Chronology

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND 1585-1775
Date	Event
1585	First known Jew, Joachim Gaunse (Ganz), steps onto American soil at Roanoke Island, Virginia.
1649	Solomon Franco makes an unsuccessful attempt to settle in Boston. After a brief period he is "warned out."
1654	First Settlers European Jews make their way to the American colonies in small numbers and by circuitous routes. The first group to come to North America is Dutch, but comes from Brazil. In 1654 twenty-three Jewish refugees landed in New Amsterdam, which would one day become New York City. Although several Jewish merchants preceded them by several months, these twenty-three created the first permanent Jewish settlement, and it is their arrival that began American Jewish history. Portuguese, Spanish, and Ashkenazi Jews, they had fled from Recife in Brazil after the Portuguese took the colony from the Dutch. One of the sixteen Jewish vessels heading back to Holland was sidetracked by Spanish pirates and seized by Spanish officials of the Inquisition near Jamaica. They managed to get to Cuba and from there set sail to New Amsterdam. They met considerable hostility in New Amsterdam despite being Dutch subjects. Peter Stuyvesant and his fellow colonists made their legal, social and economic position very difficult. Eventually, under pressure from Amsterdam Jewry, Stuyvesant ceded limited rights to members of the small Jewish community that began to form around the first refugee group. Enlightened self-interest played a role in the Dutch East India Company’s instructing Stuyvesant to stop harassing the Jews, since Jewish merchants were a valuable contribution to the colony.
1636	First Cemetery Congregation Shearith Israel, although not yet allowed to worship in a synagogue, buys a cemetery site near what is now Chatham Square in New York City. It is believed to be the oldest Jewish cemetery in the country. The Congregation was the first and is now the oldest continuous Jewish community in North America They held their first public services around 1686 and officially adopted the name Congregation Shearith Israel in 1728.
1657	First Jewish Citizens In the spring of 1657, four New Amsterdam Jews petitioned to be granted burgher rights. The petition was granted and Jews were granted the same freedoms enjoyed by the other inhabitants of New Amsterdam. Asser Levy pressured Stuyvestant for more extensive civil rights, becoming the first Jew in New Amsterdam and North America to have the right to serve in the militia, engage in retail trade, to be licensed as a butcher, and to own a house. He went into fur trading and real estate and became one of six licensed butchers in the colony. He was, for religious reasons, excused from slaughtering hogs. He became one of the richest men in New Amsterdam.
1664	English Takeover The English take over New Amsterdam from the Dutch and rename it New York.
1665	Trading Restrictions With trading restriction against Jews of New York in force, Abraham de Lucena is arrested for selling at retail and fined 6oo guilders, a huge sum at the time. Jacob Cohen Hendriques is ordered to stop baking bread for sale. Within a few years Jews in the colony win the right to trade.
1671	Philanthropy Asser Levy advances a Lutheran congregation the funds to build their first church in New York.
1678	Newport Cemetery Jews in Newport, Rhode Island, buy a cemetery, even though there is no permanent community.
1700	Growth of New Communities In New York most trading and property restrictions against Jews were lifted by 1700. Jews were still forced by law to support the established church of the colony and their status was that of second-class citizens. In other colonies the situation was much the same. There were only about two or three hundred Jews in North America. Although they were allowed to vote in some places, they were not allowed to hold any offices except those considered burdensome by the Christian colonists, such as that of constable. The British Plantation Act (1740) made it possible for a colonial Jew to become a naturalized citizen, with rights of trade within the empire. Political rights were still withheld. Six synagogue communities were established in Montreal, Philadelphia, New York, Newport, Savannah, and Charleston, South Carolina. All but Montreal were tidewater cities. Until 1720, most American Jews were Sephardim, with a Spanish-Portuguese background. After that date, most came from Central and Eastern Europe, by way of England. While in England, they often adopted English names and learned to speak English. By the middle of the 1700s, most Jews in the colonies were English-speaking immigrants who were originally from Germany. Most Jewish families were supported either by a small shop or by a trade such as soap making, distilling, or tailoring. A few became wealthy through provisioning the British armies in North America or through involvement in exporting. A few participated in the slave trade. Francis Salvador was one of the few large planters, growing indigo on his South Carolina plantation. At one point, the Salvador family owned 100,000 acres. In Georgia, the Sheftalls were cattle ranchers as well as merchants. Myer Myers was a renowned silversmith who began his business in New York and branched out to Philadelphia. During the late seventeen and early eighteenth centuries, the Jewish population of North America grew slowly but steadily.
	Religious Observance Most Jews in the colonies were devout and tied closely to the synagogue community. There were few other options. While there were no rabbis until 1840, each congregation had a chazzan, a shohet, and a Shamash. Sometimes the same person held more than one position. These congregations performed considerable social service work for their members, providing medical help to the sick and dying, educational aid for the children of the poor, and continuing help to arriving immigrants. The newer immigrants from Germany were Ashkenazim, but they accepted the already established Sephardic worship services.
	Anti-Semitism Their position as citizens without full rights was the primary oppression experienced by early Jewish Americans. Overt anti-Jewish acts were few and far between. There were no compulsory ghettos and virtually no anti-Jewish violence. The Jews experienced less persecution for religious beliefs than was experienced by the Baptists in Virginia. There were laws against blasphemy in most of the colonies but only one instance of a Jew being prosecuted for denying the divinity of Jesus. That man, Jacob Lumbrozo, was not punished. Men of wealth found considerable acceptance within the Christian community and exercised considerable political power. There was a great deal of acculturation and intermarriage, as well as support for the welfare of the larger community. Many Jews participated, for example, in charities designed to serve both Jewish and Christian poor. In 1711, some of the most notable Jewish businessmen in New York, including the chazzan, lent their financial resources to the building of Trinity Church.
1730	Shearith Israel Synagogue After being in existence for the better part of a century Congregation Shearith Israel builds a synagogue on Mill Street in what had become New York City. It was the first synagogue on the mainland of North America. This building is no longer standing. The present synagogue is on Central Park West, and the congregation still observes the Orthodox Sephardic ritual.
1740	Philadelphia Cemetery Philadelphia Jewry has a cemetery and conducts services.
	Discontinuation of Portuguese The Portuguese language is used for the last time in the official records of Shearith Israel Congregation, New York.
1763	Oldest Synagogue Touro Synagogue is consecrated in Newport, Rhode Island. It is the oldest extant synagogue building in the United States. The Jews of Newport fled the city when the British occupied it in 1776. The Newport Jewish community was revitalized with the arrival of the Jews from Europe and in 1783 the Synagogue was reopened and reconsecrated.
TAKING A PLACE IN A NEW COUNTRY, 1775-1829
1775	Francis Salvador; the first Jew to hold an elective post in the New World, became a member of the South Carolina Provincial Congress on January 11,1775. On July 31,1776 he was killed in a skirmish, becoming the first Jew to die for American independence.
1776	Haym Salomon becomes Broker to the Office of Finance of the United States. He is a major contributor and fund-raiser for the United States Government during the Revolution.
1780	Richmond Congregation An organized Jewish community is established in Richmond.
	Benjamin Nones, a Jew from France, was promoted to Major in the American army for his leadership during the Battle of Savannah. He was officially exempted from military duties on Friday night.
1783	Immigrant Aid Society Philadelphia Jewry establishes the first immigrant aid society in the United States. Two members of Philadelphia's Mikveh Israel Congregation also sign a petition to the Council of Censors asking that the oat of office be changed to include non-Christians.
1784	In Charleston, South Carolina, Jews establish their first social welfare organization.
1787	The Northwest Territory offers Jews equality in all future territories and states.
	Rights Protest Jonas Phillips writes to the Constitutional Convention saying to "swear and believe that the New Testament was given by divine inspiration is absolutely against the religious principle of a Jew. " Six years later, in 1793 he is fined ten pounds in Philadelphia for refusing to testify on the Jewish Sabbath.
1788	The United States Constitution is adopted by a majority of the states. Under federal laws - not state laws - Jews are given full rights. Not until 1877 do Jews have full political rights in every state.
1796	First State Legislator Dr. Levi Myers of Georgetown, South Carolina, is the first Jew to serve in a state legislature.
1801	First Orphan Care Society The first American Jewish orphan care society is established in Charleston, South Carolina.
1802	First Ashkenazi Synagogue The first American Ashkenazi synagogue, Rodeph Shalom, is established in Philadelphia.
1818	Rights in Connecticut Connecticut grants full political rights to Jews.
1819	Female Hebrew Benevolent Society Rebecca Gratz helps organize the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society to assist Jewish women and children because Christian charities often proselytize the Jews they help. This is the first Jewish charity not administered by a synagogue. It remained active and independent for almost 100 years.
	Jean Laffite, Pirate Jean Laffite, the buccaneer who helped Andrew Jackson turn the tide at the Battle of New Orleans in 1816, was a descendant of the Sephardic Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity. Unlike many of these so called marranos, Leffite's family maintained a covert loyalty to their Jewish faith. Indeed, it was in no small part his knowledge of the Spanish persecution of his people that made Laffite a terror to Spanish shipping in the Gulf of Mexico and the southern Atlantic.
1820s	German Immigration A mass migration of German Jews to America starts. At the beginning of the influx in 1820 there were fewer than 3,000 Jewish Americans. Sixty years later, in 1880, there were more than 250,000. In 1820, there were eight Jewish American congregations. Twenty years later, there were nineteen. By 1877, there were almost 300. The vast majority of the immigrants were young women and men with little education or resources. Because of repressive laws in Germany, life in their European homes held little possibility of prosperity or happiness for them. Fortunately, they arrived in the United States at a time of huge economic growth and many of them flourished. Their success ranged from respectable livings made in small retail stores in the Midwest to huge fortunes made in investment banking.
1821	Rights in Massachusetts Massachusetts grants full political rights to Jews. Rights in Maryland Maryland, after a difficult ten-year fight, grants its Jewish population the same political rights as its other citizens.
1829	Isaac Leeser, the father of American modern Orthodoxy, becomes the chazzan-minister-rabbi of Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia. An immigrant from Westphalia, Germany he speaks for Jewish Americans who want a traditional form of Judaism that reflects the American culture.
THE COUNTRY PREPARES FOR WAR — 1830-1860
1836	The Jew at the Alamo Among the many men and women who fell defending the Alamo from the Mexican Army in 1836 was a young Englishman named Anthony Wolfe, who was serving as a private in the Army of the Republic of Texas. Wolfe, almost certainly the only Jew in the battle, is reputed to have been one of the last defenders to be killed.
	Monticello U.S. Navy Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy purchases Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, and restores and repairs it. Without his intervention, it is doubtful the home would have been saved for the American people. Levy was also instrumental in ending flogging in the U.S. Navy.
	Awakening of a Reform Movement In Charleston, South Carolina the first attempt is made to organize a Reform Movement in American Judaism. After a proposal for reforming the Sabbath service is rejected by the congregation as a whole (1824), a splinter group of about fifty young Jews in Congregation Beth Elohim organizes the Reformed Society of Israelites (1825). The society lasts until 1833, during which time the members install an organ, stop wearing yarmulkes and stop praying for the arrival of the Messiah. Its stated policy was that its members were "their own teachers, drawing their knowledge from the Bible and following only the laws of Moses, and those only as far as they can be adapted to the institutions of the society in which they live and enjoy the blessings of liberty."
	Passover Haggadah The first Passover Haggadah is printed in America and published by S. H. Jackson.
1838	First Jewish Sunday School Rebecca Gratz establishes the first Jewish Sunday school in the United States in Philadelphia. It is Orthodox and for the first time gives Jewish women in this country a role in determining Jewish educational curriculum.
1840	First Diplomat Rabbi Abraham Rice, the first diplomat rabbi to officiate in America, takes office in Baltimore. From Germany, Rice was one of the few fully ordained resident rabbis in Orthodox Jewry in this country until the 1880s.
	Damascus Protest American Jews protest the persecution of Jews in Damascus.
1850-1860	German Rabbis Leo Merzbacher, Max Lilienthal, Isaac Mayer Wise, Bernhard Felsenthal, David Einhorn, Samuel Adler, and other German rabbis come to America to serve the new German congregations. They are active in promoting reforms in Judaism.
1841	First Permanent Reform Synagogue Charleston's Beth Elohim becomes the first permanent Reform Jewish synagogue in the United States after a prolonged struggle between Reform and Orthodox factions in the congregation. The Reformed Society of Israelites split off from this congregation in 1825. A group under the leadership of young attorney Abraham Moise, with the support of chazzan Gustavus Poznanski, won custody of the synagogue building in a legal battle. The defeated Orthodox group withdrew and formed Shearith Israel.
	First Congressman David Levy Yulee is the first Jew to serve in Congress, representing the state of Florida as a Senator. He was the son of Moses Elias Levy, a Moroccan Jew who made his fortune in timber in the Caribbean, then bought 50,000 acres of land near Jacksonville, hoping to create a New Jerusalem for Jewish settlers. Levy County and the city of Yulee are named after this family.
1843	The Country Prepares for War, 1830-1860 The first successful Jewish newspaper in this country remained in publication for twenty-five years. As its editor, Isaac Leeser became the most famous Jewish religious leader in pre-Civil War America.
	B'nai B’rith Founded B'nai B'rith, a mutual aid and fraternal order, is established in New York City. Its purposes include social service projects such as orphanages, hospitals, homes for the aged and help for new immigrants. Among its early undertakings was giving aid to victims of the Great Chicago Fire.
	Leeser's Occident Isaac Leeser, chazzan of the Sephardic synagogue of Philadelphia, publishes The Occident and American Jewish Advocate a strong voice for Orthodoxy. It is the first successful Jewish newspaper in this country and remained in publication for twenty-five years. As its editor, Leeser became the most famous Jewish religious leader in pre-Civil War America.
1845	Temple Emanu-El The foremost Reform congregation in the United States, Temple Emanu-El in New York City, is formed by thirty-three members of the cultural society on the lower East Side. They first consulted with the Charleston, South Carolina Reform congregation and with leaders of the Reform movement in Baltimore. In 1854, the congregation moved to Twelfth Street, taking over a former Baptist Church and in 1868 built its own building.
1846	Isaac Mayer Wise, the organizer of the American Jewish Reform Movement, comes to the United States from Bohemia. He later becomes rabbi of Congregation B'nai Yeshurun in Cincinnati (1854), where he remained until his death. He published the Israelite, later the American Israelite.
1853	Leeser Translation Isaac leeser publishes an English translation of the Bible, His Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scripture was the standard Jewish translation of the Bible in the United States for more than sixty years.
	Fremont Expedition Photographs Solomon Nunes Carvaiho accompanies John C. Fremont on his Western expedition. While Fremont assessed the viability of a transcontinental railway, Carvaiho documented the trip taking daguerreotypes with heavy and unwieldy equipment under difficult and dangerous conditions. Carvalho later helped organize the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Los Angeles.
	Organization Attempt Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise calls a meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, to unite American Jewry religiously, hoping to establish a common prayer book (Minhag America), a college, and generally a single religious form for American Judaism. Although the conference was successful in many ways, it did not lead to unity or even harmony. David Einhorn insisted that Wise had compromised too much with the Orthodox rabbis, ceding them the absolute authority of the Talmud. Lesser, who reluctantly participated, later distanced himself from the positions adopted by the conference.
1859	Kidnapping Protest Jews meet in several towns to protest the actions of the papal authorities who seized Edgar Mortara, a Jewish child, to rear him as a Catholic. The child's nurse secretly had him christened during an illness and the Roman Catholic Church insisted that he be brought up as a Christian. The case helps American Jews gain considerable sympathy from Christian Americans for the persecution of Jews around the world. In its wake, Rabbi Samuel Isaacs formed the Board of Delegates of American Israelites. It was the first national meeting of American Jewish religious leaders and included among its members both traditionalist Isaac Leeser and Reform leader Isaac Mayer Wise.
1860	Congressional Prayer Morris Raphall becomes the first rabbi to open a session of the United States Congress with prayer. He was rabbi of New York's Orthodox Congregation B'nai Jeshurun at the time. On the day he was to appear, tensions in Congress concerning slavery were so high that it appeared the assembly would be unable to elect a Speaker of the House. Raphall, wearing skull cap and prayer shawl, prayed, "... thou who makest peace in the high heavens, direct their minds this day that with one consent they may agree to choose the man who, without fear, and without favor, is to preside over this assembly." The prayer was credited with breaking the tension in the room and allowing the election to take place.
WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1861-1879
CIVIL WAR	To the chagrin of the abolitionist movement, American Jews generally shared the sentiments of their neighbors concerning slavery. They were also split regionally over the other economic and political causes of the Civil War. There were prominent Jewish participants on both sides of the bloody conflict. Historians estimate that there may have been as many as 7,000 Jewish soldiers in the Union Army, while about 3,000 fought for the Confederacy. There were more Jewish residents of the Northern states, accounting for the numerical inequality. The total number of Jews in the general population at the time was 150,000 and would have justified considerable smaller numbers. Many of these soldiers fought with "Jewish" companies. Although there were no entirely Jewish companies in either the Union Army or that of the Confederacy, there were many with a Jewish majority. They came from cities as widely separated as Macon and West Point, Georgia, in the South to Syracuse and Chicago in the North. The Texas Legion had two Jewish companies. For the most part, it seems to have been the Jewish soldiers themselves who chose to serve together. Colonel Edward S. Salomon led the Eighty-second Illinois Volunteer Infantry, a "Jewish" regiment, in the Battle of Gettysburg, covering himself and his men with glory. They were in the middle of the successful effort to repulse Pickett's Charge. At least three Union officers of Jewish origin were brevetted generals during the Civil War.
	Southern Supporters In the Confederate government the most important Jewish figure was Judah P. Benjamin. One of the most outstanding legal figures in the South, he was elected to the United States Senate in 1853 when he was forty-two years old. An ardent states' rights advocate who wanted to preserve slavery, he was an early secessionist. Benjamin was appointed Attorney General at the inception of the Confederacy and later, Acting Secretary of War. He later became Secretary of State, responsible for enlisting the aid of other countries, a thankless task. "The brains of the Confederacy," as he was called, fled the country after the surrender. A number of Jewish businessmen and companies provided significant support for the Southern cause, including Benjamin Mordecai, the L. Heyman & Brother foundry, and John Mayer. Phoebe Yates Levy Pember, daughter of Southern patriot Jacob Clavius Levy, ran the largest military hospital in the country in Richmond. Her sister, Eugenia Levy Phillips, was arrested for sedition twice and was once put in a Union prison for three weeks on charges of spying for the Confederacy.
	Northern Supporters In the North, one of President Lincoln's most influential informal advisors was the Jewish chiropodist Dr. Isachar Zacharie. Zacharie's profession led to his acquaintance with the president and to considerable ridicule. He was Lincoln's close friend and unofficial diplomat, making several trips to the South on the chief executive's behalf. Supporting the war in material ways were Jewish clothing manufacturers such as the Mack, Stadler & Glazer consortium and Joseph Seligman and his brothers. The Seligmans sold millions of dollars worth of Union bonds in Germany and Holland. August Belmont was a powerful advocate for the North among European statesmen and financiers. He played a large role in preventing other countries from weighing in on the side of the Confederacy, with which many of them had strong economic ties.
1862	General Orders No.11 In spite of the Jewish presence in the upper echelons of the war effort, an infamous piece of anti-Semitism was perpetrated in the name of the Union. On December 17, 1862, U.S. Grant issued General Orders No.11. Its effect was to expel all Jews from the "Tennessee Department," which included portions of Tennessee, Kentucky, and northern Mississippi. The motivation for this action was the desire to rid the area of traders who were buying cotton that would otherwise have been conscripted by the army. Since a number of traders and peddlers were Jewish, Grant generalized the entire population. The order was in effect for two months before Abraham Lincoln rescinded it, under pressure from Jewish activists. During that time, Jewish merchants, craftspeople, and farmers, as well as traders, were driven from their homes. Grant later acknowledged and apologized for his actions, but G.O. No. 11 remained with him for the rest of his life. Even the minister who delivered his eulogy mentioned and tried to excuse him for it. In no other area of his life, however, did Grant reveal an anti-Semitic strain. Indeed, he appointed General Salomon to the governorship of the Washington Territory after the war.
	Jewish Chaplains The Chaplaincy Law declared that only a "regularly ordained minister of some Christian denomination" might serve as chaplain to a Union Army company. When the "Jewish" Fifth Cavalry elected one of their numbers, Michael Mitchell Allen, to lead prayers and conduct services there was no immediate objection. However, a YMCA worker felt compelled to report the breach and Allen was forced to vacate his post. It took almost a year for outraged Jews around the country to get the law changed, but after 1862 chaplains in the U.S. Armed Forces would never again be solely Christian.
	Decline of the Southern Jewish Aristocracy With the end of the Civil War, Southern culture underwent a sea change. The culture of the Southern Jewish aristocracy virtually disappeared. There remained however, a significant Jewish population in the South.
	Rise of Industrial Fortunes in the North There was a new prosperity in the North after the War. Many of the great American fortunes were based on Civil War profits. Jewish merchants and manufacturers were among those who emerged from the war financially and socially ahead. In addition, the struggle for Jewish rights that began with opposition to G.O. No.11 and the Chaplaincy Law now grew stronger. An increased feeling of being a part of the American culture gradually led to the expansion of Reform Judaism.
	First Rabbinical School Isaac Leeser establishes Maimonides College, the first rabbinical school in the United States. Leeser died not long after and the school closed. Only four students graduated during its short life.
1869	First Reform Statement A group of Reform rabbis under the leadership of Samuel Hirsch and David Einhorn meet in Philadelphia to publish the first statement on the Jewish Reform position in America. The group rejects both the concept of the Jewish restoration of Palestine and the belief in physical resurrection held by Orthodox Jews. The rabbis also make an attempt to increase the role of Jewish women in a number of life-cycle commemorations.
	First Hebrew Weekly Zvi Hirsch Bernstein in America, published Hazofeh B’eretz Hahadashah, the first Hebrew weekly. Its intended audience was the immigrant community from Eastern Europe, particularly the intellectuals called maskilim. It remained in publication for about two years. The next Hebrew weekly, Heikhat ha-ivriyah (1877-1879?), came out as a supplement to Chicago's Yiddish Izraelitishe Prese (1877-1884).
1873	Association of Congregations The Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now the central congregational body of Reform Judaism in the Western Hemisphere) is established in Cincinnati after a conference of Jewish congregations from the South and the West, inspired by the vision of Isaac Mayer Wise of a single organization representing the entire American Jewish community. Its founders (mostly laymen from Wise's own synagogue) hoped that it would embrace all American synagogues, although its stated "primary object" was to establish a Hebrew theological institute. In 1879, the major Eastern congregations joined the Union. In the same year, the Board of Delegates of American Israelites became a part of the Union and by the end of the decade 118 congregations had joined. This number represented over half of the congregations in the country.
1875	Hebrew Union College The Hebrew Union College (now the primary seminary of the Reform Movement) is established in Cincinnati, Ohio, by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations to prepare rabbis for all types of American Jewish synagogues. The goal of Isaac Mayer Wise, its founding president, was to create an institution that did not offend the traditionalists, but at the same time provided education for Americanized rabbis. It is now the oldest center of Jewish higher education in the United States.
	Ethical Culture Movement Felix Adler, son of a Reform rabbi, creates the Ethical Culture movement with help from the president of Temple Emanu El, Joseph Seligman. The movement stresses the importance of ethical behavior independent of religious beliefs. Adler's goal was to universalize the religious liberalism of Reform Judaism, transforming it into public action. He gave Sunday lectures open to both Jews and Christians and, with his wife, Helen Goldmark Adler founded schools, a free kindergarten, and a newspaper called The Standard. They inspired the building of model apartment houses for Russian immigrants and called attention to the substandard working and living conditions of workers in New York City. The Ethical Culture School produced a great many influential Jewish Americans.
1877	Rights in New Hampshire New Hampshire is the last state to offer Jews political equality.
A NEW COMMUNITY, 1880-1920
	First Census The Union of American Hebrew Congregations publishes the first census of American Jewry, which it estimates to be 250,000.
1880-1924	Eastern European Immigration More than two million Jews immigrate to the United States from Eastern Europe. The majority of these immigrants are from the Russian empire. They flee virulent anti-Semitism stirred up by governments anxious to get rid of Jews, as well as official government policies that make it difficult to earn a living. They are also immigrating to a "land of opportunity." This mass migration ends when the United States adopts immigration laws in (1921 and 1924) severely limiting the number of Eastern and Southern Europeans who can be admitted into the country.
1882	First Yiddish Play The first Yiddish play in this country is produced by Jewish American saloon owner Frank Wolf in New York City. The cast is a troupe of Yiddish performers from London, some local people, and a young man named Boris Thomashefsky who becomes one of the most famous actors of the Yiddish theater. The first performance was not particularly successful, but by the end of the year Yiddish shows are being presented regularly in a beer hall called the Old Bowery Garden.
1883	Treyf Banquet The infamous Treyf Banquet is held at Hebrew Union College to celebrate its first graduating class. Representatives of more than one hundred Union of American Hebrew Congregations attended it. Shellfish (prohibited by Jewish law) is inadvertently served. Many of those present are so offended that, for this reason among others, they begin to work toward the establishment of an alternative school. This new school is the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
1885	Pittsburgh Platform Seeking to find a middle ground between Judaic traditionalists and Felix Adler's Ethical Culture movement, which rejected theism, Kaufmann Kohler calls a conference of Reform Rabbis in Pittsburgh. They create a "Declaration of Independence," also called the Pittsburgh Platform. It states, among other things, that "Judaism presents the highest conception of the God-idea" and that the Bible reflects "primitive ideas of its own age." Another plank describes the Jews as a "religious people" and explicitly states they were not a nation.
	First Yiddish Daily Newspaper Kasriel H. Sarasohn launches the Tageblatt, the first Yiddish daily paper in New York City.
1886	The Jewish Theological Seminary Association is established with Rabbi Sabato Morais as president Its founders believe in a more open approach to theology and scholarship than the American Orthodox movement offered, but they feel that the Reform movement has become too radical. The Seminary becomes the focus and impetus for the Conservative movement.
1888	Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf and Solomon de Silva Solis-Cohen found the Jewish Publication Society of America in New York. Dedicated to publishing works of Jewish history, religion, and literature, it published over 820 books and distributed over eight million volumes by 1988.
	United Hebrew Trades Socialists in New York City to encourage and direct the development of unions establish the United Hebrew Trades. They fight an uphill battle to organize Jewish workers, especially in the garment industry. The tide does not turn for more than two decades.
1889	Central Conference of American Rabbis The Central Conference of American Rabbis is established under the leadership of Isaac Mayer Wise in Cincinnati. Originally intended to be a regional organization, it quickly spread throughout the country. Today it is the official organization of Reform rabbis in the United States. Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America is established by Orthodox Jews from Western Europe in an attempt to provide organization unity to American Orthodoxy. However, Eastern European congregations did not join the organization until well into the twentieth century. Today the Union is considered the dominant voice of American Orthodox Judaism.
1891	Philanthropy Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a European philanthropist, establishes the Baron de Hirsch Fund to benefit American Jewry. The fund's focus was aid to East European emigrants.
1892	American Jewish Historical Society Founded The American Jewish Historical Society is founded on June 7 in New York City, where it is housed in two crowded rooms in the Jewish Theological Seminary. Now the oldest continuously functioning ethnic historical societies in the United States, Its activities comprise a wide variety of research, archival, and publication projects, including this book. In 1999 it joined with other institutions dedicated to preserving and disseminating Jewish history in the Center for Jewish History.
1893	The National Council of Jewish Women The National Council of Jewish Women is founded, coming out of the World Parliament of Religions, which was convened as part of the Chicago World Exposition. It is the first national organization created by Jewish women to promote the Jewish religion.
	Jewish Chautauqua Society Like its Christian counterpart, a Jewish Chautauqua Society is organized.
	The Educational Alliance A group of German Jewish philanthropists, including Jacob Schiff and Myer S. Isaacs, opens a settlement house on New York City's Lower East Side. It would be enormously influential in the Jewish community. Their goal is to help newly arrived East European immigrants adapt to their new homeland, and they stated, "the scope of the work shall be of an Americanizing, educational, social and humanizing character." Classes were taught in Yiddish and included all the necessary education for naturalization and more. For young people, the classes ranged from art to Greek to typing. In 1895, the Breadwinners' College lecture series began. Later there were summer camps, a Legal Aid Bureau, and a hall of fame. Among the famous alumni are sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, composer George Gershwin, comedian Alan King, and sculptor Louise Nevelson.
	Rejection of Halakah The Central Conference of American Jewish Rabbis, the rabbinical association of the Reform Movement, officially rejects the authority of halakah, Jewish traditional oral law, and a position many of its members had held for some time.
	First European -Style Yeshiva Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, the first European-type yeshiva, is founded in New York City. It later becomes Yeshiva College and eventually Yeshiva University. It was originally designed as a place of study for European rabbinical scholars who had come to the United States.
	Denunciation of Zionism Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise denounces the new Zionism of Theodora Herzl at a meeting of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. The Conference adopts a resolution stating, "we totally disapprove of any attempt for the establishment of a Jewish state." The statement is made in anticipation of the first Zionist congress, which was to be held in Basel, Switzerland.
	Jewish Daily Forward The Jewish Daily Forward, a socialist newspaper concerned with the problems of workers, publishes its first issue in New York City in Yiddish. It is probably the single most influential publication of its time, reaching almost a quarter of a million readers at the height of its circulation.
	Federation of American Zionists The first nationwide body of Zionist organizations, the Federation of American Zionists, is established in New York City. Professor Richard Gottheil of Columbia was president, Joseph Bluestone and Herman Rosenthal was vice presidents, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise was secretary.
	National Conference of Jewish Charities is organized. Forerunner of the Conference of Jewish Communal Services, it arose after federations of Jewish charities were organized in major cities. In 1900, there were three local federations. In 1989, there were 204.
