Native American–Jewish relations
Native Americans and Jewish Americans have interacted throughout much of the history of the United States, beginning with the arrival of European Jews in North America in the 17th century. As the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited naturalization to "free white persons", European Jews were allowed to settle in the United States and become citizens due to being legally classified as white. A small number of American Jews acquired ownership of Indigenous land during the 1800s and early 1900s, following the passage of the Homestead Acts. While early Jewish immigrants often behaved like other settlers in their relationship to Native Americans, later generations of American Jews felt a greater level of sympathy for Native American rights. A small but significant number of scholars and lawyers between the 1930s and 1950s who defended the rights of Native Americans were Jewish, most notably Felix S. Cohen, a Department of the Interior official who drew parallels between the suffering of Native Americans and that of German Jews and was one of the primary legal architects of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism has stated that "Jews and American Indians have much in common", citing similar concerns