Abstract
American Jewish history is often said to commence with the migration of 23 Jews from Brazil to New Amsterdam in 1654. Yet much of the early history of Jews in the United States is not a history of the Northeast but of the South. The earliest synagogues were found not only in New Amsterdam, Newport, and Philadelphia, but also in Savannah, Charleston, and New Orleans. The first known Jew in North America was Joachim Gaunse, a mining technologist from Prague, who settled for one year (1585) at Roanoke Island, Va., to serve as a metallurgist in the colony founded by