Though today the majority of New York’s population is Ashkenazi (from Central and Eastern Europe), the first significant wave of Jewish immigration to New York was actually Sephardi. In 1654, a group of 23 Jews from Brazil arrived in New Amsterdam, fleeing Spanish and Portugese Inquisitions. Jews had lived safely in Brazil since their expulsion from Spain in 1492, but persecution eventually caught up with them. Their arrival to New York (then called New Amsterdam) was met by objections on behalf of anti-Semitic Governor Peter Stuyvesant. They were ultimately allowed to settle, though numerous restrictions and taxes were imposed upon them. Congregation Shearith Israel was founded in 1654 with the arrival of those first Jewish immigrants. It is the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States and it remained the only Jewish congregation in New York until 1825. There is little evidence of where the congregation worshipped before 1730, when they moved into their synagogue on Mill Street (now South William Street in the Financial District). And then beginning in 1834, it began a series of moves uptown: first to 60 Crosby Street in today’s Soho, then in 1860 to West 19th Street in Chelsea, before settling on the Upper West Side in 1897 at West 70th Street. Amongst the prominent members of Shearith Israel was Emma Lazarus, whose poem “The New Colossus” is inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Remarkably, the congregation remains active on the Upper West Side today. Sephardic Jews still make up a notable part of New York’s Jewish population today; in addition to the Upper West Side, there is also a significant Sephardic enclave surrounding Brooklyn’s Kings Highway and on Staten Island.

The first prominent wave of Ashkenazi immigration to New York began with heightened German Jewish immigration in 1815. Several factors propelled German Jews to leave: ruination left by the Napoleonic Wars, economic chaos caused by the Industrial Revolution, as well as discriminatory laws and religious persecution. By 1875, 3 million German Jews had immigrated to the United States, with the largest cluster gravitating towards New York. German Jews found a new home in the Kleindeutschland neighborhood (or “Little Germany”, today Alphabet City and the Lower East Side). German Jews, as a group, heavily strived to assimilate and “Americanize”. This meant giving up religious customs that were incompatible with American society, such as keeping Shabbat and kashrut or donning visibly distinguishable forms of dress. Because German Jews were less tied to religion, their social lives were more often tied to eating establishments or hobbies like singing or athletics. Built in 1894, Scheffel Hall was modeled after a building in Heidelberg Castle. It served immigrants with food that they would have had in the old world, and also functioned as a beer hall, providing ales from German breweries in the city. As primarily Reform and Conservative Jews, integrating into American society was less of a challenge than it would be for their Orthodox successors. As soon as they had the means to do so, German Jews left their immigrant neighborhood and moved uptown, many of them to the Upper East Side (or Yorkville).

Two major institutions sealed the German Jews’ new place on the Upper East Side. The first was Temple Emanu-El in 1845, the first Reform congregation of the United States, which still operates today at 1 East 65th Street. The original 33 members first met in Lower East Side, but as the congregation grew, they moved further and further uptown. There, they merged American customs and religious tradition by departing from an all-Hebrew service, integrating first German and then English into their services. Though a common practice today, this actually represented a major departure at its time, and would influence how congregations and communities practiced nationwide.

Founded in 1852, the then-named “Jews’ Hospital” was founded to accommodate the increasing Jewish population uptown. The medical staff was also primarily Jewish, which helped compensate for limited employment opportunities at other hospitals. Of course the hospital no longer seeks to employ or serve primarily Jewish doctors and patients. But Mount Sinai played an instrumental role in securing German Jews' place in Upper East Side society. Today, the Upper East Side boasts a Jewish population of approximately 70,000, with firm roots in that German-American Jewish history.

The third wave of Jewish immigration was Eastern European – the focus of the Museum at Eldridge Street! In Eastern Europe, Jews bore the brunt of the blame for the 1881 assasination of Czar Alexander II, causing mass violence against them (called pogroms). At the turn of the 20th century, Eastern European Jews immigrated to New York City en masse, with the Jewish population spiking from roughly 80,000 in 1880 to 1.5 million in 1920. The immigrants settled just south of where their German predecessors had in previous decades, in the neighborhood that would become known as the Jewish Lower East Side. The neighborhood became the heart of immigrant Jewish life: Yiddish signs lined the streets, neighborhood garment factories employed mostly Jews, and synagogues such as Eldridge cemented religious communities. As soon as the Lower East Side community had the means to do so, they constructed the Eldridge Street Synagogue, the first grand synagogue in America built by this immigrant group.

Generally speaking, the Jewish immigrants coming from Eastern Europe were more traditional, more religious, than their German counterparts from decades past. This made it more difficult for them to carve out a place of belonging in their new country; white American society perceived these new Jewish immigrants as foreign outsiders. And because Lower East Side Jews held more tightly to their language and traditions, their neighborhood retained its deep immigrant character for many decades. In some cases, the second or third generations of these families did assimilate, becoming part of the eclectic and multifaceted population of American Jews. But there were many Orthodox families who held tight to their strict customs. They eventually moved out of the Lower East Side and to the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Borough Park, Flatbush, Brownsville, Crown Heights, and Williamsburg. Despite heavy gentrification, many of these communities still remain today. A quarter of Brooklyn residents today identify as Jewish.

This balance of tradition and assimilation is in many ways a microcosm of the destiny of Eastern European Jewry. Many Eastern European Jews followed the model set by German Jews and moved uptown, this time to the Upper West Side. By this time, the garment industry had begun to move from the Lower East Side to Midtown West, where it still exists (although fading) today. Jews were able to enjoy both a higher quality of life uptown, as well as an easy commute to work thanks to the newly inaugurated Broadway-Seventh Avenue subway line. Many Jewish businesses proliferated and remain today on the Upper West Side, including the legendary shop Zabar's, visible on the middle of the block in this image.

The final major wave of Jewish immigration in New York history was also Eastern European – this time, Jews fleeing the newly dissolved Soviet Union. Just like the generations that preceded them, they fled political unrest, economic chaos, and religious persecution. Russian Jews in particular found home in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brighton Beach and Coney Island. Though many descendants of Jewish immigrants have moved out of the city to neighboring suburbs and across the country, New York City remains an undeniable capital of Jewish life and culture. From the Sephardi to the German, the early Eastern Europeans to the recent, each generation came to New York and found new opportunities – though not without significant difficulty. Though today’s generations may not live in the neighborhoods their families originally lived in, we know that many Jews remain firmly attached to their roots and the culture that began so many years ago in these New York City neighborhoods.