This comprehensive collection of print and manuscript sources offers an illuminating history of one of the New World's few non-Christian communities of European origin. Issues such as race, intermarriage and slavery - overlooked in previous literature - are included and put in context. Wider issues of society, culture and economy are also considered, with the careers of several important Jewish merchants providing an insight into the economic history of the colonial and early republican eras. The sources in this collection come from the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. They include texts translated from Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Hebrew, making them accessible to most scholars for the first time.

The period between 1776-1826 signalled a major change in how Jewish identity was understood both by Jews and non-Jews throughout the Americas. Jews in the Americas, 1776-1826 brings this world of change to life by uniting important out-of-print primary sources on early American Jewish life with rare archival materials that can currently be found only in special collections in Europe, England, the United States, and the Caribbean.

A chronology of Jews in America accompanies by pertinent documents.

Gift of Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut.