NO OF PAGES: 727 SUB CAT I: American Jews SUB CAT II: SUB CAT III: DESCRIPTION: In this collection of essays and addresses, written over a period of more than thirty years and now revised and updated, Salo Wittmayer Baron has shown that, while formal, if incomplete, emancipation came to the Jews during the American Revolution, its groundwork had been fully laid during the colonial period. For all practical purposes Jews enjoyed most rights of citizenship without their being spelled out in specific laws. Their rapprochement with their Christian neighbors was greatly facilitated, moreover, by the deep interest which the Protestant majority took in Hebraic and biblical studies. At the same time, the colonial Jews, however small in number--they probably numbered less than 2,000 at the outbreak of the American Revolution--effectively resisted total assimilation through their noteworthy communal pioneering whereby they laid the foundations of the magnificent Jewish communal structure of today. All along they maintained their identity by adherence to their Jewish heritage, including variants of the messianic hope.NOTES: SUBTITLE: Essays and Addresses on American Jewish Life