The History of Jews in North America starts in the colonial period, with the earlier population of Jews mostly being Sephardic Jews who migrated to the British Colonies, with the earliest being in the colonies of New York and Rhode Island, but becoming especially prominent in the mid and late 18th century in the Caribbean and the South. One of the oldest Jewish populations in British Southern America was centered on Charleston in South Carolina.
After the American Revolutionary War, the history of Jews in the United States of American and British Southern America began to diverge. The Jewish Congregations in the USA became heavily influenced by Deism and were the first to coin the term
Deist Judaism. By the early 19th Century, Ashkenazi Jews from the Germanies started to migrate to the USA, many of them due to their attraction to Deism (similar to the German Christian enthusiasm for Deism in the first half of the 19th century). The older Sephardic communities in the USA merged with the first waves of Ashkenazi Jewish migrants to forge a new American Jewish identity.
Meanwhile in British Southern America Jews retained their more distinct Sephardic identity though many sought to assimilate (and some converted to Anglicanism). Southron Jews sought initially to fit in with their Christian Southron neighbors and rejected any and all tenants of Deist Judaism. Like many Southerners, the Southron Jewish community found brother pitted against brother in the Southern Civil War, with a few playing prominent roles both among the Loyalist forces and in the Confederation. Regardless of which side they adhered to during the Slaver Rebellion, the Southron Jewish community was notable for becoming stalwart supporters of Dominion.
European Ashkenazi Judaism underwent rapid divergence and development during the course of historical events on the continent. While Deist Judaism flourished in the German Empire after the Liberal War (and spread to other parts of Western Europe), Eastern European Jewry tended to embrace all the more what they saw as traditional Rabbinical Judaism (and those who didn't often migrated to the West). With the rise of Korsgaardianism in the East, the Jewish community fractured into several different responses to the pressure the Korsgaardian regimes placed on them. Some, exemplified by the
Hassidic Jewish movement, resisted all pressures to conform to the majority culture of their nation and to assimilate. These highly orthodox and traditionalist Jewish groups would eventually be forced to flee the Russian Pale of Settlement, Prussia-Poland, and Austria-Hungary for the West and in many cases, the United States of America (making for an odd juxtaposition to the 'native' American Jewish population which by then was overwhelmingly Deist Jewish). A middle road was taken by the so-called 'Conformist' Jews who in private remained traditionally Jewish but outside the home and synagogue embraced the culture and practices of the majority in their nation. This approach made them tolerable to the Korsgaardist powers but they faced regular discrimination (if not the outright persecution faced by the more 'Orthodox' Jewish factions). Lastly there was the Korsgaardist Judea movement. Judean Jews were rabidly traditional but also sought to redeem the Jewish homeland by force from the Ottoman Empire. They were favored by the Eastern Korsgaardist regimes who dreamt with them of a migration of Jews from the East to a New Judea in the Levant if they had vanquished the Ottomans and the Entente during the Global War. With the defeat of Korsgaardism after the Global War Judean Judaism disappeared other than a few extremists and Conformism and Traditionalist Judaism became the two main strains of Ashkenazi Judaism in the East, with Conformism making inroads into Western Europe as a conservative alternative to Deist Judaism by the early 20th century.
During the Population War some secularized Jews were staunch adherents to Malthusianism along with their Christian-raised compatriots. However, just as often Malthusian officials used the guise of population control to discriminate against and persecute minorities in their nation (a practice officially banned by the Malthusian Congress but none-the-less sometimes circumvented) including observant Jews. The most egregious example of this practice was in the Ottoman Empire; all the more shocking as prior to the rise of Malthusianism in the Empire, the Ottoman Empire had been one of the most tolerant nations to Jewish people. The Sephardic Jews of the Ottoman Empire fled during the Population War to North Africa (both Morocco and Moroccan held Ottoman territory) and to the Sephardic communities of the Western Hemisphere (mostly in the Dominion of Southern America and the United Provinces of South America). After the Population War, one of the senile Sultan's sons who had been in exile due to his pro-liberal stances won the fight for the throne (in part helped by the fact that he had had nothing to do with the loss of so much Ottoman territory and good will), outlawing Malthusians and entreating ethnic groups who had been targeted by Ottoman Malthusian leaders to return, but by then most had already committed to a new life.
By the mid 20th Century, Sephardic Judaism was the most common in the Western Hemisphere south of 36-30, in North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire (though much diminished from its heyday). Deist Judaism was the most common form in the USA, but with Traditionalist pockets in the major cities of the Eastern Seaboard (especially Hassidic groups). In Western Europe Deist Judaism and Conformist Judaism were found in equal measure, whereas in Eastern Europe Conformist Judaism and Traditionalist Judaism were the more common forms.
