All About the Jews in America Before and In 1776 and What the Declaration of Independence Gives Us All

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

   1776 was the year that is recognized as the USA's day of Independence from England.  The Fourth of July—also known as Independence Day or July 4th—has been a federal holiday in the United States since 1941, but the tradition of Independence Day celebrations goes back to the 18th century and the American Revolution. Because it falls on Sunday, we will also celebrate on Monday, the 5th.                                                   

On July 2nd, 1776, the Continental Congress voted in favor of independence, and two days later delegates from the 13 colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence, a historic document drafted by Thomas Jefferson.                                                           

Haym Solomon or (Salomon) was possibly the prime financier of the American side during the American War of Independence against Great Britain. He was born in Prussia and died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

Haym Salomon (also Solomon; anglicized from Chaim Salomon; April 7, 1740 – January 6, 1785) was a Polish-born Jewish businessman and political financial broker who, along with English-born Robert Morris, was a prime financier of the rebel American side during the American Revolutionary War against Great Britain.Sympathizing with the Patriot cause, Salomon joined the New York branch of the Sons of Liberty. In September 1776, he was arrested as a spy. The British pardoned him, but detained him for 18 months on a British boat as an interpreter for Hessian soldiers, German troops employed by the British. Salomon used his position to help prisoners of war from the Continental Army escape and encouraged the Hessians to desert the war effort. In 1778 Salomon was arrested again, convicted of espionage, and sentenced to death. Again, he escaped, making his way with his family to the revolutionary capital in Philadelphia.

                                                            1776 13 Colonies

Before and during the American Revolutionary War the Jews had representatives of their people upon both sides of the controversy, though the majority joined the colonial side. On the Non-Importation Agreement of 1769 the names of not less than five Jews are found; this is also the case with respect to other agreements of a similar nature.                                        

The outbreak of the Revolutionary War dissolved the congregation in New York; and upon the eve of the British occupancy of the town the majority of the congregation, headed by Gershom Mendes Seixas, took all the belongings of the synagogue and removed to Philadelphia, where they established the first regular congregation, the Mickvé Israel, in 1782. The Seixas family was a US Sephardic family  founded by Isaac Mendes Seixas (1708-1780) who emigrated to America from Portugal in 1730. His son, Gershom mendes Seixas (1745-1816) was minister (rabbi) of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York for some 50 years.  When the British occupied New York in 1776, he took the scrolls and other religious objects from the synagogue and went to Stratford, Connecticut and thence to Philadelphia where he helped found the 1st Jewish congregation in 1780.  After the British left New York, he returned to his duties there.  He was one of 13 clergymen to participate in George Washington's 1st inauguration.  Gershom became a trustee of Columbia College from 1787 to 1815.  His son, David Seixas (1788-1880) achieved prominence as an educator of the deaf and introduced the daguerrotype into America, while son Benjamin Mendes Seixas (1747-1817) was a founder of the New York stock exchange.  

The small number who remained in New York occasionally held services in the synagogue. Most of those that left for Philadelphia returned to New York after the war. 

Although the Jews participated prominently in the events leading up to the Revolution, it would appear that even in the midst of absorbing political discussions they were able, in 1774, to start another congregation. 

They were not all, however, to be found on the colonial side during the war,   

                                                               

1,2,3. Mordecai Sheftall (1735-1795) was a US Revolutionary patriot.  He was actively engaged in revolutionary activities in Georgie from the outbreak of the rebellion, took part in the defense of Savannah, and then was captured by the British). Levi Sheftall  must have been with him.  Sheftall Sheftall was another relative of Mordecai,

4. Philip Jacob Cohen b:before 1740 Son of Jacob Nathan Cohen, husband of Belia Cohen, father of Jacob Philip de Heer, most likely from Holland,  

   Most Americans, as well as Jewish-Americans, have virtually no notion that Jews ever existed in the South before the modern era, let alone at the very founding of one of the colonies.

Beth Elohim, Charleston, ca.1812

Who would have guessed that the second oldest extant synagogue in the nation is in Charleston, or that its congregation was the first in America to adopt Reformed Judaism?  Who would have thought that there were Jews fighting as Patriots in the American Revolution, let alone that a Georgian was the highest ranking Jewish officer in the American Continental Army?

5. Philip Minis (Philip Minis (1734-1789), the son of Abraham and Abigail Minis, was the first white male child born in Georgia; he was born on July 11. In 1774, Minis married Judith Polack (1745-1819). He was a very successful merchant in Savannah. An active patriot during the Revolutionary War, his name is listed on the 1780 Georgia Disqualifying Act, a British document listing people who supported the patriots, and who therefore could not hold public office. Minis died March 6, 1789.), 

These 5 men  were in the first days of the Revolution disqualified by the authorities from holding any office of trust in the province because of the pronounced revolutionary ideas which they advocated. The community was dispersed during the Revolution, but many Jews returned immediately after the close of the war.

"The history of the Jews in Colonial America begins upon their arrival as early as the 1650s. The first Jews that came to the New World were Sephardi Jews (of Spain and Portugal) who arrived in New Amsterdam", which will later be called New York. "Later major settlements of Jews would later occur in New York, New England, and Pennsylvania."                                 

Jacob Barsimson must be the 1st Jewish settler in New Amsterdam, New Netherland on August 22, 1654, arriving in the ship, Pereboom from Holland. He preceded Asser Levy with the 23 other Jews in the St. Charles.  

