Jews trying to live an observant Jewish life found relative freedom in America, yet at the same time experienced themselves as a people apart. Political restrictions varied enormously for the first century of American history; Pennsylvania's religious test oath was repealed in 1783 in part due to pressure from Jewish residents, while in Maryland, restrictive laws remained on the books until the passage of the "Jew Bill" of 1826. Even in the absence of formal legal prohibitions, the high rates of intermarriage in early America suggest the social and emotional costs of maintaining a minority identity.
At a time when religion mattered as a marker of identity in American culture, most Jews chose to affiliate with other Jews, if they could. Well into the 1820s, the congregation anchored Jewish life. Whether a handful of fellow Jews gathered in a private home in the Western territories, or twenty or thirty families met in a rented building in Savannah or in Newport, assembling for prayer and providing a Jewish burial ground were the two acts that bound Jews together.
Besides the congregation, Jews were linked by social, economic and family ties that stretched across the colonies. Informal networks of support and mutual assistance stood in for the more formal structure provided by the traditional synagogue-community in Europe. The insularity of early Jewish communities tended to enforce conformity; those who were found doing business on the Sabbath, for example, faced fines and reprimands.
Affiliation with other Jews, in this context, was a very nearly automatic aspect of Jewish life. Yet loyalty to Jewish religious belief was not. Religious observance had declined markedly by the 1820s and 1830s, a fact bemoaned by more traditional Jews.
The German Jews who emigrated to the United States in the early 19th century contributed to the secularization of American Jewish life. Making a living as peddlers and shopowners in every branch of the retail trade, immigrants from Central Europe spread across the country, living a less observant and yet resolutely Jewish life. German Jews established the synagogues, beneficial and fraternal organizations that defined the shape of the Jewish community until the twentieth century.
