Immigrant NYC, Episode 6: Becoming Jewish-American (1880-1945)
Channel: Samuel Finesurrey, Ph.D.
Date: 2020-04-25

Episode 6 reveals the development of the Jewish-American community in New York City from the colonial period to the present day. Focusing on the largest wave of Jewish immigrants that arrived between 1880 and 1924, this episode explores the reasons they came to the United States, the ways in which Jews assimilated into the United States and how they overcame the obstacles they faced as immigrant Jews.

The episode begins in the Colonial period illuminating the formation of a fairly significant, largely sephardic, Jewish Community in New York City. It then traces the journey of German Jews who arrived in substantial numbers in the middle of the 19th century and spread out throughout the country.

The heart of the episode is focused on the arrival of Jews from the Russian Empire, and later the Soviet Union, who often came from the Shtetl to escape anti-Jewish policies of the Russian Czars then White Russians during the Russian Civil War. Eastern European Jews faced very serious intolerance both from mainstream American society, and from earlier arriving Jews, yet they organized against these conditions and demanded systemic change.

Finally, the work turns to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and the less than welcoming reception the received in the United States who forced many to return to meet their fates in the gas chambers of Hitler's Europe.