of German Jews from Nazi Germany to the USA,. The authors of the letters and memoirs included in this collection share two important characteristics: They all had close ties to Munich, the Bavarian capital, and they all emigrated to the USA, though sometimes via detours and/or after stays of varying lengths in other places of refuge. Selected to represent a wide range of exile experiences, these testimonies are carefully edited, extensively annotated, and accompanied by biographical introductions to make them accessible to readers, especially those who are new to the subject. These autobiographical sources reveal the often-traumatic experiences and consequences of forced migration, displacement, resettlement, and new beginnings. In addition, this book demonstrates that migration is not only a process by which groups and individuals relocate from one place to another but also a dynamic of transmigration affected by migrant networks and the complex relationships between national policies and the agency of migrants.

Three New York Times bestsellers chronicle the rise of America’s most influential Jewish families as they transition from poor immigrants to household names. In his acclaimed trilogy, author Stephen Birmingham paints an engrossing portrait of Jewish American life from the colonial era through the twentieth century with fascinating narrative and meticulous research. The collection’s best-known book, “Our Crowd” follows nineteenth-century German immigrants with recognizable names like Loeb, Sachs, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. Turning small family businesses into institutions of finance, banking, and philanthropy, they elevated themselves from Lower East Side tenements to Park Avenue mansions. Barred from New York’s gentile elite because of their religion and humble backgrounds, they created their own exclusive group, as affluent and selective as the one that had refused them entry. The Grandees travels farther back in history to 1654, when twenty-three Sephardic Jews arrived in New York. Members of this small and insulated group—considered the first Jewish community in America—soon established themselves as wealthy businessmen and financiers. With descendants including poet Emma Lazarus, Barnard College founder Annie Nathan Meyer, and Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo, these families were—and still are—hugely influential in the nation’s culture, politics, and economics. In “The Rest of Us,” Birmingham documents the third major wave of Jewish immigration: Eastern Europeans who swept through Ellis Island between 1880 and 1924. These refugees from czarist Russia and Polish shtetls were considered barbaric, uneducated, and too steeped in the traditions of the “old country” to be accepted by the well-established German American Jews. But the new arrivals were tough, passionate, and determined. Their incredible rags to riches stories include those of the lives of Hollywood tycoon Samuel Goldwyn, Broadway composer Irving Berlin, makeup mogul Helena Rubenstein, and mobster Meyer Lansky. This unforgettable collection comprises a comprehensive account of the Jewish American upper class, their opulent world, and their lasting mark on American society.

History of the Jews in America is a thorough historical account of Jewish communities in both South and North America starting from the earliest days of Spanish colonization all the way to the beginning of the 20th century. _x000D_ Contents_x000D_ The Participation of Jews in the Discovery of the New World_x000D_ Early Jewish Martyrs Under Spanish Rule in the New World_x000D_ Victims of the Inquisition in Mexico and in Peru_x000D_ Marranos in the Portuguese Colonies_x000D_ The Short-lived Dominion of the Dutch Over Brazil_x000D_ Recife: The First Jewish Community in the New World_x000D_ The Jews in Surinam or Dutch Guiana_x000D_ The Dutch and English West Indies_x000D_ New Amsterdam and New York_x000D_ New England and the Other English Colonies_x000D_ The Religious Aspect of the War of Independence_x000D_ The Participation of Jews in the War of the Revolution_x000D_ The Decline of Newport; Washington and the Jews_x000D_ Other Communities in the First Periods of Independence_x000D_ The Question of Religious Liberty in Virginia and in North Carolina_x000D_ The War of 1812 and the Removal of Jewish Disabilities in Maryland_x000D_ Mordecai Manuel Noah and His Territorialist-Zionistic Plans_x000D_ The First Communities in the Mississippi Valley_x000D_ New Settlements in the Middle West and on the Pacific Coast_x000D_ The Jews in the Early History of Texas_x000D_ Conservative Judaism and Its Stand Against Reform_x000D_ The Discussion About Slavery_x000D_ Lincoln and the Jews_x000D_ Participation of Jews in the Civil War_x000D_ Immigration From Russia Prior to 1880_x000D_ Relations With Russia_x000D_ The Passport Question_x000D_ The American-Jewish Committee_x000D_ The Jews in the Dominion of Canada_x000D_ Jews in South America, Mexico and Cuba

Assesses the current state of American Jewish life, drawing on the research and thinking of scholars from a variety of disciplines and diverse points of view.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This captivating story of the Jewish community in Johnstown, Pennsylvania reveals a pattern of adaptation to American life surprisingly different from that followed by Jewish immigrants to metropolitan areas. Although four-fifths of Jewish immigrants did settle in major cities, another fifth created small-town communities like the one described here by Ewa Morawska. Rather than climbing up the mainstream education and occupational success ladder, the Jewish Johnstowners created in the local economy a tightly knit ethnic entrepreneurial niche and pursued within it their main life goals: achieving a satisfactory standard of living against the recurrent slumps in local mills and coal mines and enjoying the company of their fellow congregants. Rather than secularizing and diversifying their communal life, as did Jewish immigrants to larger cities, they devoted their energies to creating and maintaining an inclusive, multipurpose religious congregation. Morawska begins with an extensive examination of Jewish life in the Eastern European regions from which most of Johnstown's immigrants came, tracing features of culture and social relations that they brought with them to America. After detailing the process by which migration from Eastern Europe occurred, Morawska takes up the social organization of Johnstown, the place of Jews in that social order, the transformation of Jewish social life in the city, and relations between Jews and non-Jews. The resulting work will appeal simultaneously to students of American history, of American social life, of immigration, and of Jewish experience, as well as to the general reader interested in any of these topics.

Lloyd Gartner presents, in chronologically-arranged chapters, the story of the changing fortunes of the Jewish communities of the Old World (in Europe and the Middle East and beyond) and their gradual expansion into the New World of the Americas.The book starts in 1650, when there were no more than one and a quarter million Jews in the world (less than a sixth of the number at the start of the Christian era). Gartner leads us through the traditions, religious laws, communities and their interactions with their neighbours, through the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and into Emancipation, the dark shadows of anti-Semitism, the impact of World War II, bringing us up to the twentieth century through Zionism, and the foundation ofIsrael.Throughout, the story is powerful and engrossing - enlivened by curious detail and vivid insights. Gartner, an expert guide and scholar on the subject, writing from within the Jewish community, remains objective and effective whilst being careful to introduce and explain Jewish terminology and Jewish institutions as they appear in the text.This is a superb introductory account - authoritative, in control, lively of the central threads in one of the greatest historical tapestries of modern times.

An investigation of the response of American Jews to Nazism and the extermination of European Jewry. The demand for Jewish statehood politicized the rescue issue and made it impossible to appeal for American aid on purely humanitarian grounds. Berman tries to understand the constraints within which American Jews operated. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR