There have been Jewish communities in the United States since colonial times. Early Jewish communities were primarily Sephardi (Jews of Spanish and Portuguese descent), composed of immigrants from Brazil and merchants who settled in cities. Until the 1830s, the Jewish community of Charleston, South Carolina, was the largest in North America. In the late 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, many Jewish immigrants arrived from Europe. For example, many German Jews arrived in the middle of the 19th century, established clothing stores in towns across the country, formed Reform synagogues, and were active in banking in New York. Immigration of Eastern Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, in 1880–1914, brought a large, poor, traditional element to New York City. They were Orthodox or Conservative in religion. They founded the Zionist movement in the United States, and were active supporters of the Socialist party and labor unions. Economically, they concentrated in the garment industry
temperance, abolition of slavery, and education for women and girls. These are the causes that descirbes the causes women reformers and activists focused on before the suffragist movement. Women had been actively fighting for the right to vote, the campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War.\
