CHAPTER XIV

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OTHER COMMUNITIES IN THE FIRST PERIODS OF INDEPENDENCE.

Rabbi Gershom Mendez Seixas――Growth of the Jewish community of Philadelphia on account of the War――Protest against the religious test clause in the Constitution of Pennsylvania―― Benjamin Franklin contributes five pounds to Mickweh Israel―― Secession of the German-Polish element――New Societies――Jewish lawyers; Judge Moses Levy――Congressman H. M. Phillips――The Bush family of Delaware――New Jersey and New Hampshire――North Carolina: the Mordecai family and other early settlers.

While the Jewish community of New York was not entirely dispersed, like that of Newport, by the outbreak of the Revolution, a great majority resolved to leave the city before it was occupied by the British (Sept. 15, 1776). The patriotic minister of the Congregation Shearit Israel, Rabbi Gershom Mendez Seixas (b. in New York, 1745; d. there July 2, 1816), who was the spiritual head of the community since 1766, early espoused the cause of the colonies, and it was mostly due to his influence that the congregation closed the door of its Synagogue on the approach of the British. Most of those who left went to Philadelphia; Rabbi Seixas himself first went to Stratford, Conn., where he remained about four years, and where several of his former congregants joined him. In 1780 he, too, went to Philadelphia, but returned to New York after the war (March, 1784), when the Synagogue was reopened and he resumed his former position. He later (1787) became a trustee of Columbia College, and was one of its incorporators whose name appeared on the charter.

There was, however, notwithstanding the statement of Dr. Benjamin Rush that “the Jews in all the States are Whigs,” a sprinkling of Tories in New York Jewry, who remained at home, and some of them occasionally held services in the Synagogue during the British occupation, under the presidency of Lyon Jonas, and subsequently of Alexander Zuntz, a Hessian officer, who settled in New York. On the reorganization of the congregation at the close of the Revolution, Hyman Levy succeeded Zuntz as president, and the congregation presented an address of congratulation to Governor Clinton on the outcome of the war. Rabbi Seixas was one of the fourteen ministers who participated in the inauguration of Washington as President, in New York, on April 30, 1789. A list of the residents of New York in 1799 whose residences were assessed at £2,000 or over includes the names of Benjamin Seixas, Solomon Sampson, Alexander Zuntz and Ephraim Hart.

The community was still small――not quite half as large as that of Newport in the preceding period; there were only about 500 Jews in New York at the commencement of the War of 1812. But it was slowly growing and several of the first communal institutions date from that time. A Hebrah Gemilut Hasodim, for the burying of the dead, was organized in 1785; the Polonies Talmud Torah was founded in 1802, with a fund which Myer Polonies bequeathed to the congregation for that purpose in the preceding year. The Hebrah Hesed we-Emet was organized in the same year.

The Jewish community which gained most in the time of the war was that of Philadelphia. The little building in Sterling Alley, where the Congregation Mickweh Israel prayed at that time, soon became too small, and a three-story brick house, in Cherry Alley, between Third and Fourth Streets, was hired. But even the new place was soon too small, and a plain building was constructed on a lot in Cherry Street, west of Third Street, which was bought for the purpose. It was dedicated on September 13, 1782, by Rabbi Seixas. A list of the members of the congregation at that time contains 102 names[18] and the percentage of Ashkenazic (German and Polish) names is much larger than in similar lists of earlier dates.

A year after the Synagogue was built the Jews of Philadelphia for the first time appeared as an organized body in any public proceeding. On the 23d of December, 1783, the minister, Gershom Mendez Seixas; the parnass, Simon Nathan; and Asher Myers, Barnard Gratz and Haym Salomon, as members of the _Mahamad_ or Board of Trustees, in behalf of themselves and brethren, addressed the Council of Censors in relation to the declaration required to be made by each member of the Assembly, which affirmed that “the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments were given by Divine inspiration,” and also in relation to that part of the Constitution which declared that “no other test should be required of any other civil magistrate in that State.” They represented that the provisions deprived them of the right of ever becoming representatives. They did not covet office, they said, but they thought the provision improper, and an injustice to the members of a persuasion that had always been attached to the American cause. This memorial appeared to have had no immediate effect; but it doubtless had its influence in procuring the ultimate modification of the test clause in the Constitution of Pennsylvania.

