Emigration between the 1820s and World War I

Up to 1820 Jewish migration to the United States remained a trickle. The census of 1820 estimated that only about 2,700 Jews lived in the young republic. But within sixty years the number would mushroom to almost 280,000 (Faber 1992, 107-108; Cohen 1984, 12; Barkai 1994, 9).

The reasons for that wave of migration were manifold. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars (which ended in 1815) Central Europe witnessed the first signs of pro­found changes, mainly urbanization and industrialization. These changes brought about a gradual dissolution of the agrarian and feudal society, which prompted a wave of immi­gration to America from across Western and Central Europe, in which Jews were only a small fraction. There were other upheavals as well. At the same time, Europe’s monarchs were determined to restore the political order that prevailed before the French Revolution (1789) and to clamp down on any expression of liberalism or nationalism. Jews found themselves in an especially precarious situation: after centuries of imposed separation and degradation among Christians, some Jews (like Moses Mendelssohn) were imbued with the ideas of the Enlightenment, such as universal human rights. But Jewish hopes for legal and social emancipation were frustrated by the prevailing political regression. In addition, many in the German national movement were openly hostile toward Jews, as the latter were considered non-Germans or “backward.” Some German nationalists also saw the Jews as the alleged financers of the erstwhile French occupation forces, hence unworthy of emancipation.

Those changes happened, moreover, when many German Jews were moving from small towns to larger cities and becoming more integrated into German culture (language, clothing). Among the most profound responses to the pressures of partial emancipation and modernization involved the emergence of Reform Judaism. Supported initially by the urban economic elite of German Jewry in the 1810s and 1820s, reformers sought to mod­ernize the beliefs and practices of Judaism. Reform rabbis like Abraham Geiger and David Einhorn emphasized the universal and nonnational essence of Judaism, while asserting the right of Jews to amend ancient laws to fit a modern setting. By harmonizing Judaism with modern conditions, reformers believed they would both prevent Jews from abandoning their religion while demonstrating to their Gentile neighbors that Jews were ready for full emancipation.

The United States was well advertised by the second quarter of the nineteenth cen­tury in Europe as the “common man’s utopia.” Shippers and American consuls circulated guidebooks on the young country, and letters from relatives and friends in America fed an “immigration fever.” Among Central European Jews, the poorer one was, the more likely one was to go to America. Nevertheless, it was not only the promise of prosperity that lured them but also the vision of a country where neither guilds, nor a state church, nor Jewish origin would limit one’s success. In America emancipation was guaranteed.

Many of the Jewish immigrants hailed from areas where German was not the only (or not even the more common) language—such as Galicia, Hungary, Moravia, and Bohemia in the Austrian Empire, and western Poland in Prussia.

Jewish settlement spread across the country. Central European Jews could be found not only on the eastern seaboard (New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore), but also along the Mississippi River (New Orleans, St. Louis, Louisville, Minneapolis), or the Ohio River (Cincinnati), throughout the Great Lakes area (Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee), the Deep South (Jackson, Mobile, Birmingham), and the Pacific West (San Francisco, Portland), to name but a few. Most Jewish immigrants concentrated on what they knew best: small commerce (peddlers, shopkeepers). As a group, American Jews achieved a high degree of economic mobility, though only a small group of bankers and businessmen struck gold (Joseph Seligman, Jacob Schiff, Meyer Guggenheim, Lazarus Strauss, and Julius Rosenwald). Jewish upward mobility in America can be explained by the fact that Jews pursued occupations closely resembling those they knew in Europe; strove for self­employment and were willing to defer marriage and family until they could afford them; and relied heavily on family and community networks of support, especially for credit, and drew on the labor of relatives. In short, the very economic pattern that made Jews pariahs in Bavaria or Bohemia made them respectable citizens in the United States, where self-made businessmen were admired.

The development of most small congregations usually followed a similar path: first came a burial society, then a synagogue, and only later a school. To overcome the sense of isolation, Jews opted to live, work, socialize, and fulfill religious obligations with one an­other. Philanthropy became the backbone of institutions formed by American Jews.

The immigration of Central European Jews brought about a tremendous growth of Reform Judaism in the United States. Reformers and laity alike sought shorter services, prayers in German or English, and improved decorum (like the introduction of choirs and organs, mixed seating for men and women, and uncovered heads in synagogue). One of the prominent reformers, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, founded the Union of American He­brew Congregations in Cincinnati (1873), which was Reform Judaism’s laity organization, and two years later a rabbinical seminary (the oldest seminary in the United States), He­brew Union College.