	American Jewish Yearbook American Jewish Yearbook begins publication, under the auspices of the Jewish publication Society of America with the purpose of providing demographic information and information about major cultural and sociological developments in the Jewish community. In 1909, it becomes a joint publication of the American Jewish Committee. It is still being published.
1900	Workmen's Circle A Jewish fraternal order with cultural concerns and a socialist orientation, Workmen's Circle is organized to serve its members' educational, social, and recreational purposes. Its forerunner, the Workingmen's Guild, or Arbeter Ring, came into existence in 1892 and organized programs providing medical care and death benefits. It also fought against child labor and sweatshops. In 1933, the Workmen's Circle is the first organization to hold a public demonstration against the rise of Hitler. It continues its work today (on a smaller scale than earlier in the century) with its continuing commitment to human freedom and dignity in the spirit of its motto: "All for One, One for All."
	Rabbinical Assembly The official organization of Conservative rabbis, the Rabbinical Assembly is established in New York as an association for rabbinical graduates of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. It soon opened its membership to graduates of other rabbinical schools.
	International Ladies' Garment Workers Union East European labor groups organize the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). Eventually to become one of the nation's most powerful unions, it began with eleven Jewish men who represented seven local unions. With the exception of one skirt maker, they were all cloak makers. They excluded women who worked in cap making, "white goods," and men's garments on the grounds that they were not "skilled workers." Not until the shirtwaist was popularized by Charles Dana Gibson's illustrations would women move out of piecework in the household and into the factory. At that point, they began to join the ILGWU and, in the 1909 uprising, transformed it.
1901	Jewish American Play Jewish playwright and producer David Belasco presents one of the few plays dealing with the Jewish experience. The Auctioneer, which he wrote with Charles Klein and Lee Arthur, told the story of a Lower East Side peddler.
	Jewish Encyclopedia Isidore Singer and the publishing company Funk and Wagnalls put together a board of eminent Jewish scholars to create the Jewish Encyclopedia, a reference work that would help to combat anti-Semitism by educating the public about the achievements of Jews. The first volume appeared in 1901. Publication continued only after several Jewish businessmen, including Jacob Schiff and Cyrus Sulzberger, guaranteed the increasingly expensive project financially. Hundreds of scholars from around the world cooperated with the project, which was the first compilation of all historical, literary, philosophical, and religious information about the Jewish people. The twelve-volume set was completed in 1906. It signaled the emergence of Jewish scholarship in America and remained the standard reference until the Encyclopedia Judaica was published in 1971.
1900	Union of Orthodox Rabbis Eastern European rabbis found the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada. The group set standards for the rabbinate and played a leadership role in Orthodox Jewry.
1901	Solomon Schechter Solomon Schechter is appointed president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He furthered Conservatism as a separate Jewish denomination.
1903	Kishinev Pogrom On Easter weekend a pogrom in Kishinev, Russia, leaves 49 Jews dead and more than 500 injured, 700 houses looted and destroyed, 6oo businesses looted, and 2,000 families left homeless. In reaction to this tragedy, American Jewry moves to become a more tightly knit community.
	Kaufman Kohler Kaufman Kohler is elected president of Hebrew Union College, which became the most important institution in American Reform Judaism. Kohler was a leader of the Reform movement and served as rabbi of Temple Beth-El in New York.
1906	Immigration During this year 153,748 Jewish immigrants arrive in the United States. Most are from Eastern Europe.
	American Jewish Committee The American Jewish elite establishes the American Jewish Committee, a secular defense organization. It advocates that the United States make a response to Russian pogroms and pushed for more open immigration.
	First Cabinet Member Oscar Solomon Straus is named by President Theodore Roosevelt to head the newly created Department of Commerce and Labor. He is the first Jew to head a cabinet department.
	Menorah Society Jewish students at Harvard found a cultural organization, the Menorah Society. Inspired by the humanist studies of William James and George Santayana, Henry Hurwitz founds the society to pursue the humanist values of Judaism. Several chapters were established at other schools and, in 1913, the Menorah Association was founded. It was the first intercollegiate Jewish body, prospering well into the twentieth century and laying the groundwork for such groups as Hillel.
1907	Free Synagogue Free Synagogue is established as a platform for Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. It meets on Sunday mornings at Carnegie Hall and differs from traditional synagogues, inducing absolute freedom of the pulpit, no fixed dues for pews, and open criticism of social problems. The Free Synagogue also advocated looking for specifically religious approaches to those problems.
	First American Jew wins Nobel Prize Albert Michelson is the first American Jew to win a Nobel Prize, which was established a few years earlier. Michelson was a physicist with a continuing interest in the issue of light and its properties, especially velocity. In 1887, he performed one of the most important experiments to that date in the history of science. He was able to determine that light travels at a constant speed, no matter what its direction, thereby disproving the ether theory. His discoveries provided a basis for Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity. Michelson was also the first person to measure the dimensions of a star.
	Graduate School Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning was chartered in Philadelphia as a graduate school awarding the Ph.D. degree.
	Teachers' Training Gifts from Jacob H. Schiff lead to the establishment of Jewish teachers' training programs at the Jewish Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College.
	Kehillah The Kehillah (Jewish community) of New York City is established in an attempt to organize New York City's East European Jews. With Judah L. Magnes at its head, the American Jewish Committee sponsored it. Through the Kehillah, representatives of traditional organizations address problems ranging from crime on the Lower East Side to the lack of good Jewish education.
	Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) is formed from a merger of two older organizations-the Hebrew Sheltering House Association (1884) and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (1902). In its first decade HIAS helps half a million immigrants make legal entry into the country, find basic subsistence and work, get citizenship instruction, and locate their relatives.
	Uprising of 1909 The Triangle Shirtwaist factory workers, mostly young Jewish women, had been on strike for two months. Overflow crowds of International Ladies Garment Worker members were in the Great Hall at New York's Cooper Union waiting to be addressed by Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, and other prominent men. A teenage factory worker named Clara Lemlich spoke up, "I want to say a few words." The crowd around her called for her to get onto the platform and the chairman agreed that she should. After what a press report called a philippic in Yiddish," Lemlich called for a general strike. The chairman asked all those present to "... take the old Jewish oath. If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise."? The resultant strike often referred to as the "Uprising of the 20,000," revolutionized the Jewish labor movement.
1911	Passport Protest American Jewry succeeds in inducing Congress to abrogate the 1832 treaty with Russia because the Czarist regime would not honor an American passport carried by an American Jew.
	Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire On March 25, fire breaks out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, which occupies the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building in New York City. Workers from the ninth floor are trapped because doors to fire escapes are locked by the Jewish owners of the factory to prevent "stealing time," theft, union organizing, and spontaneous walkouts. Of the 500 mostly Jewish workers present on the day of the fire, 146 were killed and many more injured. In court, the proprietors were acquitted. They collected insurance on the fire and re-opened their factory at a different location. They offered one week's wages to the family of each victim. The fire and its aftermath radicalized the Jewish working community.
1912	Hadassah The first meeting of the women's Zionist organization takes place in the vestry rooms of Temple Emanu-El in New York City. More than thirty women, including Henrietta Szold, Mathilde Schechter, Emma Leon Gottheil, Rosalie Solomons Phillips, and Lotta Levesohn commit themselves to action on behalf of Zionism. Actively involved in Palestine in health care and educational services since the early 1920’s, Hadassah continues to be an active presence in Israel and the United States. They have over 300,000 members and are the largest women's organization in the United States.
	Louis Marshall, one of America's most distinguished Jewish layman, becomes president of the American Jewish Committee.
1913	United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the international organization of Conservative congregations organized. It now has 8oo congregations as members
	The Promised Land by Mary Antin is published. It presented an immigrant's evaluation of the United States. Potash and Perimutter, a stereotypical comedy about life in the Lower East Side, opens on Broadway.
	B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League With anti-Semitic feelings and activity growing in the United States, B'nai B'rith establishes the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to combat discrimination against Jews. In the 1920s the ADL fought against the Ku Klux Klan. In the 1930s and 1940s they fought against fascism. After World War II, its focus shifted to Civil Rights. Throughout its history, the ADL attacked specific instances of anti-Semitism, such as the march of the Nazis in Skokie, Illinois.
	Peoples Art Guild Responding to the revolutionary Armory Show of European modernists, John Weiclisel founds the People's Art Guild, which exhibits many important Jewish artists. The Guild publishes its brochures in Yiddish as well as English, holds special meetings on Friday evenings, and emphasizes the cultural aspects of Jewish life.
	Leo Frank Case In one of America's great anti-Semitic tragedies, Leo M. Prank was lynched for a murder there is virtually no evidence he committed. In 1913 thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan, a worker at an Atlanta, Georgia, pencil factory, was killed in the empty factory. The company's janitor, Jim Conley, accused Frank of the crime, possibly in order to turn attention from himself. The editor of an anti-Semitic newspaper, Tom Watson, worked hard to arouse feeling against the Jewish Frank, who was convicted in an atmosphere of fear and hatred. In 1915, Georgia governor John M. Slaton ordered a retrial for Frank. The governor's mansion was, as a result, attacked by a mob of angry Christians, while another mob managed to kidnap Frank from prison and lynch him. The Frank case was chronicled in the book Night Fell on Georgia, by Charles and Louise Samuels in 1956, and became the subject of a novel by David Mamet in 1997, and of a dramatic musical by playwright Alfred Uliry in 1998.
1915	Jewish Governor of Idaho Moses Alexander, a German Jewish immigrant, is elected governor of Idaho.
	The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee unites various American Jewish ethnic groups to save East European Jewry.
	Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and Yeshiva Etz Chaim (an Orthodox elementary school) unite under Bernard Revel, using the name of the former institution. The school combines Talmudic and secular studies. It would later become Yeshiva College and then Yeshiva University.
	First Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis is nominated to the United States Supreme Court by President Woodrow Wilson. The four-month confirmation battle in the Senate is seen by many, including Brandeis himself, as motivated primarily by anti-Semitism. When the Senate approves his nomination (by a vote of 47 to 22), he becomes the first Jew to serve on the highest court in the land. With the appointment of Stephen Breyer in 1994, a total of seven American Jews have served on the Supreme Court.
