When the first Jews attempting to settle in America arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654, they were not welcomed by Governor Peter Stuyvesant. He thought them deceitful and dirty, and he delivered a request for their departure to the directors of the Dutch West India Company. But back in Amsterdam, economic factors trumped cultural and religious concerns: Portuguese Jews were principal shareholders in the West India Company. So the directors charged Stuyvesant to allow the Jews to trade, travel, and settle in New Amsterdam, provided that “the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or to the community, but be supported by their own nation.” The economics of Jewish settlement in the new world informed a good many of Jewish practices from the outset. In what came to be known as the Stuyvesant Promise, Jews would take care of their own, lest dependence on their hosts would undercut their goodwill or, worse, engender bitter resentment and hostility. Indeed, right up to the depression in the 1930s, Jewish philanthropic institutions rejected government welfare and alone supported Jewish communities that required economic relief. But this need to protect and insulate Jewish communal prosperity could just as well rub up against the desire to settle, finally and irrevocably, in the new land of America. To be American, in this fuller sense, would mean becoming a member of the national community. Supported more than by their own, Jews could seek relief and fulfillment from within the American nation.