Jews in the Early Republic

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Jews in the Early Republic

Freedom and Diversity . Although American religious culture in the early nineteenth century was dominated by Protestantism, Jews and other non-Protestants shared that culture and grew within it. The religious freedom secured by the Constitution gave these groups greater liberty than they had in the colonial period, and more than in many other nations. Like their Protestant neighbors, these people worked hard to shape practices and institutions suitable to the needs of the new nation. But they remained separated by these efforts, and so were also quickly aware of the limits of religious freedom. In the distinctive histories of Jews and other non-Protestant groups, we can see both the opportunities of religious freedom in early America and the frustrations associated with the realities of religious diversity.

Community Building . There were few Jews in the early United States, no more than fifteen hundred in 1790, growing slowly to perhaps twenty-seven hundred in 1820. They were concentrated in a few communities: Newport, New York City, Philadelphia, Lancaster, Richmond, Charleston, and Savannah. After the Revolution some of these communities were seriously unstable. Newport suffered from the long occupation of the British, and its Jewish community failed entirely by the early 1800s, although it had been well established in colonial times. In other cities Jewish communities grew and developed a richer life. There was a ritual bathhouse in Philadelphia as early as 1786, and both Philadelphia and New York had ritual slaughterers to supply kosher meat to the community. New York in 1792 reestablished the Hebrew school that had closed during the war. But maintaining a synagogue was the key to a vital Jewish community. Philadelphia built its first permanent synagogue in 1782, and Charleston had its building in 1794; New York City replaced its old building in 1818. These buildings were visible symbols of optimistic communities. They were also centers of a rich ritual life, centering on the scrolls on which the Torah, the Jewish law, is written. When the Philadelphia synagogue opened, the entire Jewish community paraded the Torah scrolls to the new building and then carried them around the reading platform and into the ark on the building’s wall, where they were to be kept, all in accordance with tradition. The synagogue was the place where the community gathered together for weekly services including readings from the Torah. Like some Protestant churches, the synagogues were each led by a cantor, the hazan, for there were no trained rabbis in the United States before the 1840s.

Values . American synagogues functioned much like many American Protestant churches. They were largely independent of each other, just like the Congregational churches of New England. Like those churches, each synagogue was quite homogeneous, and most members lived within walking distance of their meeting place, which was the center of their community. The synagogues built in this period even looked like churches, Charleston’s even having a spire. The hazan likewise resembled a Protestant minister, wearing simple black robes rather than more traditional garb, joining the Protestant clergy in planning citywide thanksgiving days, and preaching sermons (which even rabbis did not do before the nineteenth century). Despite important differences, American Jews experienced a religion similar to that of their Protestant neighbors, and they embraced the values behind that experience as well. Four synagogues congratulated George Washington on his 1789 inauguration in a joint “Address to the President of the United States.” Both this address and a similar one issued by the Newport synagogue took up the question of religious freedom, suggesting how central this right was to their communal identity as religious Americans. Washington responded to the Jews’ messages by repeating their own words, assuring them that the United States “gives bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Despite this rhetoric, Jews in the early republic also experienced the limits of religious freedom. For example, most states excluded all non-Christians from public office.

Public Roles . Many Jews entered civic life in other ways, however, often becoming leaders in business and related social activities. Solomon Simpson, for example, was a financier and a major stockholder in the Bank of New York, as well as one of the founders in 1794 of Tammany Hall, the Jeffersonian political organization that soon dominated New York politics; Simpson was even its president in 1797. Gershom Mendes Seixas, the hazan of New York’s Shearith Israel synagogue, was appointed one of the regents of Columbia University. Charleston’s Jewish community became the largest in America during the economic boom that city enjoyed after the Revolution. Other Jews helped open the frontier: the Monsanto family built Natchez into an important Mississippi port, and Abraham Mordecai founded Montgomery, Alabama, and introduced the cotton gin there. Their prominence did not protect Jews from bigotry, however, as many Americans were anti-Semitic and quick to conjure up illusions of Jewish financial conspiracies and other stereotypes. Federalist writer James Riv-ington attacked Simpson’s Jeffersonian politics by writing that Simpson had “a leering underlook and malicious grin, that seem to say to the honest man—approach me not.” Other forms of prejudice were not as crude, but just as damaging. Mordecai Manuel Noah of Charleston was appointed the U.S. counsel to Riga in 1811 and to Tunis in 1813, but was recalled by Secretary of State James Monroe in 1815, simply because of his religion.

Internal Divisions . Discrimination aside, early American Jews faced more-subtle threats to their viability. One was their small numbers, which made communal life hard to sustain. Migration within the United States affected Jews as well, as they moved from place to place seeking better opportunities. Communities also suffered from low rates of immigration and from differences within the Jewish community. Most immigrants before 1800 were Mediterranean, or Sephardic, Jews, whose rituals differed from those of the Eastern European, or Ashkenazic, Jews, who immigrated in greater numbers in later years. Not everyone liked the Sephardic rites that most American synagogues followed, which became clear in 1802 when a group from the Philadelphia synagogue separated and formed the first Ashkenazic synagogue. The Jewish religious communities were further weakened by the success of many Jews who intermarried with Christians and assimilated into Protestant culture. Many Protestants supported this assimilation, particularly those looking forward to the coming of the millennium, as one of the signs of Christ’s return was to be the conversion of the Jews to Christianity. American Jews contended with a fundamental lack of respect for their ways from many Protestants. Hannah Adams, a cousin of the second president, indicated the extent of this problem in her two-volume The History of the Jews (1812), one of the first works of religious history by an American. Despite a sympathetic account, Adams was “perplexed that the race should persist in rejecting the Messiah.” For all the apparent similarities between Jewish and Protestant experiences, the groups were fundamentally

different, and the differences would only become clearer with increased Jewish immigration after 1820.