A Time for Planting

Sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society in its centennial year, this book is part of a five-volume set which chronicles Jewish life in the United States from colonial times to the present. The respective authors explore the roots of Jewish immigration, the experience of settling in America, economic and social adjustment, religious developments and educational aspirations, political involvements, and the experience from generation to generation of what it means to be at once both Jewish and American. In the autumn of 1654, 23 Jews aboard the bark "Sainte Catherine" landed at the town of New Amsterdam to establish the first permanent Jewish settlement in North America. In this first volume, the author recounts the earliest days of Jewish life in America, as Jews from Lisbon to Amsterdam to London extended the wanderings of their centuries-old diaspora - to a distant, but promising new world.