The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, and their US-born descendants. There are, however, small numbers of both older and more recently arrived Sephardic Jews (Spanish and Portuguese Jews and those descended from them following the 15th century expulsion), as well as smaller numbers of Mizrahi Jews (Jewish communities with extended histories in the Middle East, North Africa, Caucasus and Central Asia), Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews and others from various smaller Jewish ethnic divisions. The Jewish community in America, therefore, manifests a wide range of Jewish cultural traditions, as well as encompassing the full spectrum of religious observance, from the ultra-Orthodox Haredi communities to Jews who are entirely secular and atheist.

History

Main article: History of the Jews in the United States

Jews have been present in what is today the United States of America as early as the seventeenth century, if not earlier, though they were small in numbers and almost exclusively Sephardic Jewish immigrants of Spanish and Portuguese ancestry.[5][6] Until about 1830 Charleston, South Carolina had more Jews than anywhere else in North America. Large scale Jewish immigration, however, did not commence until the nineteenth century, when, by mid-century, many secular Ashkenazi Jews from Germany arrived in the United States, primarily becoming merchants and shop-owners. There were approximately 250,000 Jews in the United States by 1880, many of them being the educated, and largely secular, German Jews, although a minority population of the older Sephardic Jewish families remained influential.

As a result of persecution in parts of Eastern Europe, Jewish immigration to the United States increased dramatically in the early 1880s, with most of the new immigrants also being Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, though mostly from the poor rural populations of the Russian Empire (including the Russian-controlled portions of the former Duchy of Warsaw–see History of the Jews in Poland), many of them coming from the Pale of Settlement (modern Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova ). Over 2,000,000 arrived between the late nineteenth century and 1924, when immigration restrictions increased due to the National Origins Quota of 1924 and Immigration Act of 1924. Most settled in New York City and its immediate environs (New Jersey, etc.), establishing what became one of the world's major concentrations of Jewish population.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, these newly-arrived Jews built support networks consisting of many small synagogues and Ashkenazi Jewish Landsmannschaften (German for "Territorial Associations") for Jews from the same town or village. Jewish American writers of the time urged assimilation and integration into the wider American culture, and Jews quickly became part of American life. 500,000 American Jews (or half of all Jewish males between 18 and 50) fought in World War II, and after the war Jewish families joined the new trend of suburbanization. There, Jews became increasingly assimilated as rising intermarriage rates combined with a trend towards secularization. At the same time, new centers of Jewish communities formed, as Jewish school enrollment more than doubled between the end of World War II and the mid-1950s, while synagogue affiliation jumped from 20% in 1930 to 60% in 1960.

Politics and Civil Rights

While the first group of Jewish immigrants from Germany tended to be politically conservative, the second wave that started in the early 1880s were generally more liberal or left wing. Polls showed that Democrats Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman received over 90% of the Jewish American vote in the elections of 1940, 1944 and 1948. Democrat Adlai Stevenson received 70% of the Jewish American vote during the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections. In the 1960 election, Jewish Americans voted over 80% for Catholic Democrat John F. Kennedy. In 1964, when the Republican candidate was the strongly conservative Barry Goldwater (whose paternal grandparents were Jewish), 90% of the Jewish American vote went to his opponent.[1] Since 1968, Jewish Americans have voted about 70%-80% Democratic, increasing to 87% for Democratic House candidates during the 2006 elections.[2] Currently, of the 13 Jewish Americans in the Senate (out of 100 members),[3] only two (Norm Coleman and Arlen Specter) are Republicans, and of the 30 in the House (out of 435 members),[4] only one (Eric Cantor) is Republican.

