The Jewish arrival in New Amsterdam (September 1654) describes the first known migration of a Jewish community to North America, namely 23 Sephardic Jews, refugees "big and little," families fleeing persecution by the Portuguese Inquisition after the conquest of Dutch Brazil. It is widely commemorated as the starting point of the history of Jews in New York and the United States.
The Jews had sailed from Recife, Brazil on the ship Valck, one of at least sixteen that left for the Netherlands at the end of the DutchâÂÂPortuguese War, after the Dutch lost. Valck was blown off course in the Caribbean, en route to either Jamaica or Cuba.
According to the accounts of Saul Levi Morteira and David Franco Mendes, the ship's passengers were then taken by Spanish pirates for a time. In Cuba, the Jews eventually boarded the St. Catrina, which historians would later refer to as "the Jewish Mayflower," which took them to the New Netherland colonial capital New Amsterdam, nowadays known as Lower Manhattan.
The new Jewish community faced antisemitic opposition to their settlement from Director-General Peter Stuyvesant, as well as a monetary dispute with the captain of the St. Catrina, which required adjudication from the Dutch West India Company. They were aided by some Ashkenazi Jewish traders who had arrived just a month earlier, on the ship Peereboom, from Amsterdam via London. This group included Jacob Barsimson, and perhaps Solomon Pietersen and Asser Levy, the latter of whom was mentioned in earlier sources as one of the 23. The new community founded Congregation Shearith Israel, which remains the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States, and, until 1825, it was the only synagogue in New York City.
The primary source document for their arrival is as follows:
Several early synagogues existed, with the earliest on Beaver Street, according to a map drawn in 1695, and, by 1700, another on Mill Street where the purpose-built Mill Street Synagogue was constructed in 1730. In 1834, the congregation moved to a synagogue on Crosby Street, and in 1860 it moved to the Nineteenth Street Synagogue. Finally, in 1897, it took its current incarnation in the Seventieth Street Synagogue, which was built by architect Arnold Brunner, with interior design and stained glass by Louis Comfort Tiffany.
There are multiple inactive landmarked cemeteries in New York City for Congregation Shearith Israel, with its only current active burial site in Queens. The first, and oldest, also known as Chatham Square Cemetery, located at 55 St. James Place in Lower Manhattan, was established in 1682, and remained active until 1828. It contains the remains of early Spanish and Portuguese Jewish settlers and American Revolutionary War veterans. A second cemetery was established on West 11th Street in 1805 and a third, on West 21st Street, in 1829.
The 250th anniversary of the arrival was marked a year late in 1905, and the 300th anniversary was marked in 1954. The 300th anniversary was marked for an eight-month period, from September 1954âÂÂMay 1955. For this milestone, a Jewish Tercentenary Monument and flagstaff designed by Abram Belskie was placed on Peter Minuit Plaza in Manhattan's Battery, and another Jewish Tercentenary Monument and flagstaff designed by Carl C. Mose with a wave-shaped relief bearing illustrations of the Four Freedoms as inspired by Hebrew Bible verses, as well as a conjectural image of the St. Catrina, was placed in St. Louis's Forest Park.
Forest Park monument reliefs:<blockquote><u>Obverse:</u>
<u>Reverse:</u>
</blockquote>The 350th anniversary was observed for another one-year celebration from September 2004âÂÂSeptember 2005, with exhibitions at the Library of Congress and the American Jewish Historical Society opening in September and May, and inspired the institution of the first annual Jewish American Heritage Month a year later in May 2006.
On September 12, 2024, the City Council voted to officially recognize Landing Day, to be celebrated during the second week of September. The resolution aims to âÂÂcommemorate the arrival of the first Jewish community in New Amsterdam in 1654 and to celebrate the continuing importance of the Jewish community in the City of New York.âÂÂ