Most Jewish USA possible

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Catherine the Great is a big old antisemite: She judges the Jews of the PLC to be unassimilable and unacceptable for the Russian states. Have the Russian government expel Jews from each piece of Poland it partitions as it takes over. That forces major displacement west and south. The whole Jewish population concentration in what became the Jewish "Pale of Settlement" is displaced southward and westward in Europe. The westward displacement would be to places that had earlier established migrant flows to the USA than the Russian empire did.
 
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BlondieBC

Banned
With a POD anytime after 1800, how big a percentage of the US population can be Jewish? Would 5% be possible?

Sure. It is not the glamorous ideas, but immigrants move rapidly to economic opportunity. i.e Job/Land plus free steerage. The USA had plenty of open land such as the homestead act, so you just need someone to subsidize the passage. This could be anything from some Spanish style expulsion of Jews where the King paid/subsidized passage to the Americas to a Zionist type movement where the USA was seen as the least worse option and passage was paid by Jewish charities to just having a richer group of Jews pay steerage to help their rural jews move to the USA.

You can write very dark ATL with this type of activity where you get some Nazi like expulsion to a fairly boring ATL where richer Urban German and A-H jews subsidize Russia Jews fleeing poor economic conditions.

And you will find when you write this ATL, the Jews will cluster in a few states or few cities. An example of this pattern is that Cedar Rapids, Iowa is the second largest Czech city in the world, they just all speak English. You can end up with something like Boston's Irish and Italians being replaced by Jews. Or big population of Jews in the Great Plains. To Jews flocking to the 49 gold rush.
 
Have fewer Jews killed in the Holocaust*. The Holocaust began on January 1933, so let's say the order is given a few months later, and let's say the Operation Valkyrie coup succeeds in mid-1944. That means the Holocaust lasts for only 1 year rather then two and a half- I'm unsure how much that diminishes casualties by.

Following that up, Israel needs to be decisively defeated by the Arab forces at some point.

*I say fewer, rather then preventing the Holocaust entirely, because otherwise antisemitism(and opposition to Jewish immigration) may still be in vogue.
 
Have the pale of settlement set up in Alaska rather than western Russia/poland. The area would be isolated . No real assimilationist drives. Then have the Russians sell it to the US in 1850 with a stipulation that the jews have to stay . After the civil war the rule of jus soli means all the Jews born in Alaska are American citizens with the right to move to any other state
 
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