The Immigration of Eastern European Jewry
and the Transformation of American Jewry
Sermon, August 13, 2004
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

Esteemed Editor,

I hope that you will advise me in my present difficulty.

I am a “greenhorn,” only five weeks in the country, and a jeweler by trade.  I come from Russia, where I left a blind father and a stepmother.  Before I left, my father asked me not to forget him.  I promised that I would send him the first money I earned in America.

When I arrived in New York I walked around for two weeks looking for a job, and the bosses told me it was after the season.  In the third week I was luck, and found a job at which I earn eight dollars a week.  I worked, I paid my landlady board, I bought a few things to wear, and I have a few dollars in my pocket.

Now I want you to advise me what to do.  Shall I send my father a few dollars for Passover, or should I keep the little money for myself?  In this place the work will end soon and I may be left without a job.  The question is how to deal with the situation.  I will do as you tell me.

This letter is one of many that appeared in a column called A Bintel Brief, which ran in the Yiddish newspaper, the Jewish Daily Forward, or The Forvortz, as it was called.  These letters chronicle the challenges and triumphs of more than two generations of Jews who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. This massive immigration transformed the American Jewish community, creating institutions that would dominate American Judaism through much of the 20^th century.  As I continue my series of sermons on the 350 years of American Jewry, I turn this evening to the immigration from Eastern Europe and its impact on Judaism in the United States.

Historians date the beginning of this “avalanche” of immigration to 1881, when Czar Alexander II was assassinated by revolutionaries.  The reforms that had begun abruptly ended, and a series of devastating pogroms spread throughout Russia.  The new government enacted supposedly “temporary” laws that would last for more than 30 years, restricting where Jews could settle and purchase land, forcing many of them to seek refuge in cities that were already economically devastated. 

Actually, “Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe…had been growing well before the 1880s” according to Howard Sachar.  He estimates that by 1880 about one-fifth of the 250,000 Jews in America were from Eastern Europe.  Most of the new immigrants came to these shores in search of economic opportunity.  “Almost all middle-class Jews managed to find ways of reestablishing themselves elsewhere in Russia; it was the peddlers and the tailors who left for America,” according to Arthur Hertzberg.

They had heard that in America the streets were lined with gold and expected to find economic opportunity and a warm welcome from their fellow Jews.  The reality, as we know, was much different.  Many of the new immigrants ended up unemployed and living in tenements.  Those fortunate enough to find jobs often worked long hours for little pay to support themselves and their families.

And, for the most part, they were not welcomed by the German Jews who were by this time settled and assimilated.  Though many had protested the treatment of their fellow Jews in Russia, and sent financial support, they were much less sympathetic of their efforts to come to America.  The concerns were expressed in Jewish publications such as the Zeitgeist of Milwaukee, which referred to the Eastern Europeans as “uncouth Asiatics” and a “superstitious vestige of antiquity.” 

With regard to the new immigrants, Isaac Mayer Wise wrote:  “We are Americans and they are not. We are Israelites of the nineteenth century in a free country, and they gnaw the bones of past centuries…The good reputation of Judaism must naturally suffer materially, which must without fail lower our social status.”

The comments and writings of many German Jewish leaders reflect a community still insecure in its place in America.  As Howard Sachar writes, “With their outlandish garb and exotic Yiddish patois, their often fundamentalist version of religious Orthodoxy, their evident unfamiliarity with hygiene, the newcomers projected a gauche, even terrifying image to their Western fellow Jews.

And while there were some initial efforts by German Jewish leaders to staunch the flow of immigrants, over time that response gave way to a grudging acceptance of the immigrants and an attempt to offer “education, moral and religious, and instruction in manual labor,” in order “to elevate them” in the words of a committee of the UAHC, but body of Reform congregations.  Indeed, over time many organizations were created to help the immigrants learn English, job skills and etiquette.

And the new immigrants also created organizations to help themselves called landsmanschaften.  These were groups of immigrants from a certain village in Eastern Europe.  They provided loans, help in finding jobs or housing, and health and death benefits.  Some were also synagogues.  Eventually there were more than 3000 of these groups with about half a million members.

Because of their vast number, the new immigrants had a significant impact on every area of Jewish life, virtually recreating Judaism.  Whereas most German Jews were quite comfortable with Reform Judaism that in many ways reflected American Protestantism more than traditional Judaism, most of the Eastern European immigrants were from Orthodox backgrounds.  And although many of them were glad to leave the strictures of Orthodoxy behind, they were not about to worship in a Temple that reminded them more of a church than their synagogues back home.

The landscape was thus ripe for the creation of a new form of Judaism which became known as Conservative Judaism.  As Reform grew more radical and less traditional toward the end of the 19^th century, some rabbis objected to its direction.  And some more traditional rabbis were alarmed at the direction orthodoxy was being taken under the influence of some of the immigrants.

These rabbis did not have to create something new.  In Europe, Rabbi Zechariah Frankel had formed what was initially called “positive-historical” Judaism, which sought the middle ground between Reform and Orthodox.  In 1886, The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) was founded in New York, the first institution of what was becoming known as Conservative Judaism.  The Seminary struggled for a number of years, with the support of only a few congregations; ironically, German-Jewish leaders, themselves Reform, helped revitalize it in the early 20^th century because they recognized that such an institution was important to facilitate the immigrants’ adjustment to American life. 

Indeed, the Conservative movement would grow by leaps and bounds during the first half of the 20^th century, becoming the largest American Jewish movement, a position that it held until recently.  Orthodoxy, too, began growing among the immigrants, assuring its survival as a viable branch of American Judaism.

It wasn’t just in the area of religion that the new immigrants profoundly affected Judaism, but also in culture.  The Eastern Europeans came speaking English and in many ways attempted to replicate the Yiddish culture of their homelands.  Yiddish newspapers, including the Forvarts sprang up in New York and other cities.  There was Yiddish Theater and Yiddish schools; this was not simply nostalgia for the old country, but an attempt to keep alive and language and culture that they knew and loved. 

But as one generation gave way to another, and then another maintaining the cultural norms of Europe in America became more difficult.  The children of immigrants learned English and often tried to distance themselves from their parents’ values and mores.  Some changed their names to avoid anti-Semitism and discrimination in their quest for jobs and other opportunities.  Some even left Judaism altogether in order to make it. 

Today, the vast majority of American Jews have ancestors who came to America from Eastern Europe between 1881 and 1920.  Although for the most part the cultural and religious heritage they brought to these shores is long gone, the Jewish world they helped create remains.  The transformation of American Judaism which took place during those four decades has had a lasting affect on Jewish life.  We should gratefully acknowledge their courage and determination for leaving their homes, taking what were often perilous journeys and settling in a foreign land.

They transformed American Judaism, laying the foundation for Jewish life in 20^th century America.  Though their culture and world are in many ways relics of the past, their influence and contributions are still felt.

And, by the way, the editor advised the “greenhorn” who wrote the Bintel Brief to “send his father the few dollars for Passover because, since he is young, he will find it easier to earn a living than would his blind father in Russia.”

[back to list of sermons]

[back to top]