Monday, April 18, 2016

Jews of New York City, NY

Nadene Goldfoot                                                    
Chassidic tour of New York City
Crown Heights, a neighborhood in Brooklyn
             
Jews make up  2% of the USA population but make up much less than 1% of the world population..  How many live in New York City?  10% of the population are Jewish with 8.5 million people living in this state.  That means there are 1.2 million Jews living in New York City.  Brooklyn, which was the most popular borough, of King County, has a population of 2,621,793.

The history of New York City's Jews dates back to their boat arrival in 1654 when 23 refugees came from Recife, Brazil.  What had happened was that the Portuguese had conquered New Holland and brought the Spanish Inquisition with them.  Of the 23 in the boat,  while the tiny community did not thrive at first, one of its leaders, Asser Levy , by 1658 had real-estate holdings as far north as Albany, and in 1678 Jacob de Lucena was trading in Kingston, up the Hudson River.  Successful merchants, Luis Gomez and his sons built a trading post on the Hudson near Newburgh in 1717, and in 1732 the Hays family settled near New Rochelle in Westchester  .Their numbers grew most slowly. It wasn't until 1664 that the city's name changed to New York City.  In 1698 there were 4,937 people living in New York City.  .    By 1812, a war year, there were only about 400 Jews in the city.  Jews were denied certain civic rights and even permission to engage in crafts to make a living.
                                                                         
A major immigration of Jews to New York began in the 1880's because there was an increase of Anti-Semitic actions taking place in Central and Eastern Europe.  Remember the movie and stage play, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, with Tevia and his family and friends all being told they had to leave?  Many talked about going to the USA
                                                                     
Little Jewish girl, taken before 1910
Goldie Mabovitch b: May 3, 1898
Jewish peddlers of who many became department store owners
Bar Mitzva of Danny Eskow, 1951 in New York's Brooklyn; living on Avenue M.
His mother and father are on the right of his maternal grandmother, Sarah Greenstein Cohen,  who he is
standing with.  Behind him is his sister, aunt and cousins,
aunt and uncle behind his father.  His father and family escaped out of Russia, and he met his wife in Brooklyn, a German Jew.  They later moved to Florida.  
The number of Jews in New York City rose throughout the beginning of the 20th century and hit 2 million in the 1950s when Jews made up 1/4 of the city's population.  New York City's Jewish population then began to lessen as Jews moved out of Brooklyn and into the suburbs like other people were doing.  Some even moved to California and Florida.
                                                                             
Goldie Mabovitch b: Kiev, Russia-May 3, 1898
known as Golda Myerson Meir
4th Prime Minister of Israel
immigrated to NY as a child with parents Moshe and Bluma
after a pogrom in 1905-1906.  Her father had immigrated first.   
Moshe Mabovitch left to find work in New York City in 1903. None found, he moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Golda moved to Palestine in 1921
Gradually, Jews got these rights and were accepted only by 1715 with a naturalization law. At first they were not allowed to build a synagogue.  The first mention of one dates from 1693, 39 years after the 23 had arrived.  Since the first were from Brazil, the synagogue developed into the Sephardi congregation of Shearith Israel, which was unique until the Ashkenazi synagogue, B'nai Jeshurun was founded in 1825.

Immigration from Europe grew a lot in the 1820's and 1830's, and the Jewish population in 1846 had reached 10,000. 14 synagogues had been built by 1854.   By the late 1800s, there were in the city including Brooklyn, 250,000 Jews.

 Over 1,000 synagogues had been built by 1927, before the stock market crash of 1929.  By 1940, when WWII was about to start, there were over 2 million Jews in New York City.  Finally, it was home to 2.5 million Jews in the 1950's and had had the largest Jewish population in the world  before May 14, 1948, Israel's birth.  It went down to 1.54 million in 2011.  The proportion of liberal Jews was decreasing while the proportion of generally conservative Orthodox Jews and recent immigrants from Russia was increasing, taking place mostly in Brooklyn, which in 2012 was 23% Jewish  and where most of the Russian immigrants lived as well as nearly all of the ultra-orthodox.

The estimated Jewish population for Greater New York is 1,671,000.  There are fewer Jews under 45 and more over 45.  Occupations Jews become involved with in New York City are: liberal professions, managers, office workers, proprietors, salesmen, and less in handicrafts, manual labor and in the service industry.  Over 66% are in non-manual work while the general population shows a 50% involvement.

In 2013 there were 1,761,020 Jews in the state.  The 1,761,020 Jews of New York State represent around 9% of the total population of the state. New York City, long the most populous and influential of the American Jewish communities, had fewer than 1,000,000, with the Bronx being virtually without Jews except for Riverdale (45,000), Manhattan having 243,500 Jews, Brooklyn 456,000, Queens 186,000, and Staten Island 42,700.  

Famous New York Jews

  1. Woody Allen Movies
  2. Barbra Streisand, singer, movies
  3. Menachem Schneersohn, Chabad Rabbi
  4. Michael Bloomberg, is an American business magnate, politician, and philanthropist. Bloomberg served as the 108th Mayor of New York City, holding office for three consecutive terms, beginning with his first election in 2001. With a net worth of $43.7 billion, Bloomberg is the 6th-wealthiest person in the United States, and the 8th-wealthiest in the world. Bloomberg is the founder, CEO, and owner of Bloomberg L.P., the global financial data and media company that bears his name and is notable for its Bloomberg Terminal, which is widely used by investment professionals around the world. 
  5. Isaac M. Wise, Reform Rabbi
  6. Herbert H. Lehman-was a Democratic Party politician from New York. He served from 1933 until 1942 as the 45th governor of New York and represented New York State in the United States Senate from 1950 until 1957. Son of Mayer Lehman of the 3 Lehman Brothers of NY history, Henry, Emanuel and Mayer.  .  
  7. Jacob K. Javits- was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from New York from 1957 to 1981. He was a liberal Republican who served in Congress for 30 years.
  8. Benjamin N. Cardozo-was an American jurist who served on the New York Court of Appeals and later as anAssociate Justice of the Supreme Court. Cardozo is remembered for his significant influence on the development of American common law in the 20th century, in addition to his philosophy and vivid prose style. Cardozo served on the Supreme Court six years, from 1932 until his death in 1938.
  9. Bella Abzug-was an American lawyer, U.S. Representative, social activist and a leader of the Women's Movement. In 1971, Abzug joined other leading feminists such as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan to found the National Women's Political Caucus.
  10. Norman Lear-is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, ..
  11. Felix Rohatyn-US Ambassador to France;  is an American investment banker. He has spent most of his career with Lazard, where he brokered numerous large corporate mergers and acquisitions from the 1960s through the 1990s. In 1975 he played a central role in preventing the bankruptcy of New York City as chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corp. (MAC) and chief negotiator between the city, its labor unions and its creditors.
  12. Laurence Tisch-was an American businessmanWall Street investor and billionaire. He was the CEO of CBS television network from 1986 to 1995. With his brother Bob Tisch, he was part owner of the Loews Corporation.
  13. Neil Simon, playwrite
  14. Carly Simon-singer-songwriter, musician and children's author
  15. Gloria Steinem, Women's Lib
  16. Ralph Lauren, clothing designer
  17. Susan Sontag-was an American writer, filmmaker, teacher and political activist. She published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964.
  18. Joey Ramone-Musician
  19. Aaron Copland, music
  20. Beverly Sills, opera singer
  21. Sandy Koufax, baseball player
  22. Meir Kahane, Rabbi, moved to Jerusalem
  23. Senator Barbara Boxer
  24. Alan Dershowitz, writer
  25. Jay Sekulow- American attorney and Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law & Justice. He also hosts a talk show, which airs on radio and television.
  26. Ed Koch, Mayor of NYC-American lawyer, politician, political commentator, movie critic and reality television arbitrator. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977 and three terms as mayor of New York City, which he led from fiscal insolvency to economic boom, from 1978 to 1989.
  27. Joseph Stein- Americanplaywright best known for writing the books for such musicals as Fiddler on the Roof and Zorba.
  28. Bernie Sanders, born Sept 8, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York USA Independent Senator from Vermont, running for President 2016 on Democratic ticket, Socialist.  
Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, New York City
http://www.nycgo.com/articles/take-a-tour-cultural-tours-of-chassidic-new-york
http://www.biography.com/people/golda-meir-9404859
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_H._Lehman

No comments:

Post a Comment