The Eastern European Jews, which included Jews from Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Rumania, and primarily those from Russia, migrated to America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most of these Jews came from shtetls, which were the small-town Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. Within these communities, for the most part, Jews secluded themselves from their non-Jewish neighbors. Shtetl Jews were poor and these religious communities formed a kind of ghetto. The Jewish identity was maintained in this way of life, as Jews married within the community and practiced their own educational system. All over Eastern Europe, the Shtetl became the model of the close-knit Jewish community pertaining to day to day life.

The shtetl was like a greenhouse for the Jews, in which they did not have to worry about discrimination and persecution due to their religion. These communities, however, caused many to think of the Jews as clannish and to consider them as strangers because, among other things, they spoke Yiddish and practiced a different religion. A xenophobic attitude grew in Russia during the late nineteenth century, and that in turn led to government attempts to Russify the Jews. When the Jews refused to convert, however, Czar Nicholas II turned his anti-Jewish campaign to another course of action. Government decrees forced Jews to sell their businesses and their homes, and with the assistance of pogroms, they were forced to move to a special quarter of the Western province, The Jewish Pale. [Pogroms were riots against the Jews, which were supported by government officials. The riots involved the stoning and beating of Jews and the arson of their homes and properties.] Legislation, such as the May Laws of 1882, restricted the rights of Jews to settle in the cities, practice religion, and forced Jews to migrate to the Jewish Pale.

The goal of Czar Nicholas II and his anti-Jewish campaign was to convert one-third of the Jews to the Orthodox Church, to force another third of the Jews to leave Russia, and to eliminate the remaining third by starvation. Czar Nicholas II indeed succeeded in his goal of having the Jews leave, as three-quarters of the two million Jews who left Europe for America between 1881 to 1914 came from the lands of the Russian Empire. The main factor that pushed the Jews out of Russia was fear: the fear of being beaten the fear of being tortured, the fear of being murdered, and the fear of starvation. Many of the Jews who did not migrate to the United States during the late nineteenth century refused to move because they believed America to be a land where spiritual values had no place.

"The New World stands on three things: money and money and again money. All the people of this country worship the golden calf." 2

Religion was of central importance to many Eastern European Jews, and it became a common misconception that immigrants ceased to practice religion in the New World. Although it was a misconception, however, it caused many suffering Jews to remain in the worsening conditions of Eastern Europe. Discrimination and persecution continued into early twentieth century with additional pogroms and the emergence of peasant groups that took out their frustration, regarding the deteriorating economy, on the Jews. Food became even scarcer than before, and after 1905, when the czarist government intensified their oppression of the Jews, a new tidal wave of Eastern European Jews arrived in America.

Social Aspects

Religious aspects

Economical Aspects