Jews in America and Their History The Jewish way of life has been affected in a tremendous way by the people of the United States of America. By the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, there were only 2500 Jews in America. For forty years beginning in 1840, 250,000 Jews (primarily from Germany, Hungary, and Bohemia) entered this country. Anti-Semitism and economic woes in Eastern Europe went from bad to worse after the pogroms of 1881- 1882. Almost three million Eastern European Jews left between 1881 and 1914, two million (85%) of which decided to come to America, where they thought "the streets were paved with gold." They were w