Myths of American History: Part 6

Jews did not  flock what would be the United States of America preferring Brasil, Jamaica or Barbados as the prejudice against them was rife.. 

Joachim Gans was the first Jew to visit America in 1584 when Sir Walter Ralieigh recruited him to join an expedition to establish a permanent settlement in the Virgina territory.  On his return to England he was charged with blasphemy and brought before the mayor and aldermen of Briston.  Rather than deal with a Jew who was connected to the Royal Mining Company, his case was referred to the Queen’s Privy Council which included major investors of the same company.

Whatever happened, Gans disappears from history.

In September of 1654, shortly before the Jewish New Year, twenty-three Jews of Dutch ancestry from Recife, Brazil, arrived in New Amsterdam (later called New York).  Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Amsterdam, was very prejudiced against the Jews, but as religious plurality was already a legal-cultural tradition in the Netherlands, his superiors at the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam overruled him in all matters of intolerance.

Later, Sephardic Dutch Jews settled in  Newport, (where America’s oldest surviving synagogue building stands), Savannah  Charleston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. There were only about 250 Jews in all of America in the 17th century, extremely few.

This is because Jews faced many restrictions in what would become America. They were banned from practicing law, medicine, and other professions. As late as 1790, one year before adoption of the Bill of Rights, several states had religious tests for holding public office, and Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and South Carolina maintained established churches, meaning one had to be a member of that church before they could gain civil rights.

Within a few years of the ratification of the Constitution, Delaware, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Georgia eliminated barriers that prevented Jews from voting, but these barriers did not fall in Rhode Island  until 1842, North Carolina in 1868, and New Hampshire in 1877.

There were, however,  too few Jews in 17th and 18th century America for anti-Semitism to become a significant social or political phenomenon as it had in Europe where it was official government policy.

Note; that Jews in Jamaica, Curacao, and Brasil did not suffer the restrictions they did in America. Hence the Myth of America as land of the free did not apply to Jews until very late in history.