The Other Ellis Island: Jewish Immigration Through Galveston, Texas

In partnership with the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies

AMERICAN JEWISH LIFE SERIES

Presented by Dr. Joshua Furman
Jeanne Abrams Endowed Director, Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society, University of Denver

Between 1907 and 1914, nearly 10,000 Eastern European Jews entered the United States through the port at Galveston, Texas rather than through Ellis Island.  From Texas, they traveled on to several states, and their ancestors now spread throughout North America, and beyond.

Join us to delve into the history of the Galveston Movement, its successes and failures, and will feature a rare primary source document:  a 1907 recruitment pamphlet, translated from Yiddish, that was distributed to encourage Jews to come to Texas and other states beyond the East Coast.

Come discover the story of the immigrants who took a different route to America.

Dr. Joshua Furman is the Jeanne Abrams Endowed Director of the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society at the University of Denver, where he also serves as Affiliate Faculty in the Center for Judaic Studies. Prior to moving to Colorado in 2024, he worked at Rice University from 2015 to 2023, where he served as the Associate Director of the Program in Jewish Studies and the founder and first curator of the Joan and Stanford Alexander South Texas Jewish Archives.

His work focuses on the experiences of American Jews and Jewish communities between the East and West Coasts, principally in Colorado and Texas. His recent publications examined Jewish immigration to the U.S. through Galveston, Texas in the years before WWI and the evolution of Jewish neighborhoods in Houston. With Mark Goldberg, he is the co-editor of the anthology-in-progress, Histories of Jewish Houston: Exploring Space and Place in the Bayou City, under contract with the University of Texas Press.