Closing Doors: Jewish Immigration to the United States Before and After 1914 led by Tobias Brinkmann

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Between 1880 and 1914, almost two million Jews from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires immigrated to the United States. This migration marks an important shift in modern Jewish history because it turned the United States from a peripheral to a major center of Jewish life.

Before 1914, Congress passed several immigration bills.  While hardly any Europeans were excluded, non-white migrants were not welcome.  American Jewish leaders protested Chinese exclusion early on because they grasped the threat of nativism in a period of rising antisemitism and calls for immigration restrictions.  In 1917, Congress overrode President Wilson’s veto and passed the literacy test bill. Jewish leaders were able to mitigate the bill – the test could be administered in Hebrew and Yiddish.   However, the national origin quota acts, passed in 1921 and 1924, drastically reduced Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe.

Tobias Brinkmann is the Malvin and Lea Bank Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Penn State University, University Park, PA, and Director of the Jewish Studies program. Publications: Between Borders: The Great Jewish Migration from Eastern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2024). Sundays at Sinai: A Jewish Congregation in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2012) – finalist for the National Jewish Book Award 2013; (Editor), Points of Passage: Jewish Transmigrants from Eastern Europe in Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain 1880-1914 (New York: Berghahn, 2013).

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