La America: The Sephardic Experience in the United States

by Marc D. Angel

Cover for La America: The Sephardic Experience in the United States
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Summary

The story of the Jewish immigration to the United States in the early years of the century has been fully described in a variety of publications. Less well known is the story of the more than 25,000 Levantine Sephardim who entered the United States between 1899 and 1925. La America, the Judeo-Spanish-language national weekly newspaper founded in 1910 is a welcome contribution to an understanding of this long neglected aspect of the American Jewish experience. Rabbi Angel discovers in the newspaper reports and editorials and brings to the readers" attention the fascinating heritage of American Sephardic Jews

From The Jacket
In researching an article about the Sephardim of the United States,
which appeared in the American jewish Year Book of 1973, I
scanned through a number of issues of La America, beginning in
1910. As I quickly reeled through the microfilms of the newspaper
at the New York Public Library, I recognized at once that there
was a brilliant, vibrant mind behind them. . . . In 1979, I obtained
a set of the microfilms of La America and spent many hours each
day reading and copying. The‘ work consumed me. Moise Gadol
; was editor of La America, the first ]udeo-Spanish newspaper
published in the United States, and as I read his writings that had
appeared from November 1910 until July 1925 I felt I was coming
to know the man personally. . . . Moise Gadol was perhaps the
greatest voice of the immigrant Sephardic community during the
years in which La America appeared. He was a heroic figure,
although seldom appreciated by many of his contemporaries. . . .
This book is primarily a study of the Judeo-Spanish-speaking
Sephardim of New York from 1910 until 1925 as seen through the
eyes of Moise Gadol and his newspaper, La America. On its pages
we can see firsthand the struggles of the Sephardim to adapt to a
new way of life. This is the story of a people and of one man, the
description of a sliver of history with ramifications that transcend
time.

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