1917	English Translation of Hebrew Bible An English translation of the Hebrew Bible is published by the Jewish Publication Society of America. This huge undertaking is one of the greatest accomplishments of the Society and would be followed up with a second translation, in three volumes, later in the century (1962, 1978, 1981).
	Jewish Telegraphic Agency Serving the Jewish and general press, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency is established. It was the Jewish equivalent of Associated Press or United Press International.
	Balfour Declaration The British government issues the Balfour Declaration, promising support for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, which would soon be under British control.
	World War I The United States enters World War I. About 250,000 Jews served in the armed forces, 40,000 of whom were volunteers. About 3,500 Jews were killed and 12,000 were wounded. Among the almost 11,000 officers were Major General Julius Ochs Adler, Brigadier Generals Milton J. Poreman, Abel Davis, Charles H. Laucheimer, and Rear Admirals Joseph Strauss and Joseph K. Taussig. The Seventy-Seventh Infantry Division, which fought bravely in the Meuse-Argonne Battle, was 40 percent Jewish. Six Jewish American soldiers were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and more than 1,100 citations for bravery were awarded to Jewish American soldiers by Allied commands. The National Jewish Welfare Board was created to serve the religious needs of American Jews in the army and navy.
	Women's League for Conservative Judaism The Women's League for Conservative Judaism is formed and becomes the largest women's synagogue group in the world with 700 affiliates. The mission of the group is to "perpetuate traditional Judaism in modem society. " It helps to support the Jewish Theological Seminary and publishes the national quarterly magazine Outlook.
	Yiddish Art Theater There are seven Yiddish theaters in New York City alone and many others around the country. The theater was so powerful a force in Jewish culture that disagreements about the nature of the art alienated neighbors and came close to breaking up families. Producer, director, actor Maurice Schwartz took over the Irving Place Theater and put together an ensemble of some of the finest actors in the American Yiddish theater. The group presented the play Forsaken Nook, by Peretz Hirshbein, in a simple, realistic style that contrasted sharply with the broad, declamatory playing of the Yiddish theater. The highly successful production crystallized a distinction in the community that was more than artistic. It reached into the political and philosophical arena.
	First America Jewish Congress The Balfour Declaration is an important item on the agenda at the Paris Peace Conference, and representatives of the American Jewish Congress attend the Conference to represent the views of American Jews. This new organization came out of the dissatisfaction of East European American Jews with the primarily German membership of the American Jewish Committee, which expected to represent American Jews at the Peace Conference. Rabbi Stephen Wise led a vigorous opposition from his Free Synagogue, and in 1917 an election was held in which 130,000 American Jews voted. They elected representatives of an American Jewish Congress, with which the Committee agreed to cooperate. In Paris, the Congress attempted to induce the great powers to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine and to protect East European Jewry through the granting of minority rights. The Congress eventually became a permanent organization, committed to Zionism.
1920s	AMERICANIZATION, ANTI-SEMITISM, AND ISOLATIONISM: 1920-1930
	Immigration Acts The Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 attempt to close America to East European Jews and others. The 1921 Act limited each country's quota to three percent of the number of its country people living in the United States in 1910. The quotas were smallest for the countries with most recent immigrants: Italy and Eastern Europe. The 1924 act reduced the percentage to two percent This legislation was motivated, in part, by pseudo-scientific racial concepts and is strongly opposed by organizations within the Jewish American community.
	Henry Ford and Anti-Semitism The 1920s were a time of much anti-Jewish sentiment in the United States. The first World War and then the Bolshevik victory in Russia seemed to infect America with a severe case of xenophobia. Most notable was the anti-Jewish activity of Henry Ford, who used the pages of his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, for anti-Semitic propaganda. He accused Jewish Americans of corrupting American culture, particularly baseball and music. He declared that New York was secretly ruled by Jews. Finally, he published the virulently anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1920), a collection of apocrypha that was created by czarist police in Russia to foment anti-Jewish feeling. As the result of a lawsuit and the threat of a boycott of his automobiles, Ford wrote a retraction and an apology and ceased publishing his hate-mongering literature.
	American Academy for Jewish Research American Academy for Jewish Research is founded. It incorporates in 1929. The Academy, an organization of scholars, rabbis, and interested laymen, makes it their goal to propagate scholarship concerning Jewish culture and religion through public meetings for learned discussion, publication of scholarly works, and joint scholarly projects. The group financed the publications of critical editions of classical Jewish texts, such as Midrash Leviticus Rabbah.
1921	Hadoar The periodical of Histadruth Ivrith, the Hebrew Language and Cultural Association, Hadoar begins publication, emphasizing the primacy of Hebrew in Jewish culture. Beginning as a daily newspaper, it reorganizes as a weekly in 1922. Hudoar has published prominent Hebrew writers such as Moshe Feinstein, Reuven Grossman, and Abraham Regelson. It has maintained a devoted, though small, readership over the decades.
	American Jewish Congress American Jewish Congress, organized to represent the Zionist-minded East European element at the Paris Peace Conference, becomes a permanent organization.
	First Reconstructionist Organization Mordecai Kaplan founds the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ), a synagogue in New York City. This act marks the beginning of the Reconstructionist Movement. Kaplan worked with other synagogue members to develop a new approach to Judaism that was intended to be more relevant to twentieth-century America. The congregation engaged in a number of experiments, among which was the inclusion of women in more ritual observances. The SAJ Review was published to disseminate these ideas.
1922	Hebrew Theological College The Hebrew Theological College, an Orthodox rabbinical school, opens in Chicago. It grew out of the Hebrew high school Yeshiva Etz Chaim, which was established in 1899. It is the first Orthodox rabbinical institution in this country to supplement its Talmud and Codes studies with mandatory courses in Bible, Jewish philosophy, and history. Its first president was Rabbi Saul Silber.
	Jewish Institute of Religion The Jewish Institute of Religion is founded by Stephen S. Wise to train rabbis (mostly for the Reform Movement) with a more national orientation than Hebrew Union College. It produced for the most part pro-Zionist rabbis. It merges with Hebrew Union College in 1948.
	Bat mitzvah The bat mitzvah ceremony is introduced by Mordecai Kaplan and the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. Originally created for Kaplan's own daughter, Judith, it was accepted by about one-third of all Conservative synagogues by 1948. The ceremony took a number of different forms, but by the 1980s it was very similar to the bar mitzvah ceremony for boys. Girls are called to read from the Torah and chant a haf torah. The bat mitzvah has become an incentive to keep girls involved in supplementary religious education and is regarded by many as an important symbolic recognition of the equality of women.
1923	First Hillel Foundation First Hillel Foundation is established at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana by Rabbi Ben Frankel. He remains its director until his death four years later. His successor, Abram Leon Sachar, built Hillel into a national organization under the sponsorship of B'nai B'rith beginning in 1925. For many years, Hillel was the sole Jewish center on most college campuses. It still represents a Jewish presence on campus’ across America.
	First World Congress of Jewish Women Meeting in Vienna, nineteen countries were represented by the 200 women in attendance. An ongoing organization is formed, headed by Rebekah Kohut, an American woman active in Jewish activities and in public service.
	First Pulitzer Prize Edna Ferber becomes the first Jew to win the Pulitzer Prize for her best-selling novel So Big. Her work celebrates the variety and strength of the American people.
	New York City Jewish Population As a result of heavy immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one of every three New Yorkers is a Jew. Jewish culture has a profound effect on the city's atmosphere and identity.
1926	World Union for Progressive Judaism The World Union for Progressive Judaism is founded in London to promote and sustain the ideas and practice of liberal Judaism. A large part of its mission is to return Judaism in a meaningful way to countries where totalitarian governments had tried to eradicate it. By the end of the twentieth century, 1.5 million Reform, Liberal, Progressive, and Reconstructionist congregations were affiliated with the movement in more than 35 countries. The central office is in Jerusalem.
	Synagogue Council of America At the June 1925 gathering of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Rabbi Abram Simon calls for a meeting of congregational and rabbinical groups to discuss shared issues. Out of that meeting, the Synagogue Council of America is organized with a constitution adopted in 1926. Members of the council comprised three rabbinical groups - the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Rabbinical Assembly, and the Rabbinical Council - and three congregational groups - the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the United Synagogue of America, and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations.
	Population Distribution A survey shows that there were Jews in 9,712 towns and rural districts in the United States. There are 4,228,000 Jews, 17,500 Jewish organizations, and 3,118 congregations in the United States.
1928	Yeshiva College Yeshiva College, which grew out of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva, becomes the first general institution of higher education under Jewish auspices in this country. It includes the various schools that went into its establishment, including the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and the Teachers Institute, as well as high school and college departments.
	National Conference of Christians and Jews The 1928 presidential election is plagued by religious prejudice, with Roman Catholic Alfred W. Smith running against Quaker Herbert Hoover. In its wake, a group of prominent men of various faiths calls a conference to found an organization that would promote "the advancement of amity, justice, and peace" among Jews and Christians. It was first called the National Council of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. The name was changed because the Roman Catholic Church did not allow its members to participate in interfaith organizations until after the Ecumenical Councils in the 1960s.
1929	Union of Sephardic Congregations Rabbi David de Sola Pool organizes the Union of Sephardic Congregations with the participation of leaders from Shearith Israel in New York, Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia, and Shearith Israel in Montreal. With the cooperation of Sephardic congregations around the country, the organization published Sephardic prayer books, translated and edited by Rabbi de Sola Pool, that have been used throughout the English-speaking world.
	When Harlem Was Jewish Harlem was home to a Jewish community of well over 100,000 in the 1930s. Three generations of Jews lived uptown and constituted not only Harlem's single largest ethnic group but also America’s second largest new immigrant Jewish community. Harlem was replacing the Lower East Side as a center attracting those originally from Eastern Europe.
