Dreams in the Golden Country: The Diary of Zipporah Feldman, a Jewish Immigrant Girl, New York City, 1903

The United States has been called a nation of immigrants because since 1776, it has taken in more than 55 million people from nearly every corner of the world.

Beginning in about 1890, a great wave of immigration began, mainly from southern and eastern Europe. The new immigrants included Italians, Slavs, Greeks, and eastern European Jews. For the Jews, religious oppression as well as economic reasons caused families to leave their homes and the worlds they had known to set out for America.

Many of the new immigrants entered the country at New York City. Many Jews decided to stay in Manhattan, on the Lower East Side — a neighborhood of approximately 350,000 Jews.

Between 1892 and 1954 they were received at a U.S. government facility on Ellis Island in New York Harbor. Other eastern coastal cities, including Boston, were also first homes of immigrants. Some of the immigrants moved inland, swelling the populations of cities such as Pittsburgh and Chicago. Others were more adventurous and crossed the country, settling at places along the way or on the west coast. To go on an interactive tour of Ellis Island and learn more about immigration, click here.

Most immigrant groups quickly discovered how difficult life in their new homeland could be. New immigrants were packed into small, dark tenements where disease was a constant threat. They worked hard in sweatshops, a shop or factory where people worked long hours for poor pay, because their limited English meant they had limited jobs available. They had to learn a new language and adjust to new customs while struggling to keep their own traditions. Jewish immigrants did adopt many aspects of American culture but also established theaters and newspapers in their native language of Yiddish. New Americans learned how to make their new homes more comfortable and how to establish a better life.

Meet Zipporah Feldman

In Russia, Zipporah Feldman and her family had been told America was the “Golden Country.” When she arrived at her new home, Zipporah was rudely awakened by the true conditions of most new immigrants. Read her reaction from her diary:

It is awful, this tenement apartment. I cannot believe that back in Russia everyone called America the Goldeneh Medina — the Golden Country. There is nothing golden. It is only darkness. We entered a hall so skinny that fat Gittle from Petchenka Street could never have fit. Bad smells swirled around us. There are gaslights in the hall, but because the landlord tries to save money he will not turn them on until it is completely dark outside. But it is always dark inside. The staircase is narrow and tricky. When we got to our apartment, before we entered, Papa proudly pointed to a door in the hallway. It is the lavatory. We share it with the other family on our floor, the Sheehans. He says we are lucky to have such a luxury. Yes, so we enter this place, our apartment. Again, he tells us we are lucky. We have not just two rooms like most, we have three rooms: a parlor, a kitchen and a dark, windowless bedroom. We three girls will sleep in the parlor and Mama and Papa in the back room.