As a group, Jewish Americans have been very active in fighting prejudice and discrimination, and have historically been active participants in civil rights movements since the 1930s, including active support and participation in the black civil rights / desegration movement, active support and participation in the women's rights movement, and active support for gay rights movement. Seymour Siegel suggests that the historic struggle against prejudice faced by Jews led to a natural sympathy for any people confronting discrimination. Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, stated the following when he spoke from the podium at the Lincoln Memorial during the famous March on Washington on August 28, 1963: "As Jews we bring to this great demonstration, in which thousands of us proudly participate, a twofold experience—one of the spirit and one of our history... From our Jewish historic experience of three and a half thousand years we say: Our ancient history began with slavery and the yearning for freedom. During the Middle Ages my people lived for a thousand years in the ghettos of Europe... It is for these reasons that it is not merely sympathy and compassion for the black people of America that motivates us. It is, above all and beyond all such sympathies and emotions, a sense of complete identification and solidarity born of our own painful historic experience. "[5][6]

The Holocaust

The Holocaust had a profound impact on the community in the United States, especially after 1945, as Jews tried to comprehend what had happened, and especially to commemorate and grapple with it when looking to the future. Abraham Joshua Heschel summarized this dilemma when he attempted to understand Auschwitz: "To try to answer is to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enables us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair, to sense a ray [of] God's radiance in the jungles of history."[7]

International affairs

Jews began taking a special interest in international affairs in the early twentieth century, especially regarding pogroms in Imperial Russia, and restrictions on immigration in the 1920s. This period is also synchronous with the development of political Zionism and the Balfour Declaration. Large-scale boycotts of German merchandize were organized during the 1930s, which was synchronous with the rise of Fascism in Europe. Franklin D. Roosevelt's leftist domestic policies received strong Jewish support in the 1930s and 1940s, as did his foreign policies and the subsequent founding of the United Nations. Support for political Zionism in this period, although growing in influence, remained a distinctly minority opinion. The founding of Israel in 1948 made the Middle East a center of attention; the immediate recognition of Israel by the American government was an indication of both its intrinsic support and the influence of political Zionism.

This attention initially was based on a natural and religious affinity toward and support for Israel and world Jewry. The attention is also because of the ensuing and unresolved conflicts regarding the founding Israel and Zionism itself. A lively internal debate commenced, following the Six-Day War. The American Jewish community was divided over whether or not they agreed with the Israeli response; the great majority came to accept the war as necessary. A tension existed especially for leftist Jews, between their liberal ideology and (rightist) Zionist backing in the midst of this conflict. This deliberation about the Six-Day War showed the depth and complexity of Jewish responses to the varied events of the 1960s.[8] Similar tensions were aroused by the 1977 election of Begin and the rise of revisionist policies, the 1982 Lebanon War and the continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.[9] The subject remains fodder for deep divisions among American Jews to this day.

Population

Percentage of Jewish population in the United States, 2000.The Jewish population of the United States is one of the largest in the world.

Precise population figures vary depending on whether Jews are accounted for based on halakhic considerations, or secular, political and ancestral identification factors. There were about 4 million adherents of Judaism in the U.S. as of 2001, approximately 1.4% of the US population.[10] The community self-identifying as Jewish by birth, irrespective of halakhic (unbroken maternal line of Jewish descent or formal Jewish conversion) status, numbers about 7 million, or 2.5% of the US population. According to the Jewish Agency, for the year 2007 Israel is home to 5.4 million Jews (40.9% of the world's Jewish population), while the United States contained 5.3 million (40.2%).[11] The Jewish Agency's figure for Israel, however, included those who do not consider themselves Jews and those who are not Jewish by halakha (including a large number of Russians who immigrated under the Law of Return but are not technically Jewish by any authoritative definition), while the estimate for the US and other countries did not include such people.

