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September 2, 2010
The Jewish Immigrant Success Story
I journeyed to Philadelphia today to see the soon-to-be-opened National Museum of American Jewish History, conveniently located near Independence Hall and the Constitution Center. As our client, Michael Rosenzweig, director of the Museum, told me, “This is a celebration of the American immigrant experience. It shows the benefits of liberty and free markets for immigrants of all backgrounds.”
The first Jews came to America in 1654 from Brazil, moving to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (now New York City). In their petition to Governor Peter Stuyvesant, they asked simply for freedom to pursue their religious practices and to avoid prejudice. The first synagogue in what would become the United States was built in New York City in 1730, followed by one in Philadelphia in 1740. It is this same Philadelphia congregation that established the National Museum of American Jewish History in 1976 to coincide with the Bicentennial.
The new building, expected to attract 250,000 visitors per year, houses an exhibition on the lives of the 18 most famous American Jews, from the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis to entertainer Barbara Streisand to filmmaker Stephen Spielberg to Emma Lazarus, author of the poem about the Statue of Liberty, to Estee Lauder who mixed ingredients on her stove at home. Among the archival material collected includes Spielberg’s first movie camera, vials from Dr. Jonas Salk’s laboratory that found a polio vaccine, clothes from Streisand’s movies and Irving Berlin’s piano on which he composed God Bless America. Russian-born Berlin’s story is typical, with the family fleeing Tsarist-inspired pogroms, coming to the Lower East Side in NYC, working as a newspaper boy when he finds that singing brings more customers than song-writing.
More than thirty short films will tell the story of the American Jewish experience. There are several moving tales, none funnier than the Trefa dinner in New York, organized by the founder of Reform Judaism, Isaac Wise in the late 1800s. To draw a sharp contrast between Reform and Orthodox practices, the dinner featured oysters, shrimp and frog’s legs. The more devout members of the movement were so upset by the dinner that they founded Conservative Judaism. Or the often repeated saga of Sandy Koufax, star pitcher of the LA Dodgers, who refused to pitch on the High Holy Days, even though his team was in the World Series, then went onto be the MVP of the Series.
I have known many self-made American Jews, including client Charles Lubin, who pioneered flash freezing of cakes to create Sara Lee, Len Abramson who was an early devotee of managed care through US Healthcare and Joe Neubauer, who has outsourced services from school cafeterias to hospital gowns at Aramark. They share a love of community, commitment to religion, and devotion to family. We have been given an unprecedented opportunity in America, the ability to compete without the historical constraints. We can never take this privilege for granted.
Posted by Edelman at September 2, 2010 4:11 PM |
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