	Jewish Agency In August, the Jewish Agency is established. Its aims are to assist and encourage Jews throughout the world to help in the development and settlement of Erez Israel. Until the establishment of the State of Israel, the Agency is the principal liaison between the League of Nations Mandate, world Jewry and the National Home. In 1948, the new government of Israel takes over many, but not all, of the Agency's functions.
1932	Benjamin Nathan Cardozo Benjamin Nathan Cardozo is appointed to the United States Supreme Court. His nomination was opposed by some on the grounds that he was a liberal and a Jew. (There was already one Jew, Louis Brandeis, on the Court). Cardozo was the second Jewish American to serve on the Court.
	Reconstructionism Judaism as a Civilization, by Mordecai Kaplan, is published. Kaplan makes the Jewish people the defining characteristic of Judaism rather than the doctrine of monotheism. Kaplan states that it is the civilization of the Jews that sets them apart from other peoples or religions, not any notion of having been "chosen" by God. To Kaplan, the teachings of Jewish Law represented the insights of the Jews into the nature and meaning of life, not any pre-ordained "rules" that were immutable. The doctrines propounded by Kaplan would ultimately lead to the creation of a "fourth branch" of Judaism, Reconstructionism.
THE HOLOCAUST, 1933-1940
1933	Hitler Elected Adolf Hitler becomes the chancellor of Germany, after an election in which his Nazi party received one-third of the votes. Anti-Semitic groups begin to make public appearances in the United States.
	Jewish Labor Committee In New York City, leaders of several trade unions, as well as other Jewish labor organizations, meet to form the Jewish Labor Committee. Its goals are to support Jewish labor groups in Europe, aid the anti-Hitler underground, help victims of Nazism, work with other American labor groups to fight anti-democratic forces, and battle anti-Semitism.
	Council of Jewish Federations Council of Jewish Federations is established. Jewish Federations in fifteen American cities come together to form a council to take over the work of the Bureau of Jewish Social Research (1919) and the National Appeals Information Service (1927). Both organizations did studies of local Jewish communities, providing information to individual Jewish Federations. When they merged, they expanded their scope, doing community planning, providing aid in fund raising, and publishing annual reports on developments in social services and other fields. When the Council was founded, there were fewer than seventy Jewish Federations. Welfare funds in this country raised about ten million dollars a year. A few decades later, the member groups numbered in the hundreds and the funds raised were in the hundreds of millions.
1935	Rabbinical Council of America An organization of English-speaking Orthodox rabbis, the Rabbinical Council of America, is formed by a merger of the Rabbinical Council of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations and the Rabbinical Association of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. It is the rabbinical authority of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, and most of its members are graduates of either Yeshiva University or the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago. One of the functions of the RCA is to maintain a bet din on family problems, specifically divorce, in order to aid individual rabbis with difficult cases.
	Clifford Odets Playwright Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing! opens in New York City, presenting a poor and badly troubled Jewish family, realistically and without stereotypes. It represents a crucial development in the portrayal of Jewish Americans in the theater.
1937	Zionism in the Reform Movement In response to the growth of Nazism in Germany, the Central Conference of American Rabbis agrees to reevaluate the anti-nationalist stand it has held since the Pittsburgh Platform was adopted in 1885. Led by Abba Hillel Silver, the Zionist faction proposes a new set of Guiding Principles of Reform Judaism, which were written by Samuel S. Cohon, a professor of Jewish theology. The Columbus Platform, as it was called, did not end opposition to Zionism in the Reform movement That was accomplished by the news from Europe.
	Growing Population A survey shows 4,771,000 Jews in the United States and 3,728 congregations.
	Refugees In the late 1930s German Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution start arriving in the United States. Approximately 150,000 Jews entered the United States from German-speaking Europe. Unlike most earlier immigrants, they did not come to America willingly, looking for a new life. They came to save their lives. The refugees were largely middle class, with a strong identification as Germans as well as Jews. Their entry into American life was difficult. Professional men and women often had to take jobs below their qualifications and sometimes had to work as menials.
1938	Anti-Semitic Radio Father Charles E. Coughlin, a Catholic priest in Detroit, makes a series of radio broadcasts that rival Henry Ford's newspaper articles for virulent anti-Semitism. Millions of American listen to the broadcasts, and Coughlin's fan mail numbers up to 80,000 letters per week.
	Evian Conference From July 6 to July 15, delegates from thirty-two countries meet in Evian, France, to discuss the rapidly increasing problem of Jewish refugees caused by Germany's annexation of Austria in March. Unfortunately, very little is accomplished. The United States will not change its restrictive policy on accepting refugees, and neither would any of the other nations present. This lack of action dooms most of the refugees to death in the Holocaust.
	Kristallnacht Outrages Roosevelt On November 9 and 10 a pogrom, described as Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) is conducted throughout Germany and Austria. Under the explicit orders of the German government, mobs destroy thousands of synagogues and Jewish-owned stores and physically attack Jews. Over 30,000 Jews are arrested and sent to concentration camps. President Roosevelt recalls the United States ambassador to Germany as a protest and publicly expresses his outrage.
1939	White Paper on Palestine The British White Paper on Palestine is issued, limiting immigration to that country to 75,000 over a five-year period, followed by a complete cessation. The Paper also bans additional purchase of land in Palestine by Jews. This and others in a series of White Papers make it clear that the British are treating Palestine, not as a mandated territory held in trust, but as a colonial possession.
	World War II Begins in Europe On September 1, Germany invades Poland and on September 3, France and Great Britain declare war on Germany.
	Illegal Immigration Illegal immigration to Palestine is approved by the Jewish Agency at the twenty-first Zionist Congress in Vienna.
	Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter becomes an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, replacing Benjamin Nathan Cardozo. He is the third Jewish American to serve on the court.
	United Jewish Appeal Founded by the merger of three important Jewish humanitarian organizations, the United Jewish Appeal serves Jews in America and around the world. The three groups were the Joint Distribution Committee, the United Palestine Appeal, and the United Service for new Americans. The merger is a response to Hitler's Kristallnacht of 1938.
	Manhattan Project Albert Einstein writes to President Roosevelt warning that the Germans could be developing a program to build an atomic bomb and urges the president to begin a U.S. program. Roosevelt begins a program immediately and the "Manhattan Project," as it became known, is led by J. Robert Oppenheimer.
	S.S. St. Louis Carrying 936 refugees from persecution, the S.S. St.Louis is turned away from all ports in the United States. It is forced to return its passengers to Europe and a dangerously uncertain fate.
	Agudath Israel of America The American branch of Agudath Israel was a long time in coming. Founded in 1912 in Kattowitz, Upper Silesia, the international organization was originally intended to oppose the Tenth Zionist Congress. Orthodox rabbis from Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania declared that religious Judaism could not coexist with a secular Jewish culture. A 1922 attempt to establish an American branch failed, although a youth group, Zeiri Agudath Israel, was founded. Over the years, the focus of the organization changed and, after the Holocaust, the anti-Zionist position was dropped. Today Agudath Israel is a primary representative of ultra-Orthodox Judaism in this country. It operates the Jewish Education Program, in which Jewish public school children are taken to synagogues and yeshivot by yeshiva students and given religious instruction. It also set up the Orthodox Jewish Archives (1978) to document world Judaism. The organization's influence is limited by its unwillingness to participate in any larger group that includes non-Orthodox Jews.
	YIVO Institute for Jewish Research The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research moves from Vilna, Lithuania, to New York City. Founded in 1925, it is dedicated to preserving and transmitting the heritage of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewry, with particular emphasis on Yiddish language and culture. Its collections include substantial printed material as well as massive archive collections. Its photographic collection is especially comprehensive. In 1999 it joined with other institutions dedicated to preserving and disseminating Jewish history and culture in the Center for Jewish History.
	Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation is formed by Mordecai Kaplan to support the efforts of the Reconstructionist program.
WAR AND BEYOND, 1941-1949
1941-1945	World War II At least 550,000 Jews served in the American armed forces during World War II, the equivalent of thirty-seven divisions. More than 10,000 died and another 25,000 were wounded, captured, or missing. About 26,000 Jewish soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor or the Purple Heart. There were six major generals, thirteen brigadier generals, one admiral, two rear admirals, and one commodore among Jewish officers. Of all Jewish physicians under the age of 45, 60 percent were in uniform. Brilliant engineer Admiral Ben Morel created the Seabees. Commander Edward Ellsberg was described by the navy as "the foremost expert in the world on deep-sea rescue work." Admiral Hyman G. Rickover was largely responsible for the Navy's switch from conventional to nuclear power. Not eligible for the draft, 311 American rabbis enlisted in the army and navy, serving as chaplains.
1942	News of the Holocaust Jews in the United States become aware of the massacre of Jews in Eastern Europe by the invading Germans. The American Jewish Congress releases the information to journalists that Hitler was planning to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe.
	Anti-Zionist Organization Some anti-Zionist Reform rabbis and anti-Zionist laymen organize the American Council for Judaism. It held the position that the Jews were only a religious group and in no way a nationalist group.
	Biltmore Program In May, representatives of Zionist organizations meet at the Biltmore Hotel in New York. By unanimous agreement those present affirm their belief that Jews could no longer rely on the British government to help establish a Jewish National Home. Jewish authority, they stated, must be established over Palestine.
1943	Zionism and Reform Judaism The Central Conference of American Rabbis adopts a resolution agreeing that both the Zionist and anti-Zionist positions are compatible with Reform Judaism.
	American Government and the Holocaust American government officials do little to persuade President Roosevelt to admit European Jewish refugees in substantial numbers. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. is an exception.
1944	National Society for Hebrew Day Schools National Society for Hebrew Day Schools (Torah Umesorah) is founded by Rabbi Feivel Mendlowitz to work with the several hundred Orthodox day schools in the United States and Canada. The organization publishes three magazines: Olomeinu, for children; The Jewish Parent, for parents; and Harnenahel, for principals. It also sponsors teacher training programs and, in more recent decades, helps to administer U.S. anti-poverty projects.
