6 x 9. 352 pgs. 22 B&W photograph section, 5 maps. (2005) Cloth 978-0-472-11454-2 $29.95S  Available Add to Cart Search this Book's Content About the Book Praise Look Inside Subjects American Studies / History--American History / Race and Ethnicity / Religion

Jews and Gentiles in Early America
1654-1800

William Pencak

Runner-up: Jewish Book Council's 2005 National Jewish Book Award in the American Jewish History category

The fascinating story of the Jewish contribution to and participation in early American life

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About the Book

Jews and Gentiles in Early America offers a uniquely detailed picture of Jewish life from the mid-seventeenth century through the opening decades of the new republic.

Though the first national census in 1790 counted barely three thousand Jews, the Jewish community was nevertheless far more important in the history of early America than their numbers suggest, author William Pencak reveals in this fascinating chronicle of an often-overlooked facet of American Jewish history.

Pencak approaches his topic from the perspective of early American, rather than strictly Jewish, history. Rich in colorful narrative and animated with scenes of early American life, Jews and Gentiles in Early America tells the story of the five communities—New York, Newport, Charleston, Savannah, and Philadelphia—where most of colonial America's small Jewish population lived.

How did these communities rise and fall? How did they interact with the larger gentile population? Pencak's exploration of popular anti-semitism in the pre-Revolutionary era describes the persistence of prejudices derived from traditional European society, and his abundantly detailed community studies explore the forms these prejudices took in colonial America, some of which continue to this day.

William Pencak is Professor of History at The Pennsylvania State University.