North America

From its humble beginnings in Nieuw Amsterdam in the fall of 1654 – when 23 Sephardic refugees from Brazil met 2 recently arrived Ashkenazim from Holland and held the first Rosh HaShanah services – North American Jewry rose to become one of the largest and most important Jewish communities in history.  All seven of the pre-Revolutionary synagogues in the region were Western Sephardic, and the first Ashkenazic community on the continent was not formed until 1795.  While the Sephardim of North America were later subsumed by a flood of immigration from Germany and Eastern Europe, they played an outsized role for centuries after bringing Jewish life to the US and Canada.

A Time for Planting

  • Subtitle:  The First Migration, 1654-1820
  • Series:  “The Jewish People in America” (Vol. 1)
  • Author:  Eli Faber
  • Publisher:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992 – 188 pp.
  • LOC Permalink:  http://lccn.loc.gov/91045341
  • Availability:  out of print, but used copies are affordable
  • Review:  click HERE for a short review of the book and its table of contents

An Old Faith in the New World

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  • Subtitle:  Portrait of Shearith Israel, 1654-1954
  • Authors:  David and Tamar de Sola Pool
  • Publisher:  Columbia University Press, 1955 – 562 pp.
  • LOC Permalink:  http://lccn.loc.gov/55006619
  • Availability:  out of print, but used copies are affordable
  • Review:  click HERE for a short review of the book and its table of contents

The Story of the Jews of Newport

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  • Subtitle:  Two and a Half Centuries of Judaism, 1658-1908
  • Author:  Morris Aaron Gutstein
  • Publisher:  Block Publishing Co., 1936 – 393 pp.
  • LOC Permalink:  http://lccn.loc.gov/37001024
  • Availability:  out of print and expensive; recommend finding in a library
  • Review:  click HERE for a short review of the book and its table of contents

The Jews of South Carolina

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  • Subtitle:  From the Earliest Times to the Present Day
  • Author:  Barnett Abraham Elzas
  • Publisher:  J. B. Lippincott, 1905 – 352 pp.
  • LOC Permalink:  http://lccn.loc.gov/06002528
  • Availability:  this book is in the public domain, and can be accessed HERE
  • Review:  click HERE for a short review of the book and its table of contents

The History of the Jews of Philadelphia

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  • Subtitle:  From Colonial Times to the Age of Jackson
  • Authors:  Edwin Wolf 2nd and Maxwell Whiteman
  • Publisher:  Jewish Publication Society, 1957 – 534 pp.
  • LOC Permalink:  http://lccn.loc.gov/56007780
  • Availability:  out of print, but used copies are affordable
  • Review:  click HERE for a short review of the book and its table of contents