	War Refugee Board Henry Morgenthau, Jr., secretary of the treasury, delivers a report to Franklin D. Roosevelt indicting the State Department for failing to help rescue victims of Nazism and, worse, of having actually obstructed rescue efforts. The report went on to say that the State Department, under the leadership of anti-Semitic Assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long, failed to cooperate with organizations working to help Hitler's victims and that it also failed in intelligence concerning Hitler's destruction of the Jewish population. Roosevelt's response to these charges was to create the War Refugee Board. Representatives of the board were posted in key cities in and around Europe. From its inception, the WRB did everything in its power to aid refugees from the horrors of Hitler's Europe. It sponsored Swedish businessman Raoul Wallenberg, who developed a scheme using Swedish passports to save at least 20,000 Hungarian Jews.
1945	Atomic Bomb The United States drops the atom bomb on the Japanese, which hastens the of end of World War II in the Pacific. It is the beginning of a controversy that still rages about the use of nuclear weapons. Jews were among the nuclear scientists who perfected the atom, hydrogen, and neutron bombs.
	Jewish Miss America Bess Myerson becomes the first and (so far) only Jewish Miss America. She enters the pageant using her own (Jewish) name, against all advice. In spite of threatening phone calls to judges, Myerson wins. Three of the five sponsors of the pageant, for unspecified reasons, declined to exercise their right to have that year's Miss America advertise their products. Myerson began speaking for the Anti-Defamation League against all forms of racial hatred. She continues to work for Jewish causes. In 1997 she donated $1 million to New York's new Museum of Jewish Heritage to establish an archive of Holocaust films.
	Yeshiva University Samuel Belkin, a talmudic authority and Semitic scholar, took over the presidency of Yeshiva College in 1943 and immediately began expanding the school. Within two years, the institution becomes a full-fledged university and is called Yeshiva University. In little more than a decade, the university adds the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1955) and the Wurzweiler School of Jewish Social Work (1957). Stern college (1954), an undergraduate women's school, and the James Striar School of Jewish Studies (1955) are also added. Stern offers a program of secular and Judaic studies for women and is the first school of this kind in the world.
	Displaced Persons Under directives from President Harry S Truman, hundreds of thousand of displaced persons were admitted to the United States. In 1948, Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act, allowing the entry of a limited number of Europeans who had been displaced by World War II and the takeover of Eastern Europe by Communist regimes. Insisting that national quotas be maintained in some fashion, Congress devised an elaborate system that allowed European displaced persons to enter the country by a kind of "borrowing" against future national quotas. Approximately 400,000 European refugees were admitted under the Displaced Persons Act between 1948 and 1952.
	Jewish Museum The Museum of Ceremonial Objects is started as an addition to the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1929. A bequest from Frieda Warburg (the wife of Felix Warburg) made it possible to move the museum into the former Warburg mansion on Fifth Avenue in 1947, where it became The Jewish Museum. Over the years, paintings were added to the collection and special exhibitions presented.
	Palestine Divided On November 29, the United Nations General Assembly votes to end the British mandate and divide Palestine into two sovereign states, one Jewish and one Arab.
	American Jewish Archives The American Jewish Archives is established by Jacob Rader Marcus on the campus of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, the oldest rabbinical seminary in the United States. As of 1998, the American Jewish Archives contained almost 5,000 linear feet of archives, manuscripts, photographs, audio and video tapes, microfilm, and genealogical materials.
1948	Brandeis University Brandeis University is established in Waltham, Massachusetts, as the first secular university in the United States under Jewish auspices. Named after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, it is an accredited, private, co-educational school founded by a group of community leaders. Near Boston, the university began its life with 107 students and '4 faculty members. By 1998, there were 3,020 undergraduates, 1,199 graduate students, and over 350 full-time faculty.
	Israeli Independence On May 14, the British mandate over Palestine ends and Israel declares its independence. President Truman recognizes the new state eleven minutes after it came into existence.
	First Arab-Israeli War On May 15, the British leave Palestine. Arab forces from Egypt, Syria, Tranjordan (Jordan), Lebanon, and Iraq invade Israel. Fierce fighting raged for months. The last armistice agreement (with Syria) was not signed until July 17, 1949. American Jewry raised more than $150 million to help Israel defend itself
	United Nations recognizes Israel On May 11, almost a year to the day after Israel declared its independence, the United Nations votes to accept Israel as a member.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN JEWS AND AMERICAN JUDAISM, 195O-1999
1950	School Merger Hebrew Union College merges with the Jewish Institute of Religion. A third branch of the school opens in Los Angeles in 1954 because of the growing Jewish population of the city. A fourth branch is established in Jerusalem in 1963. The institution adds a variety of programs over the years including a School of Graduate Studies, a School of Biblical Archaeology, and Schools of Education, Jewish Communal Service, and Sacred Music.
	Lubavitch Hasidim Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn succeeds his father-in-law as rebbe of the Lubavitch Hasidirn after a struggle with his brother-in-law Rabbi Samarius Gourary. He is formally installed in 1951 and quickly begins a far-reaching program to disseminate Orthodox Judaism, particularly Chabad Hasidism, setting up day schools in a number of American and Canadian cities. He also establishes "Chabad houses" around the country. They function as a combination of synagogue, school, drop-in center, and counseling center. By 1990, there were more than 250 Chabad houses in the United States. Schneersohn also led the Lubavitch movement to publish textbooks and periodicals and broadcast speeches on radio and cable television.
	Rosenberg Case One of the most controversial court cases in American history involved Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Charged with conspiracy to convey U.S. nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, they were tried in a New York court and convicted. The judge, the principal witnesses, the chief prosecutor, and the defense lawyers in the case were all Jewish. When the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death, there was outrage around the country and around the world. No civilian had ever been executed as a spy in the United States before, and the Rosenbergs' offense occurred in peacetime. The Rosenbergs’ were executed on June 19, 1953. The case continues to arouse strong emotions, and it has been the subject of a number of books and articles.
1951	UAHC Move The major Reform organization, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, moves from Cincinnati to New York City. The action is symbolic as well as practical, indicating a determination to expand its leadership role in Reform Judaism and in American Judaism generally.
	Conference on Material Claims against Germany The Conference on Material Claims against Germany is established by Nahum Goldmann, founder of the World Jewish Congress. The Conference, representing twenty-three Jewish organizations in the U.S., France, Britain, Canada, Germany, Australia, South Africa, and Israel becomes an ombudsman to secure financial reparations for Jewish Holocaust survivors.
1952	Holocaust Reparations On January 7, while the Israeli parliament debates the acceptance of reparations from Germany, riots erupt outside the Knesset. Menachem Begin and others strongly oppose reparations as blood money. However, in September, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signs an agreement that the Federal Republic of Germany will provide $715 million in goods and services to the State of Israel as compensation for taking in survivors; $110 million to the Claims Conference for programs to finance the relief, rehabilitation, and resettlement of Jewish Holocaust survivors; and direct reparations to selected individuals over a twelve-year period. Germany was once compensating 275,000 survivors. Today the number is approximately 120,000.
1953	Lieberman Clause A difficult issue for women in Judaism arose from the fact that a woman whose husband left her without issuing a Jewish divorce was unable to remarry. The first step toward resolving this problem came when the Law Committee of the Conservative movement adopted the "Lieberman clause," which made the Jewish marriage contract a binding agreement in civil law, requiring both parties to abide by the recommendations of a Jewish court of law if their marriage ended.
1954	Women's College Stern College for Women, the first liberal arts women's college under Jewish auspices, opens in New York City as a counterpart of Yeshiva College, Yeshiv~ University's college of arts and sciences for men.
1955	Women and Aliyah The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement decides to permit women to be called up for aliyahs, if the local rabbi approves. The option was at first implemented only in a few synagogues in Minneapolis.
	Leo Baeck Institute The Leo Baeck Institute is established in New York City as a research institution dedicated to the study of the history of German-speaking Jewry. In 1999, it joined with other institutions dedicated to preserving and disseminating Jewish history and culture in the Center for Jewish History.
	Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, one of American Jewry's most powerful organizations, is formed to promote unified action among major American Jewish organizations with regard to issues in the Middle East. In 1966, the group became a conference of organizations rather than of presidents.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN JEWS AND AMERICAN JUDAISM
	Albert Einstein College of Medicine Albert Einstein College of Medicine opens. A division of Yeshiva University, it is the first medical school ever established under Jewish auspices in the United States.
1956	Increase in Synagogue Membership Statistics in the American Jewish Year Book show a great increase in Jewish synagogue membership in the previous fifteen years, particularly in the Reform and Conservative groups, and a great increase in Jewish religious school attendance.
	Arab-Israeli War From 1949 to 1956, an armed truce existed between Israel and the Arab countries. Although enforced in part by United Nations forces, it was interrupted by outbreaks of violence, which resulted in over 1,300 Israel civilian casualties. Beginning in August of 1956 Egypt began preparations for a military assault. In a preemptive strike on October 29, 1956, Israeli forces, under the leadership of Moshe Dayan, attacked Egypt's Sinai peninsula from the air and on the ground. An Anglo-French invasion along the Suez Canal bolstered Israeli successes. Israel captured several significant pieces of territory before the November 6, ceasefire. It withdrew from these areas in 1957, and turned them over to a United Nations emergency force.
1964	Civil Rights Act — Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry is founded at Columbia University on April 27. Its first public activity is a thousand-student protest outside the Soviet United Nations mission against the USSR's treatment of its Jewish citizens. For the next three years the organization works (often through demonstrations or vigils) to educate the American public about the plight of Soviet Jewry.
1965	Immigration and Nationality Act The Immigration and Nationality Act did away with quotas based on nation of origin, substituting limits on total immigration. It also instituted a system of occupational and family preferences to determine who would be allowed in under these limits. The Act is a rejection of the attempt to freeze the ethnic makeup of the United States.
1967	Six-Day War During the early sixties, border incidents between Israel and its Arab neighbors increase. In May of 1967, Egypt's President Nasser mobilizes units in the Sinai and closes the Gulf of Aqaba to Israel. On June 5, Israel launches a massive air strike, followed by an invasion of ground forces that results in military control of the Sinai peninsula within three days. After another three days, the war was over, and Israel also controlled Jerusalem's Old City and the strategically important Golan Heights. American Jewry raises more than $317.5 million to support the war.
