Bridging Three Worlds · Hungarian-Jewish Americans, 1848-1914

Between 1848 and 1914, approximately 100,000 Jews emigrated from Hungary to the United States. They came in two waves. The first group, catalyzed by the 1848 revolutions against the Austrian monarchy, consisted mainly of political dissidents and well-educated, cosmopolitan, middle-class Jews seeking greater personal, religious, and political freedoms in the New World. The second and much larger group, which began to arrive around 1880, consisted primarily of poor peasants and unskilled labourers, beckoned to America by the promise of vast economic opportunity.