250 Years in AmericaAs the United States of America celebrates 250 years from our independence from Great Britain, the sentiment doesn’t feel like “So proudly we hail,” as our country is in a place even an episode of “Twilight Zone” couldn’t imagine. Especially for baby boomers who grew up as post-war children, when we naively experienced a calm of pride, oneness and patriotism.

Many of our relatives were products of the Holocaust; countless becoming American citizens. Our fathers were soldiers during WWll which brought our allegiance to honor our Constitution and the rule of law closer to home.

Saying the “Pledge of Allegiance” every day in school reminded us of what American stood for, strived for, and that we could imagine and work towards achieving the American Dream.

But as we entertain the Fourth of July 2026, and its meaning, so many of us feel a dread for what our grandchildren will not have, will not be able to take for granted, and what they may have to work for to regain the pride of the “Red, White and Blue.” Picnics, gatherings, fireworks, good old-fashioned-apple pie may not be the heartfelt celebration we have experienced in the past.

Can the end of one administration in 2029 return us to “the-good-old-days?” or will it take years or decades to bring us back to the “normal America” we knew? Will our grandchildren be the ones to restore “And our flag was still there?” Only time will tell, and hopefully, we baby boomers will live long enough to feel some relief for our grandkids’ future.

Because 85-90% of Jews in the US are of Ashkenazi background, we tend to think all Jews came from Germanic-speaking Europe, while only 10-15% came from Southern Europe-medieval Spain and Portugal and are referred to as Sephardic Jews.

Appearing in the Hebrew Bible, the word Ashkenaz represents the name of a descendant of Noah. Noted by Jewish scholars during the Middle Ages, Ashkenaz refers to German-speaking lands of Europe, so Ashkenazi Jews whose ancestors lived primarily in Germany and later throughout Central and Eastern Europe, became known as Ashkenazi Jews.

A distinct culture was developed through customs, prayers, foods and language. Many of us are familiar with the Yiddish our grandparents spoke, which was a combination of German, Hebrew and other languages. Most Jewish delis are a menu of matzah ball soup, bagels, challah, kugels and gefilte fish.

The Hebrew word Sephardic, or Mizrahi, came to be identified with Spain and Portugal Jews before the expulsions of 1492 and 1497 who then settled across North Africa, the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire, the Caribbean and some parts of Europe.

The Sephardic Jews spoke Ladino, a Judeo-Spanish combination and based on Hebrew and medieval Spanish, combined with other influences. Their typical dishes included Mediterranean-style recipes, rice, couscous, stuffed vegetables, fish and olive oil-based dishes.

Because they lived in different parts of the world, the two groups developed different religious customs, Hebrew pronunciations, cuisine and music but shared the same deep faith in Judaism and its history.

The first Jewish settlers arrived in America in 1654 and were Sephardic, making New Amsterdam, today’s Manhattan/New York City, their home. Over the next several decades, Atlantic port cities like Newport and Philadelphia became small Jewish communities. Eventually, Jewish merchants moved up and down the Atlantic coast creating new Jewish settlements where jobs could be had from fishing, shipping and trade.

By the 1700s, Jews ventured to the South where economic and trade opportunities became enticing as a center for tobacco, rice, indigo, sugar and molasses, deerskins and furs, lumber and timber, cotton, and opening stores with ship building goods. Jewish entrepreneurs made good money by starting to import goods from Europe and the Caribbean.

Charleston, South Carolina was a welcoming place for Jews allowing them religious freedom, to work, own property, and be participants in civic life. It was the home of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, one of the oldest Jewish congregations in the US, established in 1749. Other major Southern Jewish settlements in the 1700s were Savannah, a major center for commerce and Jewish life; Richmond, inviting for merchants; and Norfolk, a small port for maritime trade.

In colonial America, Jews, being Jews, tended to gravitate to coastal cities for entrepreneurial commerce, shipping and trade businesses rather than be isolated on farms and rural areas. In the late 1800-1900s, there were small numbers of Jewish agricultural spots in New York and New Jersey, but today’s statistics show Jews are overwhelmingly non-farmers, a tiny fraction well under 1%.