The most recent large scale population survey, released in the 2006 American Jewish Yearbook population survey estimates place the number of American Jews at 6.4 million, or approximately 2.1% of the total population. This figure is significantly higher than the previous large scale survey estimate, conducted by the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population estimates, which estimated 5.2 million Jews. A 2007 study released by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute (SSRI) at Brandeis University presents evidence to suggest that both of these figures may be underestimations with a potential 7.0-7.4 million Americans of Jewish decent.[12] Jews in the U.S. settled largely in and near the major cities. The Ashkenazi Jews, who are now the vast majority of American Jews, settled first in the Northeast and Midwest but in recent decades increasingly in the South and West. In descending order, the metropolitan areas with the highest Jewish populations are New York City (1,750,000), Miami (535,000), Los Angeles (490,000), Philadelphia (285,000), Chicago (265,000), San Francisco (210,000), Boston (208,000), and Baltimore-Washington (165,000). Although New York is the second largest Jewish population center in the world, after the Gush Dan metropolitan area in Israel[7], the Miami metropolitan area has a slightly greater Jewish population on a per-capita basis (9.9% compared to metropolitan New York's 9.3%). Several other major cities have over 5% Jewish proportions, including Cleveland, Baltimore, and St. Louis. Miami and Los Angeles have long been major centers. Smaller, but growing numbers are found in Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Charlotte, and especially Atlanta and Las Vegas. In many metropolitan areas, the majority of Jewish families live in suburban areas. In Detroit, for example, the Jewish population is particularly concentrated in suburban Oakland County.

Jewish Texans have been a part of Texas History since the first European explorers arrived in the 1500s. [8] By 1990, there are around 108,000 adherents to Judaism in Texas. [9]

The Israeli immigrant community in America is less widespread. The significant Israeli immigrant communities in the United States are in Los Angeles, New York City, Miami, and Chicago.[13]

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development calculated an 'expatriate rate' of 2.9 persons per thousand, putting Israel in the mid-range of expatriate rates among the 175 OECD countries examined in 2005. [14]
Immigrant Soviet Jews began arriving after the Jackson-Vanik laws of the 1970s and are heavily concentrated in New York City, Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, Baltimore, Los Angeles and many other large American cities, although these Russian Jews can be found throughout the US in cities even with very small Jewish populations.

Persian Jews began arriving to the United States in large numbers in the late 1970s before the Islamic Revolution and most of them settled in Los Angeles and Great Neck on Long Island. Most Bukharian Jews arrived after the Collapse of the Soviet Union to New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Arizona and elsewhere.

According to the 2001 undertaking of the National Jewish Population Survey, 4.3 million American Jews have some sort of strong connection to the Jewish community, whether religious or cultural.

Assimilation and population changes

The same social and cultural characteristics of the United States of America that facilitated the extraordinary economic, political, and social success of the American Jewish community have also been attributed to contributing to widespread assimilation,[15] a controversial and significant issue in the modern American Jewish community. While not all Jews disapprove of intermarriage, many members of the Jewish community have become concerned that the high rate of interfaith marriage will result in the eventual disappearance of the American Jewish community.

Intermarriage rates have risen from roughly 6% in 1950 to approximately 40%-50% in the year 2000.[10][11] Only about 33% of intermarried couples raise their children with a Jewish religious upbringing. This, in combination with the comparatively low birthrate in the Jewish community, has led to a 5% decline in the Jewish population of the United States in the 1990s.[12]. In addition to this, when compared with the general American population, the American Jewish community is slightly older. [13]

Despite the fact that only 33% of intermarried couples provide their children with a Jewish upbringing, doing so is more common among intermarried families raise their children in areas with high Jewish populations, such as the greater New York City metropolitan area, Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore-Washington, Chicago, and Cleveland (which has the highest Jewish-American population per capita for smaller, major U.S. cities). In the Boston area, one study shows that 60% percent of children of intermarriages are being raised as Jews by religion; giving the perception that intermarriage is contributing to a net increase in the number of Jews.[14] As well, some children raised through intermarriage rediscover and embrace their Jewish roots when they themselves marry and have children.

In contrast to the ongoing trends of assimilation, some communities within American Jewry, such as Orthodox Jews, have significantly higher birth rates and lower intermarriage rates, and are growing rapidly. The proportion of Jewish synagogue members who were Orthodox rose from 11% in 1971 to 21% in 2000, while the overall Jewish community declined in number. [15] This trend, however, is likely due at least as much to declining synagogue membership and practice among the non-Orthodox as to greater numbers of Orthodox.

