8.12.8 Crowd leaving synagogue on Jewish New Year. Rivington St., East Side, New York City.
Crowd of women, men, and children leaving a synagogue on Rivington St., East Side, New York City, on Jewish New Year. The crowd overflows into the street.
A number of immigrants who came through Ellis Island were Jewish people looking to escape dangerous situations in Europe, where they were the targets of discrimination and violence. Jewish immigrants came to the United States wanting to enjoy religious freedom promised by the US Constitution, and like all immigrants, they also wanted the opportunity to establish an economically stable life. How does this picture of Jewish people at their place of worship help you understand the freedoms that Jewish people sought in the United States?
At the turn of the twentieth century, Jews across Europe, but particularly in eastern and east-central Europe, faced legal discrimination and state-sanctioned violence by vigilante groups. Many Jewish people lived in poverty in the Old World due to these challenges, and they simply decided to pick up their lives and relocate to parts of the world where they hoped to establish a more stable life. Approximately 2 million Jewish people from eastern and southern Europe immigrated to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Jew. New Year
Leaving synagogue, Rivington St 882-12
