|
Early September, 1654 |
Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Recife, Brazil, arrive in New Amsterdam. The 23 Recife Jews were to become the first Jewish community in North America, though individual Jews had been there possibly as early as the Spanish conquistadors in the west. |
September 7, 1893 |
During the Jewish Women’s Congress, Sadie American (1862-1944), a noted social worker, together with the support of Hannah Greenebaum Solomon (1858-1942), makes an appeal and offers a resolution to form the National Council of Jewish Women. The resolution was adopted on that day.  |
September 8, 1957 |
HUC-JIR Los Angeles dedicates its new campus – located on Appian Way – in a Hollywood Hills building that was once a home for asthmatic Jewish girls. |
September 8, 1945 |
Bess Myerson (1924 - ) becomes the first Jew to ever win the Miss America pageant in 1945. She later appeared on such television shows as the Mistress of Ceremonies for the “The Big Payoff” (1951-9) and as a panelist on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1958-67). |
September 9, 1918 |
Jacob Rader Marcus (1896-1995) writes home from the war assuring his family that although he is in uniform “I have not forgotten that I am still a Jew.” |
September 14, 1792 |
The corner-stone is placed for the “New Synagogue” of Kahal Kodosh Beth Elohim (Charleston, SC). |
September 15, 1728 |
Shearith Israel, the mother congregation for the New England and the mid-Atlantic provinces, was beginning to expand. On this day the leaders wrote a new set of rules and raised money to build a sanctuary on Mill Street. |
September 15, 1825 |
Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785-1851), the most distinguished Jewish layman in antebellum America, launches the Colony of Ararat at Buffalo, NY. Noah invites the oppressed Jews of Europe to migrate to free America and create a Jewish commonwealth of their own at Ararat. Though Ararat never housed a single Jew, Noah in the 1830s and 1840s continued to plead for a reborn Jewish homeland in Palestine. |
September 17, 1787 |
The Constitutional Convention (of the new United States of America) finishes its work and grants Jews all rights on a federal level. This was not necessarily of great assistance to the Jewish people, since a Jew might not be able to become a lawyer in a county in Maryland, for instance – even though there was no law to stop him from becoming president of the United States. |
September 19, 1794 |
The “New Synagogue” of Kahal Kodosh Beth Elohim (Charleston, SC) is completed. The building was destroyed by fire in 1838. |
September 19, 1934 |
The first Jewish star baseball player Hank Greenberg (1911-1986) of the Detroit Tigers chooses not to play on Yom Kippur, despite the Tigers' competition with the New York Yankees for the pennant. |
September 20, 1912 |
Samuel Edelman of the U.S. Consular Service, is stationed in Jerusalem. Edelman is the first Jew to hold this official position for the U.S. |
September 22, 1910 |
A clothing industry strike in Chicago was sparked by a group of girls, among them Bessie Abramowitz (1889-1970). Her job was sewing on buttons at two and one-half cents a coat. When the foreman cut her wages, she enlisted others to strike. By October 1910, about eight thousand men and women in the industry joined them in the effort to force manufacturers to give them a living wage. |
September 28, 1912 |
Congress passes the first law severely restricting the use of flogging. Commander Uriah P. Levy (1792-1862) of the U.S. Navy had been the main advocate and force behind Congress’ passing of the bill. He later went on to serve as Commodore of the Mediterranean fleet shortly before the start of the Civil War. |
|
View additional months in American Jewish History |
|
