The mindset for success cultivated in Jews since early childhood has allowed them to survive in difficult, sometimes even dramatic, and inhumane conditions of the Middle Ages and modern history. Suffice it to say that High Priest Joshua ben Gamla declared the system of free universal education for Jewish children in 64 AD and it has been continuously improved ever since.

The situation with the Jewish minority in the USA has been quite tolerable since the early days. The first Jews stepped onto the lands of yet-to-become US in September 1654, when 25 Jews settled in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, which passed into the hands of the British Empire the same year and was renamed New York. In 1776, the North American colonies declared independence. Around two thousand Jews lived in the USA at the time, many of whom fought in the independence war on the side of the rebels. Given the special role the Jewish immigrants played in building the American state, the first US President George Washington wrote a letter of gratitude to the ‘Hebrew Congregation of Newport’ in 1790. The letter later became a Magna Carta of sorts for American Jews.

The president particularly noted that the USA was the first country to grant the Hebrew community equal rights. There were no less than 150,000 Jews in the USA by the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 and whopping 250,000 by 1880. A wave of anti-Jewish riots, called the pogroms, started in the Russian Empire in 1881, which resulted in mass emigration of Jews to North America. Unlike the immigrants of the previous two waves, the third wave migrants were given the status of a refugee despite their professional qualifications or academic degrees. The American society thus perceived them as social marginals. The American-German Jew philanthropists supported the Eastern European Jews financially, which helped them overcome the short-term crisis of professional and social mobility. They quickly integrated into the American society, having increased their incomes, and raised their social status. Around 2.5 million Jews immigrated to the United States of America between 1881 and 1920.

The third wave was when the Jews started holding crucial positions in scientific, social, cultural, and political circles. The Belarussian Jew Abraham Cohan established the first Yiddish daily newspaper ‘Forward’ (Forverts) in New York in 1897, which became the first influential printed media on a national level, which exists to this day. The first American to ever receive a Nobel Prize in physics in 1907 was Albert Abraham Michelson, the son of Jewish emigrants from Prussia. The first Jewish Labour Party was founded in 1912, the American Jewish Congress in 1920, and the Hillel, Jewish campus organization in 1923. Oscar Solomon Straus, Jewish emigrant from Germany, served as United States Secretary of Commerce and Labour under President Theodore Roosevelt from 1906 to 1909, making him the first Jewish US Cabinet Secretary. He was appointed the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1909-1910. He was later an advisor to President Woodrow Wilson. Louis Brandeis, a prominent American lawyer of Jewish origin, was elected to the Supreme Court in 1916. He fought to introduce a new social legislation in the USA that would protect the interests of all social groups. In 1914 Brandeis was elected the president of the Provisional Executive Committee for Zionist Affairs. He was instrumental in the US support for the Balfour Declaration and the establishment of the British Mandate for Palestine. The American Jews enlisted in the US Army en masse during the World War I. One of such volunteers was Irving Berlin, the celebrated American composer of Russian-Jewish origin. He wrote his God Bless America in 1918, while still serving in the military, which is considered the unofficial anthem in the USA to this day and is one of the most popular and recognized American tunes.

The US Congress passed a law prohibiting immigration from Russia due the outbreak of the Civil War in 1918. As Hitler came to power in Germany, the Nazi ideology unexpectedly started having a stronger hold in America, introducing anti-Semitist sentiments in the country for the first time. Henry Ford, the ‘automobile king’ turned out to be one of the most ardent anti-Semites. Another such famous American anti-Semite in the early 20th century was Charles Lindbergh, who made the first ever nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris. The anti-Semites accused the Jews of fomenting the economic crisis and having ties to the mafia. Around a 100 thousand Jewish entered the United States illegally from Europe in 1920-1944 despite the anti-immigration act. The wave included a star assemblage of Nobel laureates, such as Einstein, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Niels Bohr, and others. The fifth surge of Jewish immigration to the USA happened between 1945 and 1960, which were mostly the ’Holocaust survivors’.

The sixth and last wave of Jewish immigration to the United States is associated with Soviet Jews. 24% of these were specialists with higher and secondary specialized education. This indicator was the biggest for this ethnic group among all the other peoples of the USSR. The soviet Jews firmly established themselves in the American society and built the first stably functioning Russian-speaking Jewish diaspora. Forbes reports that the USA boasts 358 billionaires, one in every 800,000 people. 108 of these billionaires are Jewish, in other words one in 55,000 American Jews. The richest state in the USA, California, has 90 billionaires for a total population of 36 million. The Jews, who make up only 2% of the state population, account for over a third of those billionaires (31 people; 2 of the richest on the list are engaged in hi-tech, including the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the son of Russian emigrants).

There are 160 Nobel Prize winners in science in the United States, and 61 of them have been Jews. This was the outcome of a very high level of education, which the parents spare no expenses for. The Jews overall have a more stable financial situation than the rest of the US population. 55% of adult American Jews have completed secondary education and have a bachelor’s degree, whereas the figure stands at 28% for non-Jews.

66% of the working Jewish population in the United States are the people engaged in skilled work with high wages. Only 5% of US Jews live below the poverty line, which is 11% for the rest of the population.

As per government structures, 13 of the 100 Senate members in the US are Jews. There were practically none in the upper house of the Congress until the 1950s. There are 30 Jews in the US House of Representatives. 31 representatives of the Jewish community have held ministerial posts, and another 20 have had diplomatic and administrative positions throughout the US history. 28 people have been elected to the state government and 2 as attorney generals. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and Attorney General Merrick Garland are the representatives of the Jewish community in the Biden administration. Henry Kissinger is still considered the most outstanding diplomat in the USA. There were 5,380 Jewish organizations in the United States in 2002, many of which operated federation wide. There is a developed system of Jewish education in the USA, starting from kindergartens to colleges, which determines the success of this ethnic group.

Moisei Bekker, PhD in Political Science, especially for AzVision.az

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