Jewish american life 1760-1780

amother

Tue, Dec 01 2020, 9:07 am

I'm a doing research on jewish american life leading up to and during the revolutionary war for a novel I am writing.
I specifically want to know details on level's of observance of the more famous religious figures such as the Gratz family or Gershom Mendes Sexias.
I am also interested in finding out more about the Spanish/Portuguese community in Amsterdam and London at the same time period. And about the connection/influence of the Haskalah on these communities.
I did all the typical googling and have read a few books, I am looking for more. Anyone know of books, articles or papers?
Any references to the american communities at this time in torah literature (psak, correspondance...) would be appreciated as well.

amother

Jade

Thu, Dec 03 2020, 11:09 am

Books:

William Pencak, Jews and Gentiles in Early America
Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History 2nd ed (2019)--this book takes actual religious practice more seriously than many others
Dianne Ashton, Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America
Laura Arnold Leibman, Messianism, Secrecy, and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life (deals with issues like mikvah)
Laura Arnold Leibman, The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects

Keep in mind that
** there were fewer than 2500 Jews in the mainland colonies prior to the American Revolution--at times there were more Jews in the Caribbean in place so you might want to think about the Atlantic world rather than just "the British colonies"
**There is very little halachic literature from this period.
**The first ordained rabbi --Abraham Rice, in Baltimore- didn't come to the US until the early 1850s, long after the American Revolution.
**Each community had only one synagogue--not until 1825 was there a second synagogue in New York.
**Tthere were no denominations yet--Reform was the first formal denomination and it didn't start until the 1830s in central Europe. No one would have used the capitalized word "Orthodox" either during this period.
** The Gratz family self-identified as traditional, but manyof the men over several generations married non-Jewish women who made no effort to convert. The women were less likely to intermarry, but because the Jewish population was so small, a lot of them (including Rebecca Gratz, the most famous of them all) didn't marry at all.