The Eastern European Jewish Migration to the United States
In 1881, Russian Czar Alexander II was assassinated. The Russian government blamed Jews for the assassination and undertook violent physical attacks — called pograms — on them. In 1882, the government passed the May Laws, which sharply curtailed Jews' ability to earn a living and participate in Russian society.
Faced with outright hostility and ostracism, many Jews left Eastern Europe, believing that the United States offered religious tolerance, economic opportunity, and the possibility for starting a new life. Eastern European Jews referred to the United States as the "goldineh medinah," Yiddish for golden land. In spite of physical problems leaving Eastern Europe — the difficulty of getting a passport, the high price of a steamship ticket, and the hunger, thirst, and sickness caused by the sea passage itself — about two and a half million Eastern European Jews came to the United States between 1881 and 1914.
Almost all Eastern European Jewish immigrants after 1870 stopped in New York City. A great number of them stayed there and found their way to a section of New York called the Lower East Side, a twenty-square-block area south of Houston Street and east of the Bowery. By 1910, about 542,000 Jews lived in this area, and overcrowding became a growing concern. The streets were crowded, but the tiny apartments in which the immigrants lived were often worse. One immigrant remembers sharing two rooms with two parents and five other boarders — people taken in to help pay the rent. As Gerald Sorin recounts in his book A Time for Building: The Third Migration, "The cantor rehearses, a train passes, the shoemaker bangs, ten brats run around like goats, and at night we all try to get some sleep in the stifling roach-infested two rooms."
At this time, the garment industry was experiencing great growth in the United States, with New York City as its center. By 1897, about 60 percent of the New York City Jewish labor force was employed in the apparel industry. By 1910, the city produced 70 percent of the nation's women's clothing and 40 percent of its men's clothing, creating jobs for newly arriving Jews.
