News

LOOK: 11 Astounding Images of Jewish Settlers in Colonial America

By Lilly Maier November 10, 2016

With the presidential election at hand, and Thanksgiving around the corner, it’s a good time to remember that Jews have been a part of United States history since before there was a United States.

The New York Historical Society makes it easy in a new exhibit: The First Jewish Americans – Freedom and Culture in the New World.

Many people think the wave of German-Jewish immigrants who came in the 1840s were the first Jews to settle in America, but their arrival actually dates back to colonial times, co-curator Debra Schmidt Bach told DNAinfo.

People also don’t realize that “the first true Jewish presence in America was in New York,” she said.

The show “explores the paths taken by Jews who for centuries fled persecution in Europe,” said Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of the NY Historical Society, in a press release.

The exhibit starts “with the little-known but remarkable stories of their experience in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Brazil during the colonial period” and then follows “their journey toward finding freedom and tolerance in the early American Republic,” Mirrer said.

The exhibit features over 170 objects, including rare early portraits, drawings, maps, books, documents and ritual objects that show the birth of a Jewish American tradition in the 18th- and 19-century.

Highlights include two landscape paintings by Sephardic Jew Camille Pissarro and a group of six portraits depicting members of the Levy-Franks family, prominent figures in New York City’s 18th-century Jewish community.

And for the first time ever, manuscripts relating to Mexican Inquisition victim Luis de Carvajal will be shown for public display. The manuscripts are considered the earliest extant Jewish books in the New World.

Jews were only a small fraction of the population in the newly founded United States, but they were heavily involved the cultural sphere and in negotiating the freedoms offered.

The New York Historical society has a history of its own in exploring early Jewish life in America. Last year, the museum featured “Lincoln and the Jews,” which traced the president’s support and friendship with Jews.

First Jewish Americans – Freedom and Culture in the New World is open until the end of February, 2017.

Lilly Maier is a news intern at the Forward. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter at @lillymmaier

Lilly Maier is a news intern at the Forward. She is a graduate journalism student at New York University, where she studies as a Fulbright scholar. She also holds a B.A. in Jewish history from the University of Munich. Contact Lilly at [email protected], read her portfolio, or follow her on Twitter.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO