If one were to ask a New York resident in the 1950’s how many people he or she would expect to be living in New York sixty years from now, he would most likely not say 20 million. Among those 20 million, it is even more unfathomable that an estimated 1.7 million Jews reside within New York City, making New York home to over a quarter of the Jews living in America today . Amongst those Jews however, how many of them consider themselves religious? Seeing that only an estimated 10 percent of Jews today classify themselves as observant, how and when did this substantial dispersion occur? The period post World War II in America presents the many different factors and pressures for Jews arriving in America during this time. Although many Jews believed America would be the best place to preserve and rebuild Jewish presence in the world, the democracy and economic opportunity resulted in adverse effects on many Jews. The rate of acculturation and assimilation for many of these Jews proved to be too strong, causing an emergence of two types of Jews during this time period. Pressures including the shift to suburbanization, secular education into professional careers, covert discrimination in the labor market and the compelling American culture, ultimately caused the emergence of the passive and often embarrassed ‘American Jew’; the active ‘Jewish American’ or distinctly ‘Jewish’ citizen, avertedly, makes Judaism an engaging active component of who and what they are amidst this new American culture.
For a Jew arriving in America from Europe starting anew marked a defining point. After losing six million Jews in the Holocaust, the United States of America served as one of the most secure havens for reestablishing a strong Jewish presence ...
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...rview. New York City, April 28, 2014.
Barry Chiswick, “The Labor Market Status of American Jews: Patterns and Determinants,” in AJYB, 1985, 145.
Calvin Goldscheider, Jewish Continuity and Change (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 29.
Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 321.
Alvin Chenkin, “Jewish Population in the United States, 1957,” in AJYB, 1958, Appendix Table
Frederick M. Binder, David M. Reimers, All the Nations Under Heaven, An Ethnic and Racial History of New York City (New York: Columbia University Press), 206.
Samuel C. Heilman, Portrait of American Jews, The Last half of the 20th Century (Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1998), 4.
Elliot Cohen, “An Act of Affirmation,” Commentary 1 (Nov. 1945), 3.
New York Times, Jun. 11, 2012
New York Times, Oct. 2, 2013
I decided to watch the testimony of Sally Roisman, a holocaust survivor. Sally had a strictly orthodox family, with a mother, father, and 10 siblings. Their family owned a textile mill which made dresses and suits. Sally attended a Jewish girls school but didn’t get the chance to finish her education before her school was closed down. Her teachers said very good things about her and that made her and her mother happy. Sally later returned and studied to finish school after the war. She still studies to make up for her loss today. Her family lived in an apartment complex were 15 families lived. 50% of the families were Jews in the complex.
And above all else, entertain.[1] Jewish life in America changed dramatically throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The majority of Jews being those wit... ... middle of paper ... ...omosexuality? http://urj.org/ask/homosexuality/> Ø Storr, A. Music and the Mind (HarperCollins, 1997) Ø Volkman, E. A Legacy of Hate: Anti-Semitism in America (Franklin Watts, 1982) Discography
New York: William Morrow. Lipsett, S. M. & Co., P.A. and Ladd, E. C. (1971) The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secon "Jewish Academics in the United States: Their Achievements, Culture and Politics." American Jewish Yearbook -. Cited for Zuckerman, Harriet (1977).
I chose to write about Jewish-Americans after my mother, who was raised Christian, chose to identify herself as Jewish. In my reading I examined Jewish culture and how it is in American society. I looked at how Jewish-American culture has become a prominent component of American society. I looked at the historical forces that have shaped Jewish-American experience in the United States. I looked at demographics of where most Jewish-Americans live. I examined how Jewish-Americans have contributed to our culturally pluralistic society in the United States.
Newman, David. "Integration and Ethnic Spatial Concentration: The Changing Distribution of the Anglo-Jewish Community." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 10.3 (1985): 360-65. JSTOR. Web. 19 Mar. 2010.
"Jewish Resistance". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 19 May 2014.
The Jewish Community. Publication Society, 1996. http://www. Wiesel, Elie. A.
Dumenil, Lynn, ed. "New York City." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2012. Oxford Reference. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
The seventeenth century not only marks an important era in Jewish history, the arrival of Jews in the New World, but it marks a shift in Jewish ideology as well. Traditionally, in the Old World prior to the Inquisition, Jews did not live as individuals but rather as a part of a social network or community that worshipped together, studied together, at times lived together, and had the same set of beliefs. During, and for sometime after the Inquisition, some secret Jews were part of an underground community but other secret Jews chose not to be part of any Jewish community, secret or not, out of fear. It was not until the seventeenth century that there was a conscious break in the tradition of being part of a community and some Jews chose the path of individualism, because they were dissatisfied with the confines of their current Jewish community or they were forced to abandon their community and worship individually. When Jews began to move from the Old World to the New World they were forced with the challenge of figuring out how they were supposed to practice Judaism when there was no current Jewish framework in place. When Portuguese Jews arrived in the New World they were forced to live outside of the traditional community because there was no Jewish community to greet them in New Amsterdam. In the seventeenth century, it was not the norm for a Jew to live outside of the Jewish community, but it was possible; one’s willingness or necessity to live outside of the community depended upon one’s geographical location, fear, or personal convictions.
As the Diaspora experience is presented as a distinct identity trait of the Jewish people, there is ...
In this article the author, Arika Okrent, makes very significant statements and claims by using information from a researcher who only studied Italian and Jewish immigrant Americans in
"A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims. University of South Florida. Web. 19 May 2014.
Jews have been in New York before America even became a country. New York has always been a symbol of hope and opportunity for Jews for over 350 years. Jews’ cultural, social, economic, and political roles in New York have dramatically affected their lives both positively and negatively. Ever since 1654, Jews have been affected by New York through its cultural, political, economic, and social environments which has ultimately made American Jewry what it is today.
Littman, Robert and Pasachoff, Naomi E, Concise History of the Jewish People, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005
... will of others and in harmony with the spirit prevailing in the worlds of others (The Core of the Matter: 54). Gordon argues that the Jewish people’s natural growth and self-realization has been hampered by alien and extraneous influences (Some Observations: 377). As the Jews has been pushed away from the primary creative processes, and forced to live under constant pressure and influence of foreign cultures, they have eventually lost the distinctive, external signs of identity, social structure, language and lifestyle, and become dependent on others materially and spiritually, leading them to have an inanimate existence, lacking in national creativity (Our Tasks Ahead: 381). This life has made the Jews passive and submissive; they no longer act upon or influence others, but are merely acted upon and influenced by others (The Work of Revival in the Diaspora: 78).