Rabbi Seixas was succeeded in Philadelphia by the Rev. Jacob Raphael Cohen (d. Sept., 1811), who was formerly a reader or hazzan in Montreal, Canada, and New York. The congregation was weakened by the departure of a considerable number of members after the war, and probably also by the death of Haym Salomon, who was one of its most generous contributors, and found itself in financial difficulties about the year 1788. After an application to the General Assembly of Pennsylvania for permission to set up a lottery to pay the amount due on the Synagogue building was not granted, the congregation issued a general appeal to citizens of all sects. Among the non-Jews who sent in contributions in response to this appeal was the great Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) and the astronomer, David Rittenhouse (1732–96), the former contributing five pounds and the latter two.

In April, 1790, the Legislature passed an act to allow the Hebrew Congregation to raise eight hundred pounds sterling by a lottery. The managers were: Manuel Josephson, Solomon Lyon, Solomon Hays, Solomon Etting, William Wistar and John Duffield. The last two were not Jews, but were placed among the trustees probably to give the project some influence with members of other denominations.

The inevitable secession of the Ashkenazic element took place in 1802, when the “Hebrew-German Society Rodef Shalom,” one of the earliest German-Jewish congregations in America was formed. It was reorganized and chartered in 1812. Among its earliest rabbis were Wolf Benjamin, Jacob Lipman, Bernhard Illowy, Henry Vidaver, Moses Sulzbacher and Moses Rau.

A Society for the Visitation of the Sick and for Mutual Assistance was organized in October, 1813, with Jacob Cohen as its first president. In 1819 several ladies organized the still existing Female Hebrew Benevolent Society, of which Miss Rebecca Gratz (1781–1869), who was reputed to be the prototype of Rebecca in Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe,” was the first secretary. Several other benevolent and educational societies date their origin from the first half of the Nineteenth Century, and have helped to give the Jewish community of Philadelphia that substantiality and compactness of organization which is missing in other large cities of the United States.

At the same time progress was being made in other directions, too. The aptitude of the Jew for the legal profession could not be displayed and utilized as early as his well known medical skill, which he exercised even in the dark ages. But as soon as the opportunity of emancipation was offered, good jurists appeared and soon occupied a prominent place at the bar and also on the bench. The earliest Jewish practitioner in Pennsylvania, of whom there is a record, was Moses Levy (d. May 9, 1826), whose admission to the bar dates as far back as 1778, and who a year later was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of that State. He held various offices and finally became Presiding Judge of the District Court of the City and County of Philadelphia (1822), after having served twenty years as Recorder. At least three other Jews were admitted to the practice of law in Philadelphia in the eighteenth century; Samson Levy (d. 1831) in 1787, Daniel Levy of Northumberland county (d. 1844) in 1791, and Zalegman Phillips (1779–1839) in 1799. About a dozen more were admitted during the first half of the nineteenth century, among them being the latter’s son, Henry Mayer Phillips, who was admitted in 1832, and was, twenty-four years later, elected to represent the fourth district of Pennsylvania in the 35th Congress. (See Henry S. Morais, _The Jews of Philadelphia_, index.)

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The number of Jews in the remainder of the thirteen original colonies was at that time very small and they were mostly scattered. While there are, for instance, records of Jews who lived or traded in Delaware as early as 1655, there was no Jewish community in that State until about two centuries later. But there was at least one Jewish family in Wilmington, Del., immediately after the Revolution, several members of which participated in that struggle. David Bush joined the Washington Lodge of Freemasons of Wilmington on December 16, 1784.[19] He was its Senior Warden in 1789, its Treasurer in 1791 and again Senior Warden in 1795. He was the father of Major Lewis Bush, who has been mentioned in a former chapter (page 90), and of three other sons, two of whom also held offices in the same lodge in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Joseph Capelle (Carpelles?) was Master of the lodge in 1792.