In 2000, there were 360,000 so-called "ultra-orthodox" (Haredi) Jews in USA (7.2%). The figure for 2006 is estimated at 468,000 (9.4%). [16]

About half of the American Jews are considered to be religious. Out of this 2,831,000 religious Jewish population, 92% are White, 5% Hispanic (Mostly Argentine Ashkenazim), 1% Asian (Mostly Bukharian and Persian Jews), 1% Black and 1% Other (Mixed Race.etc). Almost this many non-religious Jews exist in United States, the proportion of Whites being higher than that among the religious population.[16]

Religion

Jewishness is generally considered an ethnic identity as well as a religious one.

Jewish religious practice in America is quite varied. Among the 4.3 million American Jews described as "strongly connected" to Judaism, over 80% have some sort of active engagement with Judaism, ranging from attendance at daily prayer services on one end of the spectrum to as little as attendance Passover Seders or lighting Hanukkah candles on the other.

The survey found that of the 4.3 million strongly connected Jews, 46% belong to a synagogue. Among those who belong to a synagogue, 38% are members of Reform synagogues, 33% Conservative, 22% Orthodox, 2% Reconstructionist, and 5% other types. Traditionally, Sephardic and Mizrahis do not have different branches (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, etc) but usually remain observant and religious. The survey discovered that Jews in the Northeast and Midwest are generally more observant than Jews in the South or West. Reflecting a trend also observed among other religious groups, Jews in the Northwestern United States are typically the least observant.

A 2003 Harris Poll found that 16% of American Jews go to the synagogue at least once a month, 42% go less frequently but at least once a year, and 42% go less frequently than once a year. The poll also found that 48% of American Jews believe in God, 19% believe there is no God, and 33% are not sure whether or not there is a God.[17]

In recent years, there has been a noticeable trend of secular American Jews returning to a more religious, in most cases, Orthodox, style of observance. Such Jews are called baalei teshuva ("returners", see also Repentance in Judaism). It is uncertain how widespread or demographically important this movement is at present.

Education

The great majority of school-age Jewish students attend public schools, although Jewish day schools and yeshivas are to be found throughout the country. Jewish cultural studies and Hebrew language instruction is also commonly offered at synagogues in the form of supplementary Hebrew schools or Sunday schools.

Until the 1950s, a quota system at elite colleges and universities limited the number of Jewish students. Before 1945, only a few Jewish professors were permitted as instructors at elite universities. In 1941, anti-Semitism drove Milton Friedman from a non-tenured assistant professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.[18] Harry Levin became the first Jewish full professor in the Harvard English department in 1943, but the Economics department decided not to hire Paul Samuelson in 1948. Harvard hired its first Jewish biochemists in 1954.[19]

Today, American Jews no longer face the discrimination in college admissions that they did in the past. By 1986, a third of the presidents of the elite undergraduate clubs at Harvard were Jewish,[18] and Paul Samuelson's nephew, Lawrence Summers, became President of Harvard University in 2001. According to estimates from Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, Jews make up well over one-fifth of the student body in America's most prominent institutions of higher learning:

Politics
The German Jews were primarily Republicans. However the Yiddish-speaking Jews, many with experience with the Labor Bund in Eastern Europe, were leaders in the socialist and labor movements after 1910. They formed strong unions that played a major role in left-wing politics, and after 1936 in Democratic party politics. Polls showed Jews gave 90% support to Democrats Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman in the elections of 1940, 1944 and 1948. They gave about a third of their vote to Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. In 1960 Jews voted 83% for Catholic Democrat John F. Kennedy. In 1964, when the Republicans nominated arch-conservative Barry Goldwater (whose father was Jewish), 90% of Jews voted for his opponent.[25]

By the mid-20th century Jewish Congressmen from New York and Chicago gained important committee assignments through seniority, including Adolph J. Sabath and Emmanuel Celler, both Democrats. Republican Jacob Javits was a powerful Senator in the 1960s and 1970s.

