1920's America

America was different. America is different. Jews were in search of a place that they could live and achieve and participate as secure equal citizens. America wanted immigrants to settle the new vast continent to the West. America welcomed all immigrants, including Jews. America was evolving from a frontier experience to a developing industrial world power. The relationship of America to the immigrant and the immigrant to America was changing. The change was most clearly defined with the final closing of open legal immigration in 1924. The American Jewish experience is best characterized as inclusion and assimilation. Jews wanted to share in the opportunity of America. What needed to be retained to maintain cultural and ethnic identity was not clear for most Jews. The Western frontier experience had translated into the American legal system different ideas "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." An American was to be judged on what they can do not who they were. The official closing of the frontier marked a new reality. America increasingly judged a person on who they were and not only on what they can do.