Introduction
Thirty years have elapsed since the Jews began to enter the United States in numbers sufficiently large to make their immigration conspicuous in the general movement to this country. A study of Jewish immigration, in itself and in relation to the general movement, reveals an interesting phase of this historic and many-sided social phenomenon and throws light upon a number of important problems incident to it.
Especially does it become clear that the Jewish immigration, although in part the result of the same forces as have affected the general immigration and the separate groups composing it, differs, nevertheless, in certain marked respects, from the typical immigration. Some of these differences indeed are fundamental and far-reaching in their effects and practically stamp the Jewish immigration as a movement sui generis.
Generally speaking, in the forces which are behind the emigration of the Jews from the countries of the Old World, in the character of their immigration—its movement and its distinguishing qualities—the Jewish immigration strikes a distinctly individual note.
Three European countries—Russia, Austria-Hungary and Roumania—furnish the vast majority of the Jewish immigrants to the United States.[1] It is to these countries, therefore, that we must turn for light upon the causes of this movement.
Geographically, these countries are closely connected; they form practically the whole of the division of Eastern Europe. Here the Slavonic races so largely predominate that the term Slavonic Europe has been applied to this section of Europe.
Eastern or Slavonic Europe is a social as well as a geographical fact. In racial stratification, economic and social institutions, cultural position and, in part, religious traditions as well, these countries present strong similarities to one another and equally strong differences in most of these respects from the countries of Western Europe.
It is here that the Jews are found concentrated in the greatest numbers. Nearly seven and a half-million Jews—more than half of the Jews of the world—live in these countries. Of this number more than five millions are in Russia, more than two millions in Austria-Hungary, and a quarter of a million in Roumania. The great majority of these are massed on the contiguous borders, in a zone which embraces Poland, and Western Russia, Galicia, and Moldavia. This is the emigration zone. The relative density of the Jews is greatest in these parts. Every seventh man in Poland, every ninth man in Western Russia and in Galicia, and every tenth man in Moldavia, is a Jew. Thus the center of gravity of the Jewish populations is still the former kingdom of Poland, as it was constituted before the partitions at the end of the eighteenth century.
United originally in Poland, the Jews of Eastern Europe still retain the same general characteristics, in spite of the changes that have been brought about by a century of rule under different governments. Speaking a common language, Yiddish, and possessing common religious traditions, as well as similar social and psychological traits, the East-European Jews present on the whole a striking uniformity of character.
Through the centuries they have become deeply rooted in the East-European soil, their economic and social life intimately connected with the economic and social conditions of these countries and their history deeply influenced by the transformations that have been taking place in them for half a century.