ABSTRACT
By 1880 there were about 250,000 Jews in the United States; after the pogroms of 1881-2 the Jewish community increased enormously. Approximately 2,750,000 eastern European Jews emigrated between 1881 and 1914: about 350,000 settled in continental Europe; 200,000 went to England; 40,000 emigrated to South Africa; 115,000 to Argentina; 100,000 to Canada; and nearly 2,000,000 to the United States. This massive influx strongly affected the composition of American Jewry. Initially Sephardic Jews dominated Jewish life in the coastal towns of the New World. Jews of German origin who emigrated in the nineteenth century settled throughout the country. Many worked as businessmen in midwestern, southern and west coast cities. These German Jews quickly assimilated and Americanized their religious traditions.
