History of the Jews in the United States

The history of Jewish communities in the United States, encompassing colonial settlement, successive waves of immigration, religious change, and participation in American society.

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Jews in New Amsterdam: The small Jewish community that settled in Dutch New Amsterdam during the seventeenth century. Its arrival in 1654 marks the beginning of lasting Jewish settlement in what became the United States.
Reform Judaism in the United States: The American development of Reform Judaism, a Jewish movement that adapts religious practice and belief to modern life. German-speaking immigrants and later American leaders built the country's largest Jewish denomination.
Jewish labor movement in the United States: Labor organizing and political activism among Jewish workers and their allies in the United States. Immigrant workers built unions and helped make labor politics a defining part of Jewish urban life.
Jewish assimilation in the United States: The adoption of wider American cultural norms by Jews, alongside varying degrees of retained Jewish identity and practice. Assimilation shaped debates over how immigrants and their descendants could belong without abandoning Jewish life.
Jewish intermarriage in the United States: Marriage between Jews and non-Jews in the United States and its varied effects on family and communal life. Changing marriage patterns raise questions about belonging, conversion, and the transmission of Jewish identity.
Sephardic Jews in the United States: Jewish communities in the United States with roots in Iberian, Mediterranean, and related Sephardic traditions. Sephardic congregations shaped early American Jewish institutions before later immigration transformed their numbers.
Conservative Judaism in the United States: The American Jewish movement that seeks to conserve Jewish law while allowing historical change in its interpretation. It developed as a distinct institutional alternative between Reform and Orthodox Judaism.
Jewish Americans and the civil rights movement: The involvement of Jewish individuals and organizations in the struggle for African American civil rights. Coalitions and activism linked Jewish communal commitments to landmark civil rights campaigns.
American Jewish exceptionalism: The view that Jewish life in the United States has developed under unusually favorable conditions compared with Jewish life elsewhere. It frames contrasts between American religious liberty and histories of persecution or state restriction.
American Jewish population: The size and composition of the Jewish population in the United States, measured through surveys and demographic studies. Different definitions and survey methods produce disagreement about population size and communal change.