Jewish Immigrants in Early 1900s America: A Visitor's Account

WITH MORE THAN 50 VINTAGE PHOTOS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

From the 1880s to 1920s, more than 2 million Jews immigrated to the United States. Most were fleeing poverty and persecution in Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire. As the U.S. Jewish population swelled from 250,000 to 4 million, they built new identities and strong communities.

French political writer Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu toured the eastern U.S. in 1904 to see how the refugees were doing. “I had already visited most of the Jewish quarters in Europe, Asia and Africa,” he explained. Now he wanted to explore the crowded, bustling Jewish neighborhoods of America. What he saw amazed and impressed him.

That autumn, he gave an enthusiastic, insightful talk to the Jewish Studies Association in Paris, praising a “land of wonders and liberty” where long-oppressed Jews were thriving. Librairie Nouvelle published his lecture as a booklet in 1905. This new English translation contains more than fifty vintage photographs and illustrations.

This is the second book in the Between Wanderings collection.