Florida State Archives Photographic Collection

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Image, Conch Town, WPA, C. Foster, 1939, Florida State Archives Photo Collection
Annotation

More than 137,000 photographs of Florida, many focusing on specific localities from the mid-19th century to the present, are available on this website. The collection, including 15 online exhibits, is searchable by subject, photographer, keyword, and date.

Materials include 35 collections on agriculture, the Seminole Indians, state political leaders, Jewish life, family life, postcards, and tourism among other things. Educational units address 17 topics, including the Seminoles, the Civil War in Florida, educator Mary McLeod Bethune, folklorist and writer Zora Neale Hurston, pioneer feminist Roxcy Bolton, the civil rights movement in Florida, and school busing during the 1970s.

"Writing Around Florida" includes ideas to foster appreciation of Florida's heritage. "Highlights of Florida History" presents 46 documents, images, and photographs from Florida's first Spanish period to the present. An interactive timeline presents materials—including audio and video files—on Florida at war, economics and agriculture, geography and the environment, government and politics, and state culture and history.

The Jewish Americans

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women on strike
Annotation

This PBS documentary provides many useful resources for teaching the long and influential history of Jewish Americans. At the heart of this video production is the struggle between identity and assimilation. While Jews in America often faced struggles integrating into new communities, their story is common to other immigrant groups and at the same time a "quintessentially American story."

The site is divided into six main sections. Educators will be particularly interested in the historical background offered in Jewish Life in America (which is divided into eleven subsections), the 30 video segments from the documentary, four lesson plans in For Educators, and links to online resources for teaching Jewish American history.

One noteworthy section of the site is Share Your Story. By allowing Jewish American viewers to submit recipes, immigration stories, or family traditions, this site provides an interactive platform that could enhance any classroom. Students can investigate, research, and conduct interviews with family or friends of Jewish heritage and submit their investigations online. Teachers will also find that the video segments, textual information, and online submission tool can work well together to compliment thematic units on immigration, ethnic identity, and moments in history specific to the Jewish experience.

Connecticut Farmhouse

Description

Elyse Luray of PBS's History Detectives speaks to immigration historian Daniel Soyer at New York's Lower East Side Tenement Museum about the forces that brought Russian Jews to the U.S. and the conditions many immigrants encountered in tenement housing.

Touro Synagogue National Historic Site [RI]

Description

The Touro Synagogue was dedicated in 1762, and serves an active congregation today. The congregation was founded in 1658 by Sephardim who fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal and were searching for a haven from religious persecution in the Caribbean. Today, the synagogue celebrates not only their story, but serves to honor all who came to this shore seeking to worship freely.

A second website for the synagogue can be found here.

The site offers tours.

Religion in the Colonies

Description

John Turner, a manager of program development at Colonial Williamsburg, talks about the place of religion in colonial society, looking at the Great Awakening, African American participation in religious institutions, and the different denominations represented in Williamsburg.

Jews in America: Our Story

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Image, Announcement for a Purim Ball..., New York, 1881, Jews in America
Annotation

The history of Jews in America from the 17th century to the present is explored in this website through essays, images, video presentations, and interactive timelines. Eight sections focus on particular time periods: 1654–1776; 1777–1829; 1830–1880; 1881–1919; 1920–1939; 1940–1948; 1949–1967; and 1968–present. Each section has short topical essays discussing the world events, politics, and daily life of the period, video and audio presentations, an image gallery, and books for further reading.

A number of sections also have "featured artifacts" that examine a particular cultural artifact, such as a Colonial-era book of prayers or a Civil War photo album, in greater detail. Each thumbnail is accompanied by a description and a full-sized image. The 590 images in the collection can also be viewed in a separate gallery.

Jewish Immigration During the Revolutionary War

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haym saloman
Question

I am an eighth grader. I am working on a history day project about Jewish immigration during the Revolutionary War or sometime around there. I already know a lot of Jewish people came over to America seeking religious freedom. Would it be possible for you to send me some information about Jewish immigration or direct me to another source of information?

Answer

Not many Jews immigrated to the United States before about 1820, but the 350th anniversary of Jewish settlement in America was celebrated in 2004 to mark the arrival in New Amsterdam (New York City) in 1654 of a group of two dozen Jewish settlers from the Netherlands, by way of Brazil. Over the next century and more, Jewish immigrants to America came mostly from Spain, Portugal, and the West Indies. They were of Sephardic descent, although a few were Ashkenazim from Germany or England. Jews who settled in the American colonies often made their living by being merchants, land speculators, and importers and exporters, dealing especially in fur, whale oil, candles, wine, rum, cocoa, and textiles. They welcomed the New World's economic opportunities, but also hoped to find in America a refuge from the religious persecution they had experienced in Europe.

Jews were not welcomed everywhere in the colonies, but they established small communities in New York City; Newport, Rhode Island (1695); Charleston, South Carolina (1745); Savannah, Georgia (1735); and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1739): Roger Williams had founded Rhode Island on the principle of religious tolerance. English liberal philosopher John Locke had drawn up the Constitutions of Carolina, which were strongly tolerant in matters of religion. Quaker William Penn also welcomed settlers of different religious beliefs into the colony of Pennsylvania, and James Oglethorpe, Georgia's first governor, established a precedent of tolerance when he assisted a group of Jews to settle in the colony, shortly after it was founded, where they opened Congregation Mickva Israel in 1735.

The oldest synagogue building in North America, Touro Synagogue, was opened in Newport in 1763. It is still in use today. Charleston's Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim was organized in 1749. Its present building, finished in 1794, is the second oldest in the United States and the oldest in continuous use. Until well after the Revolutionary War, the Jewish center of gravity in America was Charleston. Only later did New York City overtake it in influence.

...New England, well into the 19th century, was generally less tolerant of Jewish immigration than other areas in the country...

Early Puritan New England was highly attuned to the traditions and culture of ancient Israel, but saw its own society as the "New Jerusalem," governed by covenantal relationships among its own "chosen people." Ironically, perhaps, this meant that New England, well into the 19th century, was generally less tolerant of Jewish immigration than other areas in the country, and when it was allowed, it was sometimes done because of the Puritan conviction that it would give the Jews the opportunity to be evangelized and converted to Christianity.

On the eve of the American Revolution, between 2,000 and 3,000 Jews lived in the colonies, which had a total population of 3 million. By and large, Jews were sympathetic to the effort to achieve independence from Britain. Especially attractive to Jews, because of their experience in Europe, were American efforts to create a society in which no particular religion would be established by the State. The Enlightenment influence on Revolutionary and early Republican ideals—as in Thomas Jefferson's notion of a "wall of separation between church and state"—greatly appealed to the Jewish community.

The Jewish communities in the cities were temporarily dispersed when many of their members fled British occupation forces. Perhaps 100 Jewish men served as soldiers for the American cause. Many of them were recognized for their distinguished military service. Haym Salomon, a Polish Jew who came to America in 1772, joined the Sons of Liberty in New York and became probably the greatest financier of the Revolution. Francis Salvador, who immigrated from England in 1773, was a prominent colonial legislator and American patriot in Charleston, and was killed in battle in 1776.

Books of Special Interest to Pre-college Students on the History of Jews in Colonial and Revolutionary America

Faber, Eli. "Prologue to American Jewish History: The Jews of America from 1654–1820," 23–46, in From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America, ed., Michael W. Grunberger. New York: George Braziller. The "coffee table book" published to accompany the exhibit at the Library of Congress in 2004. The exhibit's website is still online (see below).

Malamed, Sandra Cummings. The Jews in Early America: A Chronicle of Good Taste and Good Deeds. McKinleyville, Ca.: Fithian Press, 2003.

Kenvin, Helene Schwartz. This Land of Liberty: A History of America's Jew. West Orange, N.J.: Behrman House, 1986.

Diner, Hasia R. A New Promised Land: A History of Jews in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pages 1–21.

Websites

A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life, University of North Carolina Library.

This exhibit tells "the story of Southern Jewish settlers and their descendants from the late 1600s through the 21st century." It currently consists of two presentations, each with more than 50 pages presenting an image from the exhibit's collection with accompanying explanatory text. Images include portraits, maps, historical documents, photographs of Jewish ritual books and religious and cultural objects, paintings and photographs of synagogues, and photographs of Jewish businesses. "First Families" explores the period from the 1600s to the 1820s through more than 50 images and "This Happy Land" explores the antebellum and Civil War years through more than 90 images. (The presentation Pledging Allegiance, recounting the story of Jewish migration to the South in the first half of the 20th century, is under construction.) Visitors can listen to six interviews featuring voices from the past (transcripts are available). Additionally, a photographic essay with more than 40 photographs, Palmetto Jews by Bill Aron, examines Jewish life in South Carolina over the past 50 years. There is no site search capability.

Jews in America: Our Story, Center for Jewish History.

The history of Jews in America from the 17th century to the present is explored in this website through essays, images, video presentations, and interactive timelines. "It is a portrait of American Jews—and a portrait of America." It presents this story through eight sections focused on particular time periods: 1654–1776; 1777—1829; 1830—1880; 1881—1919; 1920—1939; 1940—1948; 1949—1967; and 1968—present. Each section has short topical essays explaining the period (an introduction, world events, politics, religion and community, and daily life; some sections add essays on arts and entertainment, sports, or science), video and audio presentation(s), an image gallery, and books for further reading. A number of sections also have "featured artifacts" that examine a particular cultural artifact in greater detail. The timeline has information about the events on the timeline and links to related websites about the event, where available. Each image is accompanied by a description and a larger size image. The 590 images in the collection can also be viewed in a separate gallery. A keyword search is available. This site is of interest to anyone teaching or researching the history of Jews in America, cultural history, ethnicity, or art history.

From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America, Library of Congress.

An exhibition on Jewish life in America emphasizing the themes of accommodation, assertion, adaptation, and acculturation. The website features more than 200 illustrations, portraits, and images of books and documents from Library of Congress collections. The website offers an explanatory overview of the exhibition and four brief electronic exhibits focused that help to tell a part of the Jewish story in America from 1654 to the present. Some of the items highlighted by the exhibition include the first book printed in the English settlements of America, the Bay Psalm Book printed in 1640, the first published American Jewish sermon, and a hand-drawn plaque from ca. 1942 with dual Hebrew prayers for Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. A small bibliography lists 10 books plus six books for children. The site provides an introduction to the Library of Congress collections and is useful for teaching about the history of Jewish life in America.

Scholarly Books

Pencak, William. Jews & Gentiles in Early America, 1654–1800. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

Faber, Eli. A Time for Planting: The First Migration 1654–1820. The Jewish People in America, Volume 1. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Reiss. Oscar. The Jews in Colonial America. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2004.

Marcus, Jacob Rader. Early American Jewry. 2 volumes. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1951–53.

-----. The Colonial American Jew, 1492–1776. 3 volumes. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970.
-----. United States Jewry, 1776–1985. Volume 1. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989.
Sarna, Jonathan. American Judaism: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, pages 1–40.
Hertzburg, Arthur. The Jews in America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989, pages 17–73.

Sachar, Howard M. A History of the Jews in America. New York: Vintage Books, 1993, pages 9–37.

Diner, Hasia R. Jews of the United States, 1654–2000. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, pages 13–57.