[11] Despite the fact that some of them were denied the right to vote or hold office in local jurisdictions, Sephardi Jews became active in community affairs in the 1790s, after they were granted political equality in the five states where they were most numerous.

Large-scale Jewish immigration commenced in the 19th century, when, by mid-century, many German Jews had arrived, migrating to the United States in large numbers due to antisemitic laws and restrictions in their countries of birth.

Gradually the Cincinnati Jewish community would adopt novel practices under the leadership Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, the father of Reform Judaism in the United States,[14] such as the inclusion of women in minyan.

Most of these new immigrants were Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, most of whom arrived from poor diaspora communities of the Russian Empire and the Pale of Settlement, located in modern-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova.

During the same period, great numbers of Ashkenazic Jews also arrived from Galicia, at that time the most impoverished region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a heavy Jewish urban population, driven out mainly by economic reasons.

The suburbs facilitated the formation of new centers, as Jewish school enrollment more than doubled between the end of World War II and the mid-1950s, while synagogue affiliation jumped from 20% in 1930 to 60% in 1960; the fastest growth came in Reform and, especially, Conservative congregations.

[19][20] The Jewish community in America has gone from being part of the lower class of society, with numerous employments barred to them,[21] to being a group with a high concentrations in members of the academia and a per capita income higher than the average in the United States.

The journal represented the ideals of the menorah movement established by Horace M. Kallen and others to promote a revival in Jewish cultural identity and combat the idea of race as a means to define or identify peoples.

While many of these Members represented coastal cities and suburbs with significant Jewish populations, others did not (for instance, Kim Schrier of Seattle, Washington; John Yarmuth of Louisville, Kentucky; and David Kustoff and Steve Cohen of Memphis, Tennessee).

Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, stated the following when he spoke from the podium at the Lincoln Memorial during the famous March on Washington on August 28, 1963: "As Jews we bring to this great demonstration, in which thousands of us proudly participate, a twofold experience—one of the spirit and one of our history. ...

[63] Similar tensions were aroused by the 1977 election of Menachem Begin and the rise of Revisionist policies, the 1982 Lebanon War and the continuing administrative governance of portions of the West Bank territory.

They tried to assure Congress that American Jewry was behind the Accord and defended the efforts of the administration to help the fledgling Palestinian Authority (PA), including promises of financial aid.

In opposition to Oslo, an alliance of conservative groups, such as the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI), and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) tried to counterbalance the power of the liberal Jews.

The conference, which under its organizational guidelines was in charge of moderating communal discourse, reluctantly censured some Orthodox spokespeople for attacking Colette Avital, the Labor-appointed Israeli Consul General in New York and an ardent supporter of that version of a peace process.

A 2007 study released by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute (SSRI) at Brandeis University presents evidence to suggest that both these figures may be underestimations with a potential 7.0–7.4 million Americans of Jewish descent.

[110] Similarly, Kenneth Marcus observes a number of ambivalent cultural phenomena which have also been noted by other scholars, and he concludes that "the veneer of whiteness has not established conclusively the racial construction of American Jews".

[114] In 2013, the Pew Research Center's Portrait of Jewish Americans found that more than 90% of Jews who responded to its survey described themselves as being non-Hispanic whites, 2% described themselves as being black, 3% described themselves as being Hispanic, and 2% described themselves as having other racial or ethnic backgrounds.

[123] Similarly, Kenneth Marcus observes a number of ambivalent cultural phenomena which have also been noted by other scholars, and he concludes that "the veneer of whiteness has not established conclusively the racial construction of American Jews".

Notable African American Jews include Drake, Lenny Kravitz, Lisa Bonet, Sammy Davis Jr., Rashida Jones, Ros Gold-Onwude, Yaphet Kotto, Jordan Farmar, Taylor Mays, Daveed Diggs, Alicia Garza, Tiffany Haddish, and rabbis Capers Funnye and Alysa Stanton.

Other significant communities of Sephardim Tehorim also migrated in more recent times from the Near East to New York City, Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico, Montreal, Gibraltar, Puerto Rico, and Dominican Republic.

[186] That year, Meyerson served as acting chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, but was unable to obtain a permanent appointment as a result of a combination of tactical errors on his part and antisemitism on the UC Board of Regents.

Jeffrey S. Helmreich writes that the ability of American Jews to effect this through political or financial clout is overestimated,[210] that the primary influence lies in the group's voting patterns.

[218] A New York Times article suggests that the Jewish movement to the Republican party is focused heavily on faith-based issues, similar to the Catholic vote, which is credited for helping President Bush taking Florida in 2004.

Yiddish has had an influence on American English, and words borrowed from it include chutzpah ("effrontery", "gall"), nosh ("snack"), schlep ("drag"), schmuck ("an obnoxious, contemptible person", euphemism for "penis"), and, depending on idiolect, hundreds of other terms.

The first generation of Jewish Americans who immigrated during the 1880–1924 peak period were not interested in baseball, the country's national pastime, and in some cases tried to prevent their children from watching or participating in baseball-related activities.

[251] Many[citation needed] Jewish physicists, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, were involved in the Manhattan Project, the secret World War II effort to develop the atomic bomb.

Jews have been involved in the American folk music scene since the late 19th century;[252] these tended to be refugees from Central and Eastern Europe, and significantly more economically disadvantaged than their established Western European Sephardic coreligionists.

[258] German Jewish bankers began to assume a major role in American finance in the 1830s when government and private borrowing to pay for canals, railroads and other internal improvements increased rapidly and significantly.

[259] As was true of their non-Jewish counterparts, family, personal, and business connections, a reputation for honesty and integrity, ability, and a willingness to take calculated risks were essential to recruit capital from widely scattered sources.

[286] American Jews have also been drawn to various disciplines within academia such as physics, sociology, economics, psychology, mathematics, philosophy and linguistics (see Jewish culture for some of the causes), and have played a disproportionate role in numerous academic domains.