The two million Eastern European Jews who arrived between 1881 and 1914 embraced the vision of abundance, financial security and social acceptance that America seemed to offer. The central question for Jews in this period remained the same as it did for earlier generations of immigrants: How to maintain Jewish identity and adapt to America? But the framework in which those choices were made was a profoundly different one.
Eastern European immigrants created ethnic enclaves where Yiddish flourished, and small synagogues and landsmanschaftn (associations of Jews from the same town or village) adapted the intimate community of the Old Country to American urban life. At the same time, American Jewish writers extolled assimilation; and a wide of range of organizations - from the Young Men's Hebrew Association to the D.A.R. - urged immigrants to "Join American clubs, read American papers" and otherwise take on the "customs and habits of the American people."
In sharp contrast to the West, where pioneer merchants created their own versions of American Jewish identity in relative isolation, the Eastern European immigrants faced an overwhelming array of competing claims made on Jewish identity - by labor unions, Socialists, Progressives, Zionists, Orthodox synagogues, public schools, and American popular culture. Attacked in popular literature as vulgar, aggressive businessmen, immigrants also encountered contempt or paternalism from elite German Jews, repelled by the poverty, traditional beliefs and foreign appearance of the newcomers.
