I chose to write about American Jews after my mother, who was raised Christian, chose to identify as Jewish. In my reading, I examined Jewish culture and its place in American society. I have observed how American Jewish culture has become an important component of American society. I examined the historical forces that have shaped the American Jewish experience in the United States. I looked at the demographics of the places where most American Jews live. I examined how American Jews have contributed to our culturally pluralistic society in the United States. Hilene Flanzbaum recalls that the so-called Great Wave of Eastern European immigration to the Eastern United States occurred between 1880 and 1920, after which generations of American Jewish immigrants established what it meant to be Jewish in America (2013, p. 485). Ilan Stavans points out, however, that the first Jewish colony in what would become the United States began as early as 1654 with twenty-three Portuguese-speaking Sephardic Jews from Recife, Brazil (Stavans, 2005, p. 2). General Peter Stuyvesant wanted to keep Jews out of his diverse city. Stuyvesant described the Jews as “deceitful, very loathsome” and “hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ,” leading most of the original group to leave (Stavans, 2005, p. 2). This reaction toward Jews has been common throughout history, both in the United States and abroad. Stuyvesant, seeing the economic growth brought by the Jews, eventually allowed them to stay and eventually embraced their intellectual vigor (Stavans, 2005, p. 2). Throughout history, Jews have been persecuted in almost every place they settled. Here I have provided just a small...... middle of paper ......e Menorah Journal and Shaping American Jewish Identity: Culture and Evolutionary Sociology. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 30(4), 61-79. doi:10.1353/sho.2012.0095Stavans, I. (2005). Assimilation and Jewish ethnic identity. The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography, Rpt. In Race and Ethnicity. Ed. Uma Kukathas. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. Companion to Contemporary Issues. Retrieved April 4, 2014 from http://ic.galegroup.com.proxy.hvcc.edu:2048/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&prodId=OVIC&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&limiter=&currPage = &disableHighlighting=false&displaWinter, J. (January 2002). The Death of American Anti-Semitism by Spencer Blakeslee. American Sociological Association. Accessed March 2, 2014 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3089419