Jewish Reform ideology and American middle-class decorum enabled Jewish women to play a greater role in communal life. Jewish women’s organizations in America usually began as local charities, study societies, and synagogue sisterhoods. By the 1870s mixed choirs were already quite common in synagogues, and gradually women’s galleries were re­placed by mixed seating. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, acculturated middle­class Jewish women became involved in communal activities beyond the Jewish fold. Han­nah Solomon of Chicago worked with Jane Addams to improve the conditions of the city’s poor. Solomon was also among the chief organizers of the Jewish Women’s Congress that was held in Chicago (1893) and included ninety-three delegates, mainly of German origin, aimed at organizing a body that would represent all Jewish women in America.

German Jewish women also had been active in propagating Jewish education. Re­becca Gratz, who led many philanthropic programs in Philadelphia, established there in 1838 the first Jewish Sunday school. Gratz and her students recited prayers, read chapters from the Bible, and sang hymns. The Philadelphia school grew rapidly and soon branched out to other cities, becoming the most popular form of Jewish education in America.

Hearing about some of the innovations in American Reform Judaism, many obser­vant Jews in Germany came to believe that, religiously speaking, in Amerika geht alles! (in America anything goes). Unlike Germany, where the government lent some support to the orthodox, the separation of state and church in the United States precluded traditional­ists from appealing to the government. Yet even though Reform Judaism made consider­able progress in nineteenth-century America, it met traditional opposition. Influential German Jewish leaders like Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia and Samuel Isaacs of New York rebuked the innovations by reformers and argued that the changes in Jewish law should be limited to what is absolutely necessary (such as Sunday schools that would defend Jew­ish children from Christian missionaries).

The Jewish press was a main forum for the dispute about religious reforms, as well as for communal news, discussions ofJewish history, Jewish Gentile relations, American pol­itics, and Jewish life around the world. Anglo-Jewish periodicals outnumbered those in German and survived longer. In 1855 reformer Isaac Mayer Wise founded in Cincinnati the first German-language periodical of any longevity, the monthly Die Deborah, as a women’s supplement to his weekly English-language Israelite (later The American Israelite). The following year another Reform rabbi, David Einhorn of Baltimore, began publishing Sinai. Yet, already before 1914, the last Jewish periodical in German ceased publication.

Among the first generation of German Jewish immigrants there were many who proudly accepted the label “Germans” and were active in German American cultural life. Many spoke German at home and kept records and prayed in German. Jews were promi­nent in German musical and theatrical societies and regularly contributed as writers and subscribers to German newspapers. During the Civil War, some northern Jews joined units of German volunteers to fight on the side of the Union. Still, not all immigrants shared the special bond to the German language and culture. Some immigrants, especially those hailing from the Slavic regions of Prussia or Austro-Hungary, did not speak German very well or were deterred by anti-Jewish sentiments harbored in some German organiza­tions. The more traditional Jewish immigrants preferred to stay within the confines of their own community. Others, who sought rapid Americanization, urged immigrants to conduct their lives only in English.

After 1870 the German Jewish link dissolved quite quickly. Americanization weak­ened foreign customs and loyalties. Moreover, the eruption of antisemitism in the newly unified Germany disenchanted many German Jews with their former country. The rise of racial theories highlighting the differences between “lowly” Jews and Aryans pulled Ger­man American and Jewish American communities farther apart.

German Jews entered politics mostly at the local level as established businessmen and in the nineteenth century did not climb higher than mayor, or less often, U.S. congress­man. Though Simon Wolf of Washington, D.C., became an unofficial Jewish lobbyist, es­pecially among the Republicans, most Jewish leaders warned their public to refrain from voting as a bloc; and, indeed, no party received an overwhelming majority among nineteenth-century American Jews. Jewish communities usually preferred to keep a low profile and disapproved of partisanship. During the Civil War, American Jews were split and tended to side with their home state. There were exceptions, however, such as anti­slavery reformer David Einhorn, who had to flee proslavery Baltimore in 1861, or Rabbi Morris Raphall of New York who supported slavery. As a rule, most communities tried to muzzle their rabbis on the issue of slavery.

American Jews usually came together against antisemitism at home or abroad. When in 1862 General Grant ordered “Jews as a class” to be expelled from the military zone under his command (later rescinded by President Abraham Lincoln), Republican and Democratic Jews fought together. In a similar manner Jews struggled to abolish restric­tions on office holding by Jews or Christian missionary influence in public schools. Ger­man Jews in the United States were also active in attempts to help their persecuted brethren around the world, whether during the blood libel in Damascus (1840) or Russ­ian pogroms (1880s, 1900s). Prominent German Jews established early defense agencies like the American Jewish Committee (1906) and the Anti-Defamation League (1913). German Jewish financers like Jacob Schiff and Felix Warburg played a major role in founding the Joint Distribution Committee (1914) to help East European Jewry, which suffered immensely after the outbreak of World War I. Yet many times it was the Jewish press that was crucial for alerting the Jewish public to antisemitic occurrences.