New Netherland.

The first recorded Jews in North America came to the Dutch West India Company's settlement of New Netherland in 1654. They did not all come together but instead represented the two major immigrant streams of Jews that came to early America—the Ashkenazim, or European Jews, and the Sephardim, or Spanish Jews. In the summer of 1654 Solomon Pietersen and Jacob Barsimson, both traders, arrived in New Amsterdam. Barsimson had sailed from Amsterdam. That same year twenty-three Sephardic Jews fled Brazil after the Portuguese defeated the Dutch there. While not exactly welcomed in New Amsterdam, they were not permitted as non-Catholics to remain in Brazil. The next year, 1655, Jewish merchants from Amsterdam arrived in New Amsterdam. In 1656 they petitioned local authorities for permission "to purchase a burying place," which was granted. By 1663 the Jewish community in New Amsterdam was unraveling, mainly because New Netherland was...