September 2004 marks the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the first Jewish immigrants in the United States. Whilst the exact date of their arrival is unclear, a document dated 07 September 1654, mentions 23 men, women and children who arrived on a French ship, the St. Catherine, which had rescued them from pirates in the Caribbean where they had been captured after fleeing persecution in Brazil.
Whilst they were allowed to stay in what was then New Amsterdam, the tiny Jewish community was at the mercy of the Dutch administrators. The Dutch Reform governor, Peter Stuyvesant, who had voiced his personal prejudice against even other Christian denominations, viewed the Jewish refugees as "very repugnant." They had to be unobtrusive, and the governor said that if they got sick or were in need, they had to take care of their own. Jews could practice only a few trades, and couldn't hold civic office or public religious services. After many decades of worship in private spaces, America's founding Jewish community consecrated its first synagogue in 1730 on the site of a one-time Dutch grist mill, in what today is lower Manhattan The worn out millstones from that first synagogue still greet worshippers entering Shearith Israel's current building on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The oldest synagogue still standing in the United States is the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., which opened in 1763.
In the coming months across the United States, which now has about 6 million Jewish citizens, the 350th anniversary of the refugees' landing is being marked with lectures, exhibits and gatherings. A New York-based organization called Celebrate 350 (http://www.celebrate350.org) provides links for many of the nationwide activities surrounding the anniversary.
