Chika's+Ideas

For Matt In search for a new and prosperous start in the United States of America, immigrants traveled from all over the world to regain and reclaim their dignity. What greeted most American immigrants and citizens alike in the 1930s was the despair and hardships of the Great Depression. In October of 1929, the stock market crashed and had devestating effects nationally as well as internationally. The characters in Michael Gold's "Jews Without Money" offer a glimpse of the real life hardships and opressions that people felt during this time.

The twentieth century witnessed the emergence of American Jewry on the world Jewish scene. As the century opened, the United States, with about one million Jews, was the third largest Jewish population center in the world, following Russia and Austria-Hungary. About half of the country's Jews lived in New York City alone, making it the world's most populous Jewish community by far, more than twice as large as its nearest rival, Warsaw, Poland. By contrast, just half a century earlier, the United States had been home to barely 50,000 Jews and New York's Jewish population had stood at about 16,000.

When coupled with the economic hardship wrought by the Great Depression, it is no surprise that Jews during these years sought to bury their differences and stress their interdependence.
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 * 1) the decline of antisemitism
 * 2) a massive movement of American Jews from cities to suburbs
 * 3) the emergence of an American Jewish communal order emphasizing Israel and political liberalism
 * 4) a large internal immigration of Jews to the American Sun Belt (particularly Los Angeles and Miami)
 * 5) glowing optimism concerning the American Jewish community and its future.

[|Timeline]