An interesting side note about colonial America: Larry David, Jewish comedian, actor and “Seinfeld” TV show creator, was recently on an episode of “Finding Your Roots,” where genealogical records revealed that his great-great-grandfather, Henry Bernstein, owned two enslaved girls, 17 and 4 years old! Bernstein immigrated from Bavaria, now Germany, in the early 1850s and settled in Mobile, Alabama and during the Civil War he served on the Confederate side. David’s reaction to this information was shock and discomfort!

During the 1860s, the Jewish population in the South was only about 150,000 and some Jews did own slaves and fight for the Confederate, but most opposed slavery and fought for the Union. The most famous Jewish Confederate was Judah P. Benjamin who served as Attorney General and Secretary of War for the Confederate government and Secretary of State for Jefferson Davis, (1861-1865), the president of the Confederate States of America, during the Civil War.

In the 1820-1880s, Jews began to migrate to the Midwest as a major destination after the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. The cities of Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis and Cincinnati grew because of the possibilities of river commerce.

In 1819, Issac Mayer Wise was born in the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austrian Empire and today is the Czech Republic. He migrated to the US in 1846, arriving in New York, and within a few months he accepted a position as a rabbi in Albany, New York. Eight years later he moved to Cincinnati where a Jewish community was already developing. While in Cincinnati he transformed the city to the national center of American Reform Judaism by founding Hebrew Union College, the rabbinical seminary for what is now known as the Union for Reform Judaism. Because of his influence by the late 19th century, Cincinnati has often been called the Jerusalem of the West by American Jews.

“Go West, young man!” was popularized by influential New York Tribune writer Horace Greeley in the 1850s as advice to aspiring Americans seeking opportunity on the undeveloped Western frontier. The Jewish migration after the 1848 Gold Rush wasn’t led by any one Jewish leader but was encouraged by families learning of business opportunities.

Some of the most famous Jewish pioneers who went West and changed the landscape of American industry are:

Levi Strauss, who came from Bavaria in 1853, arrived in San Francisco and built a dry-goods business that became Levi Strauss & Co. He sold clothing, fabric and supplies to miners and workers, and in 1873 partnered with a tailor from Nevada, Jacob Davis, who had the idea of reinforcing work pants with copper rivets at points that tore easily. Strauss helped finance and patent the idea. Early on these pants were made from sturdy cotton duck cloth and later a tougher fabric known as denim. The indigo-blue color became the signature denim and was his legacy. Levi Strauss became one of the most successful Jewish immigrants in the American West, not for digging gold but for giving the world JEANS!

Adolph Sutro came from Prussia and his family settled in Baltimore around 1850. Wanting to seek his fortune during the Gold Rush, he made his way West and became one of the most influential Jewish pioneers in the American West. With his arrival in San Francisco in 1851, he worked several jobs before opening tobacco stores. He did not become wealthy by mining for gold or with his tobacco stores but realized helping miners to solve problems would be more profitable.

His biggest accomplishment was the famous Sutro Tunnel in Nevada at the Comstock Lode silver mines where he created a drainage system to improve ventilation making mining safer for thousands of miners. The project took many years and made him a wealthy man. He returned to San Francisco and was known as a civic leader, remained identified with the Jewish community while supporting Jewish charitable causes.

He built the Sutro Baths, one of the largest indoor swimming complexes in the world, the public gardens in Sutro Heights Park overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the Sutro Library; he restored the historic Cliff House that sits atop a cliff with amazing ocean views, (it became a restaurant that once was a rowdy gambling destination and since the late 1880 has been a restaurant. I’ve been there and the surroundings are stunning vistas of California coastline!), and he supported affordable public transportation for ordinary working families. In 1895, Sutro was elected as San Francisco’s 24th mayor.

Isaias W. Hellman was from Bavaria and he and his brother traveled by ship in 1859 via crossing the Isthmus of Panama while landing in California. Instead of going to the East Coast, they went directly to Los Angeles where relatives welcomed them. At the time, Los Angeles had only a few thousand residents and was a rough frontier town. His vision saw tremendous opportunity in the growing American West.

He started his career by working as a clerk for his cousin’s dry good store and learned English and Spanish, saved his money and within six years opened his own clothing and dry goods business. Frequently, his customers asked Hellman to safeguard their gold and valuables in a safe in his store. This ignited an idea that there was a need for reliable banking services in growing communities. What turned out to be a banking business started as a courtesy to his customers.

