Between 1880 and 1930, thousands of men, women and children departed the Eastern Mediterranean for the Americas. They arrived in new lands [the mahjar] where many people, at best, tolerated them and more frequently maligned them. Their daily encounters, at work and in society at large, necessitated a self-conscious examination and re-creation of their individual and collective identities. This reality—which, for nearly two-thirds of immigrants, also entailed permanent relocation to the US and other countries—and the anxieties it generated propelled many immigrants to try to recreate a community that would anchor them amid all the economic, social and political forces tugging at the fabric of their lives. Family, food, language, social gatherings, clubs, letters home, infrequent return visits, and Arabic-language newspapers were all part of this process. Equally, and at times more importantly, religion was also at the heart of building and maintaining community in America. In this essay we explore these divergent roles that religion played in the lives of early Lebanese immigrants.
Historians have suggested that more than eighty percent of early “Syrian” immigrants to the United States were Christian while the rest were Muslim and Jewish.(1) However, sources for these estimates are unclear as few contemporary documents recorded immigrants’ religion. Christians were divided among Maronite Catholic, Melkite Catholic, Syrian Orthodox, and a small number of Syrian Protestants. Muslims were represented by Sunni, Shi’a, Druze, and a few Alawite. Syrian Jewish immigrants had affiliated with Eastern European Jewish refugees migrating to Syria and Palestine in the late nineteenth century and often settled among other Jewish enclaves in the United States, although they established their own ethnic Syrian Jewish Synagogue in Brooklyn.
Regardless of religion, upon arrival in the United States, these immigrants spread rapidly throughout the country settling in both urban and rural landscapes, following railroad lines to the Northeast, Midwest, South and West. They pursued jobs in industrial factories, as merchants in booming mill towns, or as peddlers to American farmers in the far reaches of the land. Yet, despite relocating thousands of miles from home and settling among ethnic cohorts, religion remained an important marker of identity among most immigrants. Thus, and especially during the period between the 1890s and 1950s, Syrian immigrants established churches, mosques, synagogues, and religious organizations to promote and maintain their faith and community in the Mahjar. One of the first steps, then, for those who sought refuge and solace in a transplanted religious community was to create one, and the starting point of that effort was to obtain a local priest, rabbi, or shaykh.