Famous Jew in History: Asser Levy (c. 1610?–1682)
Long before New York became the centre of world finance, it was a small Dutch trading settlement called New Amsterdam. Founded in 1625, the colony was less than 30 years old when one of its earliest Jewish settlers, Asser Levy, arrived and began fighting for equal rights.
Levy arrived after fleeing persecution in Europe. At a time when Jews faced restrictions and discrimination, he repeatedly challenged laws that treated Jewish settlers differently from others. When Jews were denied the right to serve in the local militia, Levy successfully petitioned for equal treatment. He also fought for the right to own property and conduct business, helping secure freedoms that many Jewish immigrants had been denied elsewhere.
His legal victories helped establish important principles of equality and religious freedom in what would later become New York. The freedoms that Levy helped to secure encouraged other Jewish families to settle in the colony. In the centuries that followed, New York would become one of the most important centres of Jewish life anywhere in the world.
More than 350 years later, New Yorkers still honour Asser Levy's contribution through parks, schools and public buildings that bear his name.