The New Land / Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country

E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Jeannie Howse, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has been preserved.
A new world, with great portals far outflung, Holding a hope more sweet than time had sung, To which the Jew, of life's high quest a part, A pilgrim came, the Torah in his heart. A land of promise, and fulfillment too; Where on a sudden olden dreams came true.... Here grew we part of an ennobled state, Gave and won honor, sat among the great, And saw unfolding to our 'raptured view The day long prayed for by the patient Jew.
From The Jew in America, by Felix N. Gerson
Dear Boys and Girls :
When your grandfather tells you a story, do you ever interrupt him to ask: But is it all true? And doesn't he often answer: I don't know, or I don't know when it's really true, and when it begins to be like a story book. And so, when you read through my little book—if you do read right through it to the very last page—you may wonder whether all my history stories really happened.
Yes—and no! I do know that cross old Peter Stuyvesant of New Amsterdam hated our people, but I never found any record of the Jewish boy who wanted to play with the governor's niece, pretty Katrina. The histories tell us how gallant young Franks became the friend of George Washington, but none of them mention that the Jewish soldier saved a Tory from the angry mob.
You understand now, don't you? So I'm going to turn the page right away that you may read for yourselves of the three Jews who whispered together on the deck of the Santa Maria, as Columbus and his crew crossed the Sea of Darkness in search of a New Land.
E.E.L.
Note: The author expresses her thanks to the editors of The Hebrew Standard and The Jewish Child in which the stories, In the Night Watches and A Place of Refuge, originally appeared.