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Beginnings |
Most scholars of Jewish history mark the beginning of Jewish settlement in North America in 1654, the year a band of refugees from Recife, Brazil, arrived in New Amsterdam. Yet the use of a single date obscures the uncertainty of Jewish beginnings in America. Jews found their place in the New World in fits and starts, not in one easy progression.
By 1789 - over a century since the first group of Jews arrived from Recife - only five Jewish communities had been established; and the Jewish population in large cities like Charles Town and Philadelphia numbered only a few hundred.
Nobody knew which communities would endure, where Jews would thrive, whether their children would explore new destinations.
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