In 1868, he established one of Los Angeles’s first banks; three years later co-founded Farmers and Merchants Bank and other banks, including Wells Fargo. He invested in railroads, electric streetcars, oil companies, agricultural and real estate, bringing Southern California to a growing modern economy. He was one of the founders and major financial supporters of the University of Southern California, supported Jewish charities and institutions which reflected a belief in his philanthropy.

These three Jewish pioneers shaped the American West with their innovations, hard work, integrity and played a major role in the economic development in Los Angeles and San Francisco. (In case you’re wondering like me, Isaias Hellman was not related to Richard Hellman, of Hellman’s/Best Foods Mayonnaise, a German Jewish immigrant who moved to New York in the early 1900s, opened a deli in Manhattan and began selling his wife’s homemade mayonnaise!)

Let’s note the obstacles, difficulties, challenges and deprivations the brave foreign Jews experienced on their journey to the Old West. The schlep could take weeks or even months, depending upon the weather, traveling via wagon or stagecoach, which was very uncomfortable and straining on the body, dealing with children and often older relatives, with life focusing on survival. They had to make difficult compromises while trying to hold onto their identity. The biggest challenge was kosher food as there were no kosher butchers, markets or rabbis along the way. They packed foods that would keep well, such as pickled foods, smoked or dried fish, bread, crackers, dried fruit, nuts and hard cheeses.

Pikuach nefesh is the Jewish principle of the obligation to preserve human life, so when kosher food was not available and their lives were at risk, it was permissible to eat foods that otherwise would not be allowed. During this long journey, the Jewish travelers relied on this principle and tried to avoid eating pork or shellfish, while others ate whatever was necessary to stay alive.

On the Sabbath, and if holidays were during the journey, they lit candles they brought, said traditional prayers and continued to observe as best they could while in the middle of nowhere. If other Jews were on the same journey, they would band together for their common observances and adapted to keep the end goal in mind — a better life.

The emotional hardships that were the most difficult were leaving parents, siblings and friends behind, often forever; having to learn a new language and customs; worrying about raising children in a new environment with or without synagogues and a Jewish community; experiencing new landscapes as mountains, deserts, vast open spaces, very different from their homelands. Homesickness was a major problem.

Most pioneer Jews never abandoned their Judaism, they adjusted to a different life-style while creating synagogues, schools, cemeteries, Chevra Kadisha, the volunteers who performed burial duties, and charitable organizations.

By the 1870s, California became a major center of Jewish life with San Francisco being one the largest Jewish centers in the United States, roughly 10,000-15,000 Jews, ranking behind only a handful of Eastern cities like New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. By the 1920s, the population in Los Angeles, with its growing economy, surpassed San Francisco, and was the second largest next to New York City.

A pattern for Jewish pioneers is that they settled where commerce was expanding, like in Nevada in the 1860s where a sizable community was established form general stores, banking, finance and real estate; Denver and Leadville, Colorado developed important Jewish centers with the mining boom; Arizona, New Mexico and Montana were smaller Jewish communities and centered around trading posts and mining towns; later in the 19th century, Portland, Oregan and Seattle, Washington became growing populations with their waterfronts creating successful financial opportunities.

Some of the most noted Jewish immigrants to make a major influences with their innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, hard work and dedication to better the world are: Albert Einstein, Germany; Henry Kissinger, Germany; Joseph Pulitzer, Hungary; Irving Berlin, Russia; Samuel Goldwyn, Poland; Anna Freud (daughter of Sigmund), Austria; Gerty Cori (Nobel-winning scientist) Austria; Lise Meitner (key figure in discovery of nuclear fission) Nazi Germany; Hedy Lamarr (actress and co-inventor of the key technology called “frequency hopping” which guided torpedoes harder to jam by rapidly switching frequencies during WWll, which led to the technology behind cell phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS systems!) Austria. And not to mention ALL the prominent American-born innovators who have changed the world.

As we celebrate 250 years of this “experiment in democracy,” with hopes for a sustainable future from the ideals of our Founding Fathers, let’s celebrate and remember those who came before us who paved the way for our cities, economic successes, innovations, freedoms to be and practice in your own way, and honor their courage with acknowledgement of where they/we all came from. We are a melting pot within our Jewish ancestry.

Somewhere over the rainbow, dreams that people once dared to dream in distant lands came closer to reality in the United States of America, where those dreams did come true. On this Fourth of July, let’s pray for the living legacy of our country. PRAYERS for a HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATION!

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