The first Jews in North America were Sephardim. In 1654, 23 Jewish refugees from Dutch Brazil landed in New Amsterdam, and for more than a century and a half the Spanish and Portuguese rite was the rite of American Judaism. Later waves made the American Sephardi world far more varied: Ladino-speaking Jews from the Ottoman Empire after 1900, Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, and after 1948 Jews from Iran, Central Asia, Morocco, Iraq and Israel. Today Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews are a minority of American Jews, but they form some of the country’s most vibrant communities. See also Western Sephardim and Curaçao Jews.
The colonial congregations
After the Portuguese reconquered Recife, the refugees who reached New Amsterdam in September 1654 founded the congregation that became Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in North America. Before 1800 every Jewish congregation in the colonies and the young United States followed the Spanish and Portuguese rite, even as Ashkenazim came to outnumber Sephardim among their members:
- Shearith Israel, New York (1654)
- Mickve Israel, Savannah (1733)
- Mikveh Israel, Philadelphia (1740)
- Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, Charleston (1749)
- Jeshuat Israel, Newport, whose Touro Synagogue (1763) is the oldest synagogue building in the United States; see Touro Synagogue and the Newport community
The Revolution and the new republic
Sephardi Jews took part in the Revolution: Francis Salvador of South Carolina was the first Jew killed in the war, and Haym Salomon helped finance it. In 1790 Moses Seixas of Newport wrote to George Washington, who replied that the government “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance”; see Moses Seixas and Newport’s language of religious liberty. Gershom Mendes Seixas, cantor of Shearith Israel, took part in Washington’s inauguration; see Gershom Mendes Seixas. In the 19th century the merchant Judah Touro became one of the country’s great philanthropists, Penina Moïse wrote the first American Jewish hymnal, and the Livorno-born Sabato Morais led Mikveh Israel and helped found the Jewish Theological Seminary.
The Ottoman Sephardim
From about 1900 to the immigration restrictions of 1924, tens of thousands of Ladino-speaking Jews from Turkey, Rhodes, Salonica and the Balkans came to the United States, along with Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews. Most settled on the Lower East Side of New York, where La America and other Ladino newspapers were published, and smaller communities grew in Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Montgomery and Portland. In Seattle, Solomon Calvo and Jacob Policar of Marmara arrived in 1902 or 1903; by 1914 the city had three Sephardi congregations, among them Sephardic Bikur Holim and Ezra Bessaroth, founded by Jews from Rhodes. See also Turkish and Greek Jews.
The Syrian community
Syrian Jews from Aleppo and Damascus began arriving in 1892 and came in larger numbers after 1900. From the Lower East Side they moved to Bensonhurst, Flatbush and Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, with summer homes and a growing year-round community in Deal, New Jersey. With about 90,000 people, the Syrian community of New York and New Jersey is one of the largest Sephardi communities in the world, centered on synagogues such as Shaare Zion (built 1960) and the landmarked Magen David of Bensonhurst (1921). See Syrian Jews.
After 1948
- Iranian Jews. After the 1979 revolution, tens of thousands settled in Los Angeles, Great Neck and elsewhere, with congregations such as Nessah in Beverly Hills. See Iranian Jews.
- Bukharan and Mountain Jews. From the 1970s and especially the 1990s, Bukharan Jews built a community of 50,000 or more in Queens, centered on the Bukharian Jewish Community Center in Forest Hills, and Mountain Jews settled in Brooklyn. See Bukharan and Mountain Jews.
- From North Africa and the Middle East. Moroccan, Iraqi, Egyptian, Lebanese, Yemenite and Israeli Sephardim founded congregations across the country, from Brooklyn and Great Neck to Miami, Los Angeles and Houston. Find one near you in our Sephardic synagogue directory.
The community today
There is no census of American Sephardim. Studies of the U.S. Jewish population generally estimate Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews at a few percent of American Jews, a share that grows when Israeli-born Americans are counted. The old Spanish and Portuguese congregations still keep their 18th-century liturgy, and organizations such as the American Sephardi Federation and university Sephardic studies programs preserve the community’s history and Ladino heritage.
Notable people
- Emma Lazarus 1849–1887 · New York Poet whose sonnet “The New Colossus” is inscribed at the Statue of Liberty.
- Benjamin N. Cardozo 1870–1938 · New York Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1932–1938; a member of Shearith Israel.
- Uriah P. Levy 1792–1862 · Philadelphia First Jewish commodore of the U.S. Navy, who campaigned to end flogging; he bought and preserved Jefferson’s Monticello.
- Bilhah Abigail Levy Franks 1696–1756 · London Colonial New York matriarch of Shearith Israel whose letters are a rare window on 18th-century Jewish life.
Sources and further reading
- Marc D. Angel, La America: The Sephardic Experience in the United States (Jewish Publication Society, 1982).
- Aviva Ben-Ur, Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History (New York University Press, 2009).
- “Sephardic Jews in the United States” and “Syrian Jews in the United States”, Wikipedia; “Seattle Sephardim: Beginnings”, HistoryLink.
Published October 2026.
