The forerunners
Between 800 and 1880 approximately 6,500 Dutch Jews immigrated to the United States to join the hundreds who had come during the colonial era. Although they numbered less than one-tenth of all Dutch immigrants and were a mere fraction of all Jews in America, the Dutch Jews helped build American Jewry and did so with a nationalistic flair. Like the other Dutch immigrant groups, the Jews demonstrated the salience of national identity and the strong forces of ethnic, religious, and cultural institutions. They immigrated in family migration chains, brought special job skills and religious traditions, and founded at least three ethnic synagogues led by Dutch lay rabbis. The Forerunners offers the first detailed history of the immigration of Dutch Jews to the United States and to the whole American diaspora. Robert Swierenga describes the life of Jews in Holland during the Napoleonic era and examines the factors that caused them to emigrate, first to the major eastern seaboard cities of the United States, then to the frontier cities of the Midwest, and finally to San Francisco. He provides a detailed look at life among the Dutch Jews in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans. To provide such a comprehensive work on the Dutch Jews in America from the early colonial years to the modern period, Swierenga gathered materials from published local community histories, Jewish archival records and periodicals, synagogue records, and particularly, the Federal Populations Census manuscripts from 1820 through 1900. He details the contributions and the leadership provided by the Dutch Jews and relates how they lost their "Dutchness" and their Orthodoxy within several generations after their arrival here and were absorbed into broader American Judaism, especially German Reform Jewry. The story of Dutch Jewry in America is a complex and compelling subject, and until now, one that has been largely unexplored. Their history is important within the history of American Jewry because the Dutch were the forerunners, the early leaders of the synagogues and benevolent societies. Here is a significant volume for readers interested in Jewish history, religious history, and comparative studies of religious declension. Immigrant and social historians likewise will be interested in this look at a religious minority group that was forced to change in the American environment.
