page_title: History of the Jews in the United States
section_title: Colonial era
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Jews in the United States / Colonial era
caption_attribution_description: Touro Synagogue, Newport, RI...America's first synagogue There has been a Jewish community in Newport since 1677, and it is believed that it may date back as far as 1656. The original settlers were Sephardic Jews who had been forced out of Spain by the Inquisition. They landed in New Amsterdam in the early 1600s and worked their way up the East Coast to Newport. Rhode Island was an oasis of tolerance in the otherwise intolerant colonies. The present building was dedicated in 1763. Peter Harrison was the architect, and the first rabbi, Isaac Tuoro, verbally gave him the description of a synagogue. This makes it the oldest synagogue in the United States. There are 12 pillars inside, one for each of the tribes of Israel. The men worshipped on the main floor along the walls, and the Torah was read from the center of the room. The woman worshipped from the second level. There are no stairs in the synagogue, so we wondered how the woman got up there. At the time of the American Revolution, there were 30 Jewish families in Newport, and this was their golden age: they were successful businessmen and ship-owners. This group was dispersed by the war, and the original community never came back, though individuals did. The synagogue survived the war because it was used by the British as a hospital, not because it was a house of worship. Later, it was used as a courthouse. Among the treasures on display here is a letter from President Washington guaranteeing the Jews of Newport freedom to practice their religion and a 500-year-old Torah believed to have been brought here by the first Sephartic Jews. The present community is descended from Askenazy Jews who came to this country from Eastern Europe. Through all its many incarnations, the Jews held the keys to the building, and it is believed that they opened the synagogue as a stop on the Underground Railroad. (there is a trapdoor in the center of the Beema where slaves are believed to have been hidden). In America , like millions of others, found the religious toleration they had so long sought. In his famous letter to &amp;quot;The Hebrew Congregation in Newport,&amp;quot; written in 1790, President George Washington pledged that the new nation would&amp;quot; give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance&amp;quot; and thereby set the standard for religious freedom and civil liberties in America.
context_page_description: There have been Jewish communities in the United States since colonial times. Early Jewish communities were primarily Sephardi, composed of immigrants from Brazil and merchants who settled in cities. Until the 1830s, the Jewish community of Charleston, South Carolina, was the largest in North America. In the late 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, many Jewish immigrants left from various nations to enter the U.S. as part of the general rise of immigration movements. For example, many German Jews arrived in the middle of the 19th century, established clothing stores in towns across the country, formed Reform synagogues, and were active in banking in New York. Immigration of Eastern Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, in 1880–1914, brought a large, poor, traditional element to New York City. They were Orthodox or Conservative in religion. They founded the Zionist movement in the United States, and were active supporters of the Socialist party and labor unions. Economically, they concentrated in the garment industry.
  Refugees arrived from diaspora communities in Europe after World War II and, after 1970, from the Soviet Union.
context_section_description: Luis de Carabajal y Cueva, a Spanish conquistador and converso first set foot in what is now Texas in 1570. The first Jewish-born person to set foot on American soil was Joachim Gans in 1584. Elias Legarde (a.k.a. Legardo) was a Sephardic Jew who arrived at James City, Virginia, on the Abigail in 1621.  According to Leon Huhner, Legarde was from Languedoc, France, and was hired to go to the Colony to teach people how to grow grapes for wine.  Elias Legarde was living in Buckroe in Elizabeth City in February 1624.  Legarde was employed by Anthonie Bonall, who was a French silk maker and vigneron (cultivator of vineyards for winemaking), one of the men from Languedoc sent to the colony by John Bonall, keeper of the silkworms of King James I.  In 1628 Legarde leased 100 acres (40 ha) on the west side of Harris Creek in Elizabeth City.  Josef Mosse and Rebecca Isaake are documented in Elizabeth City in 1624.  John Levy patented 200 acres (81 ha) of land on the main branch of Powell's Creek, Virginia, around 1648, Albino Lupo who traded with his brother, Amaso de Tores, in London. Two brothers named Silvedo and Manuel Rodriguez are documented to be in Lancaster County, Virginia, around 1650.  None of the Jews in Virginia were forced to leave under any conditions.
  Solomon Franco, a Jewish merchant, arrived in Boston in 1649; subsequently he was given a stipend from the Puritans there, on the condition that he leave on the next passage back to Holland.  In September 1654, shortly before the Jewish New Year, twenty-three Jews from the Sephardic community in the Netherlands, coming from Recife, Brazil, then a Dutch colony, arrived in New Amsterdam (New York City). Governor Peter Stuyvesant tried to enhance his Dutch Reformed Church by discriminating against other religions, but religious pluralism was already a tradition in the Netherlands and his superiors at the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam overruled him. In 1664 the English conquered New Amsterdam and renamed it New York.
  Religious tolerance was also established elsewhere in the colonies; the colony of South Carolina, for example, was originally governed under an elaborate charter drawn up in 1669 by the English philosopher John Locke. This charter granted liberty of conscience to all settlers, expressly mentioning "Jews, heathens, and dissenters."  As a result, Charleston, South Carolina has a particularly long history of Sephardic settlement, which in 1816 numbered over 600, then the largest Jewish population of any city in the United States.  Sephardic Dutch Jews were also among the early settlers of Newport (where Touro Synagogue, the country's oldest surviving synagogue building, stands), Savannah, Philadelphia and Baltimore.  In New York City, Shearith Israel Congregation is the oldest continuous congregation started in 1687 having their first synagogue erected in 1728, and its current building still houses some of the original pieces of that first.
  In 1740 Parliament passed the Plantation Act to regularize and encourage immigration; the law specifically permitted Jews and other nonconformists to be naturalized in their American colonies. By the time of American Revolution, the Jewish population in America was still small, with only 1,000 to 2,000, in a colonial population of about 2.5 million.
caption: Touro Synagogue, built in 1759 in Newport, Rhode Island, is America's oldest surviving synagogue.
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