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Old World Jews
Enriching the Culture of Their New-World Home
This book is about people—Myer Myers, the renown silversmith; Dr. John de Sequeyra, a colonial physician who studied mental illness in Colonial Williamsburg; Abigail Franks and Abigail Minis, two prominent Jewish women; Uriah Levy, who restored Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello; Solomon Carvalho, who photographed the American frontier with John Fremont. It tells how the Jews lived, how they made their livings, how they formed a community based on shared faith and common values, and how they interacted with and contributed to the rest of early American society.
In addition, the book contains an introduction placing this period in the context of the larger history of the Jewish diaspora, showing that the Jewish people who first came to America were part of the flight from the Spanish Inquisition by way of Holland.
Written to entertain and inform, The Jews in Early America will be of equal interest to adults and young adult readers. The book includes 96 photographs of people, artifacts, documents, and buildings drawn from Malamed’s collection with additions from the American Jewish Historical Society and other sources. Contains a bibliography and index.
“This long-awaited study represents a comprehensive survey of the contributions and impact of the great early Jewish Americans during the Colonial era. Sandra Malamed’s in-depth research and fine scholarship is evident in each chapter.”
—Dr. Janice E. Ovadiah, Director, Sephardic House
“A lavishly illustrated lecture and slide presentation by Sandra Malamed… underscored the influence of broader European and American cultural trends on the first Sephardic and German Jews in New York, Philadelphia, Newport, Charleston, and Savannah. Ms. Malamed’s lecture was the highlight of the AJHS winter meetings…[and her] illustrations vividly pointed out the powerful influence of the American environment on Jewish institutions.”
—American Jewish Historical Society Publications
Sandra Cumings Malamed is one of the foremost scholars of Colonial Jewish history. She has lectured throughout the United States and abroad at various historical societies and museums and has been Scholar-in-Residence for many private organizations. She has served as a curator at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and as Visiting Curator at the American Jewish Historical Society in Waltham, Massachusetts. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
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