The German Jewish Immigration Experience to America, with Ken Blady

German Jews already had trickled into Colonial America from the earliest times. Starting in the 1820s, the U.S, experienced a wave of Central European immigration. Among the millions who came to America’s shores were some 200,000 Jews, mainly from the small towns and villages of Germany, and also from Bohemia and the Galician part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was primarily the German Jews who laid the foundations of the many current Jewish organizational structures. It was they who created autonomous mutual aid and welfare societies, hospitals, clubs and Ys, and shelters for the aged and the orphaned. They also founded the first rabbinical academies and Jewish defense organizations in the U.S.

Seven Wednesdays, July 19 – August 30, 1-2:30pm Pacific Time on Zoom. It is ok to register after the course has begun.

Some of the topics to be covered:

• The “Boorish Tedescos”: German Ashkenazim among condescending Sephardim in Colonial seaboard towns
   
• A brief history of Jewish life in Germany leading up to the mass migration in the 19th century
   
• Intricacies of German Jewish peddler culture
   
• Isaac Mayer Wise and the establishment of American Reform Judaism
   
• German Jews and the American Civil War
   
• Biographical sketches of some German Jewish merchant princes
   
• German Yehudim and their uneasy relationship with the East European immigrant Yidn
• Hitler’s Gift: German Jewish intellectuals who found safe haven in America
   
• “Frankfurt on the Hudson”: The Orthodox German Jewish Community of Washington Heights, NY
   
  Tuition is $100.00. Please mail a check to Ken Blady, 1305 Evelyn Ave., Berkeley, CA 94702. You may also pay using PayPal or Zelle to kenbee13@live.com.

About Ken Blady »