community…. I never got used to being singled out in that way…. I’m proud

of my ancestors and heritage. I’ve never practiced the Jewish faith or seen myself

or our family as primarily of the Jewish culture. In the jargon of today’s sociologists

we’ve been assimilated. We’re Americans.

We American Jews have prided ourselves on being the people who

went from Poland to polo in three generations.

Someone a long time ago told me that opening a paper with a story drew the reader’s attention better then anything. So let me tell you a story, my story. My story begins over a hundred years ago when in 1897 my great-grandfather Jacob Silverstein came over from Lithuania and in 1901 when my great-grandmother Leah came over from Russia. Both came here to escape the oppression and persecution that they were experiencing because they were Jews. They grew up in New York City, met, married and had four children. One of these children was my grandmother Harriet Julia Silverstein. She grew up in a home and neighborhood full of Jewish culture and religion; and in a society full of Jewish hate. Years later

The first Jews set foot in the New World around 1492; their names were Alfonso de la Calle, Maestro Bernal, Rodrigo Sanchez, and Louis de Torres. These men came to the New World along with Christopher Columbus not only in search for the Indies but to escape what was going on back in their homeland of Spain. Almost two hundred years later, in September of 1654 twenty-three Jewish refugees sailed up the Hudson River on the Ste Catherine to settle on the western tip of Manhattan Island. They were not met with compassion but rather with hostility and cruelty. In March of 1655 five families and three single males joined the twenty-three already living on Manhattan Island. They too were met with hostility and they were almost kicked out of the colony. By reminding them that wherever Jews went in the Dutch Empire, they brought economic benefit they were allowed to stay. Although they were allowed to stay they were forbidden to do many things such as trade with the Indians or to hold office or vote. By 1656 however, Jews had established themselves well enough that they had gained acceptance and were allowed to do many things. (Sachar, 1992, 13-15) But that is just the beginning of the story of the American Jews. Jews have been involved in the history of American from the very beginning. However that was then, and this is now the year 2001, just a couple of days away from 2002. In today’s society the American Jews are still very much involved in writing America’s story, the question is however how much more will they be a part of it? There are many obstacles that are getting in the way of this goal. Ranging from intermarriage to the effects of second and third generation assimilation to the devastation of low birthrates, these are all factors that are contributing to making the Jews of America a vanishing part of the American story.

The other group of Jews that will exist will be the Ultra-Orthodox Jews. The problem with this group of Jews is not their lack of children but their lack of interaction with the American society and culture. The Ultra-Orthodox community believes that there are two types of people in the world, Jews and Gentiles. They believe that Gentiles can be dealt with in a business environment but not to be interacted with on a social level. This threatens the importance of Jews in America because soon the Ultra-Orthodox Jews will be the most significant group of American Jews but a group that chooses not to have any influence on American society. The last couple of decades has seen Jews interacting in a large and successful way in science, medicine, the arts, and many other arenas of American society. In 1989 alone, seventeen of the fifty American Nobel Laureates on the Medical Science were Jews. Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Rodgers and Hammerstein, some of Broadway’s best, were all Jews. With the way that Jewish demographics are goi

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