Joe Lieberman was the first Jew to run for national office on a major party ticket when he was chosen as Al Gore's vice-presidential nominee in the 2000 presidential election.

As of 2007, there are 13 Jewish senators, or 13% of the senate.

Jewish American culture
See also: Secular Jewish culture
Since the time of the last major wave of Jewish immigration to America (over 2,000,000 Eastern European Jews who arrived between 1890 and 1924), Jewish secular culture in the United States has become integrated in almost every important way with the broader American culture. Many aspects of Jewish American culture have, in turn, become part of the wider culture of the United States.

Language
Although almost all American Jews are today native English-speakers, some American Jews are bilingual with Modern Hebrew. A variety of other languages are still spoken within some American Jewish communities, communities which are representative of the various Jewish ethnic divisions from around the world that have come together to make up America's Jewish population.

Many of America's Hasidic Jews (being exclusively of Ashkenazi descent) are raised speaking Yiddish. Yiddish was once spoken as the primary language by most of the several million European Jews who immigrated to the United States (it was, in fact, the original language in which The Forward was published). Yiddish has had an influence on American English, and words borrowed from it include chutzpah ("effrontery", "gall"), nosh ("snack"), schlep ("drag"), schmuck ("fool", literally "penis"), and, depending on ideolect, hundreds of other terms. (See also Yinglish.)

The Persian Jewish community in the United States, notably the large community in and around Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, California, primarily speak Persian (see also Judeo-Persian) in the home and synagogue. They also support their own Persian language newspapers. Persian Jews also reside in eastern parts of New York such as Kew Gardens and Great Neck, Long Island.

Many recent Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union speak primarily Russian at home, and there are several notable communities where public life and business are carried out mainly in Russian, such as in Brighton Beach in New York City.

American Bukharian Jews speak Bukhori (a dialect of Persian) and Russian. They publish their own newspapers such as the Bukharian Times and a large portion live in Queens, New York. Forest Hills in the New York City borough of Queens is home to 108th Street, which is called by some "Bukharian Broadway"[17], a reference to the many stores and restaurants found on and around the street that have Bukharian influences. Many Bukharians are also represented in parts of Arizona, Miami, Florida, and areas of Southern California such as San Diego.

Classical Hebrew is the language of most Jewish religious literature, such as the Tanakh (Bible) and Siddur (prayerbook). Modern Hebrew is also the primary official language of the modern State of Israel, which further encourages many to learn it as a second language. Some recent Israeli immigrants to America speak Hebrew as their primary language.

Some of the Jews in Miami and Los Angeles, the second largest Jewish community in the United States, immigrated from the countries of Latin America. Many of these Hispanic Jews (many of them of Sephardic origin dating back to the Spanish and Portuguese colonial era, but also many of Ashkenazi descent from recent Central and Eastern European immigration to Latin America) speak Spanish in the home, and some have intermarried with the non-Jewish Hispanic population. Recent Jews from Spain and among their descendants speak Spanish. Spanish may be spoken by other Jews with ancestry outside Spain and Latin America living in areas near predominantly Hispanic populations. There are a large number of synagogues in the Miami area that give services in Spanish. Many Luso-Jews with origin from Brazil and Portugal (Sephardic Jews but including in Brazil, Sephardic Jews with Spanish origin, Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi) speak Portuguese in home. There are a handful of older European immigrant communities that still speak Ladino.

Jewish American literature
Main article: Jewish American literature
Although American Jews have contributed greatly to American arts overall (see the following section), there remains a distinctly Jewish American literature. Generally exploring the experience of being a Jew, especially a Jew in America, and the conflicting pulls of secular society and history, the literary traditions of Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Chaim Potok, Leon Uris, Herman Wouk, Cynthia Ozick and Bernard Malamud all fall into this category. Younger authors (e.g., Paul Auster, Lisa Crystal Carver, Allegra Goodman, Gary Shteyngart, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Safran Foer) continue this view of Jewish American literature, examining the Holocaust, and the meaning of being an American Jew.