This coming September, American Jews will celebrate the 350th anniversary of the founding of the first American-Jewish community. In commemoration of this, I have collected pages from books on the subject of Jews in America. I thought tI would share these historical treasures with the readers of The Forward. Let's begin with the real "first" – the reason for celebrating the 350th anniversary of Jews in America.

In September 1654, 23 Jews from Brazil arrived in New Amsterdam, the city that 10 years later would become New York. With their arrival, the history of Jews in America began. Some historians believe that when Columbus traveled to America, some Jews came with him [1492 also marks the expulsion of Jews from Spain]. The community in New York, however, was the first organized Jewish community in North America.

The butcher Asher Levy, born on April 26, 1657, was the first-born American Jewish citizen. Not far from the East River, in midtown Manhattan, there is a street named in his honor.

Abraham de Luciano was the first Jew to receive a summons for operating his business on Sunday during church, in 1655. (There was a strange law in New Amsterdam that forbade all business while church was in session. It is possible that de Luciano, who was a new immigrant, did not know the law, or thought he was exempt because he was a Jew.)

When a Jew comes to a new land, the first thing he does is build a synagogue. The first Jews, who were Sephardic, built their first synagogue, Shearith Israel, in New York in 1655. Today the synagogue [The "Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue"] is found on 70th Street in Manhattan. Its rabbi, Rabbi Mark Angel, is a former president of the Orthodox Union of America.

According to historian Moshe Davis, during its early years the leadership of Shearith Israel was committed to maintaining Jewish Law; Jews who did not observe the Sabbath or ate non-kosher foods were barred from participating in religious life. By the 19th century, they had become less strict on some issues of Jewish observance, but maintained a strict stance against intermarriage. According to them, a Jew who married a gentile should be denied burial in a Jewish cemetery.

According to Davis, Shearith Israel had its own day school, which was founded in 1755 and remained in existence until 1800. The school taught Hebrew, English, and Spanish as well as mathematics. Students attended classes from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Shearith Israel's school was run in the spirit of the colonial era and sustained by its commitment to education and society. Poor children were taken in without pay. In the beginning of the 19th century, the school was supported by the city of New York.

Other early synagogues include: Jesuit Israel (the Touro Synagogue—the oldest in America, 1658) in New Port, Rhode Island; Temple Mickve Israel in Savannah, Georgia (1773); and Beth Shalome in Richmond, Virginia (1822). The first Ashkenazi congregation was founded in 1825, and its first synagogue is the famous B'nai Jeshurun in New York.

The first Reform congregation was founded by Sephardic Jews in 1824. Dr. Davis remarks, "It is interesting to note that the first Reform Jews in America were not of German-Eastern European stock, but rather a Sephardic congregation." The Reform community built Temple Emanu-El in New York in 1845.

The first American Jews did not have access to Rabbis; European Rabbis did not come to America until the middle of the 19th century. Rather, their religious leaders were cantors and butchers [in Judaism, butchers must have a high degree of religious education to fulfill the laws of Kashruth].

In 1825, there were between 6,000 and 10,000 Jews in America.