1968	Civil Rights Act Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in public facilities, guarantees voting rights for all races, and establishes the Equal Opportunity Commission. The act had far-reaching consequences in the areas of education, sports, business, and government.
	Reconstructionist Rabbinical College The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College is established. It is the final step in creating the Reconstructionist Movement. The college, located in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, has a working connection with Gratz College.
	Association for Jewish Studies Association for Jewish Studies formed as a learned society and professional organization to promote teaching and research in Jewish Studies in institutions of higher learning. Regular publications of the Association include the AJS Newsletter, the AJS Review, a scholarly journal, and Positions in Jewish Studies: Information Bulletin.
1971	Touro College Touro College is founded in New York City by Dr. Bernard Lander as a Jewish-sponsored independent institution of higher and professional education. Named after brothers who were leaders in colonial America, the college opened with a class of thirty-five students. A Women's Division is later added to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as are schools of General Studies, Law, and Health Sciences. About 8,000students are currently enrolled in the various schools and divisions of Touro. There are sister institutions in Israel and Russia.
1972	First Woman Rabbi Hebrew Union College ordains the first woman rabbi, Sally Priesand.
	Ezrat Nashim Ezrat Nashim, a group of young women who were largely brought up in the camps and schools of the Conservative Movement, calls for the affirmation of the equality of women from the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly (CRA). They demand that women be granted the following rights: membership in synagogues, participation in a minyan, full participation in religious observances, recognition as witnesses in Jewish law, ability to initiate divorce, admission to rabbinical and cantorial schools, service as rabbis and cantors in synagogues, positions of leadership in the community, and responsibility to fulfill all the mitzvahs equally with men.
	Gay and Lesbian Synagogue Beth Chayim, the first Gay and Lesbian Synagogue, is established in Los Angeles. About ninety percent of its members are gay. In addition to all the traditional synagogue programs, it offers support for HIV and AIDS victims.
1973	Yom Kippur War The Yom Kippur War begins when Egypt and Syria attack Israel. Israel is again victorious. In November the Council of Jewish Federations creates a fund of $3 million to be used to mobilize American Jews and the American government to support Israel.
	Women in Minyan The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement passes a takkanah (enactment) allowing women to count in a minyan equally with men. The United Synagogue of America, the Conservative Movement's congregational association (now called the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism), decides to allow women to participate in synagogue rituals and to promote equal opportunity for women for positions of leadership, authority, and responsibility in congregational life.
	Nobel Peace Prize Henry Kissinger of the United States and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam receive the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their efforts to end the war in Vietnam.
	Aliyot From 1972 to 1976, the number of Conservative congregations giving ahyot (the honor of being called to the Torah) to women increases from seven percent to fifty percent.
1974	Women Equal in Ritual The Conservative Movement adopts a series of proposals that equalize men and women in all areas of ritual, including serving as prayer leaders.
1975	Zionism Denounced The United Nations General Assembly declares Zionism "a form of racism and racial discrimination." The American Ambassador, Daniel P. Moynihan, declares that the United States "will never acquiesce in this infamous act," and an enormous rally protesting the resolution is held in New York City.
1976	Yeshiva University opens the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, the only law school in the country founded under Jewish auspices. It now ranks among the seventy most selective law schools in the nation and has 2,000 students every year competing for the 250 spots in its entering class.
1978	Drisha Institute Drisha Institute for Jewish Education is started by Rabbi David Silbert to give women an education in Judaism equal to that of men. Although Drisha allows women to study the Talmud, it has not taken a position on controversial issues such as the legality of women's prayer groups, women serving as poskot, counting women in a minyan, or ordaining women as rabbis.
	Denver Experiment Rabbis from Reform, Conservative, and Traditional synagogues in Denver form a joint Beit Din to oversee conversions. There was no Reconstructionist rabbi in Denver, and Orthodox rabbis declined participation. The program was intended to prevent a situation in which rabbis did not recognize each other's converts to Judaism. Each rabbi still retained the authority to perform his own conversions. About 750 people underwent conversion through the communal rabbinic court before its dissolution in 1983. The dissolution was the result of a resolution on patrilineality adopted that year by the Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform), which persuaded Conservative and traditional rabbis that they could no longer be part of the court.
1979	Camp David Accords At the instigation of and with the personal intervention of American President Jimmy Carter, Israel and Egypt sign a peace treaty on the lawn of the White House. President Carter met with Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at his retreat at Camp David, Maryland, for more than ten days to hammer out the agreement.
1980	The National Yiddish Book Center The National Yiddish Book Center is founded by Aaron Lansky to save and collect Yiddish books when their readers and owners die and leave no Yiddish-speaking heirs. Under Lansky's leadership, the center has collected more than 1.3 million volumes. It has helped to create core collections of Yiddish books at 225 universities and research libraries. Originally operating out of an unheated factory loft, in 1996 the Center opened an $8 million, ten-acre "campus" in Amherst, Massachusetts. It now offers a summer camp in Yiddish culture for both children and adults.
1983	Women in Rabbinical School The Jewish Theological Seminary faculty votes 34 to 8, with one abstention and more than half a dozen absent in protest, to admit women to their Rabbinical School to pursue a course of study leading to ordination. The basis in Jewish law for their decision was the responsum of Rabbi Joel Roth, which argues that individual women could become rabbis and prayer leaders if they assume the same degree of religious obligations as men. Those opposed to the decision formed the Union for Traditional Conservative Judaism, which became a separate group in 1990, changing its name to the Union for Traditional Judaism.
1986	Patrilineal Descent The Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform) declares that a child would be considered Jewish if either parent, mother or father, were Jewish and if the child publicly and formally identified with the Jewish faith and people, receiving a Jewish education and upbringing. The decision is motivated by fears concerning the survival of the Jewish people in the face of increasing intermarriage. A 1991survey of American rabbis by sociologist Samuel Heilman showed that more than half of all Reform spiritual leaders viewed the decision as one of the most divisive acts in contemporary Jewish life.
	Nobel Peace Prize Elie Wiesel is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He has dedicated his life to making certain that the world knows about the atrocities committed during the Holocaust and to working to create a world in which such actions can never happen again.
1990	Intermarriage The National Jewish Population Survey documents that the rate of interfaith marriages among Jews has risen to fifty-two percent. This sets off a firestorm of debate about the future of Judaism in the United States. Many argue that Jews will become so assimilated that the uniqueness of Jewish culture and people would soon disappear.
1991	USSR. Dissolution The U.S.S.R. disbanded. Over 300,000 Russian Jews emigrate, with almost 85,000 coming to the United States, and many more settling in Israel. In the first three years of the 1990s, almost 400,000 Russian Jews emigrate from the former Soviet Union to Israel.
	First Conservative Woman Rabbi Amy Eilherg graduates from the Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary and is ordained as a Rabbi in Conservative Judaism. She was the first, but by the middle 1990s, there were seventy-two woman members of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
	Who Is a Jew? Orthodox groups in Israel attempt to amend the Law of Return to deny citizenship to new immigrants who were converted to Judaism by non-Orthodox rabbis. United States Jews, where about ninety percent of whom are affiliated, if at all, as Reform or Conservative, were outraged. They charge that the amendment would not only deny their Jewishness, but would also undermine their movements.
	Same Sex Marriage for Jews? Only the Reform Movement in American Judaism has raised the question of sanctioning same-sex marriage, and they have yet to take any official position. There was a high-profile marriage in Philadelphia in June of 1998 between two women who were consciously making a statement about the issue. The women were Reform Rabbi Sue Levi ElweIl, the assistant director of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations' Pennsylvania region, and Nurit Shein, the executive director of the Philadelphia AIDS Task Force and a retired lieutenant colonel In the Israeli army. "It is unabashedly a kiddushin (sanctified marriage)," Rabbi Elwell told The Jewish Week. "It is a marriage. The state hasn't recognized it yet, but we have." Four people officiated at the wedding-Rabbi Leonard Gordon, a Conservative rabbi; Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, a Reconstructionist rabbi; Phyllis Berman, a leader of the Jewish Renewal movement; and Rabbi Richard Address, a Reform rabbi.
	Woman Cantors Women were eligible to study in the Cantors Institute from its beginning in 1952, but when seminary chancellor Ismar Schorsch announces in 1987 that the Jewish Theological Seminary is going to confer the diploma of hazan on two women, the Cantors Assembly strongly objected. Resolutions to admit women to the Assembly were defeated in 1988, 1989, and 1990. Women were admitted in December of 1990 by a decision of the executive council of the Assembly. Within a few years, fifty percent of the student body in the Cantors Institute were women. However, in 1996, only 38 of the 476 of the Cantors Assembly members were women.
1993	United States Holocaust Memorial In April the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opens in Washington. Located next to the mall, the Museum is erected on land donated by the federal government, but built with private funds. The permanent exhibit has proved to be one of the most visited sites in the nation's capital, with over four million visitors during the first two years alone. Crowds are often required to stand in line for hours for tickets. In 1997 the Museum became the principal center for Holocaust studies in the United States, with the establishment of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. The archives of the Museum includes over eight million pages of documents and microfilm. The Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive includes over 200 hours of historical film.
	Steven Spielberg Schindler's List, by Steven Spielberg, is released. It is based on the true story of a German businessman who saved more than 1,100 Jews from extermination. It wins Academy Awards for best picture and best director.
	Israel and the PLO The Israelis and Palestinian Arabs meet to reconcile their political differences. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn.
1995	Pluralism At the American Zionist Movement's January convention, a resolution is passed demanding religious pluralism in Israel. The three Orthodox constituents immediately withdraw from the coalition.
	First Woman Senior Rabbi Debra Newman Kamin is the first woman to serve as senior rabbi of a major Conservative congregation, Am Yisrael, in Northfield, Illinois.
1999	The Center for Jewish History The Center for Jewish History opens in New York City on Sixteenth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It brings under one roof four major Jewish research institutions: The American Jewish Historical Society, The Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The American Sephardi Federation is headquartered at the Center. The 125,000-square-foot facility houses roo million archival documents and tens of thousands of photographs, posters, paintings, and artifacts. The library includes over one-half million volumes. The Center is the largest repository of Jewish cultural history outside Israel.