The finding of the New World offered timely compensation for the expulsion from Spain, and Israel lost no time in transferring his genius for enterprise and continuity, both material and spiritual, to the new field so providentially opened. By the middle of the seventeenth century, we see the beginnings of Jewish migration to North America, owing primarily to vicissitudes of war in South America, and as that was the time when English civilization began to establish itself here, the form of civilization destined to remain permanent, we can see with what right we may speak of the continuity of Jewish history in our Republic. It is true that the number of Jews at first was small, but before long their influence and service transcended their proportions. During the Revolution, there were only about two thousand Jews in the Colonies; yet, some of them had become so prominent, that their help was not inconsiderable, and in several instances of conspicuous and unforgettable merit. We know, for example, that Washington had an aide who was a Jew, Isaac Franks, that one of the earliest officers of our Navy was a Jew, Uriah Levy, and that a Jew, Haym Salomon, an immigrant from Poland, helped the Revolution financially, aside from what similar help he extended to some of the heroes of the Revolution individually, thus rendering it easier for them to do their share of the common task. Aside from what these instances may mean in themselves, they are important for the light they throw on the rapidity with which Jewish settlers made their way in this country, on the completeness of their civil and political assimilation, and on their public prominence in the early days of American history. What progress the Jew has made in America since those days, he who runs may read. On the material side, she certainly has become a land of promise to millions of Jews. Gradually the Jewish population has grown to its present dimensions. During the nineteenth century the original immigration from mainly Sephardic sources, with an admixture from Poland, was supplemented by a wave of migration from German provinces. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, finally, the intense persecutions in Eastern Europe poured enormous waves of migration onto these shores. As a result of these successive movements of people, unprecedented in some respects in human history, millions of Jews have settled in our Republic, and, on the material side at least, it has become to them a veritable land of promise. In all departments of life the Jew has prospered. It may be questioned whether ever in the past he has been blessed with such success. While it is erroneous to assume, as some people do, that all Jews are rich, or that the richest men are Jews (assumptions which are contradicted by facts), it is true that nowhere else have the Jewish people been given such an unhampered opportunity for advancement and such an unrestricted field of work and usefulness.