The colony of New Jersey, whose Indians, according to a description by William Penn, closely resembled Jews, had very few real Israelites in Colonial times, despite its proximity to New York on one side and to Pennsylvania on the other. In the test established in West Jersey for office-holders in 1693, the candidate had to declare on oath or affirmation that he “professes faith in God the father, and Jesus Christ his eternal son....” In the East Jersey Bill of Rights was inserted the provision “that no person or persons that profess faith in God, by Jesus Christ his only son, shall at any time be any way molested.... Provided this shall not be extended to any of the Romish religion.” But, as it is justly observed by Mr. Friedenberg (see “Publications,” XVII, p. 36), these provisions were not at all aimed against the Jews, of whom there were hardly any in the colony at that time, but against heathens, atheists, infidels and Catholics, especially against the latter. No Jews were naturalized in New Jersey before the Revolution. David Hays is known to have resided on a plantation in Griggs Town, Somerset County, in 1744, when he offered it for sale; and Myers Levy, a Dutch Jew, is reported to have absconded from Spottsville, in East New Jersey, in 1760, leaving many debts behind. Another Jew, Nathan Levy, a shop keeper of Philipsburg, Sussex County, West Jersey, is mentioned many years later. There was only, as far as it is known, one Jew in the New Jersey troops of the Continental Army: Asher Levy or Lewis, a grandson of the well-known Asser Levy of New Amsterdam. He was commissioned ensign in the first regiment, September 12, 1778. “The New Jersey Journal” was established by David Franks at Camden in 1778 and existed about four years.

The first families with Jewish names which are mentioned in the records of New Hampshire, were the Moses and the Abrams family “descendants of Jewish Christians.” The Abrams family, according to tradition, is descended from two brothers who came from Palestine to New England at an unknown date, their names being William Abrams, who was a ship’s carpenter and fell into the sea and was drowned, and John, the other brother, who settled at Amesbury, Mass. (“Publications,” XI, p. 79). In the list of grants to settlers on the road, between Wolfsborough and Leavits Town (Ossipee), issued in 1770, on condition that each settler had to give a bond for £30 that a house would be erected by him within a year, grant No. 11 was made to Joseph Levy. In 1777 mention is made of William Levi, of Somersworth, as a private in the 2d New Hampshire Continental Regiment. Abraham Isaac settled in Portsmouth about the close of the Revolution and was active in Masonic affairs. A local historian writes of him that “he and his wife were natives of Prussia and Jews of the strictest sect. They were the first descendants of the venerable Patriarchs that ever pitched their tents in Portsmouth, and during their lives were the only Jews among us. He acquired a good property and built a house on State street. Their shop was always closed on Saturday.” Mr. Isaac died February 15, 1803, and on the stone which marks his grave in the North Burying Ground is an epitaph written by the poet J. M. Sewall, author of the popular revolutionary song “Vain Britons Boast No Longer.”

It has already been mentioned in a former chapter (page 86) that there were hardly any Jews in North Carolina at the time when its representatives voted at the Constitutional Convention against the abolition of religious tests. The provision of its State Constitution of 1776, which read “That no person who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion ... shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the Civil Department within the State” was doubtless aimed primarily at Roman Catholics, though it necessarily included Jews, Quakers, Mohamedans, etc. Jews did not become directly interested in the struggle for religious liberty in that State until the first decade in the Nineteenth Century, and the description of it will be found in the following chapter. The annals of Freemasonry, which usually disclose the earliest Jewish settlers in various localities in the eighteenth century, do not contain any Jewish names in the lodges of that fraternity until its very close. Jacob Mordecai (b. in Philadelphia, 1762; d. in Richmond, 1838), the son of Moses Mordecai (b. in Bonn, Germany, 1707; d. in Philadelphia, 1781), was Master of Johnston Caswell Lodge No. 10, of Warrenton, N. C., in 1797, 1798 and 1799. He was the founder and proprietor of a female seminary in that city which enjoyed a good reputation. One of his sons, Major Alfred Mordecai (1804–87), was probably the first Jewish graduate of the United States Military Academy of West Point.[20] Zachariah Hart (also spelled Harte) was a member of David Glasgow Lodge, in Glasgow County, in 1798 and 1799. Abraham Isaacs was Senior Warden of St. Tammany Lodge No. 30, of Wilmington, in 1798. Aaron Lazarus (1777–1841), who is mentioned as one of the first Hebrews to reach Wilmington and later became one of the first directors of the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad Company, was a member of the same lodge in 1803. There were about half a dozen other Jewish Masons in the lodges of Wilmington, Newbern and of Beaufort County about that time.

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