Between the 1870s and the 1920s, almost 2,500,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in the United States with most of them settling in New York City. While New York shaped the contours of Jewish life both in the city and in the rest of the country, Jews also profoundly influenced the culture, politics, and economics of the city and beyond. In this talk, Daniel Soyer examines Jewish immigrant life by looking at the city’s immigrant Jewish neighborhoods, communal organizations, politics, cultural expressions, economic activities, and relations with other segments of the population.

Daniel Soyer, professor of History at Fordham University, is especially interested in American Jewish life in New York. Two of his books developed out of this interest, and he has won both the National Jewish Book Award and the American Jewish Historical Society’s Saul Viener Award. In addition, he is coeditor of the journal American Jewish History. Daniel Soyer last spoke to our society in 2014 on Landsmanshaftn.