 The Jewish community of Rhode Island is centered in the Providence area, and emerged during a wave of Jewish immigration predominantly from Eastern Europeans shtetls between 1880 and 1920.The presence of the Touro Synagogue in Newport, the oldest existing synagogue in the United States, emphasizes that these second-wave immigrants did not create Rhode Island's first Jewish community; a comparatively smaller wave of Spanish and Portuguese Jews immigrated to Newport during the colonial era.Rhode Island is divided into five counties but it has no county governments.