num_pages: 189
description: We owe much to conscientious historical demographers such as Ira Rosenwaike, whose Population History of New York City (1972) is of lasting value for urban and ethnic history. In his present work Rosenwaike uses his skills to wring from the census of 1830 a statistical profile of American Jewry before the great migration of German Jews, who in the next decades were to alter the character of Jewish life. This work exceeds simple compilation, since the census provides no clues regarding religion. By using various public and religious records, Rosenwaike has succeeded in identifying 629 Jewish households with some four thousand members, about whom he has fashioned fifty statistical tables relating to such matters as the origins of household heads (a substantial majority were foreign born), age and sex ratios (roughly similar to those of urban Gentiles), the number of Jewish slaveholders (a majority of the 322 southern households that Rosenwaike studied owned slaves), and the occupations of Jews in the major cities. From this data Rosenwaike reaches four conclusions about American Jews in the early national period.
language: English
title: On the Edge of Greatness: A Portrait of American Jewry in the Early National Period
titlecomplete: On the Edge of Greatness: A Portrait of American Jewry in the Early National Period (Publications of the American Jewish Archives)
publisher: Amer Jewish Archives