Jewish Americans

I

Introduction

Jewish Americans, Jews who live in the United States. Many Jewish Americans practice Judaism, the Jewish religion. However, a considerable part of the community, known as secular Jews, observes few religious rituals. This group membership relies primarily on a common heritage, culture, and outlook. Unlike most nationality groups, Jewish Americans trace their heritage to a variety of countries in Europe, North and South America, North Africa, and the Middle East, and they retain many of the characteristics associated with these nations.

There are nearly 6 million Jewish Americans, and they comprise approximately 2.3 percent of the U.S. population. Jews reside throughout the United States, with the heaviest concentrations in major urban centers, notably New York City; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Boston, Massachusetts. In recent years, large Jewish communities have evolved in Sun Belt communities of the South and West, such as southeast Florida, the San Francisco Bay area, and Orange County, California.

II

History

Jews first came to the United States in the 1650s from Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands as refugees from the Spanish Inquistion. The Inquisition forced many non-Catholics, especially Jews and Muslims, to convert to Catholicism or face expulsion from the country. The first large group of Jewish immigrants to the United States came in the 1850s. During this decade, about 50,000 Jews from German cities joined a larger economic migration from Germany to the United States. Smaller groups of Jews emigrated from many countries around the world.

Despite the American Jewish community’s long history and diverse national origins, the vast majority of Jewish Americans descend from Eastern European immigrants who entered the United States between 1880 and 1924. During this period, approximately 2,340,000 Jews, mostly from Russia, immigrated to the United States to escape discrimination and build a better life. In addition to their ancient religious and cultural heritage, these Eastern European Jews brought with them a way of life shaped by their former homelands. Many of these immigrants spoke the Yiddish language, a German-based folk language written with the Hebrew alphabet. Their diet emphasized delicatessen foods, such as corned beef, bagels, dill pickles, and blintzes.

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In Europe and other regions, Jews endured harsh treatment, such as forced conversion to other religions or expulsion. Fierce government-sanctioned attacks against Jews, known as pogroms, took place in Russia and Poland from the 17th century until the 1920s. This kind of violence sometimes escalated into full-scale genocide, organized efforts to wipe out entire Jewish populations. Between the late 1930s and 1945, between 5.6 million and 5.9 million European Jews were systematically exterminated by Nazi Germany in the genocide campaign now known as the Holocaust.

The impoverished Eastern European Jews who arrived in the United States after 1880 faced various forms of discrimination, ranging from street violence and condemnation in newspapers and magazines to exclusion from education, housing, and employment. In addition to anti-Jewish campaigns, nativist, or antiforeigner, movements often targeted Jews. Like other European immigrants of the period, many Jews held socialist views. Jewish Americans were often victims of antileftist campaigns (see Socialism).

From the late 19th century until the 1960s, discriminatory policies in various parts of the United States generally prohibited Jews from joining social and athletic clubs, visiting resort hotels, and living in certain neighborhoods. After the 1920s, many private colleges and universities, especially those in the Northeast, established quotas to limit the number of Jewish students admitted, regardless of their qualifications. For example, a 1949 study determined that while non-Jews had a 1 in 7 chance of admission to Cornell University Medical School, Jews had only a 1 in 70 chance. In the early 1950s, studies of job markets in Los Angeles and Chicago found that 20 percent of all job openings requested non-Jewish applicants. Until the late 1960s, few Jews could find employment in large law firms or major industrial corporations.

By the late 1960s, however, a combination of factors resulted in a significant reduction in discrimination against Jews in the United States. Confronted with the horrors of Nazi genocide programs during World War II (1939-1945), many Americans rejected anti-Jewish prejudice. In response to the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. government implemented a series of antidiscrimination laws in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, second- and third-generation Jewish Americans who came of age during and after the 1960s proved to be highly Americanized and largely middle-class, which lessened anti-Jewish sentiment among mainstream Americans.

III

Current Trends

Despite their experience with discrimination, Jewish Americans have risen to high levels of accomplishment in all areas of social, economic, political, intellectual, and cultural endeavor. More than 80 percent of college-age Jewish Americans attend institutions of higher learning, a proportion twice that of the population at large.

Jews are well-represented in professions requiring a college education, such as medicine, law, engineering, and accounting. They also have high rates of self-employment. The 105th Congress, elected in 1996, included 25 Jewish representatives and ten Jewish senators. As of 1997, two Jewish justices sat on the Supreme Court of the United States—Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In addition, many Jewish Americans have won Nobel Prizes, particularly in the areas of physics, medicine, and economics. These Jewish American Nobel winners include Jerome Friedman, Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, Jack Steinberger, Steven Weinberg, Richard Feynman, and Isidor Rabi in physics; Stanley Cohen, Joseph Goldstein, Baruch Blumberg, and Selman Waksman in medicine; and Milton Friedman and Harry Markowitz in economics. Jewish Americans also work on the faculties of elite universities, in top positions in media industries, in Washington, D.C., and New York City law firms, and in leading civil service positions.

While many factors play a part in the success of Jewish Americans, most observers agree that their high levels of education and their arrival in the Northeastern United States during a time of economic growth and opportunity played major roles. Immigrant Jews brought with them a strong tradition of communal organization and extensive involvement with social movements and political activism. Jewish Americans were able to adapt and invent a diverse array of organizations suitable to their new environment, including associations, clubs, landsmanschaften (hometown lodges), synagogues, and mutual benefit societies. The 1919 volume of the American Jewish Year Book, a national directory ofJewish American organizations, required nearly 60 pages just to list entries for New York City.

Many Jewish Americans were involved in the religious reform movements that led to the development of modern Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Judaism. By joining such movements, Jews maintained forms of traditional religious practice and community involvement while adopting lifestyles and ethical traditions compatible with the largely Christian society in which they lived.

As time passed, Jews developed institutions such as B’nai B’rith to advance Jewish interests, encourage interaction among Jews, and provide for community needs. They also founded schools and universities to train future generations in the Jewish tradition. Since the founding of Israel in 1948, efforts to aid Israel have provided a major focus for the Jewish American community. For theological reasons, some Jewish American groups oppose Zionism, the movement to establish a Jewish country in Palestine. However, the vast majority supports the growth and survival of Israel as a place of refuge for the world Jewish community.

Despite their rapid assimilation into mainstream American society, Jewish Americans maintain many behavioral patterns that distinguish them from other groups. When compared to other established white ethnic populations, Jews tend to live near other members of their group and to visit relatives more often. They also have lower rates of intermarriage with other ethnic or religious groups. Jews also tend to retain the liberal politics and Democratic Party affiliations generally associated with the working class.

These behavioral patterns are partly religious in origin. Orthodox Jews must maintain a Kosher diet, consisting of certain foods prepared according to Jewish law. Jews traditionally have lived together close to community institutions, such as synagogues, Jewish schools, Jewish community centers, and kosher food stores. Tradition also required that they walk to synagogue on the Sabbath, the Jewish holy day observed every Saturday. However, only a small fraction of American Jews still follow such rules. Reflecting the changing habits of Jewish Americans, whole Jewish communities in many major cities have relocated from inner-city neighborhoods to suburban locations since the 1940s.

Jewish Americans debate the future of their community. More than 50 percent of Jewish Americans now marry non-Jews. Religious and institutional involvement among Jewish Americans have steadily declined. Some Jews suggest that the community will eventually be absorbed into mainstream American society. Other observers respond that inaccurate predictions about the total assimilation of American Jews have been made since the 1870s. They point out that Jewish Americans still maintain many rituals, practices, and associations that bind them to the Jewish community.