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Most of the first Jews to cross the Atlantic traced their origins to the Iberian Peninsula, where what had once been a large and thriving Sephardic Jewish community had come to a catastrophic end with the 1492 expulsion of all Jews from Spain and the mass forced conversion of Portuguese Jews in 1497.
- Pamela S. Nadell
- 2010
- A Theory Is Born
- Religious Connotations
- Prominent Jews Respond
- Implications
One of the first books to suggest the Native American Lost Tribe theory was written by a Jew, the Dutch rabbi, scholar, and diplomat Manasseh ben Israel. In The Hope of Israel (1650), Ben Israel suggested that the discovery of the Native Americans, a surviving remnant of the Assyrian exile, was a sign heralding the messianic era. Just one year late...
Some of these writers were interested in Native American history, but most of them were just interested in the Bible. Indeed, the Lost Tribe claim should be seen as part of a general 19th-century fascination with biblical history. Explorations of Holy Land flora and fauna, the geography of the Holy Land, the life of Jesus-the-man, were very much en...
Around the time of the Pittsfield tefillin Pronounced: tuh-FILL-in (short i in both fill and in), Origin: Hebrew, phylacteries. These are the small boxes containing the words of the Shema that are traditionally wrapped around one’s head and arm during morning prayers. incident, Mordecai Manuel Noah, the journalist, playwright, politician, and Jewis...
From a historical and scientific point of view, the Native American Lost Tribe claim is clearly narishkeit (Yiddish for foolishness). But even a brief exploration of it — who was making it and why, who was refuting it and why, reveals important insights about American Jewry. Popular thought about who Jews were — their place in America, with whom th...
- David Koffman
Apr 4, 2023 · More than 2 million immigrants arrived from Eastern Europe between 1880 and 1924, and much of the American Jewish population can trace their roots to this third wave, according to Goldstein....
By the end of the 20th century, Do-It-Yourself Religion—the apotheosis of individualism and personalism—had triumphed in most sectors of American Judaism (with the exception of Orthodoxy)—just as it had in other faith communities.
- Sources of unity and division. While there are some signs of religious divergence and political polarization among U.S. Jews, the survey also finds large areas of consensus.
- U.S. Jews less religious than U.S. adults overall, but some Jewish trends reflect broader American context. When it comes to religion, U.S. Jews are in many ways distinctive from the wider U.S. public – and not just in their engagement with specifically Jewish beliefs and practices.
- Why Jews go, or don’t go, to religious services. Left unanswered by the 2013 study was why many Jewish Americans, particularly in younger cohorts, rarely attend synagogue, and in what ways, if any, they connect with Judaism or other Jews.
- Cultural engagement. In addition to traditional forms of religious observance, such as attending a synagogue, many Jewish Americans say they engage in cultural Jewish activities such as enjoying Jewish foods, visiting Jewish historical sites and reading Jewish literature.
The volume opens with early Jewish settlers (1654-1820), the expansion of Jewish life in America (1820-1901), the great wave of eastern European Jewish immigrants (1880-1924), the character of American Judaism between the two world wars, American Jewish life from the end of World War II to the Six-Day War, and the growth of Jews' influence and a...
As anti-Semitism declined during the postwar decades, the religion of American Jews gained widespread recognition as America’s “third faith” alongside Protestantism and Catholicism. Popular interest in Judaism burgeoned as Americans sought to learn more about this “unknown religion of our time.”.