                                                            

Asser Levy (Van Swellem) is first mentioned in public records in New Amsterdam in 1654 in connection with the group of 23 Jews who arrived as refugees from Brazil. It is likely he preceded their arrival. Levy was the (kosher) butcher for the small Jewish community. He fought for Jewish rights in the Dutch colony and is famous for having secured the right of Jews to be admitted as Burghers and to serve guard duty for the colony.  Governor Peter  Stuyvesant at first refuse them entrance .  These 23 Sephardi Jews, refugees "big and little" of families fleeing persecution by the Portuguese Inquisition after the conquest of Dutch Brazil, had sought refuge and were denied.  The Jews had sailed from Recife on the ship Valck, one of at least sixteen that left mostly bound for the Netherlands at the end of the Dutch–Portuguese War. Valck was blown off course to Jamaica and/or Cuba. According to account in Saul Levi Morteira and David Franco Mendes, they were then taken by Spanish pirates for a time. In Cuba, the Jews eventually boarded the St. Catrina, called by later historians the "Jewish Mayflower", which took them to New Amsterdam.   It is widely commemorated as the starting point of New York Jewish and Jewish-American history.

"In 1685, the application of Saul Brown (originally Saul Pardo) who died in 1708,  to trade at retail was denied, as was also that of the Jews for liberty to exercise their religion publicly. That they did so privately in some definite place of worship would appear from the fact that a map of New York, dated 1695, shows the location of a Jewish synagogue on Beaver Street, also that Saul Brown was the minister"( was he frightened to say "rabbi?") , and that the congregation comprised twenty families. Saul Pardo was the 1st known hazzan of the Jewish community of New York.   Pardo was a Sephardi family, originally from Salonica and subsequently found in Italy, Holland, England and America.  David Pardo  (1719-1792) was born in Venice, was a rabbi at Spalato before settling in Jerusalem.  

The Jewish settlers faced discrimination, but nevertheless had an important impact in the colonies.

A group of Jews settled in Newport, Rhode Island in the late 1600s due to the official religious tolerance of the colony as established by Roger Williams. In other parts of New England there were probably occasional settlers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the intolerance of the Puritans rendered impossible the establishment of any religious communities. According to several sources, Moses Simonson, who settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621, may have had Dutch Jewish ancestry.                                                                  

An interesting personality is that of Judah Monis (1683- 1764) Hebraist, born in Algiers or in Italy,, went to New York in 1716 and to Boston in 1720.  After being publicly baptized at Harvard in 1722, he got the job of instructor in Hebrew there until 1760.  His Dickdook Leshon Gnebreet was the 1st Hebrew grammar in America.  "He  became a convert to Christianity and filled the chair of Hebrew in Harvard College from 1722 until his death in 1764" Why did he convert?  Was it to get that job?  Would they not hire a Jew? 

The earliest mention of a Jew in Massachusetts bears the date May 3, 1649, and there are references to Jews among the inhabitants of Boston in 1695 and 1702; but they can be regarded only as stragglers, as no settlers made their homes in Massachusetts until the Revolutionary War drove the Jews from Newport.

                                                             

 In 1777, Aaron "Duarte" Lopez  (1731-1782) a merchant and Portuguese Marrano by birth, went to Newport, RI in 1752.  With his father-in-law,  Jacob Rodriguez Rivera, he formed a partnership which promoted the whaling industry and developed Newport's commercial standing in other ways.  In 1763, he laid the cornerstone of the Newport synagogue.  In 1777, when the British captured Newport, his family and 59 other Jews, moved to Leicester, Massachusetts and went from Newport to Leicester, and established themselves there; but this settlement did not survive the close of the war.   He became a philanthropist.  Through his varied commercial ventures, he became the wealthiest person in Newport, Rhode Island, in British America. In 1761 and 1762, Lopez unsuccessfully sued the Colony of Rhode Island for citizenship. This means that because he was a Jew, he was not allowed citizenship. It took 1776's war to bring that about.                                                       

       Doctor on call, Dr.Jacob Lumbrozo was a Lisbon, Portuguese-born physician, farmer, and trader resident in the British colony of Maryland in the middle of the 17th century. He is the first Jewish resident of Maryland who can be identified by documentary evidence,  He died between September 24, 1665 and May 31, 1666)

"The most prominent figure" in Maryland, "who was unquestionably a Jew, was a Dr. Jacob Lumbrozo, who had arrived January 24, 1656, and who, in 1658, was tried for blasphemy,  that is, for denial of the doctrine of the Trinity, thus becoming liable to punishment by death and forfeiture of lands and goods, .but was released by reason of the general amnesty granted in honor of the accession of Richard Cromwell (March 3, 1658). Letters of denization were issued to Lumbrozo September 10, 1663. Besides practising medicine, he also owned a plantation, engaged in trade with the Native Americans, and had active intercourse with London merchants. He was one of the earliest medical practitioners in the colony, and his career casts much light upon the history and nature of religious tolerance in Maryland. By the strength of his personality he was able to disregard nearly all the laws which would have rendered his residence in the colony impossible, and he seems to have observed his faith even though this, under the laws, was forbidden. The unfavorable environment rendered the admittance of Jews to Maryland difficult, and until the Constitution of 1776 established the religious rights of all, few Jews settled in the colony."

America wasn't such an easy  country to enter, but the Declaration of Independence actually gave us citizenship when it hadn't before.  

Resource:

https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/july-4th

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Colonial_America

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/661547/about-philip-jacob-cohen.

https://www.geni.com/people/Philip-Jacob-Cohen/6000000000911747186

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Lumbrozo

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23601464

http://www.newamsterdamhistorycenter.org/media/files/Inventory_Article_90_3hershkowitz.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_arrival_in_New_Amsterdam

https://savannahambitions.wordpress.com/cultural-institutional/msjah/

https://thejerusalemconnection.us/blog/2010/09/29/early-jewish-contributions-to-america/ by Victor Sharpe