Old Lives and New by Edith Rogovin Frankel

Author:Edith Rogovin Frankel [Frankel, Edith Rogovin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hamilton Books
Published: 2012-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

America

Background

The United States has been a magnet for immigration since its colonial beginnings. This was true not only for settlers from the British Isles, but also gradually from across Europe and, later, Asia, regardless of ethnic, social or cultural background. People were motivated for a wide variety of reasons, whether through a longing for religious or political freedom, or a need to escape a situation of economic distress or, perhaps, simply a sense of adventure and an eye for opportunity.

The Jews of the Russian empire were not the first to reach America’s shores. They had been preceded long before by Sephardic Jews from Holland and England and, later, by Jews leaving German-speaking lands in the middle of the nineteenth century. At first, Sephardic Jews had come over in relatively small numbers and settled in New York and New England, but also in the South and as far as the Louisiana Territory. Later came the German-speaking Jews, many of whom left the east coast and headed inland, where they often started out as peddlers, but eventually built up businesses all over the mid-West. So there was already a nucleus of Jews in the United States when the early immigrants from the Russian empire started to arrive in the 1880s.

It was in the aftermath of the assassination of Alexander II in March 1881 that a series of pogroms shocked the Jewish communities of the empire, destroying their fragile sense of security and their faith in a better future. From the towns and townlets of New Russia in the vast region north of the Black Sea all the way to Warsaw, that most European of cities, the “storms in the south” raised havoc in the generally quiet lives of the Jewish communities. Pondering the question of how to ensure their own safety and that of future generations, members of the great Jewish population that spread out into every corner of the Russian Pale of Settlement came up with various possible solutions to their dilemma. Some of the Jews of the empire espoused post-liberal ideologies and considered participating in political activity to bring about needed changes in the governing structure. Others were inspired by nationalist dreams which might lead them to Palestine or to some combination of nationalism and socialism to be developed within Russia itself. And some turned their thoughts towards America.

In the autumn of 1881 Charles Netter, sent by the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris, came to the Galician town of Brody to help organize the transport of thousands of Russian Jews who were flowing over the border into Austria-Hungary. From Brody they were put on trains that took them via Lemberg, Cracow and Berlin to Hamburg, where they boarded ships to take them to America. Jewish communities in the States galvanized their resources to help their fellow Jews out of their distress. An organization was founded for this purpose, HEAS, the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society. But it eventually had to call for a stop to the immigration:

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