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Segment from Judaism in America

Ararat, New York

In 1825, Mordecai Noah, the self-proclaimed Judge of Israel, encouraged American Jews to move to an upstate New York town called Ararat. There was only one problem – it didn’t exist.

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Judaism Lesson Set

Note to teachers:

The teaching materials that follow will help students develop History’s Habits of Mind. They are grouped according to the three waves of Jewish immigration.

  • Part One: “To Bigotry No Sanction, To Persecution No Assistance” features the first wave of Sephardi Jews in the 17th and 18th centuries.
  • Part Two: “A Jewish Identity Within a Christian Country” recounts the second wave of Jewish Immigration, that of German Jews in the mid-19th century.
  • Part Three: “The “Largest Jewish City in the World” tells a story with which students may be more familiar. This is the classic story of the huge wave of immigrants to America in the post-Civil War industrial age.

These lessons have implications for understanding challenges of the present. As America again discusses the importance and restriction of immigration, as we struggle with accommodating, integrating and assimilating new religious and ethnic groups into a nation whose motto is E Pluribus Unum, these lessons can help students develop perspective on their own times.