INTRODUCTION.

THE JEWS AS EARLY INTERNATIONAL TRADERS.

The ten centuries which passed between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the discovery of the New World are commonly known as the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages. They were, on the whole, very dark indeed for most of the inhabitants of Europe, as well as for the Jews who were scattered among them. It was a time of the fermentation of religious and national ideas, a formative period for the mind and the body politic of the races from which the great nations of the present civilized world were evolved. It was a period of violent hatreds, of cruel persecutions, of that terrible earnestness which prompts and justifies the extermination of enemies and even of opponents; there was almost constant war between nations, between classes, between creeds and sects. The ordinary man had no rights even in theory, the truths “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” were not self-evident then; they were not even thought of until a much later era.

The treatment accorded to the Jews in our own times in the countries where the general conditions are nearest to those prevailing in the dark ages, gives a clear idea of what the Jew had to undergo when the average degree of culture was so much lower than it is in the least developed of the Christian countries at present. The records of the times are so filled with pillage, expulsions and massacres, that they impress us as having been common occurrences, though they happened further apart to those who lived through the peaceful intervals which distance of time makes to appear short to us. There were, of course, some bright spots, the most shining of which was the Iberian peninsula during the earlier part of the Moorish domination. Sometimes a kind-hearted king would afford his Jews protection and even grant them valuable privileges; a clear-headed prince often found it to his own interest to utilize them for the advancement of the commerce of his dominion, and in a rare period of peace and prosperity there also happened a general relaxation of the severity which characterized the time. But if we view the entire thousand years as a single historical period, we find the condition of the Jews slowly deteriorating; with the result that while the modern nations were welded together and came out of the medieval furnace strengthened and developed, the Jews were pushed back, segregated and degraded, ready for the numerous expulsions and various sufferings which continued for more than two centuries in Western Europe and are not yet over in other parts of the Old World.

The favorable position of the Jews at the beginning of the Middle Ages is less familiar to the reading public, even to the Jewish reader, than the troublesome times which came later. As a matter of fact the Jews were, except for the lack of national unity and of the possession of an independent home, better situated materially four centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple than before the last dissolution of the Kingdom of Judah. The instinct for commerce which is latent in the “Semitic” race was awakened in the Diaspora and, after an interruption of more than a thousand years, we find, at the end of the classical times, international trade again almost exclusively in the hands of members of that race. The Sumero-Accadians or original Babylonians who were the earliest known international traders on land, and the Phoenicians, who first dared to trade over seas, were of Semitic origin. As foreign commerce is the highest form of activity in regard to the utilization of human productivity, so it is also the forerunner of mental activity and of the spread of an ennobling and instructive culture. The beginnings of both Egyptian and Greek civilization, according to the latest discoveries, point unmistakably to Mesopotamian or Phoenician origin, with a strong probability that the latter received it from the former in times which we usually describe as pre-historic, but about which we now possess considerable exact information. Culture followed the great route of the caravans to Syria and Egypt on one side, to Iran, India and as far as China in an opposite direction. And if we accept the wholly incorrect and un-scientific division of the white race into Aryans and Semites, then this original and most fertile of the cultures of humanity was undoubtedly Semitic. A more modern and more nearly correct division would place these ancient inhabitants of the plateau of Asia as a part of the great Mediterranean or brunette race, which includes, besides all the so-called Semites, a number of European nations which are classed as Aryans. Greece succeeded Phœnicia and was in turn succeeded by Rome in the hegemony of international trade as well as in that of general culture. Both commerce and culture declined when the ancient civilization was all but destroyed by the invasion of the blond barbarians of the northern forests, who were themselves destined to attain in a far-away future the highest form of civilization of which mankind has hitherto proven itself capable. (See Zollschan “Das Rassenproblem,” Vienna, 1910, pp. 206 ff.)

It so happened that at the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire, or, as it is usually called, the beginning of the Middle Ages, another people of Semitic origin, the Jews, were for the most part engaged in international trade. There are records of Jewish merchants of that period shipping or exporting wine, oil, honey, fish, cattle, woolens, etc., from Spain to Rome and other Latin provinces, from Media to Brittannia, from the Persian Gulf and Ethiopia to Macedonia and Italy; there was no important seaport or commercial center in which the Jews did not occupy a commanding position. Their prominence as importers and exporters rather increased than diminished by the downfall of the great Empire. The new nations of the Germanic kingdoms which were founded on the ruins of Rome, knew nothing of international trade, and the position of the Jews as merchants was accepted by them as a matter of course. Hence the first traces of Jewish settlements in modern European countries are almost exclusively to be found in the earliest records of commerce and of trading privileges. They are then known as traders with distant countries, as sea-going men, as owners of vessels and as slave-traders. The commercial note or written obligation to pay, which is accepted in lieu of payment and is itself negotiable as a substitute for money, is a Jewish invention of those times. They developed industries and improved the material conditions of every place in which they were found in large numbers. As late as 1084, when their position had been already much weakened and the coming Crusades were casting their shadows, Bishop Rudiger of Speyer began his edict of privileges granted to the Jews with the statement: “As I wish to turn the village of Speyer into a city ... I call the Jews to settle there.” (See ibid. p. 351.)1

THE SPANISH JEWS AS LAND OWNERS.

Canon Law on one side and the rise of cities on the other shattered the position of the Jews until they were reduced to sore straits at the end of the Middle Ages. The church labored persistently and relentlessly through the centuries in which Europe was thoroughly Christianized, to separate the Jews as far as possible from their Gentile neighbors. The ties which united the two parts of the population by a thousand threads of mutual interest, friendship, co-operation and beneficial intercourse, were slowly loosened and, where possible, all but severed. At the various Church Councils, from Nicea to the last Lateran, there was laid down the theory of the necessity to force the Jews out of the national life of the countries in which they dwelt, and to segregate them as a distinct, inferior and outlawed class. The principles enunciated by the higher clergy were disseminated by the priests and the demagogues among the masses. Special laws and restrictions were often followed by attacks, sacking of the Jewish quarters and degradations of various kinds. In the twelfth and the following three centuries the ill-treatment was often followed by expulsions and cancellation of debts, while heavy fines on individual Jews or on entire communities were accepted on both sides as a lesser evil or as easy terms for escaping greater hardships. The climax of this method of dealing with the Jews, the greatest blow administered to the unhappy Children of Israel by Christian princes, was the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and its concomitant, the expulsion from Portugal five years afterwards.

But the Church alone could never have accomplished the ruin of the Jews if the changing economic conditions and the rise of a large and powerful class of Christian merchants did not help to undermine the position of the erstwhile solitary trading class. The burgher classes were the chief opponents and persecutors of their Jewish competitors: they seconded, and in many cases instigated, the efforts of the clergy to exclude the Jews from many occupations. So when the city overpowered the land owner and began to exert a preponderant influence on the government, the cause of the Jew was lost, or at least postponed until a more humane and liberal time, when the ordinary claims of the brotherhood of man were to overcome the narrow-minded mercantile and ecclesiastical policies of a ruder age. The great historian Ranke pointed out that the struggle between the cities and the nobility in Castille was decided in favor of the former by the marriage of Queen Isabella to Ferdinand of Aragon. It was also this marriage which sealed the doom of the Spanish Jews, as well as that of their former friends and protectors, the Moors, who had by that time sunk so low, that it was impossible for them to keep their last stronghold in Europe much longer.

Though the outlook in Spain was very dark, it was much worse in all other known countries, which accounts for the fact that there was hardly any emigration from the Christian parts of Spain in the time immediately preceding the expulsion. The Spanish Jew was then, and has to some extent remained even unto this day, the aristocrat among the Jews of the world. His intense love for that country is still smouldering in the hearts of his descendants, and not without reason. In other European countries the Jew could, during the middle ages, only enjoy the sympathy and sometimes be accorded the protection of the nobility. In Spain and Portugal he actually belonged to that class. For, as Selig (Dr. Paulus) Cassel has justly remarked (in his splendid article Juden in Ersch and Gruber’s Encyclopædia) sufficient attention has not been paid by Jewish historians to the important fact that Spain and Portugal were the only considerable countries during the Middle Ages in which the Jews were permitted to own land. The statement, for which there is an apparent Jewish authority, that they owned about a third of Spain at the time of their exile, is doubtless an exaggeration, but there can be no question of their being extensive holders of land-properties.

This largely explains why the Jew in Spain has not sunk in public estimation as much as he did in other countries, why his fate was different, and, in the end, worse than that of his more humiliated and degraded brother elsewhere. When the German or French Jew was forced out of commerce he could only become a money-lender at the usurious rates prevailing in those times. This vocation drew on him the contempt and hatred of all classes, as was always the case and as is the case in many places even to-day. But while the usurer was despised he was very useful, often even indispensable, especially in those times when there was a great scarcity of the precious metals and of convertible capital. This may explain why the exiled Jews were in other countries usually called back to the places from which they were exiled. The prejudice of the age may render their work disreputable, but it was none the less necessary; they were missed as soon as they left, and on many occasions negotiations for their return were begun as soon as the popular fury cooled down, or when the object of spoliation was attained.

Not so in Spain. The Jewish merchant who could no longer hold his own against his stronger non-Jewish competitor, could do what is often done by others who voluntarily retire from such pursuits, i. e., invest his capital in landed estates. We can imagine that the transition did not at all seem to be forced, that those who caused it, and even its victims, might have considered it as the natural course of events. After the great massacres of 1391, a century before the expulsion, many Jews emigrated to Moorish North Africa, where there still remained some degree of tolerance and friendliness for them, mingled perhaps with some hope of re-conquering the lost parts of the Iberian peninsula. But later there was less thought of migration, least of all of emigrating to the parts of Spain which still remained in the possession of the Moors. The race which was, seven centuries before, assisted by the Jews to become masters of Iberia, and which together with them rose to a height of culture and mental achievement which is not yet properly appreciated in modern history, has now become degenerate and almost savage in its fanaticism. The Jew of Spain was still proud, despite his sufferings. He could not see his fate as clearly as we can now from the perspective of five hundred years. He was rooted in the country in which he lived for many centuries. He was, like most men of wealth and position, inclined to be optimistic, and he could not miss his only possible protection against expropriation or exile—the possession of full rights of citizenship—because the Jews nowhere had it in those times and had not had it since the days of ancient Rome.

The catastrophe of the great expulsion, which came more unexpectedly than we can now perceive, was possibly facilitated by the position which the Jews held as land owners. It certainly contributed to make the decree of exile irrevocable. The holder of real property is more easily and more thoroughly despoiled, because he cannot hide his most valuable possessions or escape with them. He is not missed when he is gone; his absence is hardly felt after the title to his lands has been transferred to the Crown or to favorites of the government. When the robbery is once committed only compunction or an awakened sense of justice could induce the restitution which re-admission or recall would imply. And as abstract moral forces had very little influence in those cruel days, it is no wonder that the expulsion was final—the only one of that nature in Christian Europe.

This peculiar position of the Jews in Spain and Portugal was also the cause of the immense number of conversions which gave these anti-Jewish nations a very large mixture of Jewish blood in their veins. The temptation to cling to the land and to the high social position which could not be enjoyed elsewhere was too strong for all but the strongest. Thus we find Marranos or secret Jews in all the higher walks of life in the times of the discovery of America. The more steadfast of their brethren who were equally prominent in the preceding period assisted in various ways earlier voyages of discovery, and even contributed indirectly to the success of the one great voyage, which did not begin until they were exiled from Spain forever.

But we must constantly bear in mind, when speaking of the Middle Ages and of the two centuries succeeding it, the sixteenth and the seventeenth, that the Jews did not possess the right of citizenship and were not, even when they were treated very well, considered as an integral part of the population. This was the chief weakness of their position and the ultimate cause of all the persecutions, massacres and expulsions. Still they had many opportunities and made the most of them to advance their own interests and those of the countries in which they dwelt. We find them in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in close touch with the current of national life in the countries which were most absorbed in enterprises of navigation and discovery. Many of them were still great merchants, numerous others were scholars, mathematicians and astronomers or astrologers; some had influence in political life as advisers or fiscal officials at the royal courts. They accomplished much, as Jews and as Marranos, even when the danger of persecution must have been ever-present, or later, when in constant terror of the Inquisition. Many of them could therefore participate in the work which led to the discovery of a New World, where their descendants were destined to find a home safer and more free than was ever dreamt of in medieval Jewish philosophy.

CHAPTER III.

VICTIMS OF THE INQUISITION IN MEXICO AND IN PERU.

Impossibility of obtaining even approximately correct figures about the Inquisition—A few typical cases—The Carabajal family—Relaxation for several decades—The notable case of Francisco Maldonado de Silva.

The Inquisition, or, as it styled itself, the Holy Office, was an institution of tremendous power and influence which during its existence of more than three centuries deeply impressed the character of the Spanish and Portuguese peoples. A great number of books were written about it, but the material to be dealt with is so vast that none of the works purporting to be histories of the Inquisition really deserve that name. It has been mentioned already in the preceding chapter that an immense mass of documentary material which is heaped up in various archives awaits to be sifted and worked up. An idea of the actual quantity of this material can be obtained from the statement made by Mr. E. N. Adler, in the monogram on the Inquisition in Peru quoted above, that thirty-three million documents, relating to the Inquisition, are preserved in 80,000 “legajos” or bundles in the castille of Simancas, a small town, seven miles from Valladolid, in Spain.

It is therefore next to impossible to attempt to give a general review of the work of that awful tribunal in the old world or the new; it is even unsafe to quote figures as to the total number of trials, Autos da Fé or of victims, because most of the authorities contradict one another or disagree in vital points. Many facts which are given at one time as reasonably certain, are soon disproved by the discovery of more authentic records, which necessitates a constant changing of the time, the place and the identity of persons spoken of in such descriptions. It is therefore considered best to mention here only a few typical cases of victims about whose identity and Jewish extraction there can be no doubt. From these the reader may form his own opinion as to what was constantly happening in the various places since the Inquisition’s firm establishment in the New World in the second half of the sixteenth century, until its final disappearance at the end of the eighteenth and in some instances as late as the beginning of the nineteenth centuries.

Several members of the Carabajal (Carvalho?) family suffered martyrdom in Mexico at the end of the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the seventeenth. Francisca Nunez de Carabajal, born in Portugal about 1540, was among the members of the family seized by the Inquisition in 1590. She was tortured until she implicated her husband and her children, and the entire family was forced to confess and abjure Judaism at a public Auto da Fé which was celebrated on Saturday, February 24, 1590. Later, after more than five years’ imprisonment, they were convicted of relapsing into Judaism, and Francisca, her son Luis and her four daughters were burned at the stake in Mexico City, December 8, 1596. She was the sister of Don Luis de Carabajal y Cueva (born in Portugal, 1539), who was appointed Governor of New Leon, Mexico, in 1579 and is said to have died in 1595. He arrived in Mexico in 1580, where, in consideration of his appointment as governor of a somewhat ill-defined district, he undertook to colonize a certain territory at his own expense, being allowed the privilege of reimbursing himself out of the revenue. There were many Spanish Jews among his colonists, and within a decade after their settlement more than a score were denounced and more or less severely punished for Judaizing. He is the subject of a work, half romantic and half historical, by Mr. C. K. Landis, entitled Carabalja the Jew, a Legend of Monterey (Vineland, 1894).

Another heroic martyr of Mexico was Don Tomas de Sobremonte, a Judaizer, who died at the stake April 11, 1649, without uttering a groan, mocking “the Pope and his hirelings” and taunting his tormentors with his last breath.

The Inquisition in Lima, Peru, is known to have solemnized thirty-four Autos da Fé at that place between 1573 (November 15) and 1806 (July 17) and at ten or eleven of them there were Jewish victims, their numbers ranging from one or two to as high as fifty-six (January 23, 1639). From the earliest day of its establishment it looked with suspicion upon the Portuguese who settled there. In this case as in many others, Portuguese was only another name for Marranos, and they were treated with great severity. There is a record of one David Ebron, who in 1597 sent a memorial to Philip II. relating to his discoveries and services in South America, but it is not known how far his claims were recognized. About 1604 or 1605 a number of those who were accused in Peru of Judaizing sent memorials to the King of Spain in which they pleaded that life under such conditions had become unbearable. Relief was obtained in the form of an Apostolic Brief from Pope Clement VIII., commanding the Inquisitors to release, without delay, all Judaizing Portuguese in Peru. When this order arrived in Lima, only two prisoners were still detained in the dungeons of the Tribunal, Gonzalo de Luna and Juan Vicente. The others had either become reconciled or had suffered death at the stake.

The liberal decree, which arrived too late for most of the complainants who were to benefit by it, still seems to have had the effect of securing the Marranos against molestation for several decades. But as soon as they had increased in wealth and influence the establishment of a new Tribunal was ordered in the Province of Tucuman, it having been ascertained that quite a colony of Jews were domiciled in the Rio de la Plata. In consequence of this order, dated May 18, 1636, the Portuguese were again hounded and many of them lost life and fortune. The Inquisition succeeded in ferreting out the fact that in Chili alone, at that time, there were no less than twenty-eight (secret) Jews, most of them enjoying the rights of citizenship and living securely and at peace with their neighbors. It has now been practically ascertained that a considerable number of Jews or Marranos lived in Peru, Chili, Argentine, Cartagena and La Plata towards the end of the sixteenth century, that their number and wealth increased in the first half of the seventeenth, when the new era of persecutions was ushered in by attacks and denunciations.

A notable instance, typical of the times, was the case of Francisco Maldonado de Silva. His sister Doña Isabel Maldonado, forty years old, on the 8th day of July, 1626, testified before the Commissioner of the City of Santiago de Chile that her brother had, to her horror and indignation, confessed to being a Jew, imploring her not to betray him and using all endeavors to convert her too. He was arrested in Concepcion, Chili, April 29, 1627, and was transported to Lima in July of the same year, where he was imprisoned in a cell of the convent of San Domingo. He is described in the records of the Tribunal as a bachelor, thirty-three years old, an American by birth, having been born of new-Christian parents in the city of San Miguel, Province of Tucuman, Peru. His father, the Licentiate Diego Nunez de Silva, and his brother, Diego de Silva, were both reconciled by the Inquisition at an auto held in Lima March 13, 1605. He confessed that he was brought up as a Catholic and that up to his eighteenth year he rigidly observed the tenets of the Christian faith. According to a circumstantial description of his case (Publications, XI, pp. 163 ff.), he remained in prison for nearly twelve years, during which time he had many hearings and disputed with many priests who undertook to convert him. He also wrote much in defence of his views and at one time made a nearly successful effort to escape. In the last years of his confinement he fasted very much, thereby becoming so feeble that he could not turn in his bed, “being nothing but skin and bones.” He was, with ten others, burnt at the stake in Lima, on January 23, 1639, at a splendid and gruesome Auto da Fé, for which the preparations were costly and elaborate, involving fifty days of uninterrupted labor, holidays included.

CHAPTER VII.

THE JEWS IN SURINAM OR DUTCH GUIANA.

Jews in Brazil after the expulsion of the Dutch—The community of Paramaribo, Surinam, was founded when Recife was still flourishing—First contact with the English, whom the Jews preferred—David Nassi and the colony of Cayenne—Privileges granted by Lord Willoughby—“de Jooden Savane”—Trouble with slaves and bush negroes—Plantations with Hebrew names—German Jews—Legal status and banishments—Jewish theaters—Literature and history.

The history of the Jews in Brazil practically ends with the termination of the Dutch rule, and there is a gap which extends until the new settlements at the beginning of the twentieth century. There was the usual aftermath of Marranos and persecutions which was almost a repetition of the happenings under Portuguese dominion prior to the short, liberal era under Holland’s sway. Some new-Christians continued to reside in Brazil after the capitulation of 1654. Their number was largely increased towards the end of the seventeenth century, when Portugal again banished to Brazil the Marranos who had become reconciled. These transportations continued from 1682 to 1707; and the Jews again became to be known as a distinct class. They were closely watched, however, and many were sent back to Lisbon from time to time, to be tried by the Inquisition. Many Jews from Rio were burned at an Auto da Fé at Lisbon in 1723. Several of these martyrs were men of great repute, the most prominent being the famous Portuguese poet and dramatist, Antonio José da Silva, a native of Rio de Janeiro, who was burned as a Jew at Lisbon in 1739. In 1734 Jews appear to have been influential in controlling the price of diamonds in Brazil.

The transportations to Lisbon of those accused of Judaizing had become so common at the middle of the eighteenth century, that “a wide ruin was produced and many sugar mills at the Rio stopped in consequence.” The influential Marquis de Pombal, with all his power, did not venture to proclaim toleration for the Jews; but he succeeded in having laws enacted making it penal for any person to reproach another for his Jewish origin, and removing all disabilities of Jewish blood, even from the descendants of those who had suffered under the Inquisition. He prohibited public Autos da Fé, and required all lists of families of Jewish extraction to be delivered up. These statutes deprived the Inquisition of its most important means of accusation; and as a result the Marranos were ultimately absorbed in the Catholic population of Brazil.

The Jewish community which was founded in Surinam or Dutch Guiana, near Brazil, in the days when the community of Recife was still in a flourishing condition, and which soon rose to prominence after the dispersion of the latter, has enjoyed an almost uninterrupted existence until the present day. According to the latest researches, the oldest indication in the archives of the Dutch-Portuguese Jews shows that the Jews had already settled in Surinam in the year 1639.5 As far as can be traced, the first Jewish marriage was celebrated there between Haham Isaac Mehatob and Judith Mehatob in 1643. The text of the “Ketubah,” which has been preserved, proves that Surinam, or rather the city of Paramaribo, had already in that year a sufficient number of Jews to require the services of a Haham or Rabbi.

Though the Dutch had claims on it, Guiana was at that time practically British territory, and it was there that the Jew came first in contact with the Englishman in the New World, many years before they began to dwell together in North America. And while it was recognized that of all European nations the Dutch were then the most friendly to the Jews, many of the latter who had experience with both nationalities in that part of the world soon learned to prefer the English. Lord Willoughby, who arrived for the second time in Surinam in 1652, brought with him several Jewish families, and the community was thus increasing even before the influx of refugees from Brazil two years later.

On September 12, 1659, the Jews were permitted, under the patronage of David Nassi, to found a colony on the island of Cayenne (French Guiana). According to the tenor of the eighteen articles contained in the letters patent of that date, all the land over which they exercised the rights of possession within four years from that date, would become their property; and they would be allowed to administer justice according to the Jewish usages and customs. The colony was further increased by the arrival, in 1660, of one hundred and fifty-two Jews from Leghorn, Italy. But the four years’ limit was barely passed when the French took Cayenne in 1664, and all the Jews left the island for Surinam under the leadership of the above-mentioned David Nassi. The French of the time of “the Grand Monarch” Louis XIV would not suffer Jews to be settled in their colonies; a century and a quarter had to pass before France, shaken to its very foundations by the great revolution which began in 1789, was the first of modern European nations to grant its Jews the absolute equality which is implied in full citizenship.

Even while the Portuguese Jews were still in Cayenne, they were given by Lord Willoughby, in 1662, the same privileges in Surinam as the English colonists. A year after their return, on August 17, 1665, was issued the famous grant of privileges by the Governor, Council and Assembly of Surinam, of which the preamble reads as follows:

“Whereas, it is good and sound policy to encourage as much as possible whatever may tend to the increase of a new colony, and to invite persons of whatsoever country and religion to come and reside here and to traffic with us; and whereas, we found that the Hebrew nation, now already resident here, have, with their persons and property, proved themselves useful and beneficial to this colony; and being desirous further to encourage them to continue their residence and trade here, we have with the authority of the Governor, his Council and Assembly passed the following act:”

The provisions of the act (the full text of which is reproduced in “Publications”, vol. III, pp. 145–46; vol. IX, pp. 144–45, and vol. XVI, pp. 179–80) is extremely favorable to the Jews. The British Government of Surinam therein ratified all former privileges of the Jews, guaranteed them full enjoyment and free exercise of their religious rites and usages, and made void any summons served upon them on their Sabbaths and holidays. They were not to be called for any public duties on those days, except in urgent cases. Civil suits of less value than ten thousand pounds of sugar were to be decided by their Elders, and the magistrates were obliged to enforce their judgments. They were also permitted to bequeath their property according to their own laws of inheritance. They were given ten acres of land for the erection of a Synagogue and such buildings as the congregation might need; and in order to induce Jews to settle there, it was decided that all who came for that purpose should be considered as British-born subjects, in return for obeying all the decrees of the King of England which did not infringe on their privileges.

For Portuguese Jews of the seventeenth century, i. e., for extremely conservative Jews whose relatives were at that very time tortured and burned at the stake for adherence to their religion, these privileges were probably much more acceptable than an outright admission to full citizenship could have been. There was no desire or striving for assimilation on either side in those times. No especially organized movement was necessary to emphasize the fact, which was then self-evident, of the existence of a separate Hebrew nation. Nobody thought otherwise before the philosophers of the eighteenth century instilled in the minds of the civilized nations the idea of the modern assimilationist. The frank selfishness of the preamble was, therefore, a better guarantee of good faith and more convincing than phrases about humanity and inherent rights could possibly be in those illiberal times. The English were thus less sentimental and more business-like in their dealings with the Jews than the Dutch, and were probably on that account more trusted. When Surinam became a Dutch province, July 13, 1667, the Jews were allowed all rights of citizenship. Still a number of them left with the English and went to Jamaica. Another declaration by the home government of Holland, made two years later, to the Jews of Surinam, that they would be allowed free exercise of their religion, tends to prove that there must have been cases, or at least fears, of restraint in that respect. Even if the “Documents relating to the attempted departure of the Jews from Surinam in 1675” (edited by Dr. J. H. Hollander, in “Publications” VI, pp. 9–29) in which the anxiety of many Jews to leave Surinam for British territory is described, should be considered as somewhat exaggerated, it could not have been entirely an invention. The Jews’ preference for the British rule was therewith clearly established, and so was their acknowledged usefulness in the newly founded colonies.

The Jews of Surinam were then chiefly engaged in agriculture, the wealthy among them being large planters and slave holders. The chief men of the congregation were David Nassi, Isaac Perreira, Isaac Aries, Henriques de Caseras, Raphael Aboab, Samuel Nassi, Isaac R. de Pardo, Aaron de Silva, Alaus de Fonseca, Isaac Mera, Daniel Mesia, Jacob Nunez, Israel Calabi Cid, Isaac da Costa, Isaac Drago, Bento da Costa. The first Synagogue was built in 1672, on an elevated spot in Thorarica belonging to the Jews, da Costa and Solis. There are still some tombstones with illegible Hebrew inscriptions. We hear about that time of Rabbi Isaac Neto who was called from England as minister of the congregation of Paramaribo (1674 or 1680), and later we find recorded the name of another rabbi, David Pardo, who also came from London and died in 1713 (or 1717). The last named wrote, while still in Europe, “Sefer Shulhan Tahor” (Amsterdam, 1686), extracts from the “Shulhan Aruk,” and is considered the most distinguished rabbi of Surinam.

In 1682 the above-named Samuel Nassi, who has been described as capitein and as the richest planter in Surinam, gave to the Jews an island on the river Surinam, about seventy miles from the sea, where most of them settled and which was henceforth known as “de Jooden Savane” (Savannah of the Jews, the name originally meaning: a treeless region) and was the principal seat of the Jewish community of Surinam. It was there that the Congregation Berakah-we-Shalom (Blessing and Peace) built its splendid Synagogue in 1685. One hundred years later the centennial of the dedication of that Synagogue was appropriately celebrated on Wednesday, Heshwan 8, 5546 (October 12, 1785), of which a record was printed in Amsterdam the following year, partly in Hebrew and partly in Dutch. (See Roest, Catalog ... der Rosenthalschen Bibliothek I, p. 738.)

When a French squadron attacked Surinam in 1689, the Jews under the leadership of Samuel Nassi did good service in beating them off. Similar valuable service was rendered in 1712, this time under Capitein Isaac Pinto, against another French attack under Cassard. The unfriendliness of the French was demonstrated again in that year, when they took the Jewish Savannah and desecrated the Synagogue by slaughtering a pig on the “Teibah” or Ammud. The Jews, on the other hand, did not always get the protection to which they were entitled. When the slaves on the plantation of M. Machado revolted and killed their master in 1690, Governor Van Scherpenhuitzen refused to assist the Jews. At a later period (in 1718), when there was continual trouble with bush negroes, who destroyed the plantation of David Nassi, they were chastised by Jews under the leadership of Capitein Jacob d’Avilar. David Nassi (1672–1743) himself served under him with distinction, and his praises were sung by the Judeo-Spanish poetess Benvenide Belmonte. We also find traces of legal restrictions in such instances as the decree of 1703, by which all Jewish marriages contracted in Surinam up to that year are confirmed, but henceforth they must be made in conformity with the Dutch marriage law of 1580. Sunday-closing laws were also brought into force against them, but they were later repealed.

A list of the names of about sixty-five plantations belonging to Jews at that period and the names of the owners has been preserved. (“Publications,” IX, p. 129 ff.) Some of the plantations bear Hebrew names like Carmel, Hebron, Succoth and Beer-Sheba. The number of Jews in Surinam was then (about 1694) 570, consisting of ninety-two Dutch or Portuguese families, about fifty unmarried persons and ten or twelve German families. They possessed about nine thousand slaves.

Difficulties between the earlier settlers and the Germans, who arrived later, soon arose, and in 1734 the latter requested permission to form a separate community, which was granted. They were, however, prohibited to own any possession on the Jewish Savannah, nor were they allowed to have their own jurisdiction. The act of the separation of the “Hoogduytsche” (High-German) Jews, who founded the congregation Neweh Shalom, is dated January 5, 1735. It is signed by A. Henry de Scheusses (Governor) and Samuel Uz. Davilar, Ishac Carrilho, Abraham Pinto Junior, Jehoshuah C. Nassi, for the Portuguese; Solomon Joseph Levie, I. Meyer Wolff, Gerrit Jacobs, Jakob Arons Polak for the German Jews. The Portuguese thereupon built a new Synagogue, “Zedek we-Shalom,” which was dedicated in 1737. But the Germans also stuck to the Portuguese Minhag or prayer-book, and we have it on the authority of Rabbi Roos of Paramaribo (1905) that there never existed a Synagogue with the Minhag Ashkenaz in Surinam.

Bloody conflicts with negroes continued for about forty years longer, and many valiant deeds of Jewish military leaders and their followers embellish the records of that period. David Nassi was killed in battle at the age of 71 (in 1743), after being successful in more than thirty skirmishes, and was succeeded as capitein by Isaac Carvalho. In 1749 another Jewish capitein, Naär, won a victory against the Auka negroes; while in 1750 young Isaac Nassi and three hundred of his men were killed by an overwhelming force of bush negroes. At last, in 1774, forts were erected and a military line drawn from the Savannah of the Jews along the river Commoimber to the sea; and we hear no more of negro wars.

The legal status of the Jews was undergoing some changes, as is almost unavoidable so long as there is not the same law for Jew and Gentile alike. Some measures could be considered as improvements, like the law of 1749, which granted the Jews of Surinam their own judiciary in matters affecting less than 600 gulden. On the other hand we hear of an unsuccessful attempt in 1768 to institute a Ghetto in Paramaribo, and in 1775 Jews were forbidden to visit a certain amateur theatre of that town. At that time the two communities also began to make use of the right which was bestowed on them by the English Charter of Privilege (and later confirmed by the Dutch authorities), of “banishing troublesome people and persons of bad demeanour.” The “Deputies of the Jewish Nation” had only to declare to the Governor the reasons why they wished to have these persons banished, and they were expelled. The above named Rabbi J. S. Roos has noted five cases of such banishments:

Solomon Montel was banished in 1761 on the request of the Portuguese deputies, because he refused to restitute rents or usury “which is contrary to the Mosaic law.” In 1772 Noah Isaaks was banished on the request of the German deputies, and in the following year Abraham Isaac Moses Michael Fernandes Henriques, alias Escarabajos, was, on the request of the Portuguese deputies, made to quit the place. Elias Levin was banished in 1781 by the Germans and Abraham de Mesquita, the last of those exiled, belonged to the Portuguese part of the community.

The German Jews kept on increasing in numbers, and in 1780 their Synagogue in Paramaribo was enlarged and two burial grounds were procured. In 1784 the Jewish theatre of that city, probably the first in modern history, was enlarged and embellished. The Savannah, of which only ruins remain now, was on its decline, and had only about forty houses in 1792; while the community in Paramaribo was growing and two Jewish play houses are mentioned in that year. The Portuguese were still the majority, numbering 834, but the Germans were gaining fast, and from the ten families at the end of the seventeenth century they rose now to the number of 477. There were also about 100 Jewish mulattoes in Paramaribo in that time.

The Jews of Surinam in that period also commenced to display considerable literary activity. J. C. Nassi and others wrote the Essai historique sur la Colonie de Surinam avec l’histoire de la nation juive y etablie (Paramaribo, 1788), which is one of the principal sources of the history of the Jews of Surinam. A highly interesting correspondence between representative Jews of that community and Christian Wilhelm v. Dohm (1751–1820) relating to the latter’s work favoring the Jews, is printed at the end of that Essay. (Reproduced in “Publications,” XIII, pp. 133–35). Various other works of historical, religious and poetical nature were written and published there in the following half century.

The history of the community of Paramaribo in the nineteenth century is uneventful. In 1836, when the German congregation, which now numbered 719 souls, already exceeded the Portuguese portion, which had declined to 684, a new “Hoogduitsche of Nederlandsche” Synagogue was erected. In 1838 Rabbi B. C. Carrilon became the spiritual head of the Dutch-Portuguese congregation. Twenty years later M. J. Lewenstein (1829–64) was inaugurated as the Chief Rabbi of the congregation of Paramaribo and held the position for six years, until his death. In 1900 the city contained about 1,500 Jews, who occupied an honorable position and controlled the principal property of the colony. Even modern Antisemitism has not failed to invade this distant Jewish settlement, the oldest in the New World.

At present (1911) there are about 4,000 Jews in Surinam, mostly in Paramaribo, which has now about 50,000 inhabitants. The two communities, both strongly orthodox, are still in existence, and each has its rabbi. The most prominent Jewish citizen in the colony is Mr. David Da Costa, a former President of the Provincial Parliament, who was lately appointed by the Dutch Government to be the presiding judge of the Supreme Court of the colony. Mr. da Costa was for many years Parnass or President of the Portuguese congregation. Another member of the Jewish community, M. Benjamin, is at the head of the educational system of the province. Several families trace their descent from the original settlers who came there in 1639, and all of them, now fully enfranchised for several generations, have no other mother-tongue than the Dutch. Their staunch orthodoxy has saved them from being absorbed in the non-Jewish population, as happened with most of the early settlers in the British colonies in North America.

CHAPTER IX.

NEW AMSTERDAM AND NEW YORK.

Poverty of the first Jewish immigrants to New Amsterdam—Stuyvesant’s opposition overruled by the Dutch West India Company—Privileges and restrictions—Contributions to build the wall from which Wall street takes its name—The first cemetery—Exemption from military duty—Little change at the beginning of the English rule—The first synagogue after a liberal decree by the Duke of York—Marranos brought back in boats which carried grain to Portugal—Hebrew learning—Question about the Jews as voters and as witnesses—Peter Kalm’s description of the Jews of New York about 1745—Hyman Levy, the employer of the original Astor.

The wealth which made the Spanish and Portuguese Jew welcome, or at least insured him sufferance, in the other Dutch and English colonies of the New World, was absent in the case of those who first settled in what is now New York. In September, 1654, the year in which the Dutch lost control of Brazil and the great Jewish community of Recife was scattered, there arrived in the port of New Amsterdam (as New York was called by its Dutch founders) the barque St. Catarina, of which Jacques de la Motthe was master, from Cape St. Anthony (Cuba?), carrying twenty-seven Jews, men, women and children. These passengers, the first Jews to arrive in what is now the United States, were so poor that their goods had to be sold by the master of the vessel by public auction for the payment of their passage. The amount realized by the sale being insufficient, he applied to the Court of Burgomaster and the Schoepens that one or two of them, as principals, be held as security for the payment of the balance in accordance with the contract made with him by which each person signing it had bound himself for the payment of the whole amount, and under which he had taken two of them, David Israel and Moses Ambrosius, as principal debtors.

The court accordingly ordered that they should be placed under civil arrest, in the custody of the provost marshal, until they should have made satisfaction; that the captain should be answerable for their support while in custody, as security for which a certain proportion of the proceeds of the sale was directed to be left in the hands of the secretary of the colony. But as no further proceedings appear upon the records, the matter was doubtless arranged and was probably nothing more than a dispute or misunderstanding between them and the captain as to whether they were bound to make good the deficiency, which was probably enhanced by the forced sale of their effects by auction.6 It is more likely that their embarrassment was only temporary and was due to their being robbed shortly before or after they left their last stopping place or residence, which was probably Jamaica. (See Leon Hühner, Whence came the First Jewish Settlers of New York? “Publications,” IX, p. 75 ff.) It is mentioned that some of them were awaiting remittances, which must have come in time to enable the refugees to hold their own until the question of permitting them to remain in the colony was settled in their favor through correspondence with Holland.

Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of the colony, a man of strong will and strong prejudices, was hostile to the new arrivals, and he soon wrote to the Directors of the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam requesting that “none of the Jewish nation be permitted to infest New Netherland.” He received a reply that such a course “would be unreasonable and unfair, especially because of the considerable loss sustained by the Jews in the taking of Brazil, and also because of the large amount of capital which they have invested in the shares of this company. After many consultations we have decided and resolved upon a certain petition made by said Portuguese Jews, that they shall have permission to sail to and trade in New Netherland and to live and remain there, provided that the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or to the community, but be supported by their own nation.” This is the end of the reply, dated, April 26, 1655, which began with the ominous sentence: “We would have liked to agree to your wishes and request, that the new territories should not be further invaded by people of the Jewish race, for we forsee from such immigration the same difficulties which you fear.” But the influence of the Jews in Amsterdam overcame the predilections and the fears of the company, and a special act was issued July 15, 1655, expressly giving Jews in New Netherlands the privileges contained in the above letter to the governor.

Before the favorable decision could arrive from Holland, the position of the Jews was precarious. On the 1st of March, 1655, Abraham de la Simon was brought before the Court of Burgomaster and the Schoepens upon the complaint of the Schout or Sheriff for keeping open his store on Sunday during the sermon, and selling at retail. The Sheriff on that occasion informed the court that the Governor and Council had resolved that the Jews who had come in the preceding autumn, as well as those that had recently arrived from Holland, must prepare to depart forthwith. The Court, which was also a council for the municipal government of the city, was asked by the Sheriff whether it had any objection to make; whereupon, says the record, it was decided that the Governor’s resolution should take its course.

There is reason to believe that some Jews left on account of that resolution before the orders from Holland arrived. They presumably went to Rhode Island. Those who remained were still objects of the Governor’s aversion, and even the more friendly Company was not too liberal. A letter from the directors to Stuyvesant, dated, March 13, 1556, contains the following: “The permission given to the Jews to go to New Netherlands and enjoy the same privileges as they have here (in Amsterdam), has been granted only as far as civil and political rights are concerned, without giving the said Jews a claim to the privilege of exercising their religion in a synagogue or a gathering.”

But it must be said to the credit of the directors that they insisted on what they granted to the Jews, and in another letter, dated, June 14, 1556, they write to the self-willed governor: “We have seen and heard with displeasure, that against our orders of the 15th of February, 1655, issued at the request of the Jewish or Portuguese nation, you have forbidden them to trade to Fort Orange (Albany) and the South River (Delaware), also the purchase of real estate, which is granted to them without difficulty here in this country, and we wish it had not been done, and you have obeyed your orders which you must always execute punctually and with more respect. Jews or Portuguese people, however, shall not be employed in any public service (to which they are neither admitted in this city) nor allowed to have open retail shops; but they may quietly and peacefully carry on their business as beforesaid and exercise in all quietness their religion within their houses, for which end they must without doubt endeavor to build their houses close together in a convenient place on one or the other side of New Amsterdam—at their choice—as they do here.”

These instructions came as the result of a petition sent to the directors by Abraham d’Lucena, Salvatore d’Andrade and Jacob Cohen, for themselves and in the name of others of the Jewish nation, asking for a confirmation of the privileges, which was thus granted. These three and two other Jews, Joseph da Costa and David Frera, were in the preceding year, 1655, assessed each 1,000 florins to defray the cost of erecting the outer fence or city wall, from which Wall street takes its name. It was the same amount as was imposed upon the wealthiest of the citizens, and the five adduced it as a reason for their being entitled to the rights to trade and to hold real property.

Abraham d’Lucena, who appears to have been the most prominent of the early Jewish immigrants, and several others, applied in July, 1655, for a burying ground; but the request was refused with the reply “that there was no need for it yet.” There was need for it, however, about a year later, and on July 14, 1656, a lot was granted to them outside of the city for a place of interment. This is the old cemetery on Oliver street and New Bowery, which was augmented by further purchases in the following century.

The city was at that time exposed to attacks from Spanish cruisers and pirates, and to assaults from hostile Indians. The encroachments of the English on Long Island and Westchester was a subject of constant anxiety, England never having conceded the rights of the Dutch to settle New Netherlands. This caused all the male inhabitants capable of bearing arms to enroll in the Burgher Guard, and a watch was kept up night and day with the steadiness and vigilance of a beleaguered town. A few months after the arrival of the Jewish immigrants the question arose whether the adult males among them should be incorporated in the Burgher Guard; the officers of the guard submitting the question to the Governor and Council. It was duly deliberated upon and an ordinance was passed (August 28, 1655), which, after reciting “the unwillingness of the mass of the citizens to be fellow-soldiers of the aforesaid nation” or watch in the same guard-house, and the fact that the Jews in Holland did not serve in the train bands of the cities, but paid a compensation for their exemption therefrom, declared that they should be exempt from that military service, and for such exemption each male person between the ages of sixteen and sixty shall pay a monthly contribution of sixty-five stivers.

Jacob Barsimson and Asser Levy (d. 1682) petitioned to be allowed to stand guard like other burghers, or to be relieved from the tax, which was refused by the Governor and Council with the remark that “they might go elsewhere if they liked.” But after the last order from Amsterdam favorable to the claims of the Jews was received, Asser Levy applied to be admitted to the right of citizenship, and exhibited his certificate to the court to show that he had been a burgher in Amsterdam. His request, as well as the one made for the same purpose by Salvatore d’Andrade and others, was not complied with. The matter was brought before the Governor and Council, and as the directions from Holland were controlling, an order was made April 21, 1657, that the Burgomaster should admit them to that privilege. Here the struggle virtually ended, and they were no longer troubled during the Dutch rule.

When the British captured the city in 1664 and renamed it New York, the condition of the Jews remained practically unchanged. There is a record of at least one Jew who removed from Newport to New York in that period, and had difficulties with the local authorities because they enforced against him the regulation which did not permit a Jew to engage in retail trade. The Charter of Liberties and Privileges which was adopted in 1683 by the colonial legislature declared that “no one should be molested, punished, disquieted or called in question for his religious opinion, who professed faith in God by Jesus Christ,” which meant that the Jews and unbelievers were excluded from the privileges of religious freedom. A petition by the Jews to Governor Dongan, in 1686, for liberty to exercise their religion, i. e., to have public worship, was consequently decided in the negative. But James, Duke of York (afterwards King James II., 1633–1701), to whom New York was granted by his brother, had previously sent out instructions, which arrived about that time, “to permit all persons of what religion soever, quietly to inhabit within the government, and to give no disturbance or disquiet whatsoever for or by reason of their differing in matters of religion.”

The exact date when the Jews took advantage of that liberal decree is not known, but it is presumed that the religious services, which had been heretofore conducted semi-privately, were soon performed in a house devoted to that purpose. It is certain that there was a Jewish Synagogue in New York in 1695, probably as early as 1691, while the restrictions as to trade were removed a few years before. The Synagogue, the first on the North American continent, was situated on the south side of the present Beaver street, between Broadway and Broad street. When it became too small for the community which was increasing in wealth and in numbers, a new edifice was erected in 1728 on Mill street (about the present site of South William street), where the congregation, which now assumed the name of “Shearith Israel” (Remnant of Israel), continued to worship for more than a century.

A profitable commerce was carried on between New York and the West Indies at the beginning of the eighteenth century in which numerous Jewish merchants participated. There was also carried on, though for a short period, a considerable business of exporting wheat to Portugal, on account of the scarcity in Europe about the close of the French war. Abraham d’Lucena and Louis Moses Gomez, who engaged in that traffic to Portugal, not only became two of the most affluent of the Jewish residents of New York, but they also incidentally caused an increase of the number of their co-religionists in the community. It is presumed that the vessels which carried grain to the Iberian peninsula brought Jewish or Marrano passengers on the return voyage. Most of the new Jewish names which began to appear here about that time are of undoubted Spanish and Portuguese origin. But there were also in the city Jews from other countries. When the Rev. John Sharpe proposed the erection of a school-library and chapel in New York, in 1712–13, he points out among the advantages which the city afforded for that purpose that: “It is possible also to learn Hebrew here as well as in Europe, there being a Synagogue of Jews, and many ingenious men of that nation from Poland, Hungary, Germany, etc.”

The above-mentioned Louis Moses Gomez (b. Madrid, 1654; d. New York, 1740) who arrived in America about 1700, was until the time of his death one of the principal merchants of New York. He had five sons, and his descendants have intermarried with most of the old-time American-Jewish families.

While the community was increasing in number and wealth, something occurred which sharply reminded the Jews that the time of complete emancipation had not yet come. In 1737 the election of Col. Frederick Phillips as representative of the General Assembly for the County of Westchester was contested by Captain Cornelius Van Horne. Colonel Phillips called several Jews to give evidence on his behalf, when an objection was made to their competency as witnesses. After arguments on both sides were heard, they were informed by the speaker that it was the opinion of the House that “none of the Jewish profession could be admitted as evidence.” It seems that Jews had voted at the election, for after again hearing arguments from the counsel of both parties, the House resolved that, as it did not appear that persons of the Jewish religion had a right to vote for members of Parliament in Great Britain, it was the unanimous opinion of the House that they could not be admitted to vote for Representatives in the colony. This decision has been described by a later historian as remarkable, and in explanation of it he says: “That Catholics and Jews had long been peculiarly obnoxious to the colonists,” that “the first settlers being Dutch and mostly of the Reformed Protestant religion, and the migration from England, since the colony belonged to the Crown, being principally Episcopal, both united in their aversion to the Catholics and the Jews.” (Quoted by Daly, The Settlement of the Jews in North America, p. 46.)7

The general condition of the Jews of New York was, nevertheless, highly favorable, as is attested by Peter Kalm (1715–79), the Swedish botanist and traveler, who spent a considerable time in the colony in the following decade. He says: “There are many Jews settled in New York who possess great privileges. They have a Synagogue and houses, great country-seats of their own property, and are allowed to keep shops in the town. They have likewise several ships which they freight and send out with their goods; in fine, the Jews enjoy all the privileges in common to the other inhabitants of this town and province.”

The increase of the community between that time and the American Revolution was very slow in comparison with the fast growth of the general population of the city, which was less than 5,000 in 1700, about 9,000 in 1750, and nearly 23,000 in 1776. The natural increase and the additions which the Jewish community received by immigration, chiefly from England, was barely sufficient to counteract the loss of others who went to Newport, Charleston and Philadelphia. But, though small, it continued to be a highly respectable and influential body, having among its members some of the principal merchants of the city. Of this number was Hayman Levy (d. 1790) who carried on an extensive business chiefly with the Indians, and by winning their respect and confidence became the largest fur trader in the colonies. Upon his books are entries of moneys paid to John Jacob Astor (1763–1848), the founder of the Astor family, for beating furs at the rate of one dollar a day. Miss Zeporah Levy (d. 1833), a daughter of Hayman, was married in 1779 to Benjamin Hendricks, a native of New York, the founder of a well-known and long-maintained Jewish commercial house.

PART III.

THE REVOLUTION AND THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION.

CHAPTER XI.

THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

Spirit of the Old Testament in the Revolutionary War—Sermons in favor of the original Jewish form of Government—The New Nation as “God’s American Israel”—The Quebec Act—The intolerance of sects as the cause of separation of Church and State—A Memorial sent by German Jews to the Continental Congress—Fear expressed in North Carolina that the Pope might be elected President of the United States—None of the liberties won were lost by post-revolutionary reaction, as happened elsewhere.

The spirit of the old Testament which was prevalent among the early settlers of New England was perhaps still more manifest there at the time of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War of Independence. The ever-increasing antagonism which was aroused by the attempt of the Parliament of England to regulate and to tax the colonies, found expression in Biblical terms to an extent which can hardly be appreciated in the present time. The people in America had to fight over again the same battles for constitutional liberties which the English had fought before them, and George III., so far as his claims over the colonies were concerned, relied as much upon the kingly prerogative, the doctrine of “Divine Right,” as ever did James I. All of these pretensions, all the questions of right and liberty had to be re-argued. To refute this false theory of kingly power it was not only expedient but necessary to revert to the earliest times, to the most sacred record, the Old Testament, for illustration and for argument, chiefly because the doctrine of Divine Right of a King by the Grace of God and its corollaries, “unlimited submission and non-resistance,” were deduced, or rather distorted, from the New Testament, having been brought into the field of politics with the object of enslaving the masses through their religious creed. “It is, at least, an historical fact—says the historian Lecky—that in the great majority of instances the early Protestant defenders of civil liberty derived their political principles chiefly from the Old Testament, and the defenders of despotism from the New. The rebellions that were so frequent in Jewish history formed the favorite topic of the one, the unreserved submission inculcated by St. Paul, the other.”11

While there were many free thinkers or Deists among the intellectual leaders of the Revolution, the masses of the colonists were intensely religious, and an argument from Scripture carried more weight with them than any other. Education was limited at that period in the colonies; there were not many newspapers, they were rarely issued more than once a week, and the number of subscribers was but few. The pulpit had their place, and the pastors in their sermons dealt with politics not less than with religion. Sermons were for the people the principal sources of general instruction. These pastors, in the way of history, knew above all that of the Jewish people, and they were the first to bring before their audiences the ideals of the old Hebrew commonwealth. Rev. Jonathan Mayhew (1720–66), whose discourse, in 1750, against unlimited submission was characterized as “the morning gun of the Revolution,” declared in a later oration on the “Repeal of the Stamp Act” which he delivered in Boston on May 23, 1766: “God gave Israel a king in His anger because they had not sense and virtue enough to like a free commonwealth, and to have Himself for their King—where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty—and if any miserable people on the continent or isles of Europe be driven in their extremity to seek a safe retreat from slavery in some far distant clime—O let them find one in America.” Rev. Samuel Langdon (1723–97), President of Harvard College, delivered an election sermon before the “Honorable Congress of Massachusetts Bay” on the 31st of May, 1775, taking as his text the passage in Isaiah 1. 26, “And I will restore thy judges as at first,” in which he said: “The Jewish government, according to the original constitution, which was divinely established, if considered only in a civil view, was a perfect republic. And let them who cry up the divine right of Kings consider, that the form of government which had a proper claim to a divine establishment was so far from including the idea of a King, that it was a high crime for Israel to ask to be in this respect like other nations, and when they were thus gratified, it was rather as a just punishment for their folly.... The civil polity of Israel is doubtless an excellent general model, allowing for some peculiarities: at least some principal laws and orders of it may be copied in more modern establishments.” Almost everybody at that time knew by heart the admonitions of Samuel to the children of Israel, describing the manner in which a King would rule over them.

Sermons drawing a parallel between George III. and Pharaoh, inferring that the same providence of God which had rescued the Israelites from Egyptian bondage would free the colonies, were common in that period; and they probably had more effect with the masses than the great orations of the statesmen or the philosophical essays of the publicists which came down to us in the literature of the Revolution. The success of the War of Independence was also accepted in that sense. The election sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles, President of Yale College, on May 8, 1783, at Hartford, before Governor Trumbull and the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, may be cited as an instance. Dr. Stiles took for his text Deut. XXVI, 19: “And to make you high above all nations which he has made, in praise, and in name, and in honor, etc.” This sermon takes up one hundred and twenty closely printed pages, and assumes the proportions of a treatise on government from the Hebrew Theocracy down to the then present, showing by illustration and history that the culmination of popular government had been reached in America, transplanted by divine hands in fulfilment of Biblical prophecy from the days of Moses to the land of Washington; and discussing from an historical point of view “the reasons rendering it probable that the United States will, by the ordering of heaven, eventually become this people.” He referred to the new nation as “God’s American Israel” and to Washington as the American Joshua who was raised up by God to lead the armies of the chosen people to liberty and independence.12

The committee which was appointed on the same day the Declaration of Independence was adopted, consisting of Dr. Franklin, Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson, to prepare a device for a seal for the United States, at first proposed that of Pharaoh sitting in an open chariot, a crown on his head and a sword in his hand, passing through the dividing waters of the Red Sea in pursuit of the Israelites: with rays from a pillar of fire beaming on Moses, who is represented as standing on the shore extending his hand over the sea, causing it to overwhelm Pharaoh.13

Great religious animosity was also aroused by the “Quebec Act,” which was passed by the British Parliament in 1774, for the purpose of preventing Canada from joining the other colonies. It guaranteed to the Catholic Church the possession of its vast amount of property, and full freedom of worship. The object which it was intended to effect by the passage of this act was purely one of State policy, and as far as Canada herself was concerned it was a wise and diplomatic step. But with the exception perhaps of the Boston Port Bill, it was the most effectual in alienating the colonies. It was construed as an effort on the part of Parliament to create an Established Church, and not that alone, but the establishment of that Church which was most hateful to and dreaded by the great majority of the people in the colonies.

It was not due to lack of religious sentiment that the ultimate bond between the colonies was a strictly secular one, and that Church and State were forever separated in the Constitution of the United States. It was rather due to the great and insurmountable differences in the religious beliefs among the various parties to the confederation; it may be said that it was strong sectarianism which forced upon them a non-sectarian government. The religious complexion of no two of the American colonies was precisely alike. The various sects at the time of the Revolution were grouped as follows: The Puritans in Massachusetts, the Baptists in Rhode Island, the Congregationalists in Connecticut, the Dutch and Swedish Protestants in New Jersey, the Church of England in New York, the Quakers in Pennsylvania, the Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians in North Carolina, the Catholics in Maryland, the Cavaliers in Virginia, the Huguenots and Episcopalians in South Carolina, and the Methodists in Georgia. Owing to these diversities, to the consciousness of danger from ecclesiastical ambition, the intolerance of sects as exemplified among themselves as well as in foreign lands, it was wisely foreseen that the only basis upon which it was possible to form a Federal union was to exclude from the National Government all power over religion.

The separation of Church and State was therefore a practical necessity, based on causes which were deeply rooted in the life of the people. It was almost a forced step on the way of development, not an enthusiastic outburst in favor of an abstract principle. This is why the ground which was then gained was never lost again, why there was no reaction and no reversion to the former order of a religious establishment as happened in France after the great revolution which began in 1789. The moderate, self-restrained liberalism of the colonists held its own after the struggle was over and kept on progressing slowly. The violent radicalism of the older country went so far that many steps had to be retraced, and the fight of separating Church and State had to be fought out all over again in our own time, more than a century after all religion was abolished during the reign of terror.

A letter sent by an unnamed German Jew on behalf of himself and his brethren to the President of the Continental Congress, in which the wretched condition of the Jews in Germany at that time is depicted, and their desire to become subjects of the thirteen provinces is expressed, appeared in the Deutsches Museum of June, 1783, and four years later a separate edition of it was published under the title, Schreiben eines deutschen Juden an den Nord Amerikanischen Präsidenten.14 As there is no record of its reception or discussion in America, it probably attracted very little attention. The same is also true of the letter which Jonas Phillips (b. in Rhenish Prussia, 1736; d. in New York, Jan. 28, 1803), of Philadelphia, sent to the Federal Convention in relation to the removal of the test oath in Pennsylvania which discriminated against Jews and those who did not subscribe to Christian doctrines (Sept. 7, 1787). When the fundamental law of the land was adopted there were no exciting debates about the question of religious liberty. The clause abolishing religious tests in the Federal Constitution passed almost unanimously; the State of North Carolina alone voted against it, and as there were hardly any Jews there at that time, the fear of the Roman Catholics was the only cause for the illiberal stand taken by its representatives. The extent of that fear can be understood from the fact that when the State Convention of North Carolina to adopt the Federal Constitution convened in Hillsborough, in July, 1788, pamphlets were circulated “pointing out in all seriousness the danger of the Pope being elected President should the Constitution be adopted.” (See Hühner, Religious Liberty in North Carolina, “Publications,” XVI, p. 42). The time for religious liberty as well as for independence in national affairs had come and was accepted as a matter of course, and it is the exceptional glory of the American Revolution that all the liberties won were retained and the young nation was enabled to continue on the way of progress unhindered by post-revolutionary reaction, and to devote its energies to the solution of the problems which the Revolution left unsolved, and to new problems which arose after that period.

CHAPTER XIV.

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 names18 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.)

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.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE WAR OF 1812 AND THE REMOVAL OF JEWISH DISABILITIES IN MARYLAND.

The Jewish community almost at a standstill between the Revolution and the War of 1812—Stoppage of immigration and losses through emigration and assimilation—No Jews in the newly admitted States—The small number of Jews who fought in the second war with England included Judah Touro, the philanthropist—The Jewish disabilities in Maryland—A Jew appointed by Jefferson as United States Marshal for that State—The “Jew Bill” as an issue in Maryland politics—Removal of the disabilities in 1826.

The hopes of the Jews of western Europe were raised by the French Revolution, which gave the Jews of France full citizenship. The Napoleonic wars brought liberty and Jewish emancipation in the countries and principalities which were conquered by the great Corsican, and even where this was not achieved it became a probability for the near future. The disturbed state of Europe made foreign travel, and especially emigration over sea, hazardous, and there were hardly any new arrivals of Jews from the Old World during the quarter century following the establishment of the United States Government. There were, on the other hand, numerous departures of Jews for England and its American colonies, especially Jamaica, during and after the Revolution, and the losses through baptism and mixed marriages, which account for the disappearance of a large number of colonial Jewish families, retarded the natural growth of the communities. As a result it is doubtful whether there were as many Jews in the United States at the time of the outbreak of the second war with England, in 1812, as there were in the Revolutionary period. Neither had their wealth or importance increased in those times; it seems that there was even some deterioration in both, caused no doubt by the lack of new blood which is indispensable to small communities.

There were hardly any Jews in the three new States which were admitted to the Union in the eight years of Washington’s administration. In Vermont, which came in in 1791, there was no Jewish Congregation until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Kentucky (1792) and Tennessee (1796) had very few Jews until a later period, and the stray Jewish sounding names which are met with in various records in the first half century of their existence as States are not safe material for the foundation of a history of the Jews in these Commonwealths. Ohio, which was admitted in 1803, had very few Jews at that time, and the immense territory of Louisiana, which was purchased from Napoleon in the same year, had practically none, as Jews never thrived in the French possessions in the New World, except in colonies like Martinique,24 where there was a Jewish community prior to it being occupied by the French (1635).

The number of Jews who took part in the War of 1812 was therefore smaller than that of the participants in the War of Independence, and the disproportionately large percentage of officers shows that they still belonged mostly to the wealthier classes. In the list which is enumerated in the valuable work of Mr. Simon Wolf, which was mentioned above, there are mentioned thirteen officers, of whom one, Nathan Moses of Pennsylvania, achieved the rank of Colonel, and two, Mayer Moses of South Carolina and Mordecai Myers of Pennsylvania, were captains. (General Joseph Bloomfield of New Jersey, who is included in the list, was not a Jew, see “Publications,” XI. p. 190.) The balance comprises three lieutenants, one adjutant, one ensign, two sergeants, three corporals and twenty-seven privates. Among the latter were Jacob Hays, and Benjamin Hays of New York, father and son; and Judah Touro, the philanthropist, who was dangerously wounded at the battle of New Orleans in January, 1815.

The War of 1812 gave the impetus to a renewal of the agitation for the removal of the disabilities of the Jews of Maryland, the only State which had a considerable Jewish community in such a disadvantageous position. The church establishment in Maryland terminated with the fall of the proprietary rule and the emergence into statehood. With it fell, too, the force of the legislation which for a century and a half had declared the profession of Jewish faith a capital offence, as was already mentioned in a previous chapter (page 77).25 But part of the old spirit remained under the new conditions, and the new State Constitution of 1776, which granted free exercise of religion, provided for “a declaration of belief in the Christian religion” as a necessary qualification for holding public office. But this did not prevent a gradual influx of Jews during and after the Revolutionary War, which is to be attributed to the commercial and industrial advantages of Baltimore. The first formal effort to effect the removal of the disability was made in December, 1797, when Solomon Etting (b. in York, Pa., 1764; d. in Baltimore, 1847), Bernard Gratz (b. in York, Pa., 1764; d. in Baltimore, 1801) and others presented a petition to the General Assembly at Annapolis in which they averred “that they are a sect of people called Jews, and thereby deprived of many of the valuable rights of citizenship, and pray to be placed upon the same footing with other good citizens.” The committee to whom this petition was referred reported the same day that they “have taken the same into consideration and conceive the prayer of the petition is reasonable, but as it involves a constitutional question of considerable importance they submit to the House the propriety of taking the same into consideration at this advanced stage of the session.” This disposition of the petition put a quietus upon further agitation for the next five years. In the meantime (1801) Reuben Etting (b. in York, Pa., 1762; d. in Philadelphia, 1848), a brother of the above-mentioned Solomon, was appointed by President Jefferson United States Marshal for Maryland, which presented the anomalous condition of a man who could not be chosen constable under the State laws, holding a highly responsible Federal office. A second petition with the same object in view as the first was presented to the General Assembly in November, 1802, and this time it came to a vote, but it was refused, thirty-eight voting against it and only seventeen in its favor. The attempt was renewed in 1803 and in 1804, when it was again defeated by a vote of thirty-nine to twenty-four. This fourth defeat disheartened the few determined spirits upon whom the brunt of the struggle had thus far fallen, and the formal agitation ceased for a time.

The arrival in Baltimore from Richmond, Va., in the year 1808, of the Cohen family, consisting of the widow and six sons of Jacob J. Cohen, a soldier of the Revolution (a native of Rhenish Prussia, who came to America in 1773 and died in 1808), and other arrivals in that period, helped to increase the material importance and the communal influence of the Jews of Baltimore. After Solomon Etting and several members of the Cohen family served with distinction in the defense of Baltimore and in subsequent military engagements, the injustice of the Jewish disabilities became more manifest. The sympathy of a group of men active in public life was enlisted, and these conducted the legislative struggle for full emancipation of the Jews in the General Assembly from 1816 to 1826. The most prominent figure in this group, which included Thomas Brackenridge, E. S. Thomas, General Winder, Colonel W. G. D. Worthington and John V. L. MacMahon, was Thomas Kennedy of Washington county.

The “Jew Bill” became a clearly defined issue in Maryland politics, and here we see again the American peculiarity mentioned above (page 118), that those who knew the Jew best were his most ardent defenders. Several representatives from country districts, where Jews were known by name only, failed of re-election because they had voted for the repeal of Jewish disabilities: while, on the other hand, a disposition favorable to Jewish emancipation became at an early date a sine qua non of election from Baltimore. The successful effort of Jacob Henry to retain his seat in the Legislature of North Carolina, which has been described in the previous chapter, was effectively used by the friends of the Jews in Maryland. Speaking on the Jew Bill in 1818, Mr. Brackenridge alluded to the incident as follows: “In the State of North Carolina there is a memorable instance on record of an attempt to expel Mr. Henry, a Jew, from the legislative body of which he had been elected a member. The speech delivered on that occasion I hold in my hand. It is published in a collection called “The American Orator,” a book given to your children at school and containing those republican truths you wish to see earliest implanted in their minds. Mr. Henry prevailed, and it is a part of our education as Americans to love and cherish the sentiments uttered by him on that occasion.” Six years later Col. Worthington, in the course of a speech on the same subject, also recalled Henry’s triumph in glowing terms. Some of the addresses delivered on that subject were considered of sufficient importance to be republished separately after the question was settled; one collection of them entitled “Speeches on the Jew Bill in the House of Delegates in Maryland” was published in Philadelphia in 1829.

Finally, in 1822, a bill to the desired effect passed both houses of the General Assembly; but the Constitution of Maryland required that any act amendatory thereto must be passed at one session and published and confirmed at the succeeding session of the Legislature. Accordingly, recourse was necessary to the session of 1823–24, in which a confirmatory bill was introduced accompanied by a petition from the Jews of Maryland. The bill was confirmed by the Senate, but defeated in the House of Delegates after a stirring debate, and all formal legislation hitherto enacted was rendered nugatory. But the time was ripe for this act of justice, and on the last day of the following session of the Legislature (Feb. 26, 1825) an act “for the relief of the Jews of Maryland,” which had already received the sanction of the Senate, was passed by the House of Delegates by a vote of twenty-six to twenty-five. The bill provided that “every citizen of this State professing the Jewish religion” who shall be appointed to any office of profit or trust shall, in addition to the required oaths, make and subscribe a declaration of his belief in a future state of rewards and punishments, instead of the declaration now required by the government of the State. In the following year a brief confirmatory act was passed and the battle for Jewish emancipation was won. Theoretically there still remained a discrimination, which was not eliminated until many years afterwards; but practically there was no formal disability. Solomon Etting and Jacob I. Cohen, both of whom had been throughout the moving spirits of the legislative struggle, were promptly elected in Baltimore (Oct., 1826) as members of the City Council, and the former ultimately became president of that body. A number of Jews later occupied and still occupy important political positions in Maryland commensurate with their individual ability and with the prominence of Jews in the business and professional life of the State.

PART IV.

THE SECOND OR GERMAN PERIOD OF IMMIGRATION.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE FIRST COMMUNITIES IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.

Impetus given to immigration to America by the reaction after the fall of Napoleon—The second period of Jewish immigration—First legislation about immigration (1819)—The first Jew in Cincinnati—Its first congregation, Bene Israel—Appeals to outside communities for funds to build a synagogue—The first Talmud Torah—Rabbis Gutheim, Wise and Lilienthal—Cleveland—St. Louis—Louisville—Mobile—Montgomery and its alleged Jewish founder, Abraham Mordecai—Savannah and Augusta—New Orleans—Judah Touro.

The reaction in Western Europe after the fall of Napoleon in 1815 gave an impetus to emigration to America. This was especially true of Germany and more particularly of the German Jews. Those who had already tasted the sweets of freedom could not so easily endure the returning hardships of the galling exceptional laws and discriminations, as did their fathers and grandfathers who knew not the experience of better conditions. While the struggle for political and religious liberty was carried on with increased intensity in the various German states and principalities, many ventured to come out to the New World in quest of more favorable conditions and better opportunities. This new immigration, which continued for about half a century, until the Jews in all the German states were emancipated, much exceeded the immigration of the preceding two centuries, while it now appears almost insignificant in comparison with the large influx from the Slavic countries in the last thirty years. These Jewish immigrants of the second period, which is usually called the German period (though a considerable number came from Austria-Hungary, Russian-Poland and even Russia proper), were in one essential point more like the Slavic Jews who came after them than like the Sephardim of former times; they came poor, and grew up with the country. The Spanish and Portuguese Jews as a class were wealthy; some of them brought more capital with them than was found in the localities in which they settled. Their wealth and their business connections made them welcome or secured them sufferance at a time and at places—in the Old World as well as in the New—where a poor Jew, coming to earn his living as a peddler or craftsman, would probably never have been admitted. But better times had come; an immensely large country, which had now increased its territory by the Louisiana Purchase, and doubly secured its independence by the successful issue of the second war with its former masters, now needed men even more than money, and the immigrant who came to cast his lot with the new nation was welcome. A substantial part of the Jewish immigrants of this new era remained in the older communities, which were thereby largely increased. But many penetrated far into the South and the West; new settlements were founded in scores of places, and almost in each case a congregation was formed as soon as there were a sufficient number of Jews to warrant such an undertaking. As there was no longer any struggle between the Jews, as such, and the surrounding non-Jewish world, the history of the Jews of a locality is mainly the history of its communal institutions and of its individual members, who reflect credit on it by their distinction in various fields of activity. We shall now follow the formation of these new communities in various parts of the country, with an effort to understand the spirit which moved the early settlers in their Jewish activities, which helped them to rise to an eminent position in their new home and to be useful to their fellow citizens, as well as to their co-religionists who arrived at a later period.

There are no statistical figures for the number of immigrants who arrived in the second decade of the nineteenth century; but what may be considered as an official declaration (in the voluminous report of the Immigration Commission, issued in 1910) states that after the year 1816 “an unprecedented emigration from Europe to the United States occurred. It is estimated that no less than 20,000 persons arrived in 1817.” The sudden demand for passage caused overcrowding, disease and death in the steerage of the sailing vessels, which resulted in the first “legislative interference” by a law which “became effective March 2, 1819, containing provisions intending to regulate the number of passengers on each vessel and proper victualing of each vessel.” A provision of this law also marked the beginning of statistics relative to immigration into the United States. And as there was now a certain percentage of Jews among the arrivals of each year, it may be presumed that the Jews of that time were as much interested in these earliest provisions relating to immigration, as we are to-day in that perennial question.

Some of the pioneers of this new Jewish immigration came from England, but as in the earlier period of the Spanish Jews, the Germans and the Polish soon followed, or came simultaneously. A typical instance was that of Cincinnati, where the first Jewish congregation in the Ohio Valley was formed. The first Jew to settle there was Joseph Jonas (b. in Exeter, England, 1792; d. in Cincinnati, May 5, 1869), who came to America in 1816 and lived for a short time in New York and in Philadelphia. He left the latter city on the second day of January, 1817, and arrived in Cincinnati on the eighth of March. He was a watchmaker by trade, and had little difficulty in establishing himself. He was a curiosity at first, as many in that part of the country had never seen a Jew before. Numbers of people came from the country round about to see him, and he related in his old age of an old Quakeress who said to him: “Art thou a Jew? Thou art one of God’s chosen people. Wilt thou let me examine thee?” She turned him round and round and at last exclaimed: “Well, thou art no different to other people.”27

Jonas remained the only Jew in Cincinnati for about two years, when he was joined by Lewis Cohen of London, Barnet Levi of Liverpool and Joseph Levy of Exeter. These four, with David Israel Johnson of Brookville, Ind. (a frontier trading-station), conducted in the autumn of 1819 the first Jewish service in the western portion of the United States. Solomon Buckingham, Moses Nathan and Solomon Menken came there from Germany in 1820. The last named established the first wholesale dry goods house in Cincinnati. The six Moses brothers, one of whom, Phineas (d. 1895), lived to the age of ninety-seven, arrived in the following two years, and about this time Joseph Jonas was joined by his three brothers, Abraham, Samuel and George; their parents and a fourth brother, Edward, coming some time afterwards. Services were held only on Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur until 1824, when the number of Jewish inhabitants reached about twenty. (See “Publications,” IX, p. 155, for fourteen Jewish names from the Cincinnati Directory of 1825.) In the first month of that year the Congregation “Bene Israel” was formally organized, and at a meeting held some time thereafter it was resolved to build a suitable house of worship.

There was not, however, sufficient wealth in the new community to enable the congregation to undertake the work unaided, and an appeal was sent to the older congregations in the United States and also to England, for help in the proposed undertaking. A copy of this appeal has been preserved (in “Publications,” X, pp. 98–99) and reads as follows:

TO THE ELDERS OF THE JEWISH CONGREGATION AT CHARLESTON.

Gentlemen:—Being deputed by our Congregation in this place, as their committee to address you in behalf of our holy Religion, separated as we are and scattered through the wilds of America as children of the same family and faith, we consider it as our duty to apply to you for assistance in the erection of a House to worship the God of our forefathers, agreeably to the Jewish faith; we have always performed all in our power to promote Judaism and for the last four or five years we have congregated where a few years before nothing was heard but the howling of wild beasts and the more hideous cry of savage man. We are well assured that many Jews are lost in this country from not being in the neighborhood of a congregation, they often marry with Christians, and their posterity lose the true worship of God forever; we have at this time a room fitted up for a synagogue, two manuscripts of the law and a burying ground, in which we have already interred four persons, who, but for us, would have lain among the Christians; one of our members also acts as Shochet. It will therefore be seen that nothing has been left undone, which could be performed by eighteen assessed and six unassessed members. Two of the deceased persons were poor strangers, one of whom was brought to be interred from Louisville, a distance of near 200 miles.

To you, Gentlemen, we are mostly strangers and have no further claim on you, than that of children of the same faith and family, requesting your pious and laudable assistance to promote the decrees of our holy Religion. Several of our members are, however, well known both in Philadelphia and New York—namely Mr. Samuel Joseph, formerly of Philadelphia; Messrs. Moses Jonas and Mr. Joseph Jonas, the two Mr. Jonas’s have both married daughters of the late Rev. Gerson Mendes Seixas of New York. Therefore with confidence, we solicit your aid to this truly pious undertaking, we are unable to defray the whole expense, and have made application to you as well as the other principal congregations in America and England, and have no doubt of ultimate success.

It is also worthy of remark that there is not a congregation within 500 miles of this city, and we presume it is well known how easy of access we are to New Orleans, and we are well informed that had we a synagogue here, hundreds from that city who now know and see nothing of their religion, would frequently attend here during holidays.

We are, Gentlemen, your obedient servants,

S. Joseph Chan,   
Joseph Jonas,   
D. I. Johnson,   
Phineas Moses.   

I certify the above is agreeable to a Resolution of the Hebrew Congregation of Cincinnati.

July 3, 1825.

Joseph Jonas, Parnas.   

Both the congregation in Charleston and that in Philadelphia sent contributions, and so did some individuals in New Orleans and in Barbadoes, W. I. It was some time, however, until the necessary amount was collected. The congregation was chartered by the General Assembly of Ohio in 1830, and the synagogue was dedicated in the year 1836. The first official reader was Joseph Samuels; he was succeeded by Henry Harris, who was followed in 1838 by Hart Judah. In the same year was organized the first benevolent association. The first religious school was founded in 1842, but it existed only a short time. A Talmud Torah was established in 1845, which gave way in the following year to the Hebrew Institute, of which James K. Gutheim (b. in Prussia, 1817; d. in New Orleans, 1886) was the founder. This also flourished but a short time, for with the departure of Rabbi Gutheim for New Orleans in 1848 the institute was closed.

A considerable number of German Jews arrived in the city during the fourth decade of the nineteenth century. They were not in sympathy with the existing congregation, in which the influence of the English Jews was predominant, and determined to form another congregation. The Bene Yeshurun congregation was accordingly organized by these Germans in September, 1841, and it was incorporated under the laws of the state in 1842. Its first reader was Simon Bamberger, and when Gutheim, who followed him, left it, he was succeeded by H. A. Henry and A. Rosenfeld. The assumption of the office of rabbi in the Bene Yeshurun congregation by Isaac M. Wise in April, 1854, and in the Bene Israel congregation by Max Lilienthal (b. in Munich, 1815; d. in Cincinnati, 1882) in June, 1855, gave the Jewish community of Cincinnati a commanding position and made it a Jewish center and the home of a number of movements which were national in scope. But their activity in general Jewish matters does not properly belong to the history of Jews in Cincinnati, and will be treated in a succeeding chapter. Three other congregations were formed before the close of the period of German-Polish immigration: the Adath Israel, organized in 1847; the Ahabat Achim, organized in 1848; and the Shearit Israel, in 1855.

The first Jew who is known to have settled in Cleveland, O., was a Bavarian, Simson Thorman, who came there in 1837. He was soon joined by Aaron Leventrite and by others of his countrymen, and the thriving city, which had then about 6,000 inhabitants, soon had twenty Jews, who organized the Israelitish Society in 1839. In 1842 there was a split, and the seceding part formed the Anshe Chesed Society; but four years later these two again united and formed the Anshe Chesed congregation, the oldest existing congregation in Cleveland. The first services were held in a hall on South Water street and Vineyard lane, with Thorman as president and Isaac Hoffman as minister or reader. A burial ground was purchased in 1840. New dissensions arose in 1848 in the rapidly increasing community and resulted in the withdrawal of a number of members, who in 1850 formed the Congregation Tifereth Israel, which from the beginning represented the reform element. Isidor Kalish (b. in Krotoschin, Prussia, 1816; d. in Newark, N. J., 1886) was its first rabbi until 1855, and he was followed by Wolf Fassbinder, Jacob Cohen, G. M. Cohen, Jacob Mayer, Aaron Hahn and the present incumbent, Moses J. Gries (b. in Newark, 1868), who assumed his position in 1892. The rabbis of the older congregation were: Fuld, 1850; E. Hertzman, 1860–61; G. M. Cohen, 1861–66; Nathan, 1866–67; Gustave M. Cohen, 1867–75; Moritz Tintner (b. in Austerlitz, Austria, 1828; d. in New York, May 11, 1910), 1875–76; and M. Machol (b. in Kolmar-in-Posen, 1845) since 1876.

The first Jewish congregation in St. Louis, Mo., was organized about the same time as that of Cleveland, though individual Jews were living there more than thirty years before. The Bloch, or Block, family of Schwihau, Bohemia, settled there about 1816, the pioneer being Wolf Bloch. Eliezer Block was an attorney-at-law there in 1821. Most of the early arrivals intermarried with Christians, and were lost to Judaism. It was not until the Jewish New Year in 1836 that the first religious services were held, when ten men rented a little room over a grocery store at the corner of Second and Spruce streets. The Achduth Israel or United Hebrew Congregation was organized in 1839, Abraham Weigel (d. 1888) being the first president and Samuel Davidson the first reader. Services were held for many years in a private house in Frenchtown. The first building used as a synagogue was located in Fifth street, between Green and Washington avenues. According to Markens (p. 108), Bernard Illowy (b. in Kolin, Bohemia, 1814; d. near Cincinnati, O., 1871), one of the leading conservative rabbis of America in his time, a pupil of the great Rabbi Moses Sofer (1763–1839), of Presburg, Hungary, was elected to the rabbinate of the St. Louis congregation in 1854. Its temple on Sixth street, between Locust and St. Charles streets, was dedicated in 1859. Rev. Henry J. Messing (b. 1848) held the position of rabbi for about thirty years. The B’nai El congregation, which was organized in 1852, moved into its own house of worship in 1855. Rabbi Moritz Spitz (b. in Csaba, Hungary, 1848), editor of the “Jewish Voice,” has been at the head of this congregation since 1878. The third of the earlier congregations, Shaare Emet, was organized in 1866, with H. S. Sonnenschein (b. in Hungary, 1839; d. in Des Moines, Ia., 1908) as its first rabbi.

The first Jewish organization of Louisville, Ky., is mentioned in the year 1832, and two brothers named Heymann, or Hyman, from Berlin, were known to have settled there as early as 1814. Several Polish Jews from Charlestown, S. C., and some German Jews from Baltimore arrived there about 1836, and were soon joined by new arrivals direct from Germany. They bought a graveyard, built a mikweh and engaged a shochet. A few wealthy Jews came from Richmond, Va., but they did not associate with the others and were soon absorbed by the non-Jewish population. The first regular minister was J. Dinkelspiel (1841), and the congregation, which was named Adath Israel, was incorporated in 1842. B. H. Gotthelf was elected cantor and shochet in 1848 and later became Hebrew teacher of a school which was opened in 1854. In 1850 a synagogue was built on Fourth street, between Green and Walnut streets, which was consumed by fire in 1866. A regular preacher, L. Kleeberg, was then engaged and remained till 1878. Another congregation was chartered by the legislature in 1851, but it was not properly organized until 1856, when it changed its name from “The Polish House of Israel” to Bet Israel.

Farther to the south congregations were organized about that time in Mobile, Ala., and in two other towns of that state. The most prominent among the early settlers of Mobile was Israel I. Jones, who arrived there from Charleston, S. C., and organized the Congregation Shaare Shamayyim, the oldest in the state, in 1844. B. L. Tim, from Hamburg, in whose residence the first services were held; I. Goldsmith, S. Lyons, D. Markstein, Solomon Jones and A. Goldstucker, all from Germany, were among the first members. The first synagogue was dedicated in December, 1846, with Mr. Jones as President and Rev. de Silva as minister. The latter died in New Orleans in 1848 and was succeeded by Baruch M. Emanuel, who served for five years. Montgomery, which is said to have been founded by Abraham Mordecai, an intelligent Jew, who dwelt fifty years in the Creek Nation, and confidently believed that the Indians were originally of his people (see “Publications,” XIII, pp. 71–81, 83–88), had its first Jewish society for relieving the sick, organized in 1846. Its first twelve members were from Germany and Poland. In 1849 this Chevra, which held religious services on Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur, was enlarged into a regular congregation called Kahal Montgomery or Temple Beth Or. Isaiah Weil was the first president and the number of members was about thirty. No rabbi was employed until about fifteen years later. There is also a record of a congregation which was organized in Claiborne, Ala., in 1855, and had an officiating rabbi. Most of the Jews, however, left the town and the congregation passed out of existence.

While the older Jewish community of Savannah, Ga., which dated from the eighteenth century, was strengthened by the new immigration, a new community, in Augusta, grew up in the first half of the nineteenth century. A Mr. Florence and his wife came there from Holland in 1825. Isaac Hendricks arrived with his family from Charleston, S. C., in 1826, and it is believed that Isaac and Jacob Moise, also Charlestonians, reached Augusta about the same time. Jews from Germany began to arrive in 1844. Isaac Levy, who came there about 1840, was for many years City Sheriff, and Samuel Levy was for two years Judge of the Superior Court and for ten years Judge of the Court of Ordinary (Markens, p. 113). There is reason to believe that the sixth Governor of Georgia, David Emanuel (d. 1808), who assumed the office March 3, 1801, and after whom the largest county in the state, Emanuel, was named, was a Jew, or at least of Jewish Descent.28 The number of Jews in Augusta went on increasing until about 1846, when the congregation B’nai Israel, which is still in existence, was organized.

Judah Touro.

The prominent figure of the philanthropist Judah Touro (b. in Newport, R. I., 1775; d. in New Orleans, 1854) looms large in the early Jewish history of New Orleans. Touro was educated by his uncle, Moses Michael Hays (1739–1805), who had become an eminent merchant of Boston, and was later employed in his counting house. Touro came to New Orleans about a year before Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France in 1803. He opened a store and built up a thriving trade in New England products, and soon became one of the wealthiest and most prominent merchants of the growing city. He gave liberally to many charities and public spirited enterprises in New Orleans and elsewhere, at a time when large gifts for such purposes were not as common as they are now. When he donated $10,000 towards the erection of the Bunker Hill Monument in 1840, those interested in raising the necessary funds had almost given up their project in despair. Though the cornerstone was laid in 1826, on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle which it was to commemorate, Amos Lawrence’s generous offers of aid met with no material response, even when aided by the eloquent appeals of Edward Everett (1794–1865) and Daniel Webster (1782–1852), until Touro privately offered to duplicate Lawrence’s donation, provided the remaining necessary $30,000 would be raised. On the dedication of the monument in 1843, when Daniel Webster was the orator of the day, the generosity of the chief donors was praised in the lines read by the presiding officer, which became very popular at that time.29 At his death he left, among many other bequests, a large sum in trust to Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885) for the poor Jews of Jerusalem. His name is connected with the oldest and largest Jewish institutions in New Orleans, while Boston, Newport and other communities have benefited by his generosity.

Alexander Isaacs and Asher Philips were also among the arrivals at New Orleans early in the last century. Morris Jacobs and Aaron Daniels were the Senior Wardens, and Abraham Plotz, Asher Philips and Abraham Green, the Junior Wardens of a benevolent society named Shaare Chesed. In that capacity they bought the first Jewish cemetery in New Orleans, which was located just beyond the suburb of Lafayette, in the Parish of Jefferson, fronting on Jackson street, where the first interment, that of Haym Harris, took place on June 28, 1828. The first congregation adopted the name of the benevolent society, and worshipped in a room on the top floor of a building in St. Louis street. The oldest existing synagogue, the Shaare Chesed Nefuzot Judah, commonly known as the Touro synagogue, was organized in its present form in 1854. The other congregations belong to a later period, which will be described in a subsequent part.

Another prominent Jew, the greatest in American public life—Judah P. Benjamin—also lived in New Orleans in this period. But he took no interest in Jewish affairs, and his career belongs to the chapters in which the participation of Jews in the dispute about slavery and in the Civil War will be described.

CHAPTER XX.

THE JEWS IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF TEXAS. THE MEXICAN WAR.

The first settler in 1821—Adolphus Sterne, who fought against Mexico and later served in the Texan Congress—David S. Kaufman—Surgeon-General Levy in the army of Sam Houston—A Jew as the first meat “packer” in America—Major Leon Dyer and his brother Isadore—Mayor Seeligsohn of Galveston (1853)—One Jew laid out Waco; Castro County is named after another—Belated communal and religious activities—The War with Mexico, in which only a small number of Jews served—David Camden de Leon and his brother Edwin, U. S. Consul-General in Egypt.

The history of the Jews of Texas begins at the time when the largest state of the American Union was still a part of Mexico. The first Jewish settler of whom any record is preserved was Samuel Isaacs, who came there from the United States in 1821 with Austin’s first colony of three hundred. He received a Spanish grant of land as a colonist, and is later mentioned once more as the recipient of a bounty warrant for 320 acres of land, located in Polk county, for services in the army of Texas in 1836–37. When Abraham Cohen Labatt (b. in Charleston, S. C., in 1802; d. in Texas after 1894), who has been mentioned in the preceding chapter, visited Velasco, Texas, in 1831, he found there two Jews—Jacob Henry from England and Jacob Lyons from Charleston—who had been there for some years engaged in business. When the former of the two died without issue he left his fortune for the building of a hospital at that seaport.

Adolphus Sterne (b. in Cologne, Germany, 1801; d. in New Orleans, 1852) was one of the first settlers in Nacogdoches, in the eastern portion of Texas, where he came from New Orleans in 1824. He knew several European languages and soon mastered various Indian dialects, which made him very useful to the insurgents against Mexican rule, whose cause he espoused. He was sentenced to death for his share in the Fredonian war against Mexico. He was saved by a general amnesty which had been declared by that time, and took an oath of allegiance to the Mexican government, which he kept faithfully until Texas became an independent republic in 1836. After having been Alcalde and official interpreter under the old order, he served in both the upper and the lower houses of the Texas Congress. Dr. Joseph Hertz came with his brother Hyman to Nacogdoches about 1832; Simon Schloss (b. in Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1812) came there in 1836. David S. Kaufman (b. in Cumberland County, Pa., in 1813; d. in Washington, D. C., 1851), a graduate of Princeton College, came there from Louisiana in 1837. In 1838 he was elected a Representative in the Texas Congress; was twice re-elected and was twice chosen Speaker of the House. In 1843 was elected to the Senate, where, in 1844, as a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, he presented a report in favor of annexation to the United States. When this plan was carried out he was elected one of the first members of the House of Representatives from Texas, serving from 1846 until his death five years afterwards. Albert Emanuel (b. 1808) came there from Germany in 1834, and was one of the first volunteers in the Texas army, serving in the battle of San Jacinto. He later settled in New Orleans, where he died in 1851. Samuel Mass (who married a sister of Offenbach, the composer) and Simon Weiss were two other natives of Germany who settled in Nacogdoches about that time. Four Jews are known to have fought at Goliad under Fannin (March 26, 1836), one of whom, Edward J. Johnson (b. in Cincinnati, O., 1816) was slain, together with his chief, after the surrender to the Mexicans.

Moses Albert Levy served as surgeon-general in Sam Houston’s army throughout the Texas-Mexican war. Dr. Isaac Lyons, of Charleston, served as surgeon-general under General Tom Green in the war of 1836. Among other Jews who rendered notable service to the Republic of Texas were the brothers Leon and Isadore Dyer, natives of Germany, who, at an early age, came with their parents to Baltimore, where the older Dyer founded a meat-packing establishment, which is said to have been the first in America. Leon Dyer (b. 1807; d. in Louisville, Ky., 1883), who settled in New Orleans, was quartermaster-general of the state militia of Louisiana in 1836, when Texas called for aid in her struggle for independence. With several hundred other citizens of New Orleans, he responded, and, coming to Galveston, he received a commission as major in the Texas forces, signed by the first President, Burnett. The Louisiana contingent was assigned to the force of General Green, and saw much active service. Major Dyer also served on the guard which took General Santa Anna, the captive President of Mexico, from Galveston to Washington in the following year. His brother, Isadore Dyer (b. 1813; d. in Waukesha, Wis., 1888), settled in Galveston as a merchant in 1840, and was one of its public spirited citizens. He was one of the earliest grand masters of the Order of Odd Fellows in Texas. The first Jewish religious services in Galveston were held at his house in 1856.

Henry Seeligsohn (b. in Philadelphia, 1828; d. 1886) came to Texas in 1839, and was elected first lieutenant of the Galveston Cadets, an organization composed of young boys, which rendered efficient service. His father was Michael Seeligsohn (d. 1868), who was elected Mayor of Galveston in 1853. Levi Myers (sometimes also called Levi Charles or Charles Levi) Harby (b. in Georgetown, S. C., 1793; d. in Galveston, 1870), who was a midshipman in the United States Navy in 1812 and was taken prisoner by the British, also participated in the Texan war of independence. A. Wolf was killed in the battle of Alamo in 1836, and his name is inscribed on the Alamo monument at Austin. Jacob de Cordova (b. in Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1808; d. in Texas, 1868) removed to Galveston from New Orleans in 1837 and was the founder of several newspapers, represented Harris county in the Texas Legislature in 1847, and laid out the city of Waco in 1849. Henry Castro (b. in France, 1786; d. in Monterey, Mexico, 1861), a descendant of a wealthy Marrano family, entered, in 1842, into a contract with President Sam Houston of Texas to settle a colony west of the Medina. Houston also appointed him consul-general in France for the Republic of Texas. Between 1843 and 1846 Castro sent to Texas about 5,000 emigrants from the Rhenish provinces, who settled in the towns of Castroville, Quihi, Vandenburgh and O’Harris. Castro county, in northwest Texas, was named in honor of this early promoter of immigration to Texas, who sank large sums in the venture.

There was little communal and religious activity in the stirring times of the early development of Texas, and the first communal organizations appeared a considerable time after Jews settled in some localities. The first Jewish cemetery in Texas was established in Houston in 1844, where the first synagogue in the state was built exactly ten years later. The Jews of Galveston acquired their first burial ground in 1852: religious services were held since Yom Kippur 1856, but no congregation was organized until twelve years later. In San Antonio almost twenty years passed between the acquisition of a cemetery (1854) and the organization of the first congregation. All the other Jewish communities in the rapidly growing state date their foundation from a later period.31

The war with Mexico, which began in 1846, was the least popular of all the wars in which the United States has engaged, and this probably accounts for the small number of Jews who volunteered to participate in what was practically an attack on a weak neighbor. The number of Jews in the country was now more than ten times as large as in the time of the wars with England; but there are only about a dozen more names in the list of the Jewish soldiers of the Mexican war (in the above-mentioned work of Mr. Simon Wolf) than in the list of the year 1812. New York now had the largest Jewish community, and was represented by no less than fifteen in that small band of less than sixty, in which there was only one from Pennsylvania (Gabriel Dropsie, Co. E, 1st Regiment), one from New Jersey (Sergeant Alexander B. Weinberg) and five from Maryland. The others were mostly from the South, a large proportion of them having participated in the earlier struggle between Texas and Mexico.

The most prominent Jewish soldier of the Mexican war was David Camden de Leon (b. in South Carolina, 1813; d. in Santa Fé, N. M., 1872). He graduated as a physician from the University of Pennsylvania in 1836 and two years later entered the United States army as an assistant surgeon. He served with distinction in the Seminole war of 1835–42, which was the most bloody and stubborn of all wars against Indian tribes. For several years afterwards he was stationed on the Western frontier. He served throughout the Mexican war and was present at most of the battles. At Chapultepec he earned the sobriquet of “the Fighting Doctor,” and on two occasions led a charge of cavalry after the commanding officer had been killed or wounded. He twice received the thanks of Congress for his distinguished services and for his gallantry in action. He was afterwards again assigned to frontier duty, and in 1856 became surgeon, with the rank of major. Like most Southern officers in the regular army, de Leon resigned his commission at the outbreak of the Civil war and joined the Confederacy, for whose government he organized the medical department, becoming its first surgeon-general. Edwin de Leon (b. in Columbus, S. C., 1818; d. 1891), the journalist and author, who was appointed by President Pierce consul-general to Egypt, and was later a confidential agent of the Confederate States in Europe, was a brother of David C. de Leon.

Leon Dyer and Henry Seeligsohn, whose participation in the struggles of Texas was described at the beginning of this chapter, also served as officers in the war with Mexico. The names of Captain Michael Styfft, who served on the staff of General Zachary Taylor, and of Lieutenant-Colonel Israel Moses, who was promoted from the rank of assistant-surgeon, have also been preserved. Among those who were killed in action was Sergeant Abraham Adler of the New York Volunteers.

CHAPTER XXII.

CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM AND ITS STAND AGAINST REFORM.

“The poor Jews of Elm street and the rich Jews of Crosby street”—Rabbis Samuel M. Isaacs, Morris J. Raphall and Jacques J. Lyons—Sabato Morais—Kalish and Hübsch, the moderate reformers—Benjamin Szold—Dr. Marcus Jastrow’s career in three countries—Alexander Kohut—Russian Orthodoxy asserts itself in New York, and the Bet ha-Midrash ha-Godol is founded in 1852—Rabbi Abraham Joseph Ash and his various activities—Charity work which remains subordinate to religious work in the synagogue.

In New York, too, it was not a radical appealing to a wealthy congregation, but a conservative in a neighborhood where the poorer Jews dwelt, who first introduced the English sermon in the synagogue. Reference is made by a correspondent from New York (see “Orient,” 1840, p. 371) to “the poor Jews of Elm street and the rich Jews of Crosby street” in that period; and it was, characteristically enough, in the synagogue of the Bene Yeshurun, then situated at Elm street, that the innovation was made. Samuel Mayer Isaacs (b. in Leeuwarden, Holland, 1804; d. in New York, 1878), the son of a Dutch banker who removed to England, was called to the rabbinate of that congregation in 1839. When members who seceded from that synagogue formed the Congregation Sha’are Tefilah, in 1847, Rabbi Isaacs went with them and remained with his new charge until his death. He was an able exponent of conservative Judaism and was the founder of the “Jewish Messenger” (1857), which was continued after his demise by his son, Professor Abraham Samuel Isaacs (b. in New York, 1852), until 1902, when it was merged with another Jewish periodical. Like Leeser, Rabbi Isaacs was a good organizer, and influenced the foundation of various Jewish institutions.

His successor as rabbi of the Elm street congregation was Rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall (b. in Stockholm, Sweden, 1798; d. in New York, 1868), who was, like Isaacs, also the son of a banker. Raphall was a linguist and a good rabbinical scholar, and while in England he delivered lectures on Hebrew poetry, and also began there the publication of the “Hebrew Review and Magazine of Rabbinical Literature,” which was discontinued in 1836. For some time he acted as secretary to Solomon Herschell (1762–1842); he also made translations from Maimonides, Albo and Wessely; he participated in the translation of part of the Mishna, and began a translation of the Pentateuch, of which one volume appeared. After being for eight years minister of the Birmingham Synagogue, he sailed for New York in 1849, and remained with the Bene Yeshurun until shortly before his death. Raphall was the only prominent Northern rabbi who defended the institution of slavery in the pulpit, as well as in one of his works, entitled “Bible View of Slavery.”

Rev. Jacques Judah Lyons (b. in Surinam, 1814; d. in New York, 1877), who was a rabbi in his native city for several years, came to the United States in 1837, went to Richmond, Va., where he was minister of the Congregation Bene Shalom for two years, came to New York in 1839, and became rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, which had removed from Mill street to Crosby street in 1834. He held the position thirty-eight years, “successfully combating every movement to change the form of worship in his congregation.”

Rabbi Sabato Morais.

Photo by Gutekunst, Phila.

Leeser’s successor in the pulpit of Mickweh Israel in Philadelphia was also a prominent conservative, Sabato Morais (b. in Leghorn, Italy, 1823; d. in Philadelphia, 1897). After having spent five years in London as the master of a Jewish Orphans’ School, he arrived in Philadelphia in 1851, and “until his death his influence was a continually growing power for conservative Judaism.... Though his ministry covered the period of greatest activity in the adaptation of Judaism in America to changed conditions, he, as the advocate of Orthodox Judaism withstood every appeal in behalf of ritualistic innovations and departures from traditional practice,” proving thereby how much the personality of the rabbi counts in this country in deciding the religious attitude of his congregation. When Maimonides College was established in Philadelphia, in 1867, Morais was made professor of the Bible and Biblical literature; and he held the chair during the six years that the college existed. He was the founder and the first president of the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary, which was established in New York in 1886, which position, as well as that of Professor of Bible, he held until his death. Henry Samuel Morais (b. in Philadelphia, 1860), the writer on Jewish historical subjects and the first editor of the Philadelphia “Jewish Exponent” (established 1887), is a son of Sabato Morais.

Isidor Kalisch (b. in Krotoschin, Prussian-Poland, 1816; d. in Newark, N. J., 1886) was another scholarly rabbi of that period, who came to the United States in 1849, after having studied at several European universities. While he was more inclined toward Reform, he is chiefly known for his literary works and translations, which cover a wide range of Jewish subjects in Hebrew, German and English. He officiated as rabbi in various communities, beginning with Cleveland, O., and ending in Newark, N. J., to which city he removed from Nashville, Tenn., after he retired from the ministry in 1875. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Kalisch (b. in Cleveland, O., 1851) of Newark is his son.

Rev. Adolph Hübsch (b. in Hungary, 1830; d. in New York, 1884) was also a moderate Reformer with a good Rabbinical education. He came to New York in 1866 and became rabbi and preacher of the Congregation Ahabat Chesed, which grew considerably under him. He was one of those who yielded to the temptation of the time to tamper with the Siddur, and his edition of it, which was adopted by several other congregations for a certain time, was an addition to the curiosities of American Jewish liturgical literature.

Henry S. Jacobs (b. in Kingston, Jamaica, 1827; d. in New York, 1893), who came to Richmond, Va., as rabbi of Congregation Bet Shalom in 1854 and later held similar positions in Charleston, S. C., New Orleans and New York (Shearit Israel, 1873–74; Bene Yeshurun, 1874–93), also belongs to the group of conservative rabbis of that period, who did much to uphold traditional Judaism as a living faith without treating it as a movement or considering themselves as agitators. His conciliatory attitude enabled him to act as president of the Board of Jewish Ministers of New York from its organization until his death.

Benjamin Szold (b. in Hungary, 1829; d. at Berkely Springs, W. Va., 1902), who came to Baltimore in 1859 as rabbi of Oheb Shalom congregation and remained with it as rabbi until 1892 and as rabbi-emeritus until his death, was an opponent of radicalism who influenced his congregation to adopt a more conservative course relating to prayers. The changes in the contents of the Siddur, or traditional Prayer Book, are a characteristic of the extremely individualistic period in the Reform movement, when almost every leader of prominence tried his hand at it, and when the aim seemed to be to make the services in each temple or Reform-synagogue as unlike that of the other as possible. Most of those special “siddurim” have neither literary nor historical value, and deserve to be mentioned only as the curiosities or vagaries of an epoch of transition in American Judaism. Szold used the prevailing method for the purpose of inducing his congregation to retrace its steps; and his “Abodat Israel,” which closely followed traditional lines, soon displaced the more radical “Minhag America,” not only in his own synagogue but in a number of others. It was re-published several times, once with an English translation. His commentary on Job (Baltimore, 1886), written in Hebrew, is one of the best works of that nature produced in the United States. Miss Henrietta Szold, the translator and writer on Jewish subjects, is his daughter.

Of the same age, and to some extent imbued with the same views as Szold, was Mordecai or Marcus Jastrow (b. in Ragosen, Prussian-Poland, 1829; d. in Germantown. Pa., 1903), who had a remarkable career as rabbi in two countries before he came to America. Jastrow had a thorough rabbinical education, and also a degree of Ph.D. from the University of Halle. In 1858 he became the preacher of the modern or “German” congregation at Warsaw, Russian-Poland, and threw himself into the study of the Polish language and of the condition of the Jews of Poland. His work “Die Lage der Juden in Polen”, which appeared anonymously (Hamburg, 1859), proves him to have possessed much valuable information and clear views on the condition of the Jews of Poland; while a collection of Polish sermons which was published in Posen (1863) attest to his mastery of the language. He took the part of the Poles against their Russian oppressors, and participated in the demonstrations against the killing of five Poles in a suburb of Warsaw in February, 1861, which led to the beginning of the second Polish insurrection. Jastrow was imprisoned, together with the great Rabbi Berush Meisels, and after being held more than three months, was expelled from Russia. His widely circulated patriotic Polish sermons, his efforts to bring the Jews and Christians together in protest against the Muscovite tyranny, and his imprisonment, made him one of the most popular men in the old Polish capital at that time. He occupied the position of rabbi at Mannheim, Germany, for a short time in 1862, but his sympathy with Poland was too strong to permit him to remain there when, on the supposed pacification of that unhappy country, the order for his expulsion was revoked in November of that year. He soon returned to Warsaw, but a few months later the actual insurrection broke out, and, his passport being cancelled while he was visiting Germany, he could not return to Russia. He then (1864) accepted a position as rabbi at Worms, Hesse, where he remained until 1866, when he was chosen rabbi of the Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia.

In the first years of his American rabbinate, Jastrow ably seconded the efforts of Leeser to preserve conservative Judaism in the East against the advance of radical Reform, and continued to oppose that tendency after Leeser’s death. Jastrow was one of the professors of Maimonides College, and later collaborated with Szold in the revision of the “Siddur Abodat Israel” and in its translation into English. Besides his activity in local Jewish affairs and in other Jewish matters of a more general nature, he contributed to many European and American Jewish periodicals and was for several years the chief editor of a new translation of the Bible into English, which was undertaken under the auspices of the Jewish Publication Society of America. He also found time to compile his great work, “A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature” (London and New York, 1886–1903), and in his last years was editor of the department of the Talmud in the “Jewish Encyclopedia.” Two of his sons are renowned American scholars. The older, Prof. Morris Jastrow (b. in Warsaw, 1861), has occupied the chair of Semitic languages at the University of Pennsylvania since 1892, and is one of the foremost Orientalists in the country. The younger, Joseph Jastrow (b. in Warsaw, 1863), has been prof. of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin since 1888, and a recognized authority on his special subject. He was in charge of the psychological section of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and served as president of the American Psychological Association for the year 1900.

Dr. Marcus Jastrow.

Photo by Gutekunst, Phila.

The last of the important rabbis to come here from a Western European country was Alexander Kohut (b. in Hungary, 1842; d. in New York, 1894), the lexicographer and Orientalist, whose “Aruch Completum” (Vienna, 1878–92), to which he devoted twenty-five years of his life, is still the standard work on the subject. The first four volumes were printed during his residence in Hungary, where he was rabbi first at Stuhlweissenburg, then at Fünfkirchen, and lastly at Grosswardein (1880–84). The last four appeared during his sojourn in America, whither he came in 1885, when he was chosen rabbi of Congregation Ahabat Chesed in New York. He was at once recognized as an eminent conservative leader, and was associated with Morais in founding the Jewish Theological Seminary, in which he became professor of Talmudic methodology. In March, 1894, while delivering a eulogy on Kossuth, he was stricken in the pulpit, and died after lingering several weeks. A volume containing memorial addresses and tributes to his memory was published by his congregation in 1894. Another volume, containing essays by forty-four noted scholars in Europe and America, entitled “Semitic Studies in Memory of Rev. Dr. Alexander Kohut,” was published in Berlin in 1897 by his son, George Alexander Kohut (born in Stuhlweissenburg, 1874), the bibliographer and writer on Jewish subjects.

Extreme Russian Orthodoxy asserted itself in New York about the middle of the nineteenth century. There were numerous Jews from Russia in the country long before that, and the immigration from Russian-Poland increased heavily after 1845, when Jews in the Kingdom of Poland were first conscripted in the army, in violation of a promise made by the Government that this was to be postponed until they were granted equal rights with non-Jewish subjects. The first Russian congregation in America was founded June 4, 1852, with twelve members, which soon increased to about twenty-three, several of whom, however, were natives of Germany who were dissatisfied with the Reform tendencies of the congregations to which most of their countrymen belonged.33 The first place of worship was in a garret of the house, No. 83 Bayard street, for which a monthly rental of eight dollars was paid. B. Lichtenstein was the first Parnass or president, I. Cohen the secretary, H. S. Isaacs the reader and Abraham Joseph Ash (Eisenstadt? b. in Semyatich, Russia, 1813; d. in New York, 1888), who came to America in that year and was a Talmudical scholar, acted as rabbi without compensation.

The place on Bayard street was soon too small for the rapidly increasing congregation, and it removed in November of the same year to larger quarters on the first floor of a house on the corner of Canal and Elm streets, for which a monthly rental of twenty-five dollars was paid, although there was a carpenter-shop on the floor above. In another six months the continual increase necessitated another removal, this time to the top floor of a former court house at the corner of Pearl and Centre streets. There was a German congregation, “Bet Abraham,” on the first floor of the same building; but it soon moved out and, changing its name to “Sha’are Zedek,” located in Henry street and was known as the Henry Street Synagogue, until it moved uptown several years ago.

During the three years which the first Russian congregation, which called itself simply the Bet ha-Midrash, remained on Pearl street, Mr. Ash became the regularly appointed rabbi at a salary of two dollars a week, and Joshua Falk ha-Kohen, author of “Abne Joshua” (a commentary on Pirke Abot, New York, 1860), delivered occasional sermons without compensation. About this time a quarrel between Rabbi Ash and Judah Middleman, who was also a Talmudical scholar, about the recognition of a shochet, in which the rabbi would not submit to the decision of European rabbinical authorities, led to the first split in the congregation. Middleman and his followers withdrew and formed a separate minyan on Bayard street, which later became the congregation Bene Israel (Kalwarier, organized 1862), which now has its synagogue on Pike street.

A Portuguese Jew by the name of John Hart, who visited the Pearl street synagogue to say kaddish on his Jahrzeit, or anniversary of his parents’ death, influenced his friend, Samson Simpson, the founder of Mount Sinai Hospital (b. in Danbury, Conn., 1780; d. in New York, 1857), to donate three thousand dollars, which formed the largest part of the fund with which the Welsh Chapel, No. 78 Allen street, was purchased and turned into a synagogue. It was dedicated June 8, 1856. New quarrels between the rabbi’s adherents and the officers of the congregation led to a lawsuit, and later to another split; this time Rabbi Ash and twenty-three of his followers left the synagogue, and they formed a new congregation which they named “Bet ha-Midrash ha-Godol,” which was dedicated August 13, 1859, the first location being the top floor of the house on Forsyth street, on the southwest corner of Grand street. Henry Chuck was the first president of the new congregation; Mayer Salwen, secretary; Israel Cohen, reader, and Nathan Mayer, beadle and collector.

About the time of the beginning of the Civil War, Rabbi Ash left the rabbinate and engaged in business, in which he was successful for a time. During these years he became one of the largest contributing members and acted for a time as the highest officer of the congregation. But reverses came and he again became a rabbi, which, with a short interruption in 1876, when he became a dealer in “Kosher” wine, he remained until his death. The congregation removed from Forsyth street to the corner of Clinton and Grand streets in 1865, and from there moved into its own new building at 69 Ludlow street, which was dedicated September 27, 1872. This building was sold in 1885 when the congregation purchased the Methodist church at Nos. 52–60 Norfolk street, which has been known as the Bet ha-Midrash ha-Godol for the last quarter of a century.

This synagogue, which was increasing in wealth and membership, made progress in true Orthodox fashion. A system of baking strictly kosher matzoth for Passover was introduced in 1870. An extra shochet, Asher Lemil Harris, was engaged for the special meat market which supplied the members. A “Hebra Mishnayot” for the daily study of the Mishna was organized in the same year and a “Hebrah Shas,” for the study of the Talmud every evening after the services, was organized in 1874 by Rabbi Ash and Judah David Eisenstein (b. in Mesericz, government of Siedlce, Russian-Poland, 1855; a. 1872), who is now the editor and publisher and practically the author of the Hebrew Encyclopedia “Ozar Israel.”

The congregation also did a considerable amount of direct and unorganized charity work, the money often being contributed by members or visitors who were called to the reading of the Torah on Saturdays or other formal occasions. Poor transients and immigrants were assisted, some were taken into the houses of the more wealthy members for Sabbaths and festivals. Many of them were assisted to become peddlers, and were even instructed in the rudiments of the occupation. The poor of the Holy Land were also remembered by special donations once a year. But charity work never overshadowed the religious work. The affairs of the synagogue remained paramount, which is one of the principal reasons why congregations of this kind retain their truly Orthodox character. The increase of wealth brought the employment of the first professional cantor, Judah Oberman (1877), who was succeeded by Simha Samuelson in 1880. Other large congregations were now growing up on the East Side, where the Jewish population was increasing very fast; but the further development of its religious and communal life belongs to a later period.

CHAPTER XXIII.

INTERVENTION IN DAMASCUS. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST SWISS DISCRIMINATION.

The Damascus Affair; the first occasion on which the Jews of the United States requested the government to intercede in behalf of persecuted Jews in another country—John Forsyth’s instructions to American representatives in Turkey, in which those requests were anticipated—A discrimination in a treaty with Switzerland to which President Fillmore objected, and which Clay and Webster disapproved—The case of a Jewish-American citizen in Neufchatel—Newspaper agitation, meetings and memorials against the Swiss treaty—President Buchanan’s emphatic declaration, and Minister Fay’s “Israelite Note” about the Jews of Alsace—Question is settled by the emancipation of the Swiss Jews.

The Jewish community of the United States as a whole had no difficulties with the outside world and no serious internal problems in the period of expansion which is treated in this part. The results of the treaty between our Government and that of Russia, which was concluded in 1832, in which the rights of American Jews to enter Russia on the same conditions as other American citizens were not safeguarded as explicitly as ought to have been done in dealing with a power so unfriendly to the Jews, had not become apparent until nearly a half century afterwards, and must be ascribed more to oversight and ignorance of Russia’s treatment of Jews than to wilful neglect. Several unfavorable local decisions against Jews as such, mostly in cases of violation of Sunday laws, or of exemption claimed by Jews from attending court on Saturday,34 were of an immediately more painful nature: but this question also did not become acute until a much later period, when there grew up communities containing large poor Orthodox masses, for whom the observance of two day’s rest was a great economic hardship. An occasional objection to a public functionary’s forgetfulness about there being other citizens than Christians, which was sometimes noticed in Thanksgiving Day Proclamations (see Dr. Lilienthal’s correspondence about a case of that nature with Governor Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, in “Publications,” XIII, pp. 30–36) would soon itself be forgotten by Jew and gentile alike. The Jews were occasioning and experiencing very little difficulties, contributing to the work of developing the country, and thus unconsciously assisting in preparing themselves and the general population for the larger influx of immigrants which were to come later.

The Jews of America were therefore prepared to participate with the Jews of Western Europe in arousing public sympathy and causing diplomatic intervention in the case of the thirteen unfortunate Jews of Damascus who were imprisoned and tortured under the Blood Accusation of 1840. While the distance and the absence of the present means of quick communication delayed the action taken by the Jews of America until after the necessary assistance was rendered by European governments at the instance of the most influential Jews of England and France, the steps taken by the Jews here and the noble response of the Government under President Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) is of real historical value, and has been so regarded by Jost.35 It was for the first time that the Jews of the United States interested themselves and enlisted the interest of the government in the cause of suffering Jews in another part of the world, and thus participated in that consolidation of the Jewish public spirit which resulted from this memorable occurrence, and which justifies the statement made by Mr. Jacobs that “in a measure, modern Jewish history may be said to date from the Damascus affair of 1840.” There were now emancipated Jews in some countries who not only dared to come out in open protest against anti-Jewish outrages in other countries, but could also interest civilized governments to take official notice of such outrages—something unknown in former times. The American government, on its part, did not even wait for the request of the Jews to intercede in behalf of the victims of barbarous cruelty; but of its own accord it sent instructions to its representatives in Turkey and in Egypt to do all in their power for the unfortunate Jews.

The first meeting of Jews “for the purpose of uniting in an expression of sympathy for their brethren at Damascus, and of taking such steps as may be necessary to procure for them equal and impartial justice” was held in New York on August 19, 1840; and a letter containing the Resolution which was adopted there was sent to President Van Buren under the date of August 24, to which the following reply was received:

Washington, August 26, 1840.   

Messrs. J. B. Kursheedt, Chairman, and Theodore J. Seixas, Secretary.

Gentlemen:—The President has referred to this Department your letter of the 24th inst., communicating a resolution unanimously adopted at a meeting of the Israelites in the City of New York, held for the purpose of uniting in an expression of sentiment on the subject of the persecution of their brethren in Damascus. By his direction I have the honor to inform you, that the heart-rending scenes which took place at Damascus, had previously been brought to the notice of the President by a communication from our Consul at that place, in consequence thereof, a letter of instruction was immediately written to our Consul at Alexandria, a copy of which is herewith transmitted for your satisfaction.

About the same time our Charge d’Affairs at Constantinople was instructed to interpose his good offices in behalf of the oppressed and persecuted race of the Jews in the Ottoman Dominions, among whose kindred are found some of the most worthy and patriotic of our own citizens, and the whole subject which appeals so strongly to the universal sentiment of justice and humanity was earnestly recommended to his zeal and discretion. I have the honor to be, gentlemen,

Very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

JOHN FORSYTH.   

The letter by Mr. John Forsyth (1780–1841) to the Consul, which is mentioned in the above communication, was as follows:

Washington, August, 14, 1840.   

JOHN GLIDDON, ESQ., United States Consul at Alexandria, Egypt.

Sir:—In common with all civilized nations, the people of the United States have learned with horror the atrocious crimes imputed to the Jews of Damascus, and the cruelties of which they have been the victims. The President fully participates in the public feeling, and he cannot refrain from expressing equal surprise and pain, that in this advanced age, such unnatural practices could be ascribed to any portion of the religious world, and such barbarous measures be resorted to, in order to compel the confession of imputed guilt; the offences with which these unfortunate people are charged, resemble too much those which, in less enlightened times, were made the pretexts of fanatical persecution or mercenary extortion, to permit a doubt that they are equally unfounded.

The President has witnessed, with the most lively satisfaction, the effort of several of the Christian Governments of Europe, to suppress or mitigate these horrors, and he has learned with no common gratification their partial success. He is moreover anxious that the active sympathy and generous interposition of the Government of the United States should not be withheld from so benevolent an object, and he has accordingly directed me to instruct you to employ, should the occasion arise, all those good offices and efforts which are compatible with discretion and your official character, to the end that justice and humanity may be extended to these persecuted people, whose cry of distress has reached our shores. I am, sir,

Your obedient servant,

JOHN FORSYTH.   

The following letter was addressed to David Porter (1780–1843; the father of Admiral David D. Porter), who was then United States Minister to Turkey:

DEPARTMENT OF STATE.

Washington, August 17, 1840.   

DAVID PORTER, ESQ.

Sir:—In common with the people of the United States, the President has learned with profound feelings of surprise and pain the atrocious cruelties which have been practiced upon the Jews of Damascus and Rhodes, in consequence of charges extravagant and strikingly similar to those, which, in less enlightened ages, were made pretexts for the persecution and spoliation of these unfortunate people. As the scene of these barbarities are in the Mahomedan dominions, and, as such inhuman practices are not of an infrequent occurrence in the East, the President has directed me to instruct you to do everything in your power with the government of his Imperial Highness, the Sultan, to whom you are accredited, consistent with discretion and your diplomatic character, to prevent or mitigate these horrors,—the bare recital of which has caused a shudder throughout the civilized world; and in an especial manner, to direct your philanthropic efforts against the employment of torture in order to compel the confession of imputed guilt. The President is of the opinion that from no one can such generous endeavors proceed with so much propriety and effect, as from the representative of a friendly power, whose institutions, political and civil, place upon the same footing, the worshippers of God, of every faith and form, acknowledging no distinction between the Mahomedan, the Jew, and the Christian. Should you, in carrying out these instructions, find it necessary or proper to address yourself to any of the Turkish authorities, you will refer to this distinctive characteristic of our government, as investing with a peculiar propriety and right, the interposition of your good offices in behalf of an oppressed and persecuted race, among whose kindred are found some of the most worthy and patriotic of our citizens. In communicating to you the wishes of the President, I do not think it advisable to give you more explicit and minute instructions, but earnestly commend to your zeal and discretion, a subject which appeals so strongly to the universal sentiments of justice and humanity.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

JOHN FORSYTH.   

The Jews of Philadelphia held, on August 27, a meeting for the same purpose in the vestry of the Mickweh Israel Synagogue, at which were present, besides the prominent Jews of the city, several representative Christian clergymen—Dr. Ducachet, Rector of St. Stephens, Dr. Ramsay, a Presbyterian minister, and the Rev. Mr. Kennedy—all of whom spoke. Isaac Leeser was the principal orator, and he argued that as both Christianity and Islam are derived from Judaism, if the last advocated ritual murder, the daughter-religions would equally be guilty of the same practice. He contrasted the position of the Eastern Jews with that of their brethren in this happy land, and declared that while the Jews everywhere felt themselves true citizens of the lands in which they dwelt, they still retained full sympathy with their co-religionists throughout the world, especially when charges were brought against them which affected the honor and good fame of their religion. A series of resolutions were adopted and sent to Washington, whence Mr. Forsyth replied in similar terms to those he had used in his letter to the Jews of New York, and likewise enclosed a copy of his letter to Consul Gliddon at Alexandria. Another meeting was held in Richmond, Va., where a resolution was adopted thanking the President “for the prompt and handsome manner in which he has acted in reference to the persecution practiced upon our brethren in Damascus.”

The Jews of the United States were also in open sympathy with the liberal movements in Central Europe, especially in Germany, which culminated in the revolutions of the year 1848. While there was no active co-operation or direct assistance in those times of slow communication, those who wrote from America described the conditions prevailing here as well-nigh ideal from the liberal point of view. A poem by Sigmund Herzl, entitled “Auf! Nach Amerika!” which appeared in the “Central Organ,” published in Vienna in 1848 by Isidor Bush (b. in Prague, Bohemia, 1822; a. in New York, 1849; d. in St. Louis, Mo., 1898), in which America is described as a place where true brotherly love reigns supreme, where ignorance and base prejudice are entirely unknown, may be taken as an example of the expression of that sentiment. When the great Jewish champion of the liberal movement in Germany, Gabriel Riesser (b. in Hamburg, Germany, 1806; d. there 1863), visited America in 1856, he was greeted by many former German revolutionary soldiers—both Jewish and Christian—and in New York they gave a public dinner in his honor. German Jews in Philadelphia formed a Riesser Club, which existed for a number of years. (See Albert M. Friedenberg in “Publications,” XVII, pp. 204–5.)

The first diplomatic difficulties which the Government of the United States experienced on account of discrimination against its Jewish citizens occurred about this time, and—strangely enough—it was not with Russia, but with the Swiss Confederation. A general convention between the two republics was drawn and signed at Berne, November 25, 1850, by Mr. A. Dudley Mann, American Minister to Switzerland, on the part of the United States, and by Messrs. Druey and Frey-Hérosée on the part of the Swiss Confederation. This treaty and a copy of the instructions under which Mr. Mann acted, together with his dispatch of November 30, 1850, explanatory of the Articles of Convention, were transmitted to the United States Senate on February 13, 1851, by President Millard Fillmore (1800–74). Neither the treaty nor the papers accompanying it were ever made public, the ban of secrecy imposed by the Senate having never been removed. But President Fillmore himself, in the message transmitting the treaty, objected to it in the form in which it was presented. He said: “There is a decisive objection arising from the last clause in the First Article. That clause is in these words: On account of the tenor of the Federal Constitution of Switzerland, Christians alone are entitled to the enjoyment of the privileges guaranteed by the present Article in the Swiss Cantons. But said cantons are not prohibited from extending the same privileges to citizens of the United States of other religious persuasions.

“It is quite certain [continues the President] that neither by law, nor by treaty, nor by any other official proceeding is it competent for the Government of the United States to establish any distinction between its citizens founded on differences in religious beliefs. Any benefit or privilege conferred by law or treaty on one must be common to all, and we are not at liberty, on a question of such vital interest and plain constitutional duty, to consider whether the particular case is one in which substantial inconvenience or injustice might ensue. It is enough that an inequality would be sanctioned, hostile to the institutions of the United States and inconsistent with the Constitution and the laws. Nor can the Government of the United States rely on the individual Cantons of Switzerland for extending the same privileges to other citizens of the United States as this article extends to Christians. It is indispensable not only that every privilege granted to any of the citizens of the United States should be granted to all, but also that the grant of such privileges should stand upon the same stipulation and assurance by the whole Swiss Confederation, as those of other articles of the convention.”36

The two most prominent men in American public life at that time, Senator Henry Clay (1777–1852) and Secretary of State Daniel Webster (1782–1852), strongly disapproved the discrimination which the proposed treaty provided. The former wrote: “I disapprove entirely the restrictions limiting certain provisions of the treaty, under the operation of which a respectable portion of our fellow-citizens would be excluded from their benefits. This is not the country nor the age in which unjust prejudices should receive any countenance.” Webster wrote about the same time to a Jew who addressed him on the subject (presumably J. M. Cordozo): “The objections against certain specialties of the Swiss Convention concerning the Israelites which you urge in your letter to me have not escaped the attention of the Department, and I hasten to inform you that they will be laid before the Senate with the convention.” (The letter is dated February 11, 1851.)

In the meantime, although it was asserted on behalf of Switzerland that the discriminations which it insisted upon were only “a precautionary measure ... a safeguard against the immense itinerant (Jewish) population of Alsace,” the two Cantons of Basle vigorously executed a decree of banishment against the Jews which was promulgated November 17, 1851. The law was suspended for a few months because of a note sent by Emperor Napoleon III. to the Council of the Federation, in which he said “That France will expel all Swiss citizens established in France in case the two Cantons should insist on carrying out this law against the Jews.” But while the negotiations were pending, the two Cantons carried out the law of expulsion, and no further steps were taken by France. About this time there was set on foot in this country a movement to procure religious toleration abroad for American citizens generally. It appears to have been aimed at the persecution of American Protestants in Catholic countries, and the movement to secure redress in this direction culminated in a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives, December 13, 1852, by John A. Wilcox, of Mississippi, which declared “that the representatives of this Government at foreign courts be instructed to urge such amendments of all existing treaties between the United States and the other powers of the world as will secure the same liberty of religious worship to all American citizens residing under foreign flags which is guaranteed to all citizens of every nation of the whole world who reside under the flag of our Union.”

Objection was made to this resolution as an encroachment upon the powers of the Executive, and action was delayed for a long time. A resolution of a similar nature, which was reported to the Senate from the Committee on Foreign Relations, February 17, 1853, met the same fate. But all these discussions had the effect of the Senate refusing to ratify the treaty with Switzerland in the form in which it was sent to it. Mr. Mann thereupon proceeded to negotiate another treaty which, while striking from it the clause objected to by the President and the other notable men mentioned above, yet in another form inserted a clause, the effect of which was the same as that of the clause which had been stricken out. Article I of this new treaty read as follows:

The citizens of the United States of America and the citizens of Switzerland shall be admitted and treated upon a footing of reciprocal equality in the two countries, where such admission and treatment shall not conflict with the constitutional or legal provisions, as well Federal as State and Cantonal of the contracting parties.

Despite the previous and many subsequent protests from numerous Jews, and also despite the attention of the government, which was attracted to the case of A. H. Gootman, an American-Jewish citizen, who was ordered expelled from the Canton of Neufchatel in 1853, the treaty containing the above article was ratified by the Senate November 6, 1855. Ratifications were exchanged two days afterward, and the treaty was proclaimed November 9, 1855, by President Franklin Pierce (1804–69), when William Learned Marcy (1786–1857) was Secretary of State.

In 1856 the above mentioned Mr. Gootman, who had remained in Neufchatel by special permission, again requested, through the American minister to Switzerland, Mr. Theo. S. Fay, the intervention of the United States Government against his expulsion. In his letter to the State Department Mr. Fay states it as a matter of fact that the treaty between the two republics “does not grant to Israelites the right of domicile in Switzerland,” and in a second letter he says “that it may be superfluous to repeat that the obnoxious clause in the treaty was unavoidable without a revision of the federal constitution of Switzerland.” He also repeats “that the admission of American Jews would necessitate that of Jews of other nations, and particular inconvenience is apprehended from the usurious Israelitish population of the French province of Alsace.” This second Gootman case became generally known, and public sentiment was aroused against the treaty. The result of the agitation was apparent even in the general press of the country, and many protest meetings were held, memorials drawn and forwarded to Washington and committees appointed to consider the matter. A delegation of prominent Jews went to the Capital in October, 1857, and presented a memorial to President James Buchanan (1791–1868), who gave an explicit promise to remedy the wrong of which the Jews complained.

The declaration of the President on the subject was so emphatic that most of the leaders and promoters of the agitation were completely satisfied that the question was already settled in their favor. Dr. Einhorn wrote in his “Sinai”: “We feel satisfied that the Israelites of the United States may feel implicit confidence in the Executive, and that their rights as citizens of the United States will be zealously maintained.” Dr. Wise, in the “Israelite,” wrote: “No doubt was left in the minds of the delegates, but that this matter is settled as far as we are concerned.” Rabbi Leeser, however, was not so well satisfied, and he did not agree that all agitation ought now to cease, but thought it “advisable for all the congregations that have not yet acted to draw up memorials and send them to the President, to show at least that the interest in the question was not confined to the four States represented at Washington on the 31st of October.”

Another long diplomatic correspondence followed, with reciprocal requests for information about the condition of the Jews in both countries, with urgent requests from Washington that something be done, and with explanations from Mr. Fay that the Cantonal laws or constitutions would have to be changed before favorable action could be expected. In November of the same year Mr. Fay wrote: “I would wish carefully to avoid offering encouragement to the Hebrews.” But he was now working diligently to carry out the desire of the President, and was even collecting material to disprove the charges made by the Swiss against the Alsatian Jews. In November, 1858, he wrote to Secretary of State Lewis Cass (1782–1866): “That the mouths of all foreign governments and preceding treaty makers have been until now closed by a plea about the Alsatian Jews. I think that after the renseignements which I am now collecting no Swiss authority will ever dare to advance that objection against us as an argument, and I am more and more of the opinion that it may become expedient to denounce our treaty until the expunction of the offensive clause.” The results of Mr. Fay’s investigations were incorporated in his “Israelite Note,” which was transmitted to the Secretary of State on June 3, 1859, and to the Federal Council of Switzerland on the same day. It had a salutary effect on Switzerland, where the Federal Council assisted in its circulation. A German edition of it was printed in St. Gall in 1860. The cause of the Jews in Switzerland gained much from this intervention of the representative of a foreign government in their behalf; and the consequences were felt in other countries where the struggle for Jewish emancipation was then going on. According to a letter written by Mr. Fay in October, 1859, the Bavarian Minister told him that should he succeed in Switzerland, the Israelites of Bavaria would also be emancipated.

The case of the Jews was making considerable progress, and other enlightened governments also made representations to Switzerland in favor of the Jews; still nothing definite was accomplished under Buchanan’s administration, either. In March, 1861, Rabbi Leeser expressed, in the “Occident,” his regret, that nothing was done, and wrote that he expected that nothing would be done until “Switzerland herself will render the laws harmless by repealing through her Cantonal Councils all inequality laws existing against us.” This prediction proved correct; for while the succeeding Secretary of State, William H. Seward (1801–72) took up the matter with Mr. George G. Fogg, who was then minister to Switzerland, several years passed before another favorable report reached the State Department on the subject. The appointment by the Government of the United States of a Jewish citizen, Mr. Bernays, as its Consul to Zürich created a stir in both countries, and clearly indicated the favorable disposition of the administration of President Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) towards the Jews.

In 1864 Mr. Fogg wrote to Mr. Seward that the President of the Confederation, Mr. Dubs, had informed him that the Federal Council were then disposed to so amend the treaty that no discrimination founded on religious belief should thereafter be made or endured by citizens of the United States within the limits of the Swiss Confederation. The remaining Cantons were removing the Jewish disabilities one after another; but in some of them, as in Basle, the hotbed of opposition and prejudice against the Jews, full civil rights were not granted until 1872, although the right of residence was freely accorded ten years earlier. The new Swiss Constitution, which was adopted in 1874, at last established full religious liberty, and also made the question of treatments of aliens a Federal, as distinguished from a Cantonal, matter. It was not until then that the question was solved, so to speak, automatically; but it is conceded that the efforts of the Government of the United States contributed to the result, although it could not attain its object by direct diplomatic negotiations.

CHAPTER XXV.

PARTICIPATION OF JEWS IN THE CIVIL WAR. JUDAH P. BENJAMIN.

Probable number of Jews in the United States at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War—Seddon’s estimate of “from ten to twelve thousand Jews in the Southern Army”—Judah P. Benjamin, the greatest Jew in American public life—His early life and his marriage—Whig politician, planter and slave owner—Elected to the United States Senate and re-elected as a Democrat—Quits Washington when Louisiana seceded and enters the cabinet of the Confederacy—Attorney-General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State—His foreign policy—His capacity for work—When all is lost he goes to England and becomes one of its great lawyers—His last days are spent in France.

The highest estimate of the number of Jews in the United States about the time of the outbreak of the Civil War was about four hundred thousand (Jonas P. Levy in 1858; see “Publications,” XI, p. 39), while the lowest, given by Mr. Simon Wolf in his work, which is the standard authority on the participation of the Jews in the war,39 thinks it “altogether doubtful whether there were more than 150,000, if that many, when hostilities commenced.” But it is certain that even if the higher estimate is nearer the truth, the Jews took their full share in the struggle and “that the enlistment of Jewish soldiers, North and South, reached proportions considerably in excess of their ratio to the general population.” Mr. Wolf has collected data to the effect that over seven thousand Jews took part in the conflict on both sides, but he has by no means been able to come near completeness. Neither the Government of the United States nor that of the Confederacy took notice of the religion of its soldiers; a large number of the young German-Jewish volunteers were far from being strict adherents of religion, while many among the native Jews had American names and could not be easily recognized as Jews. Mr. Seddon, the Secretary of War of the Confederacy, when requested, in the fall of 1864, to grant a furlough to Jewish soldiers who would like to keep Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur, is quoted as replying that he believed that there were from ten to twelve thousand Jews in the Southern Army, and that it would perhaps disintegrate certain commands if the request was granted. While this number is probably an exaggeration, it cannot be very far from the truth, and considering the comparatively small number of Jews in the South at that time, this is a really remarkable showing.

The number of Jews who distinguished themselves by their bravery and who attained high rank and other forms of recognition, was also correspondingly large, especially if we consider their inexperience in war. But before treating of the men who gained eminence on the field of battle, and of the others whose creditable record in the war helped them to attain positions of prominence in other walks of life afterwards, we shall speak of the one man who occupied a really commanding position in this gigantic struggle, the greatest Jew in American public life—Judah P. Benjamin.

Judah P. Benjamin.

From Pierce Butler’s “Judah P. Benjamin.”

He was the son of Philip (b. about 1782) and Rebecca de Mendes Benjamin, who emigrated from London, England, to St. Thomas, W. I., in 1808, shortly after their marriage, where the son was born August 6, 1811. The Benjamins removed to the United States, where they originally intended to go, about 1818, and settled in Charleston, S. C. Judah Philip entered Yale University in 1825, and left in 1827, without taking a degree. A year later he came to New Orleans, where he taught English, learned French and studied law as a notary’s clerk. He was admitted to the bar in 1832 and a year later married his former pupil, Natalie St. Martin, who remained all her life a devout Roman Catholic. The marriage was not a happy one, and when their only child which survived infancy was about five years old, Mrs. Benjamin moved permanently to France to educate her, and Mr. Benjamin saw them only on his visits to Paris, which he made almost annually.

Benjamin was associated with Thomas Slidell, who later became Chief Justice of Louisiana, in the preparation of the Digest of the Reported Decisions of the Superior Courts in the Territory of Orleans and State of Louisiana, which was published in 1834. He soon afterward became interested in politics, and was elected to the lower house of the General Assembly of Louisiana on the Whig ticket in 1842. When he was forced by weakened eyesight to relinquish his law practice for a time, he took up sugar planting, in which he likewise succeeded very well. The plantation, however, was ruined by a flood, and Benjamin removed to New Orleans, together with the members of his family, whom he brought over from South Carolina. They were his mother (d. 1847), his oldest sister, the widow of Abraham Levy (whom she married in 1826), and his younger sister, who later became the mother of Julius Kruttschnitt (b. in New Orleans, 1854), the railroad manager. As a planter Benjamin became a slave owner, and some of his slaves, who were still living at the beginning of the present century, “would tell visitors all sorts of tales of the master of long ago—none but kindly memories and romantic legends of the glory of the old place.”40

He soon became one of the recognized leaders of the Whig party in his state, and “no small share of the flashes of success that came to it in the last decade of its existence in Louisiana is attributable to his energy and political sagacity.” He was, according to the journalistic custom of that time, savagely assailed by the newspapers which opposed him, and he was even charged, in 1844, with belonging to the “Know Nothing” party, despite the fact that he was himself foreign born. But he agreed with that party in his opposition to the granting of suffrage to immigrants into the state, even to natives of Northern States, in whom he saw a source of danger to the South.

His seat in the Constitutional Convention of 1844 being contested, he resigned and was re-elected by a much larger majority. When he again took his seat at the convention which re-assembled in New Orleans, Benjamin was the recognized leader of the delegates of that city in its disputes with the representatives of the country districts. One of his speeches at that convention proved that he clearly foresaw the war in 1845, though he was then considered an alarmist. He was elected a State Senator in 1852, and soon became a leading candidate for the United States Senate. He received the nomination by an unexpectedly large majority and was elected in the same year, as a Whig. When that party was split by the antagonism between the North and the South, he came out openly in 1855 with the declaration that it did not exist any more as a national party. He urged the necessity of uniting in one great Southern party, on a platform “on which we can all stand together to meet with firmness the coming shock.” When the formation of such a party proved impracticable, he turned to the Democratic party and became more friendly to the administration. His first really powerful speech in the Senate was delivered May 2d, 1856, on the Kansas bill, in which he distinctly and calmly enunciated the right of secession.

In 1859 Benjamin was re-elected to the United States Senate by a majority of one vote (that of the last “Know Nothing” in the Louisiana Legislature). He was now one of the prominent Senators, and chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He was in favor of secession only as a last resort; but he thought that this last resort was reached after Lincoln’s election in 1860. He delivered two powerful orations in the Senate in the following winter, and a memorable farewell speech, February 4, 1861, on the right of Louisiana to secede. His last speech in the capital was delivered before the Washington Artillery on Washington’s birthday, and soon after, in New Orleans, he took leave from his family, whom he was never to see again.

Louisiana had already seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861, and one month later, February 25, Benjamin was named by the President of the new Confederacy, Jefferson Davis (1808–89) as his Attorney-General. Benjamin assumed his new office at the new capital, Montgomery, Ala.; but there was hardly any work for him to do as an Attorney-General to a government that practically had no courts. But he was often called upon by President Davis to perform other services which required tact and delicacy, and he soon gained the latter’s confidence to a marked degree. On September 17, 1861, Benjamin was named Secretary of War ad interim, to succeed Secretary Walker, acting also as Attorney-General until November 15 of that year. He proved unpopular in his new office, and was blamed by a Congressional committee for not sending ammunition to General Wise, who lost an important battle about that time. But as a matter of fact there was nothing to send, and the President and his Secretary of War preferred to accept official blame to disclosing the dearth and scarcity of powder to a committee of the Confederate Congress, fearing that it might become known to the Yankees. Benjamin shouldered the odium, as usual; but he rose in the estimation of Davis and the other leaders who were conversant with the true state of affairs. Thus it happened that while almost everybody in the South expected Benjamin to be dismissed in disgrace, the surprising news was published on March 27, 1862, that he was promoted to the office of Secretary of State.

His new Department was the one for which he was pre-eminently fit; and while he could not, in the nature of things, accomplish all that was expected of him, he earned the undying fame which was best expressed in the description of him as the “Brains of the Confederacy.” The great problem was to obtain assistance from a maritime power, the only one who could help the blockaded Confederacy, which was prevented by the blockade from selling its chief staple article—cotton. Spain, though a slave power herself at that time, was unfriendly to the former persistent filibusters, and her distrust could not be overcome. France was too friendly with England and would not interfere without the latter’s consent or co-operation, so that even if the South could send out a new Benjamin Franklin to Paris he could accomplish little. Benjamin, like almost all Southern statesmen, believed that England will be unable to get along without cotton, and ignoring or misunderstanding the moral forces which the cause of the North awakened in Europe, he displayed more independence at the beginning than was justifiable. Later, when he was in England, Benjamin declared: “I did not believe that your government would allow such misery to your operatives, such loss to your manufacturers, or that the people themselves would have borne it.” Benjamin believed that recognition (by England and France) even without intervention would end the war, and he might have been right if recognition came early.

Mason, the Southern representative in England, made little headway, and even had his cause been stronger, he was no match for Adams, the minister of the North. Slidell, Benjamin’s friend, was apparently more successful in France. Benjamin authorized him to offer France a cotton subsidy valued at over sixty million francs for breaking the blockade or even for simple recognition of the Confederacy. Emperor Louis Napoleon (1808–73) seemed to have been favorably inclined, and Mercier, the French minister at Washington, who visited Richmond with Lincoln’s permission, was so influenced by Benjamin that he became almost enthusiastic. But communications were unsteady and unsafe, and some dispatches came seven months after they were sent from Paris. As an instance: Benjamin received from Slidell on February 27, 1863, a message written December 27, 1862, stating that the envoy to France was “without any dispatch from you later than April 15th.” The fall of New Orleans, May 1, 1862, blasted the hopes of early intervention.

Benjamin worked very hard as Secretary of State, although there were no ambassadors to be received and no social functions to be attended in Richmond. It has been stated on good authority that President Davis consulted with his Secretary of State more freely than with any other member of his cabinet, and finding him always willing and able, got in the habit of referring to the State Department anything that did not beyond any hope belong to some other department. Benjamin’s assistant secretary, L. O. Washington, writes of him: “He was ever calm, self-poised, and master of all his resources. His grasp of a subject seemed instantaneous. His mind appeared to move without friction. His thought was clear.” Mrs. Jefferson Davis wrote; “Mr. Benjamin was always ready for work; sometimes with half an hour recess, he remained with the Executive from ten in the morning until night.... Both the President and the Secretary of State worked like galley slaves, early and late. Mr. Davis came home fasting, a mere mass of throbbing nerves, and perfectly exhausted; but Mr. Benjamin was always fresh and buoyant.”

When New Orleans fell, his little family, after privations and misadventures, moved to La Grange, Ga., where he could again supply them with money. When the fortune of the Confederacy began to wane, his unpopularity increased, and attacks upon the score of his religion and race, which were never neglected by his opponents during his entire career, were now redoubled. He was especially blamed for the desperate plan, which was carried out through the desire and influence of General Robert E. Lee (1807–70) of enlisting negroes in the Confederate army. On February 9, 1865, Benjamin made, at a mass meeting in Richmond, the last public speech of his life. His power over his audience was still great, but all was lost. Richmond fell in less than two months. After an anxious week at Danville, he accompanied President Davis to Greensboro, where the fugitive government halted for a few days. Taking leave from Mr. Davis, to whom he could no longer be of any assistance, he escaped to the West Indies, where he visited his native place for the last time, and after many dangers and adventures he arrived in England, July 22, 1865.

Although England did not recognize the Confederacy, many sympathized with it, and Benjamin, whose fame preceded him, was received in London with great friendliness, despite the order which he gave as Secretary of State, expelling from the Confederate States all British Consuls, because they persisted in acting under orders from their superiors in Washington. He was befriended by many of the important men of the time in London, including both Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield, 1804–81) and William E. Gladstone (1809–98). Having been born in an English colony, the son of an Englishman, he simply returned to his original allegiance, seemingly trying to forget his experience of more than forty years as an American. He never made a political address or a public declaration after leaving America.

His subsequent career as an English barrister, as one of the greatest of barristers in his time, was wonderful, especially when we remember that it was begun when he was over fifty-five years of age; with a past history which was so crowded with activity and exciting experience to wear out any man. He wrote there his Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property, with References to the American Decisions, to the French Code and Civil Law which became a legal classic on both sides of the Atlantic. His income from his law practice was for some years as high as £15,000 annually, which was much rarer then than it is now. In 1872 he received a “patent of precedence,” which gave him rank above all other Queen’s Counsels. About 1877 he began to build a new house on Avenue d’Jena (No. 41), in Paris, in which city his wife and only child continued to reside, even after he settled in England. A bad accident caused by an attempt to jump off a tram-car, in 1880, left him a sick man for the rest of his life. Diabetes developed, and in February, 1883, he was forced to announce his retirement from the English Bar. After a notable banquet given in his honor by the Bench and Bar—the first of its kind in England—he retired to his mansion in Paris, where he died May 6, 1884, about seventy-three years old. He was buried according to the rites of the Catholic Church, although it is not believed that he was converted to Christianity. His wife survived him seven years. His only daughter, Ninette, who married Captain Henri de Bousignac, of the French army, died without issue in 1898.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE FORMATIVE PERIOD AFTER THE CIVIL WAR.

Ebb and flow of immigration between 1850 and 1880—Decrease and practical stoppage of Jewish immigration from Germany—The breathing spell between two periods of immigration, and the preparation for the vast influx which was to follow—The period of great charitable institutions—Organization and consolidation—The Hebrew Union College and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations—The Independent Order B’nai B’rith—Other large fraternal organizations and their usefulness—Important local institutions in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc.

The number of immigrants arriving in the United States increased in the middle of the last century, and reached its highest point of that period in 1854, when the new arrivals numbered 427,833. It then began to diminish, and fell to about 150,000 in 1860, and to less than 90,000 in each of the two first years of the Civil War, 1861 and 1862. In the following year it began to rise again, and in the two last years of the war, when the final outcome was already easily foreseen in the Old World, it was considerably above the three years preceding the beginning of the conflict. In 1865 there came 247,453; in 1867 (when the present system of figuring by the fiscal year, ending June 30, was adopted) they numbered 298,967, and only a little less in 1868. In 1869 it rose to 352,569; in 1870 to 387,203. After a slight relapse in 1871 to 321,350, it rose in 1872 to 404,806 and in 1873 to 459,803, when the current receded again on account of the slackening of all business activity which followed the panic of that year. It sank to as low as 138,469 in 1878, rose again to 177,826 in 1879, and to 457,257 in 1880, when the country had fully recovered from the effects of the panic, as well as from the ravages of the great struggle.

But while Germans formed a large part of those who arrived in the two or three decades after the war, the number of Jews who left that country was now very small, and sank to almost nothing about 1880. What was described by a Jewish traveler41 as the second German-Jewish migration to America, which began about 1836, and to which “Bavaria contributed the largest quota of (Jewish) immigrants, because of her peculiarly harsh (anti-Jewish) marriage laws and commercial restrictions,” practically ended in the decade of the Civil War, when the Jews were emancipated in most of the German states. The progress made by these immigrants in less than one generation can be best illustrated by quoting two passages from the same article by Mr. Kohler: “The early German settlers commonly arrived here without means, frequently without any education other than of the most rudimentary character.” Subsequently (p. 102) he quotes a German-American politician, who wrote in 1869: “The German Jews in America gain in influence daily, being rich, intelligent and educated, or at least seeking education. They read better books than the rest of the Germans....”

This progress was largely accelerated by the great business activity which followed the war. A large number of the German-Jewish immigrants amassed wealth, and the stoppage of the arrival of new poor immigrants, or rather of poor relatives, reduced the number of the needy and helpless among them to an insignificant fraction. It may be said that it was during these fifteen years (1865–80), between the preceding large German-Jewish immigration and the following incomparably larger Russian-Jewish influx, that the Jews of the United States succeeded in bringing their communal house to order, and in preparing for their historic mission of receiving the great masses which were soon to be driven thither from the Slavic countries by the iron hand of persecution. Most of the large charitable institutions, which are the pride of American Judaism, and have served to relieve want and pain in various forms, actually date from that period. The date of organization or original foundation is in most cases much earlier. But at the beginning these institutions were more like the small charities which are now founded by poor immigrants. There were very few great Jewish institutions in the United States prior to the Civil War, although most of the magnificent organizations in the older communities justly claim a continued existence from ante-bellum days. The largest number and the most important of them grew to their imposing size and vast usefulness in “the seventies,” i. e., in that breathing spell which the Jews of America had between two periods of immigration.

The tendency to organize, to consolidate and take up the work of American Judaism in earnest, which characterized that period, manifested itself in the conferences of the Reform Rabbis, although as occasions for squabbles about destructive innovations and for extremely radical declarations, they deserve to be classed as ephemeral sensationalism rather than events of historical importance. It was at the third of these conventions, held in Cincinnati in June, 1871, that it was decided to establish the Hebrew Union College and to organize the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. The last named organization, which was founded in July, 1873, with thirty-four congregations, numbering about 1,800 members,42 now comprises about two hundred congregations, with a total membership of nearly twenty thousand, and includes practically the entire American and Americanized German elements which are affiliated with Jewish religious institutions. The College, which was established two years later, has educated nearly one hundred and fifty American Rabbis, some of whom have attained eminence as preachers and communal workers.

Julius Bien.

Principal organizer of the Ind. Order B’nai B’rith.

The Independent Order B’nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant), which seems destined to be the great Jewish international organization of the future, though founded in 1843, did not assume its commanding position until about a quarter of a century afterward. It had less than 3,000 members in 1857. Three years after the close of the Civil War its membership rose to 20,000, which was probably a larger proportion of the Jewish population of the country at that time than it ever had before or after. It now has about 34,000 members, distributed in the seven districts into which it has divided the United States, and in Germany, Austria and Roumania, where there are flourishing lodges. A lodge has also recently been established in England. The guiding spirit of the order was Julius Bien (b. in Hesse-Nassau, Germany, 1826; d. in New York, 1909), who was its president in the years 1854–57 and 1868–1900. His successor was Leo N. Levi (b. in Victoria, Tex., 1856; d. in New York, 1904), who was in turn succeeded by the present incumbent, Adolf Kraus (b. in Bohemia, 1850; a. 1865), an eminent attorney, who has resided in Chicago since 1871, where he has served as President of the Board of Education, Corporation Counsel of the city and President of the Civil Service Commission.

While no other Jewish fraternal organization succeeded in accomplishing as much as the B’nai B’rith in communal or charitable work and in representing general Jewish interests for a number of years, other organizations of the same kind, which kept more strictly to the activities for the benefits of their own members, also originated in that period. They are the Order Brith Abraham (organized 1859) and its offshoots, the Kesher shel Barzel (founded 1860), the Independent Order Brith Abraham (1887), the Free Sons of Israel (1849), and the Free Sons of Benjamin (1879). The two Brith Abraham Orders, the second of which was formed by a secession from the first, have grown very fast of late years, the former having about 70,000 members of both sexes and the latter about twice that number. Like most of the other Jewish orders which originated later, the bulk of their membership consists of immigrants of the last period from the Slavic countries. Aside from the pecuniary benefits which members and their families derive from these organizations at lower rates than they could have obtained elsewhere, the educational value of these bodies is also great, for many obtain there the first glimpse of the systematic working of an organization which is amenable to its own rules.

As much, if not more, progress was made in that time with the founding of institutions which are considered as local in their character, but which in large communities like New York, Philadelphia or Chicago ultimately helped more people at a larger cost than many of the national organizations. The United Hebrew Charities of New York was organized in 1874, two years after the incorporation of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews. The Mount Sinai Hospital was originally the Jews’ Hospital (organized 1857), but it was then a small institution, and its large structure (which was abandoned for a still larger one in 1901) which first bore the name of Mount Sinai was erected in 1870. The Hebrew Benevolent Orphan Asylum, which was organized in its original form in the first quarter of the last century, had only thirty children, in a rented house, in 1860. Its first building, on the corner of Third avenue and Seventy-seventh street, was erected in 1862, and its magnificent structure on Amsterdam avenue more than twenty years afterwards. The Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Orphan Asylum Society was organized in 1879. The Hebrew Free School Association, which gave the impetus to the organization in later years of important educational institutions, like the Hebrew Technical Institute, the Technical School for Girls, and ultimately also to the Educational Alliance (originally The Hebrew Institute, organized 1891), originated in that period and existed until about 1899. The Young Men’s Hebrew Association was organized in 1874.

Philadelphia likewise enjoyed much communal activity in that formative period of American-Jewish history. The first Jewish theological seminary in America, Maimonides College, was opened there in 1867 and existed for six years. The Hebrew Education Society, which was organized in 1848 and opened its school with twenty-two pupils in 1851, opened a second school in the vestry room of the Bene Israel Synagogue on Fifth street in 1878, and a third school on the northwest corner of Marshall street and Girard avenue in 1879. The first Jewish Hospital Association of that city was incorporated in 1865. The Jewish Maternity Association was founded in 1873. The Jewish Foster Home, which erected its first small building in 1855, was organized in its present form in 1874, since which time it has become one of the most important communal institutions there. The Young Men’s Hebrew Association was organized in 1875, a year later than the one in New York.

The first Jewish Hospital in Chicago was erected on Lasalle avenue in 1868. It was destroyed by the great fire of 1871, and eight years later the funds which made possible the erection of the Michael Reese Hospital were donated for that purpose. The United Hebrew Charities of Chicago, originally the United Hebrew Relief Association, was organized in 1859, and changed its name later. The United Hebrew Charities of St. Louis was organized in 1875.

PART VI.

THE THIRD OR RUSSIAN PERIOD OF IMMIGRATION.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE INFLUX AFTER THE ANTI-JEWISH RIOTS IN RUSSIA IN 1881.

The country itself is well prepared for the reception of a larger number of Jewish immigrants—Absence of organized or political Antisemitism—Increase in general immigration in 1880 and 1881—Arrival of the “Am Olam”—Imposing protest meetings against the riots in Russia—Welcome and assistance—Emma Lazarus—Heilprin and the attempts to found agricultural colonies—Herman Rosenthal—Failures in many States—Some success in Connecticut and more in New Jersey—Woodbine—Distribution—Industrial workers and the new radicalism.

The favorable economical and political conditions of the country itself were, however, the best preparation for the reception of a larger number of Jewish immigrants from Russia, who came as the result of the greatest Jewish migration since the exodus from Egypt. The strong congregations, the well-organized charities and the considerable number of wealthy Jews who were able and willing to assist the refugees, as well as the numerous able, energetic and tireless workers who did their best to alleviate the sufferings of the new arrivals and to help them to find their way in the new surroundings—all these were necessary and to some degree indispensable to solve as much of the problem as circumstances would permit. But all would have been useless if there was not room for new immigrants to settle here, and work for them to do. It would also have been well nigh impossible to take full advantage of the opportunities which this country offers to willing workers, were it not for the absence of that organized or official anti-Semitism which is found in one form or another in almost all civilized countries outside of the English-speaking world. Individual instances of social antipathy and personal dislike, or even hatred, of Jews, were not rare in the United States, at that period or at any other. But the Jew baiter was never encouraged, or even approved, by the all-powerful public opinion of the country at large; sympathy for the suffering Jew was easily aroused, and those who pleaded the cause of the victim of persecution were not hampered by open opposition or by covert political influences.

There was a sudden increase in immigration in the two years preceding the Russian influx. The country was recovering from the panic of 1873 and from the effect of the contraction of the currency which was incident to the resumption of specie payment by the government at the beginning of 1879. The number of immigrants who came here in 1876 was 169,986; in 1877 it fell to 141,857; in 1878 to 138,469. There was a slight rise in 1879 to 177,826; but in 1880 it jumped to 457,257 and in 1881 (in the fiscal year ending June 30, when there was as yet no increased immigration from Russia on account of the riots) to 669,431. The people who came were needed, as is the case with the million or more who had come here in the three years preceding the panic of 1907 and again in the last two or three years, which is proven by the fact that they are easily absorbed. Not only the general conditions, but even the times, were favorable for an increased Jewish immigration. There was neither economic nor national or racial cause for abstaining from giving those who fled from the pogroms the best public and open-hearted welcome that Jewish refugees ever received when coming in masses from one country to another.

The first of the anti-Jewish riots of that period took place in Yelisavetgrad, on April 27, 1881. Another outbreak in Kiev followed on May 8, and there were “over 160 towns and villages in which cases of riot, rapine, murder and spoliation have been known to occur during the last nine months of 1881” (Joseph Jacobs, “Persecution of the Jews in Russia, 1881,” p. 13). These riots, and the relief which was afforded to its victims, and especially to those who left Russia by way of Germany and Austria, have created a small literature of their own; but the subject in general belongs rather to the history of the Jews in Russia than to the present work, which can only be concerned with the emigrants after their arrival here. The first to arrive as a direct result of the riots, and among whom the new tendencies which were called forth by the calamities were prevalent to an appreciable degree, were included in a group of about 250 members of the “Am Olam” (“Eternal People”) Society which came to New York July 29, 1881.

Unlike the time of the Damascus affair in 1840 (see above, p. 193), the Jews of America not only took the leading part in arousing public opinion against the outrages, but they could do much more than enlist the sympathies of their non-Jewish fellow-citizens: they collected money to aid the sufferers and bade them welcome to these shores. A call for “A meeting of the citizens of New York without distinction of creed, to be held on Wednesday evening, February 1st, 1882, ... for the purpose of expressing their sympathy with the persecuted Hebrews in the Russian Empire,” was signed by about seventy-five of the most prominent non-Jewish citizens of New York, headed by ex-President U. S. Grant. The memorable meeting was held in Chickering Hall, and was presided over by Mayor William R. Grace; it was addressed by distinguished men in various walks of life, including three Christian clergymen, and had a marked effect on public opinion. It was on the same day that a similar meeting, at which the Lord Mayor presided, was held in London, at the Mansion House. Two weeks later (February 15) a meeting of the same nature with the same excellent moral result was held in Philadelphia, where four clergymen, two of them Protestant Bishops and one representing the Roman Catholic Archbishop, were among the speakers. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society collected over $300,000 for the new arrivals, and nearly two-thirds of that sum was contributed by residents of this country, the balance coming from Germany, England and France. Some groups of immigrants were given a public welcome; temporary quarters were built for their accommodation on Ward’s Island and at Greenpoint, L. I., where several thousand were housed and maintained until they found employment.

Emma Lazarus.

There was one other voice raised at that time in behalf of the Jew and of Judaism, only to be prematurely silenced forever a few years afterwards. The most gifted poet which American Jewry has produced, Emma Lazarus (b. in New York 1849; d. there 1887) was aroused, and her noble spirit reached its full height, by the stirring events of the martyrdom of the Russian Jew. Like so many other intelligent Jews in various countries, Emma Lazarus, the daughter of an old Sephardic family of social position, the friend of Emerson and other noted literary men, was up to that time mainly interested in general and classic subjects, and devoted to them her poetical and literary talents. “She needed a great theme to bring her genius to full flower, and she found that theme in the Russian persecution of 1881.... Her poetry took on a warmer, more human glow; it thrilled with the suffering, the passion, the exaltation of a nation of the Maccabees.”44 Her family, though nominally Orthodox, had hitherto not participated in the activities of the synagogue or of the Jewish community. But contact with the unfortunates from Russia led her to study the Bible, the Hebrew language, Judaism and Jewish history. She suggested, and in part saw executed, plans for the welfare of the immigrants. The fruit of her latter literary activity include “Songs of the Semite” (1882); “An Epistle to the Hebrews”; poems like “The Banner of the Jew,” “The New Ezekiel,” and “By the Waters of Babylon: Little Poems in Prose” (1887), her last published work. A collection of her works, in two volumes, appeared after her death (1889), and in 1903 a bronze tablet commemorative of her was placed inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. (See Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. Lazarus, Emma, by Miss Henrietta Szold.)

The number of those who received direct assistance was only a small fraction of the arrivals from Russia at that time. According to the opinion of the author of the article United States in the “Jewish Encyclopedia,” “The various committees and societies assisted about five per cent. of the total Jewish immigrants.” One of the most active and self-sacrificing of the workers for the refugees, Michael Heilprin, who was himself brought up under the influence of the Haskalah movement, was, like all Maskilim of the old school, a strong believer in the theory that the Jewish problem was to be solved by inducing or helping the Jews to become agriculturists. Many of the immigrants who belonged to the class described as Intellectuals or Intelligents, whose dreams of political liberty and assimilation in Russia were shattered by the pogroms, also entertained fantastic notions about the virtue of agriculture. They fell in with all colonization plans, for which they had more enthusiasm than natural aptitude, and this gave rise to a series of experiments in the colonizing of Russian immigrants, none of which were immediately successful, though it contributed to the inception of a small class of Jewish farmers which is slowly growing in the United States, and in which many see considerable promise for the future.

Herman Rosenthal.

Photo by Schill, Newark, N. J.

The first Jewish agricultural colony of that period was founded on Sicily Island, Catahoula Parish, Louisiana. The settlers, including thirty-five families from Kiev and twenty-five from Yelisavetgrad, had been partly organized in Russia. Its leading spirit was Herman Rosenthal (b. in Friedrichstadt, Courland, 1843; a. 1881), who is now chief of the Slavonic department of the New York Public Library. Before the colony was fairly started it was literally swept away by an overflow of the Mississippi in the spring of 1882, and the colonists scattered; a few of them, however, settling as independent farmers in Kansas and Missouri. In July, 1882, Rosenthal headed another group of twenty families which formed the colony Cremieux, in Davison county, in the present State of South Dakota. It led a precarious existence for about three years and was finally abandoned. Another attempt, which was made by the Alliance Israelite Universelle, with the formation of a colony surnamed “Betlehem Yehudah,” in the same region, was no more successful. Colonies founded in the same year in Colorado and Oregon met with no better fate. The colonies founded in North Dakota (one), in Kansas (five), in Michigan (one), and in Virginia (two) remain but memories. Those founded later in Connecticut were more successful, and some of them are still in existence and even growing. The most successful were those established in New Jersey, where four of the nine which were founded there since 1882 are still in existence and, considering the drawbacks of such enterprises, are in a flourishing condition. They are: Alliance, Salem county, founded by the Alliance Israelite in 1882; Carmel, Cumberland county, founded by the aid of Michael Heilprin in the same year; Rosenhayn, in the same county, which owes its origin to six families which were settled there by the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society of New York in 1883; and Woodbine, Cape May county, which was founded by the trustees of the Baron de Hirsch Fund in 1891, and is the largest as well as the most thriving of all Jewish colonies in America. Woodbine now has over two thousand inhabitants, and is an incorporated borough with a government of its own, which was instituted in 1903, with Professor Hirsch Loeb Sabsovich (b. in Berdyansk, Russia, 1860; a. 1888), the former superintendent of The Baron de Hirsch Agricultural and Industrial School of that place, as the first Mayor. He was succeeded by M. L. Bayard, who is likewise a native of Russia.

While the assistance rendered to the needy immigrants, and the large sums expended in the formation of colonies and in supporting them, attracted the most attention, a larger number were effectively helped by being distributed over various parts of the country where they could engage in trade or find work for which they were much better fitted than for farming. The largest number received little, if any, assistance, except such as was rendered by their relatives or countrymen whom they found here. The least successful and those who became helpless or dependent from various causes were assisted by the old charitable institutions, which were enlarged or strengthened by the new demands made upon them, and by new ones which sprang up everywhere as the occasion required. But the bulk of the new comers succeeded remarkably well, and many of them were soon in a position to assist those who came after them, and to contribute to charities from which they received assistance but a short time before, or to found new charitable institutions which were conducted in a manner more suitable to the character of the immigrants.

The number of applicants to Jewish charitable institutions was increasing, and so was the number of people who crowded the districts in the larger cities where Jews live together. But in both cases there was going on a continual change, due to the steady inflow of new immigrants, on the one hand, and on the other to the steady rising in the social and economic scale, and the continued departure to other and better neighborhoods or to other cities. The same people did not apply for charity or dwell in tenement houses long. They soon made room for those who came after them, and what seemed to the superficial observer a solid, unmovable mass of poverty and helplessness which presented a very difficult problem, was in reality in a state of constant flux. This transient, fleeting mass slowly spread over the country, until we find communities of Jewish immigrants practically in every city in the Union, and hardly a place without some individuals of that class. Most of those Jewish immigrants living in smaller places, as well as almost all of them who live in more comfortable quarters in the large cities or their suburbs, passed through the tenement house districts or the so-called “Ghetti”; which proves that the distribution considered by some as a desirable process which must be artificially accelerated, is actually being accomplished by the free movement of individuals and is hardly noticed.

The number of those who remained, though temporarily, in the congested centers of population, especially in New York, was very large, and was constantly becoming larger, because more immigrants came in each year than the number of those who left those centers. This mass was hardly affected by the small withdrawals from it for the purpose of colonization. It was too large and was replenished too fast to be able to disperse as small traders over the country or to go in business even on a small scale in the cities, as did the smaller number of Jewish immigrants who came in the former periods. And so, after all deductions are made, including those who went to become farmers and those who went to become peddlers, of those whose intelligence and the learning which they brought with them enabled them, sometimes with a little aid, to pursue their studies; and those whose business acumen or the small capital which they brought, enabled them to engage in trade and to prosper in a short time—after all these deductions, there remained a very large class, steadily increasing by the excess of arrivals over departures, which could do the only thing which poor people can do in a country where capital is abundant and industries flourish—go to work. The Jewish immigrants soon began to fill the factories and the shops, especially those of the clothing trade, which was then to a certain extent already in Jewish hands. The trades to which they flocked began to extend fast; immigrant workers themselves soon ventured to open small shops, where they employed those who came after them. While wages were comparatively small and “sweating” was common, the earnings were so much above what the poor man can make in Russia, and the standard of living so much higher than the one to which the laborer is accustomed over there, that even those who worked under what an American would consider the worst circumstances, soon saved enough money to begin sending for their families, their relatives, and even their friends. The great mass was solving its own problem by hard work and by thrift; it built up and multiplied the industries in which it was occupied, and thus made it easy to absorb the newcomers year by year and to become a part of the great industrial army which is doing the work of the country.

Thus there arose a third and new class of Jewish immigrants, unlike the first or Sephardic small groups who came here usually with large means and took their position among the higher classes as soon as they arrived; also unlike the second and larger groups of German, Polish and Hungarian Jews who came in the second period, most of whom began as peddlers and artizans, but ultimately became merchants or professional men. Among the immigrants of the third period, which began in 1881, there were many men of means and skilled men who at once joined the better situated classes. There were also among them a large number who took up peddling or petty trade with various degrees of success. But the agriculturists and the industrial workers, or proletariat, are distinctive features of the new period. The colonist was mostly assisted and usually failed; then he joined the trading or the working classes in the cities. The industrial classes took care of themselves and fared much better. Even their new problems presented difficulties which were more apparent than real. The seeming persistence in errors which are characteristic of those who are here only a short time is easily explained when it is considered that in cities like Philadelphia or Chicago there are always thousands, and in New York there are always tens of thousands, of Jewish immigrants from Slavic countries who came to this country within the last year. So there is always at hand a mass which is not aware of what a similar mass—which to the outsider seems the same—did a year before; and what seem to be repetitions year after year of the same actions which lead to the same results or to the same lack of results, are actually experiments made but once by each successive wave of immigration and soon abandoned, only to be taken up later as a novel experience by those who come later.

As the worker succeeded the trader, so the political extremist comes to the fore in this period, as the radical in religious matters did in the former. Many of the “intellectuals” sympathized with the revolutionary movement in Russia, and were infected by the Socialistic virus which is the bane of that movement and has made its success well nigh impossible. While the German or Austrian revolutionary of the “forties” or “fifties” wanted nothing for his fatherland which the people of the United States did not already enjoy, the Russian theorist was dreaming of a social revolution and of fantastic victories for the peasantry and the proletariat which should put Russia far in advance of the civilization of the “rotten West.” There was plenty of opportunity under the freedom of speech and of the press prevailing in this country “to continue the struggle against capital” among the sweat-shop workers. For a while the Socialist agitator became the most active leader among the immigrant masses; the “maskilim,” or half-Germanized, Hebrew scholars were forced into the background, and the large Orthodox majority confined itself to the ever-increasing number of synagogues and kept quiet, as usual. But as the years went by and the immigrants of the beginning of the period became more Americanized and more conservative, it became clear that radicalism was a passing phase in the development of the Russian-Jewish immigrant, that the largest number outgrow it in several years at the utmost, and that the extreme movements depend almost entirely on the new arrivals who are attracted by its novelty, and on those who cater to them. Excepting what may be described as a pronounced tendency to Socialism in the Yiddish sensational press—differing in degree more than in kind from the general press of that type—the Socialist movement has not held its own proportionally among the Russian immigrants, and the fears of some of their friends that the neighborhoods where the noisy agitation was carried on would develop into politically Socialistic strongholds, were dispelled almost before the first decade of this period was over.

CHAPTER XXXI.

NEW COMMUNAL AND INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITIES.

The Jewish Alliance of 1891 as the first attempt to form a general organization in which the immigrants of the latest period should be officially recognized—Some of the prominent participators—The new Exodus of 1891—The Baron de Hirsch Fund—Various activities—Decrease in the numbers and proportion of the helpless and the needy—The American Jewish Historical Society—The Jewish Publication Society of America—The Jewish Chautauqua—Participation in the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893—The Council of Jewish Women.

In less than a decade after the first influx from Russia, an attempt was made to establish some form of co-operation between the immigrants of the new period and the American or Americanized Jews who belonged to the former periods. The latter were complaining that the burden of charities was becoming too heavy, while from the former, especially from the more intelligent immigrants who were interested in Jewish matters, there arose even at that early date a demand for recognition and a share of responsibility in communal work. The theory that the two elements, described respectively as the German and the Russian, must be brought nearer together, and that the latter element must be prepared to take over the hegemony of the Jewish community from the former, just as the German took it over from the Sephardim, was already then, as it is to some extent still now, a favorite with those who consider themselves representatives of the immigrants. And it was the effort to apply part of this theory to practice, and perhaps, according to some, to put it to the test, that a call was issued for a convention of the Jewish Alliance of America, which met in Philadelphia on February 15, 1891.

Nineteen cities were represented, some of them as far as San Francisco, Cal. (by Bernhard Marks), and Portland, Ore. (David Solis-Cohen). Boston was represented by David Blaustein (b. in Lida, Russia, 1866; a. 1886), who later became eminent as an educator and communal worker. The Hon. Simon Wolf (b. in Rhenish Bavaria, 1836; a. 1848), a recognized representative in Washington of the Jews of the country, came from the capital. There were twenty delegates from Baltimore, including Samuel Dorf and B. H. Hartogensis. Chicago sent six men, including Dr. A. P. Kadison and Leon Zolotkoff (b. in Wilna, 1865(?); a. 1887). Among the seven delegates from New York were the Russian immigrants Nicholas Aleinikoff and P. Caplan, and the native American, Ferdinand Levy (b. in Milwaukee, Wis., 1843), who served in the Union army with his father and two brothers during the Civil War, and held various offices in New York City and in Jewish fraternal organizations. The largest contingent was, of course, from Philadelphia, its fifty-four delegates including many well-known men from both elements, like the inventor, Louis E. Levy (b. in Bohemia, 1846), Dr. Solomon Solis-Cohen, a native of Philadelphia; Bernhard Harris, who was chosen secretary, and Dr. Charles D. Spivak (b. in Krementshug, Russia, 1861; a. 1882), who was president of the temporary organization.

A constitution was adopted and a permanent organization formed, of which a well known local Jewish philanthropist, Simon Muhr (b. in Bavaria, 1845; d. in Philadelphia, 1895), was elected president; Simon Wolf, treasurer, and Bernhard Harris, secretary. The board of trustees which was elected included, as representatives of New York, the communal leader, Daniel P. Hays (b. in Pleasantville, N. Y., 1854), and the educator, Henry M. Leipziger (b. in Manchester, England, 1854). There was some enthusiasm in numerous communities for the plan which was “to unite Israelites in a common bond for the purpose of more effectually coping with the grave problems presented by enforced emigration ...” and thirty-one branches were formed throughout the country.45 But the entire plan came to nothing. In February, 1892, the Jewish Alliance was consolidated with “The American Committee for Ameliorating the Condition of the Russian Refugees,” which was organized in New York apparently for the purpose of heading off the activity of the Alliance. Both organizations were soon forgotten, and the historical value of the Alliance consists chiefly in its having been the first formal manifestation of a desire which was partly satisfied in an entirely different manner fifteen years later by the formation of the American Jewish Committee.

There was another recurrence of persecutions in Russia in the same year, which did not take the sensational form of massacre and pillage, but had as much or even more effect in forcing Jews to leave the country. Relentless expulsions from Moscow and from villages in which the Jews have dwelt peacefully and on good terms with their neighbors forced tens of thousands to leave the country, and as many of them now had relatives or friends in the United States, it was natural for them to turn their faces towards the New World. Conditions were again favorable, for several reasons. The tide of general immigration, which fell from 788,992 in 1882 to 334,203 in 1886, rose after some vaccillations in the following three years to 455,302 in 1890, to 560,319 in 1891 and to 623,084 in 1892. In the year ending June 30, 1893, which includes a few months of the hard times which began in the spring of that year, the number of immigrants was still as high as 502,917, and it is only in the following twelvemonth, when only 314,467 arrived, and in 1895, when immigration fell to 279,948, which was the lowest number since 1879, that the deterrent effects of the panic of 1893 were visible.

Not only had the Jews in general made progress in the decade after 1881, and were better able to cope with the new situation because they discovered their own strength in the work of helping their less fortunate brethren, and had also learned by experience that the new element adjusted itself to the new surroundings with remarkable rapidity, but there was also a new agency to assist in the work of helping some of the newcomers to find their way to work and independence. The great Jewish philanthropist, Baron Maurice de Hirsch (b. in Munich, Bavaria, 1831; d. in Hungary, 1896), some time before the new increase of immigration from Russia, created and endowed the Baron de Hirsch Fund for the ameliorating of the condition of certain Jewish immigrants in the United States. The fund, which he originally endowed with the sum of $2,400,000 (and which had grown later to nearly a million more), was incorporated under the laws of the State of New York, February 12, 1891, the trustees being: M. S. Isaacs, president; Jacob H. Schiff (b. in Frankfort o. t. Main, 1847; a. 1865), vice-president; Jesse Seligman (b. in Bavaria, 1827; d. in California, 1894), treasurer; Dr. Julius Goldman (who later became president), honorary secretary. The other trustees were Henry Rice (b. in Bavaria, 1835; a. 1850), who for many years was president of the United Hebrew Charities of New York; James H. Hoffman and Oscar S. Straus (b. in Germany, 1850; a. 1854), of New York, and Mayer Sulzberger (b. in Hildesheim, Baden, 1843; a. 1848) and William B. Hackenburg (b. in Philadelphia, 1837), of Philadelphia. Adolphus S. Solomons (b. in New York, 1826; d. in Washington, 1910) was the first general agent. The present trustees are: Eugene S. Benjamin, president; Jacob H. Schiff, vice-president; Murry Guggenheim, treasurer; Max J. Kohler, honorary secretary; Nathan Bijur, Abram I. Elkus, Henry Rice, Louis Siegbert, S. G. Rosenbaum, all of New York City; Mayer Sulzberger, W. B. Hackenburg and S. S. Fleischer, of Philadelphia. H. L. Sabsovich succeeded A. S. Solomons as general agent.

The trustees of this fund, which has an annual income of about $125,000, at first used the amount at their disposal in relieving the immediate necessities of the refugees, and in order to make the immigrants self-supporting, a number of them were given instruction in the work which is required in the manufacture of clothing, white goods, etc. The United Hebrew Charities of New York was made the agent through which the material necessities were relieved, and certain sums are still granted by the fund to institutions which make a specialty of assisting immigrants. On the other hand, the fund itself is receiving assistance from the Jewish Colonization Association (I. C. A., to which Baron de Hirsch left a large share of his fortune) in the activities which it carries on through the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society for the encouragement of farming, and the Industrial Removal Office, for the distribution of workingmen from the crowded centers of population to places further inland (both of these institutions were organized in 1900). When the great pressure due to the rapid immigration had somewhat relaxed, the trustees carefully matured their plans of education and of colonization, doing a large amount of good with the various forms of instruction, including technical as well as elementary knowledge; while the colonization plans, which resulted in the establishment of the colonies which have been mentioned in a former chapter, meet with so many difficulties that progress is made at a less rapid pace.

The Jews of America were thus even better prepared to receive a large number of Jewish immigrants at the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century than they were ten years before. There was also at this time a smaller number and a much smaller proportion of helpless people among the Russian refugees, for those who lived in the interior of Russia, outside of the “pale of settlement”, and would have remained there had it not been for the expulsions, were as a rule active and fairly successful men, and therefore better able to take care of themselves than those whom poverty or lack of employment forced to emigrate. Many more found relatives and friends here than in 1881–82, and among those who were here there were also many more who could be of assistance to new arrivals than in former times. As a matter of fact, Jewish immigration from the Slavic countries had then assumed its natural form, which it has retained ever since, except in the years following the massacres in the present century. Most men come to kinsmen or personal friends, who are willing and able to assist them in finding their way. A large majority consists of wives and children, of parents and other near relatives, who come because they were sent for and because the breadwinner or the most energetic member of the family has previously established himself here and demands their presence, or feels certain that they will soon be able to provide for themselves. The helpless Jewish immigrant who has nowhere to go and nothing to do when he arrives, is now very rare, and has been rare for the last two decades.

The number of the new immigrants needing assistance immediately after their arrival had been reduced to such a small fraction that those having the interest of the Jewish masses at heart began to express their opinion that it would perhaps be better if organized charity would leave them alone altogether. At first this opinion was uttered mostly in the Yiddish press or at meetings of immigrants. But in time there came not only a still further improvement in the general condition of the Jews, and also a further diminution in the number of helpless immigrants, but the voice of the immigrant-citizen became more potent in communal affairs. The folly of appeals, in which the wants of that class were exaggerated, became apparent; a large number of the employees of charitable institutions, and even some of the directors, were now Russian or Galician or Roumanian Jews, with a closer acquaintance with the needs, and also with the lack of needs, of the new arrivals. Much of the friction due to the resentment against help, which was rendered sometimes with more ostentation than the circumstances required, was obviated under the altered conditions, and the ground was prepared for a new co-operation of all elements of the community.

The foundation about this time of the American-Jewish Historical Society, whose objects are the collection and preservation of material bearing upon the history of the Jews in America, may be taken as an indication that the times were now again considered normal in the Jewish community. It was organized in June, 1892, with Oscar S. Straus as president, and Dr. Cyrus Adler (b. in Van Buren, Ark., 1863) as secretary. The latter is now (since 1899) its president, and Albert M. Friedenberg and Dr. Herbert Friedenwald, secretaries. It has thus far issued twenty annual volumes of its “Publications,” which form an invaluable collection of material on the subject, much of which has been used in the preparation of this work. The president and both secretaries, as well as its curator, Leon Hühner, and some of its officers and members of its Executive Council, like Professor Richard J. H. Gottheil (b. in Manchester, England, 1862; who came here with his father, Rabbi Gustave Gottheil (1827–1903) of Temple Emanuel, New York, in 1873), of Columbia University; Professor Jacob H. Hollander (b. in Baltimore, 1871), of Johns Hopkins University, and Max J. Kohler (b. in Detroit, Mich., 1871), are among the most important contributors of papers and monograms on various historical subjects to the publications of the society.

Another society of a kindred nature, but appealing to a wider circle, The Jewish Publication Society of America (organized in Philadelphia, 1888; incorporated there 1896), began to attain prominence about that time. It has published for distribution among its members and also for sale to the general public about sixty books on a large variety of subjects, some of them, like the English edition of Graetz’s History of the Jews, Schechter’s “Studies in Judaism” and the earliest works of fiction by Israel Zangwill, are highly valuable. Morris Newburger (b. in Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, 1834; a. 1854) was its first president and held the office for fourteen years, until he was succeeded by the present incumbent, Edwin Wolf, in 1902. The leading spirit of the society is the chairman of its Publication Committee, Mayer Sulzberger, the eminent communal leader and Jewish bibliophile, who has been a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia since 1895. The secretary of that committee, Henrietta Szold, has done much useful work in translating or preparing for publication a considerable part of the works which the society has published.

This society is the third of its kind in the United States. The first, which was called the “American Jewish Publication Society,” was founded by Isaac Leeser in 1845, and in the same year an auxiliary society was established at Richmond, Va. It published fourteen works between that year and 1849; but went out of existence after its plates and books were destroyed by fire, in 1851. The second, The Jewish Publication Society, was established in New York in 1873, by Leopold Bamberger, Benjamin I. Hart, Myer Stern, Edward Morrison and several others of New York, William B. Hackenburg (b. in Philadelphia, 1837) of Philadelphia and Simon Wolf of Washington. Rabbis Gustave Gottheil, Moses Mielziner (b. in Schubin, Posen, 1828; d. in Cincinnati, 1903, where he had been Professor of Talmud in the Hebrew Union College since 1879, and Wise’s successor as president) and Frederick de Sola Mendes (b. in Jamaica, W. I., 1850; since 1874 rabbi of Congregation Shaarey Tefilla); Marcus Jastrow of Philadelphia, and Moritz Ellinger (b. in Germany, 1830; a. 1854; d. 1907), editor of the “Menorah” and of the “Jewish Times,” constituted its publication committee. It existed only for two years.

The Jewish Chautauqua Society, “for the dissemination of knowledge of the Jewish religion by fostering the study of its history and literature, giving popular courses of instruction, issuing publications, establishing reading circles, holding general assemblies, and by such other means as may from time to time be found necessary and proper,” is also a product of this new period of spiritual and literary activity in the American-Jewish world. It was founded in 1893 by Dr. Henry Berkowitz (b. in Pittsburg, Pa., 1857; since 1892 rabbi of the Congregation Rodeph Shalom, Philadelphia), who is still its chancellor. It now has about three thousand members.

Miss Sadie American.

The World’s Columbian Exposition, which was held in Chicago in the year 1893, offered the Jews an opportunity to participate in the great event in diversified ways. What they did and what they exhibited as artists, scientists, manufacturers and merchants does not belong to the subject of this work, which is mostly concerned with Jewish matters. But the Jews participated, as such, in the World’s Parliament of Religions which was held in Chicago at that time. Among the separate denominational congresses which constituted that Parliament was also a Congress of Jewish Women, the first of its kind ever held. This congress resulted in the organization of the National Council of Jewish Women, “to further united efforts in behalf of Judaism by supplying means of study; by an organic union to bring about closer relations among Jewish women; to furnish a medium of interchange of thought and a means of communication and of prosecuting work of common interest; to further united efforts in the work of social betterment through religion, philanthropy and education.” Hannah G. Solomon and Sadie American, respectively chairman and secretary of the congress, were elected president and secretary of the council. In 1896 the word “National” was eliminated from the name, on account of the entrance of sections from Canada. The council now consists of more than sixty sections and is doing noble work in pursuance of its program. Miss American still retains the office of secretary, while Mrs. Solomon was succeeded as president by Mrs. Marion L. Misch, of Providence, R. I.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA. THE PASSPORT QUESTION.

The normal rate of Jewish immigration is but slightly affected by the panic of 1893—Oppressiveness of the Sunday Laws are felt by the new immigrants—The Extradition Treaty with Russia—Beginning of the struggle about the Passport Question—The first Resolution against Russia’s discrimination, introduced in Congress by Mr. Cox in 1879—Diplomacy and diplomatic correspondence—More resolutions—Rayner, Fitzgerald, Perkins—Henry M. Goldfogle—John Hay’s letter to the House—More letters, speeches and discussions—The Sulzer Resolution and the last step to abrogate the Treaty of 1832.

The large increase in Jewish immigration from Russia after the renewed persecutions of 1891, like the general increase in the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century, lasted only till the effects of the hard times, which began in the spring of 1893, began to be felt. But the increase in Jewish immigration was more than ordinarily large, or what might be considered for those times as abnormal, only in one year—1892. If this year, in which there arrived 76,417 Jews from Russia,47 should be eliminated, it is seen that Jewish immigration fell off much less in proportion than general immigration. The general figures are: 560,319 for 1891; 502,917 for 1893; 314,467 for 1894; and 279,948 for 1895. The number of Jewish immigrants from Russia for those years was: 42,145 for 1891; 35,626 for 1893; 36,725 for 1894, and 33,332 for 1895. The cause of it was mentioned in a former chapter—that the largest part of the Jewish immigration now consisted of families or near relatives brought over by those who have established themselves here. The condition of those remaining there was becoming continually worse, while those who were here could, with a little exertion and self-denial, save enough, even in slack times, to save their immediate relatives from the conditions which were becoming unendurable in Russia.

For this large and increasing mass of Russians, the relations between the United States and Russia were a matter of grave concern. And to them, in conjunction with the Galician Jews and the Roumanian Jews, who were, roughly estimated, nearly half as strong numerically as the Russians, the question of the restriction of immigration, which was then being discussed in Congress and in the country generally, was of most vital interest. The fear that the oppressed Jews who were left home could not come in now, and that there might be difficulty even in bringing over members of the family, sufficed to make this question overshadow all others in the mind of the Jewish immigrant; to make it not only the most important, but with many, the sole Jewish problem.

A minor problem which had also become more acute under the changed conditions was the Sunday Laws of the various states. While the laws themselves date further back, some of them from the eighteenth century, and they were not enforced with any more severity than before, the opportunities for conflict with them were now much more frequent. The Jewish immigrants of the former periods, who were mostly traders doing business with their Gentile neighbors, and were also inclined toward Reform Judaism, usually rested Sunday, for economic reasons as well as on account of their religious views. But now there were in many large cities, and especially in New York, large Jewish neighborhoods where brisk trading was done among Jews themselves. There were Jewish shops and factories in which the owners, the managers and foremen, as well as the workers, were Jews. And not only was the proportion of Orthodox Jews among them very large, but even the unbelievers and the radicals among them thought the Sunday laws oppressive and incongruous. It was certainly not what most of them expected to find in the Land of Liberty: to be hampered and interfered with for practices which were then practically permissible in countries like Russia and Austria, where the Churches rule supreme and where Jews are harassed on every imaginable pretext.

Two incidents in the relations with Russia aroused the interest of the Russian Jews in America at that time. The first related to the Treaty of Extradition which was negotiated between the two governments during the first administration of President Cleveland, but was not pressed for ratification, owing to protests which were made against it by Russian Jews and which were seconded by many liberal Americans and by a considerable portion of the press. But the document itself, signed by the representatives of the two governments seven or eight years before, remained in the State Department, and was again presented to the Senate by John W. Foster, a former American Minister to Russia, who held the office of Secretary of State in the last months of the administration of President Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901). It was ratified by the Senate in February, 1893, and the report of its ratification and exchange with Russia was a painful surprise for the Jews of the country, especially for the natives of Russia. Happily the fears about the possible effects of the treaty proved absolutely groundless. Every extradition case under this treaty which was fought in the United States courts was won, and, as far as it is known, not one Russian refugee who made the plea against extradition, claiming that he was wanted for political offences, was ever delivered to Russia.

The second occurrence pertained to a difficulty of long standing: to the general treaty between the United States and Russia which was concluded in 1832. The number of Jews in the United States at that time was comparatively small, and very few of them came from Russia. The intercourse between the two countries was insignificant, and probably no Jew of that time thought of going from America to Russia for any purpose. It could therefore not have occurred to the representatives of our Government in negotiating the treaty that Russia would discriminate against American Jews who might come there. As a matter of fact, the language of the treaty implied equal treatment for all American citizens alike, and is much less objectionable than was the treaty with Switzerland, which was concluded later (see above Chapter XXIII), in which discrimination against Jews was knowingly accepted. And while a case of discrimination against an American-Jewish citizen in Switzerland was under consideration by the State Department in Washington at the very time when the treaty of 1855, with the highly objectionable clause, was adopted, more than forty years passed after the adoption of the Russian treaty of 1832 before the question of Russia’s disloyalty to the terms of the treaty attracted the attention of the American Government, although there seems to have been some correspondence about it as early as 1866.48 The name of a naturalized Jewish citizen, Theodore Rosenstrauss, appears frequently in the diplomatic correspondence of the State Department from 1873 to 1879, and his case was the cause of the following Joint Resolution being introduced in the House of Representatives of the 46th Congress in June, 1879, by Mr. Samuel S. Cox of New York, a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs:

JOINT RESOLUTION IN RELATION TO TREATY NEGOTIATIONS WITH RUSSIA AS TO AMERICAN CITIZENS.

Whereas, It is alleged that by the laws of the Russian Government, no Hebrew can hold real estate, which unjust discrimination is enforced against Hebrew citizens of the United States resident in Russia; and

Whereas, The Russian Government has discriminated against one T. Rosenstrauss, a naturalized citizen of the United States, by prohibiting him from holding real estate after his purchasing and paying for the same, because of his being an Israelite; and

Whereas, Such disabilities are antagonistic to the enlightened spirit of our institutions and age, which demand free exercise of religious belief, and no disabilities therefrom; and

Whereas, The Secretary of State, under date of April 29, 1879, expresses doubt of his ability to grant the relief required under existing treaty stipulations; therefore

Resolved, By the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress Assembled, that the rights of the citizens of the United States should not be impaired at home or abroad because of religious belief; and that if existing treaties between the United States and Russia be found, as is alleged, to discriminate in this or any other particular, as to any other classes of our citizens, the President is requested to take immediate action, to have the treaties so amended as to remedy this grievance.

After a debate, in which the fact that English Jews were permitted to own land in Russia, was brought out, this Resolution passed the House of Representatives June 10, 1879, and as far as known was not heard of again.

In the diplomatic correspondence which followed, the American Government insisted on its rights under the treaty and urged its minister to claim absolutely equal treatment for all American citizens alike, Jews as well as others. The arguments and the mode of procedure which are now familiar to every one who is interested in the question, were all used thirty years ago, though the only effective remedy, suggested by the first resolution, “to take immediate steps to have the treaties amended,” had not been resorted to. But the question of former Russian subjects who return to Russia as American citizens, in which the principle of expatriation and right of naturalization is involved, is not touched upon in these early disputes. There is even a clear intimation that the Russian Government’s chief objection was against naturalized Jews from Germany. Mr. Foster, who was then our representative in St. Petersburg, in a dispatch dated December 30, 1880, reports an interview which he had with M. de Giers, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and says:

So far as concerned Jews who are bona fide American citizens (not disguised German Jews), he would assure me of the most liberal treatment, as he knew it was the desire of the Emperor to show all possible consideration to American citizens. If such came to St. Petersburg and encountered any trouble, if I would merely send him an unofficial note, he would give them all the time I might ask for them to remain here to attend to their business....

The same dispatch reports also a conversation with the Minister of Worship, who “listened with much interest to my presentation of the subject. He said that a commission was now engaged in studying the question of reform in these laws,” and “frankly recognized that the laws were not fully in accordance with the spirit of the age.” But in the end of this document Mr. Foster acknowledges his failure to obtain what he wanted and says that “the Russian Government was disposed to grant what we desired only as a favor when my government asked it as a right” (quoting Loris Melikov).

In a dispatch sent by Secretary of State James G. Blaine to Mr. Foster, dated July 29, 1881, the entire subject is historically reviewed and the principles involved are restated in strong and lucid terms. Two passages from this dispatch are worth quoting. One reads: “From the time when the treaty of 1832 was signed down to within a very recent period, there had been nothing in our relations with Russia to lead to the supposition that our flag did not carry with it equal protection to every American within the dominions of the empire.” The second is the last sentence of the dispatch and reads: “I cannot but feel assured that this earnest presentation of the views of this government will accord with the sense of justice and equity of that of Russia, and that the questions at issue will soon find their natural solution in harmony with the spirit of tolerance which pervaded the ukase of the Empress Catherine a century ago, and with the statesman-like declaration of the principle of reciprocity found in the later decree of the Czar Alexander II. in 1860.” Actual dealings with Russia were a novel experience for American diplomatists, and even so eminent a statesman as Mr. Blaine could believe—after the pogroms of the spring of that year—that the question would be solved in the same manner as in Switzerland—by the final emancipation of the Jews of that country.

In the meantime new cases had arisen, and the question was again brought before Congress. Representative Samuel S. Cox of New York introduced a second resolution in the House of Representatives on January 26, 1882, which was passed four days later, requesting the President, if it was not incompatible with the public service, to communicate to the House all correspondence between the Department of State and the United States minister at St. Petersburg, relative to the expulsion of American Israelites from Russia, and the persecution of the Jews in the Russian Empire. Another resolution, asking for further correspondence on the subject, was introduced by Mr. Cox on July 31 of the same year and referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. He submitted the same resolution again in February, 1883, when it was passed. There was another resolution in 1884, and more correspondence in 1886 between Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard and the American representative in Russia, with no better results than before.

The subject was taken up more earnestly than before in the following decade. Congressman S. Logan Chipman of Michigan introduced in the House, in February, 1892, a resolution “To inquire into the operation of the Anti-Jewish Laws of Russia on American Citizens.” It was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and reported on April 6, 1892, in a much amplified form, but its passage is not recorded. Mr. Irvine Dungan, of Ohio, introduced, on June 10, 1892, a joint resolution “directing the severance of diplomatic relations with Russia,” which seems not to have gone any further than the Committee on Foreign Affairs. There was new correspondence, too, as the result of new cases, and probably also as an indirect result of the resolutions which were introduced in the House. A letter written from the State Department in 1893 to Mr. Andrew D. White (b. 1832), the educator and historian, the greatest man who ever represented the United States in Russia, contained the “surmise that some strange misapprehension exists in this regard in the mind of His Majesty’s Government, which your accustomed ability and tact may explain and perhaps remove.” The events proved that he could do neither.

In 1894 the subject was again brought before the House, for the first time by a representative of Jewish extraction. Isidor Rayner (b. in Baltimore, 1850), who was successively a member of the Maryland Legislature, a State Senator, a representative in Congress for three terms, the Attorney-General of the State of Maryland, and is now serving his second term as United States Senator from that State (beginning March 4, 1911), was then serving his third term in the House and was recognized as one of the ablest orators and leaders of his party (the Democratic) in the popular branch of Congress. But his resolution, which was introduced May 28, 1894, in which the President was “directed to call the attention of the Government of Russia to its continued violation of the treaty rights,” met with no better fate than the preceding ones which were introduced by non-Jews. The disposition of the resolutions made, however, little difference, for the Government was urging a settlement of the difficulties as strongly as if it was commanded by Congress to do so.

Minister Breckinridge, who was in St. Petersburg in 1895, writing to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs in that year, states “that it has long been a matter of deep regret and concern to the United States that any of its citizens should be discriminated against for religious reasons while peacefully sojourning in this country.” The subject was apparently taken up more seriously now than before, and there was justification for the belief that it would have to be settled soon. Mr. H. H. D. Peirce, Secretary of Legation, writing in June, 1895, of an interview which he had with a high Russian official, declares that the latter admitted the force of the argument and “expressed himself as hopeful that it would be possible to bring about a satisfactory revision of Russian practice as regards the admission of American Jews into the Empire.” In the following month Assistant Secretary of State A. A. Adee wrote to the Legation at St. Petersburg:

Your conclusion that it is inexpedient to press the complaint to a formal answer at present appears to be discreet, but the Department must express its deep regret that you have encountered in the foreign office a reluctance to consider the matter in the light in which this Government has presented it. The Russian Government can not expect that its course in asserting inquisitorial authority in the United States over citizens of the United States as to their religious or civil status can ever be acceptable or even tolerable to such a Government as ours, and continuance in such a course after our views have been clearly but considerately made known may trench upon the just limits of consideration.

There were three more dispatches of considerable length sent about this subject in the same year, 1895; one from Mr. Breckinridge to Secretary of State Richard Olney, dated July 4; the second from Mr. Adee to Mr. Breckinridge, dated August 22, and a third, dated October 23, from Washington to the Russian capital, beginning with the acknowledgment of the receipt of a set of regulations relating to the Jews in Russia and commenting on it that: “If anything, it presents the subject in a still more unfavorable light, for it seems that those Russian agents in a foreign territory may in their discretion inquire into the business standing of the principal of the commercial house employing a Hebrew agent, and act favorably or unfavorably, according to their own judgment of its importance.” It continues that even “assuming for the argument’s sake but not by way of admission, that such a right may technically exist, the question remains whether the assumption to exercise it in face of the temperate but earnest remonstrances of this Government against foreign interference with the private concerns of its citizens, is in accordance with those courteous principles of comity which this Government is so anxious to observe in its relations with all foreign states.”

All this was of no avail, and the question was again brought before Congress. Representative John F. Fitzgerald (b. in Boston, 1863; now Mayor of Boston) of Massachusetts introduced the following resolution in the House of Representatives, March 31, 1897, which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs:

Resolved, That the Secretary of State be requested to demand from the Russian Government that the same rights be given to Hebrew-American citizens in the matter of passports as now are accorded to all other classes of American citizens, and also inform the House of Representatives whether any American citizens have been ordered to be expelled from Russia or forbidden the exercise of the ordinary privileges enjoyed by the inhabitants, because of their religion.

The same resolution was re-introduced by Mr. Fitzgerald in December, 1899, with no better results. In the meantime, a Jewish banker from California, Mr. Adolf Kutner, was refused admission to Russia in 1897, and this caused Senator J. C. Perkins of that State to introduce a lengthy resolution about this question in the United States Senate (May 25, 1897), which was followed by a shorter one presented in the House by Representative Curtice H. Castle of the same State in December of that year.

In 1902 the question was again brought to the attention of the House by a Representative who not only is himself a Jew, but represents a district most of whose inhabitants are immigrant Jews who are interested in the passport question. Henry Mayer Goldfogle (b. in New York City, 1856), who was twice elected Judge of the Municipal Court in an East Side district, was in 1900 elected, as a Democrat, to represent the Ninth Congress District of New York, which includes the most thickly populated part of the East Side, and has been re-elected at every Congressional election since, serving now (1911) his sixth term. It was during his first term that he introduced what became well known as the “Goldfogle Resolution” and has been before Congress in one form or another for nearly a decade. Its original form as it was introduced, March 28, 1902, was as follows:

Resolved, By the House of Representatives of the United States, that the Secretary of State be, and he is hereby, respectfully requested to inform the House whether American citizens of the Jewish religious faith, holding passports issued by this Government, are barred or excluded from entering the territory of the Empire of Russia, and whether the Russian Government has made, or is making, any discrimination between citizens of the United States of different religious faiths or persuasions, visiting or attempting to visit Russia, provided with American passports; and whether the Russian Government has made regulations restricting or specially applying to American citizens, whether native or naturalized, of the Jewish religious denomination, holding United States passports, and if so, to report the facts in relation thereto, and what action concerning such exclusion, discrimination or restriction, if any, has been taken by any department of the Government of the United States.

This resolution was amended by adding the words “if not incompatible with the public interest” after the word “House” in the third line. It was passed by the House April 30, 1902. Shortly afterwards (June 27) Senator E. W. Pettus of Alabama introduced a resolution in the Senate requesting the President, “if not incompatible with the public interest, to inform the Senate as to the attitude of the Russian Government toward American citizens attempting to enter its territory with American passports.” This was also passed by the Senate, but the reply was given to the House before the Senate Resolution was introduced. The essence of the letter to the House, written by Secretary of State John Hay (1838–1905), dated May 2, 1902, that American Jews are not at a greater disadvantage before that Government than are the Jews of other countries; that the exclusion of naturalized citizens of Russian origin was explained by Secretary Olney in his report to the President in 1896 as due to circumstances under which a “conflict between national laws, each absolute within its domestic sphere and inoperative beyond it, is hardly to be averted”; that the effort to secure uniform treatment for American citizens in Russia, begun many years ago, had continued, although it had not been attended with encouraging success; and that the Department of State send to all persons of Russian birth who received passports an unofficial notice showing what were the provisions of Russian law liable to affect them, in order that they might not incur danger through ignorance.

The subject has been treated officially and semi-officially in various manners since that time, but practically without results. It came up several times in Congress, and was ably discussed by Jewish representatives and their friendly colleagues, hardly a voice ever being raised in defence of the Russian Government. There were new resolutions by Judge Goldfogle, who was now recognized as the Jewish Representative in Congress; new correspondence between the State Department and the American Ambassador in St. Petersburg; a personal letter from President Theodore Roosevelt to Count Witte (who came to the United States to negotiate a treaty of peace with Japan in 1905), in which that Muscovite statesman was begged “to consider the question of granting passports to reputable American citizens of the Jewish faith,” and a letter from Secretary of State Elihu Root (b. 1845; now a Senator from New York) to Mr. Jacob H. Schiff in October, 1908, telling him that the Administration “has urged the making of a new treaty for the purpose of regulating the subject.” It was the subject of a notable address delivered by the well known attorney and communal worker, Louis Marshall (b. in Syracuse, N. Y., 1856), at the convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations which was held in New York in January, 1911, and was afterward brought before President William H. Taft (b. 1857) by a delegation which was appointed by that convention. Public men in various parts of the country became interested in the question. They were encouraged by an almost unanimous public press to stand up for the rights of American Citizenship, regardless of creed, and the movement became well-nigh irresistible. Numerous State Legislatures adopted resolutions favoring the abrogation of the treaty unless the American passport be fully recognized as conferring the right of domicile in all parts of the Russian Empire. Congress was flooded with resolutions which were adopted by Jewish organizations all over the country, and many meetings were held to express the public indignation, as well as the dissatisfaction with the Government’s dilatoriness in obtaining justice for its Jewish citizens. The most imposing meetings were held under the auspices of the National Citizens’ League, a newly formed organization, composed mostly of prominent non-Jews, of which Andrew D. White became the chairman.

In December, 1911, the resolution for the abrogating of the treaty, which was introduced in the House of Representatives by William Sulzer, of New York, was adopted with practical unanimity. But President Taft had anticipated this action by the instructions which he gave several days before to the American Ambassador in St. Petersburg, to serve formal notice on Russia that the Treaty of 1832 would be abrogated on December 31, 1912, i. e., after one full year shall have elapsed after the notice of abrogation, as it is provided by the terms of the agreement itself. Both houses of Congress soon afterwards approved the President’s act without a dissenting vote, and the battle was won, as far as the American side of it was concerned. But the work of negotiating and concluding a new treaty was perforce left to the slow procedure of diplomacy, which is doubly slow when a government, like the Russian, which is so unwilling to recognize the rights of Jews, is one of the contracting parties.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

LEGISLATION ABOUT IMMIGRATION. SUNDAY LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT.

Jewish interest in immigration—The first legislation on the subject—The Nativists or “Know Nothings”—A Congressional investigation in 1838—President Taylor’s invitation to foreigners to come and settle here—A law to encourage immigration passed on Lincoln’s recommendation in 1864—The General Immigration Law of 1882—The “Ford Committee”—Permanent Immigration Committees in Congress—Continued agitation and legislation on the subject—A bill containing the requirement of an educational test is vetoed by President Grover Cleveland in 1897—The last Immigration Law of 1907—The Immigration Commission of 1907 and its report in 1910—Sunday Laws and their significance for the Orthodox Jew—Laws of various States and Territories—Their effect on movements for municipal reform—Status of the problems.

The question of immigration, or rather of its restriction, was always of great interest to the Jews, not only because they are great wanderers and many of them are looking for a home, but also because to the many who came from countries where they were persecuted or from which they were exiled, exclusion meant a much more serious matter than to those who had a home to go back to. The immigrants of the second period, from 1815 to 1880, were more fortunate in this respect than those who came very early and were harrassed by frank discrimination against them as Jews, as was related in earlier parts of this work; and also more than the later arrivals, many of whom were excluded as undesirable, along with the defective and helpless of other races and nationalities. From the time of the establishment of the Government of the United States until about 1835, immigration was taken as a matter of course; the only legislation enacted, and practically all that was proposed, was the law of 1819 for the regulation of the carriage of steerage passengers at sea, which law also for the first time provided that statistics relative to immigration to the United States be recorded.

The second period, from 1835 to 1860, is sharply defined by the so-called “Native American” and “Know Nothing” movements, which, as is well known, were largely based on the opposition to the immigration of Catholics.49 The hostility early took the form of a political movement, and in 1835 there was a Nativist candidate for Congress in New York City, where that party nominated a candidate for mayor in the following year. It spread over various states, and in 1845, when it held its first national convention in Philadelphia, it had six Representatives in Congress from New York and two from Pennsylvania. The chief demands of this convention were a repeal of the naturalization laws and the appointments of native Americans only to office.

While these societies were stronger in local politics than in national, their few Representatives in Congress attempted to make Nativism a national question. As a result of their efforts, the United States Senate in 1836 agreed to a resolution directing the Secretary of State to collect certain information respecting the immigration of foreign paupers and criminals. In the House of Representatives on February 19, 1838, a resolution was agreed to which provided that the Committee on Judiciary be instructed to consider the expediency of revising the naturalization laws so as to require a longer term of residence in the United States, and also to consider the propriety and expediency of providing by law against the introduction into the United States of vagabonds and paupers deported from foreign countries. This resolution was referred to a select committee of seven members, and its report (House Report No. 1040, 25th Congress, 2d session) was the first resulting from a Congressional investigation of any question bearing upon immigration. It proposed a system of consular inspection, and there was even talk of a tax of $20 to be paid by the immigrant upon his receipt of a passport from the consul. The bill presented on recommendation of the committee provided heavy penalties for any master taking on board his vessel with the intention of transporting to the United States any alien passenger who was an idiot, lunatic, maniac or one afflicted with any incurable disease, or any one convicted of an infamous crime; it was further provided that the master should forfeit $1,000 for any alien brought in who had not the ability to maintain himself.

Congress did not even consider this bill, and during the next ten years little attempt was made to secure legislation against the foreigner.

In a message to Congress on June 1, 1841, President John Tyler (1813–62) referred to immigration, in part, as follows:

We hold out to the people of other countries an invitation to come and settle among us as members of our rapidly growing family; and for the blessing which we offer them, we require of them to look upon our country as their country, and unite with us in the great task of preserving our institutions and thereby perpetuating our liberties.

As a consequence of the increase of immigration about the middle of the nineteenth century, the old dread of the foreigner was revived, and in the early fifties the Nativist politicians again became active. The new, like the earlier movement, was closely associated with the anti-Catholic propaganda. The new organization assumed the form of a secret society. It was organized probably, in 1850, in New York City, and in 1852 it was increased in membership by drawing largely from the old established Order of United Americans. Its meetings were secret, its indorsements were never made openly, and even its name and purpose were said to be known only to those who reached the highest degree. Consequently the rank and file, when questioned about their party, were obliged to answer: “I don’t know”; so they came to be called “Know Nothings.” They participated in local, State and even in national elections, and claimed as many as forty-three Representatives and five Senators in the Thirty-fourth Congress. But in the end they disappeared without having accomplished anything against immigration, adopted citizens, or Catholics, and, as a matter of fact, some legislation favorable to foreigners was passed during these periods of agitation. The passenger law of 1819 was amended in 1847, and again in 1848, in order to improve the condition of the steerage of immigrant ships. The act organizing the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas, passed in 1854, was also favorable to foreigners, it being provided that the right of suffrage in such Territories should be exercised by those declaring their intentions to become citizens and taking an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and the provisions of the act. During the discussion of the homestead act in 1854, which act, however, was not finally passed until 1862, there was considerable reference to immigrants and to whether they should be allowed to enjoy the advantages of the act. The “Know Nothings” proposed to strike out the section of the bill permitting the granting of land to foreigners who had filed their intention of becoming citizens; but the attempt failed.

Although the National Government did not assume control of immigration until 1882, Congress in 1864, on the recommendation of President Lincoln, passed a law to encourage immigration. It provided for a Commissioner of Immigration, to be under the direction of the Department of State, and that all contracts that should be made in foreign countries by emigrants to the United States, whereby emigrants pledged the wages of their labor for a term not exceeding twelve months to repay the expense of emigration, should be held to be valid in law and might be enforced in the courts of the United States or by the several States and Territories, and that no such contract could in any way be considered as creating a condition of slavery or servitude. Following the enactment of the law several companies were established to deal in contract labor, but they were not satisfied with the law and wanted its scope enlarged. This indirectly led to the abolition of the entire law in 1868, and the brief period of national encouragement of immigration was over. A campaign against contracting for foreign labor began soon afterward, though no legislation to forbid it was enacted until many years later. A law, enacted in 1875, which provided for the exclusion of prostitutes, was chiefly designated to regulate Chinese immigration, and thus early touched two subjects with reference to which the most stringent exclusion laws were to be enacted in the period of national control over immigration, which was now approaching.

In 1876 the Supreme Court of the United States declared laws enacted by several States to regulate and tax immigration to be unconstitutional, and expressly recommended that Congress should exercise full authority over immigration. This ultimately led to the enactment of the first general immigration law, which was approved by President Chester A. Arthur (1830–86) August 3, 1882. It provided for a head tax of 50 cents on all aliens landed at United States ports, the money thus collected to be used to defray the expenses of regulating immigration and for the care of immigrants after landing. It also provided that foreign convicts, except those convicted for political offences, lunatics, idiots and persons likely to become public charges, should not be permitted to land. Aside from a law forbidding the importation of contract laborers, adopted in 1885 and strengthened by supplementary laws in 1887 and 1888, and aside from the laws about Chinese immigration which do not concern us here, there was no legislation affecting general immigration for nearly a decade, though the question was now widely discussed in the press and there was considerable agitation for further restriction.

In 1888 the House of Representatives authorized, by resolution, the appointment of a select committee to investigate the charges which were made that the immigration laws were being extensively evaded. The committee, known as the “Ford Committee,” in its report more than sustained the charges; it praised the immigrants of the past and deprecated those who were then coming; and proposed a new bill which added polygamists, anarchists and persons afflicted with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease to the excluded classes. Congress, however, did not act upon the recommendations of that committee.

In 1889 a Standing Committee on Immigration in the Senate and a Select Committee on Immigration and Naturalization in the House were established. In 1890 these committees were authorized jointly to make an inquiry relative to immigration. Various reports were submitted, and the conclusion was that a radical change was not advisable, although it had been found that throughout the country there existed a demand for a stricter enforcement of the immigration laws. During 1890 one or more political parties in twenty-three States had demanded additional regulation of immigration. Consequently a law strengthening the existing law in several important details, but making no radical departure from the former policy, was adopted in 1891.

But the question continued to receive the attention of Congress. There was another investigation by a joint committee in 1892, which reported in July of that year, and still another investigation ordered by the Senate. Two new bills were proposed—one establishing additional regulations, the other entirely prohibiting immigration for one year, on account of the epidemic of cholera then prevailing in Europe. But neither this measure, nor the educational test which was then for the first time recommended by a Congressional committee, was adopted, and the revised immigration law, which was approved by President Harrison March 3, 1893, was by no means radical. The head tax on immigrants was raised from fifty cents to one dollar by an amendment to an appropriation act in 1894.

The agitation of the subject in Congress continued, however, and finally both houses adopted a bill for an educational test, excluding persons physically capable and over sixteen years of age who could not read and write the English language or some other language, parents, grandparents, wives and minor children of admissible immigrants being excepted. President Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) returned the bill with his veto on March 2, 1897. He objected to the radical departure from the previous national policy relating to immigration, which welcomed all who came, the success of which policy was attested by the last century’s great growth. In referring to the claim that the quality of recent immigration was undesirable, he said: “The time is quite within recent memory when the same thing was said of immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens.” In referring to “the best reason that could be given for this radical restriction,” the “protecting of our population against degeneration and saving our national peace and quiet from imported turbulence and disorder,” President Cleveland said that he did not think that the nation would be protected against these evils by limiting immigration to those who could read and write, for, in his mind, it was safer “to admit a hundred thousand immigrants, who, though unable to read and write, seek among us only a home and an opportunity to work, than to admit one of those unruly agitators who can not only read and write, but delight in arousing by inflammatory speech the illiterate and peacefully inclined to discontent.” Those classes which we ought to exclude, he claimed, should be legislated against directly. Some sections of the bill against aliens who come regularly into the United States from neighboring countries for the purpose of obtaining work, he declared to be “illiberal, narrow and un-American.”

On March 3, 1897, the House passed the bill over the President’s veto by a vote of 193 to 37, but no action was taken in the Senate, and the veto was thus sustained. The same bill was introduced in the following Congress (fifty-fifth) and passed by the Senate, but the House, by a vote of 103 to 101 refused to consider it.

By an act of June 18, 1898, Congress created an Industrial Commission “to investigate questions pertaining to immigration, and to report to Congress and to suggest such legislation as it may deem best upon these subjects.” The final report of this commission was submitted to Congress in February, 1902, and shortly afterwards a bill was introduced in the House which was substantially in accord with the recommendations made. The House added a literary test to this bill, but it was eliminated by the Senate, which raised the head tax from one dollar to two. This was accepted by the House, and the bill, as it was approved by the President March 3, 1903, made no radical change in the existing laws. The same may be said of the present immigration law, which was approved February 20, 1907, which, besides raising the head tax from two to four dollars and somewhat strengthening the provisions against the defective or undesirable classes, made no innovation or departure from the policy of admitting all who may be expected to be able to provide for themselves and to become good citizens. The number as well as the percentage of those excluded is now considerably larger than in former years; but the tide of immigration is not stemmed, and after the quick recovery from the hard times which began with the panic of 1907, there is now again a very large influx of immigrants, among whom the proportion of Jews is by no means smaller than in former years.

The act of 1907 also created an Immigration Commission to “make full inquiry, examination, and investigation, by sub-committee or otherwise, into the subject of immigration.” This commission submitted its report, in forty volumes, in 1910, and recommended some strong restrictions, with the view that “a sufficient number may be debarred to produce a marked effect upon the present supply of unskilled labor.” It also advised that “as far as possible the aliens excluded should be those who come to this country with no intention to become American citizens or even to maintain a permanent residence here; but merely to save enough, by the adoption, if necessary, of low standards of living, to return permanently to their home country.... A majority of the Commission favor the reading and writing test as the most feasible single method of restricting undesirable immigration.” Congress has not acted on these recommendations at the time of this writing (1911).

The question of enforced rest on Sunday is much older than the question of regulating immigration. Several States have Sunday laws which were in their original form enacted in the eighteenth century. In the Carolinas these laws have been but little changed since Colonial times. But the reviews of these laws in the various States and Territories, their effect on the Jews, and the leading cases under them in various times and places, give no adequate idea of their significance for the Orthodox immigrant of the later period. What our best authority on the subject, Albert M. Friedenberg,50 could collect and collate, contains only a record of such cases which originated in, or were carried up to, higher courts of record. These are usually lawsuits which affected men of means, who could hire attorneys and fight the question as a matter of principle. But these recorded cases give no indication of the tens of thousands of arrests which were made in the large cities, especially in New York City, in the last years, where the cases never went higher than the first instance, because the poor man, if he was not discharged in the Police Court, had to pay his fine or be imprisoned. Appeals to higher courts and insistence upon constitutional or statutory rights are out of the question, not only on account of poverty or ignorance, but also because of familiarity with such procedure in the Old World. The Sunday laws are not constantly enforced in the same manner, there being periods of severity and periods of lenience even under the same local administration, and often a complete change of policy under a new administration, though the statute or State law remains the same. The Jew of Russia or Roumania has been too well accustomed to intermittent police tyranny for the purpose of extortion at home, to be able to interpret the frequent changes in administrative policy or in police regulations here in any other way, and this also tends to discourage appeals to higher courts. The question ought to be investigated not juristically but statistically; the number of arrests made, the loss of time and money sustained by those who are charged with transgressing these laws, and the contrast in the enforcement of them at various periods: if such facts and figures were placed before the American people and before legislators, the attitude of many in regard to Sunday laws would probably be changed. But the figures are not available in a form to be used in a work like the present, and only the hope can be expressed here that they will be collected in the near future by one of the agencies which gather data of that kind relating to Jewish subjects.

There is no Federal Sunday Law, although the distillation of spirituous liquors on the first day of the week is prohibited. California only prohibits labor by any employee on more than six days out of every seven, but not specifying any compulsory day of rest. In Colorado only trafficking in liquors and barbering are prohibited on Sunday and in Montana there is a law against barbering only.

In most of the other States, as well as in the Territories and in the District of Columbia (which is also counted as a Territory), there are more or less stringent laws, most of them forbidding not only manual labor but also the carrying on of trade or business. There are eleven States—Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia—where servile or manual labor is permitted on Sunday to those who observe Saturday as their day of rest. In thirteen more—Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wisconsin—the exceptions in favor of Seventh-Day Sabbatarians affect both manual labor and trade or business. But the statute is not always a criterion of the observance or enforcement of Sunday laws in a certain locality. Some of the laws, like that of New York, decree that “it is a sufficient defense to a prosecution for work on the first day of the week, that the defendant uniformly keeps another day of the week as holy time, and does not labor on that day, and that the labor complained of was done in such manner as not to interrupt or disturb other persons in observing the first day of the week as holy time.” In many localities, especially in large cities, the Sunday laws are simply obsolete, and are usually revived in the name of Reform after the success of a Reform Party at the polls, only to become obsolete again when that party is voted out of office at the succeeding election. The defeat usually comes for no other reason than the dissatisfaction of a large number of citizens with the strict enforcement of the Sunday laws. Jews are by no means the only element of the population which resents stringency in these matters. It may be said that the coupling together of strict enforcement of the Sunday laws with the good government movements in the large cities has been a greater drawback to municipal reform in the United States than any other single cause.

Of all these three problems which are of special interest to the Jews of the United States, the first, or the passport question, seems at the present moment to be nearest to solution. The immigration question is certain to remain open for many years to come, as neither side of the conflicting interests who work against each other is likely to yield in the near future. The trade unions, which see in the immigrant a menace to the highly-paid laborer, and the so-called patriotic societies, which fear a deterioration of the American race or stock by the admixture of people from nationalities and races which they consider to be inferior, keep up a constant agitation for more restrictive measures against the influx of strangers. On the other hand, there is a constantly increasing demand for workmen in the expanding industries, for farm laborers and for domestic servants, and the million or more immigrants who now arrive in a year of ordinary business activity are so easily absorbed that their usefulness cannot be denied. While the adoption of some restrictive legislation may be forced on Congress by the pressure of those who agitate for it, real restriction seems to be out of the question before the country is filled up and built up; and this will take so long a time that all speculations as to what may happen afterwards are at present premature.

There is hardly any agitation for or against the Sunday laws, as such. New and mostly restrictive measures are adopted, either against the liquor business as a concession to the Prohibition element, which is backed by the churches; or against single trades, like those of butchers or barbers, as a concession to the sentiment in favor of overworked laborers. The time for abolishing the Sunday laws or for adopting explicit exemptions in favor of Jews, making the observance of Saturday not a defense against prosecution but a security against molestation, has not yet arrived; but the sense of justice and righteousness is unmistakably growing, and there is no doubt of the ultimate triumph of liberal tendencies over this heritage of intolerant ages, when nobody considered himself bound to respect the rights, especially the religious rights, of helpless minorities.

PART VII.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. PRESENT CONDITIONS.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

SYNAGOGUES AND INSTITUTIONS. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA. ROUMANIA AND THE ROUMANIAN NOTE.

Synagogues and other Jewish Institutions—General improvement and moderation—The Jewish Encyclopedia—Its editors and contributors—The Roumanian situation and the American Government’s interest in it since 1867—Benjamin F. Peixotto, United States Consul-General in Bucharest—Diplomatic correspondence between Kasson and Evarts—New negotiations with Roumania in 1902—The Roumanian Note to the signatories of the Berlin Treaty—The question still in abeyance.

More than six hundred thousand Jews arrived in the United States from the beginning of the new exodus in 1881 until the end of the nineteenth century, and the total number in the country was now considerably more than one million. There were Jews in more than five hundred places, and there were 791 congregations, 415 educational and nearly five hundred charitable institutions of a distinctly Jewish character, according to an enumeration made in the beginning of the new century.52 But the number of congregations or synagogues was very much larger, probably more than double than the figures gathered by the enumerators. For the American, even the American Jew, had then not yet learned to take seriously those small and exceedingly unchurchlike synagogues of the small congregations, of which five or six, or even a larger number, can sometimes be found in one block in a thickly settled Jewish neighborhood in the great cities. A second and more thorough enumeration made in 1907 gave to New York City alone a number of synagogues almost as large as the one given by the statistics of 1900 to the entire country; but the actual increase was very far from such proportions. Probably four-fifths of the congregations of New York and of the other great Jewish centers in the East and the Middle West were more than ten years old, and they simply escaped the notice of former enumerators. The organizing of small synagogues is now out of fashion; the tendency is to consolidate the smaller ones and to erect more fashionable and spacious buildings in the newest neighborhoods, to which the immigrants usually move after they leave their earliest abode in the tenement house districts. In the fields of charity and education the predilection for new organizations is disappearing, and there is a desire to build on more solid foundations, and to improve and strengthen rather than form anew. New synagogues are now built usually in new communities or in new Jewish neighborhoods, or by old congregations who need a larger edifice.

America now had the largest community of free Jews in the world, i. e., of Jews who labored under no special disadvantages and who had no special difficulties, like those which are making life a burden to the Jews of Russia or Galicia. The great masses which arrived in the last twenty years progressed rapidly and were becoming Americanized in every respect. There arose new intellectual needs; the extremists had to yield to the influence of those who were more acclimatized, and even the most radical periodicals began to respect the susceptibilities, if not the opinions, of the other classes. The number of the educated and the well-to-do was fast increasing, and the community was now well prepared for “the capital event in the history of Jewish learning in America”—the publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia.

This monumental work, the greatest Jewish work of reference in any language, was projected by Dr. Isidore Singer (b. in Weisskirchen, Moravia, 1859; a. 1895) and edited by a board of well-known scholars, of whom Dr. Isaac Funk (b. in Clinton, O., 1839; d. 1912; of the firm of Funk and Wagnalls, which published the work) was chairman, and Frank H. Vizitelly (b. in London, Eng., 1864) secretary. The original editors were: Cyrus Adler, Gotthard Deutsch (b. in Kanitz, Austria, 1859; a. 1891), Professor of History at the Hebrew Union College; Louis Ginzberg (b. in Kovno, Russia, 1873; a. 1899), now Professor of Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York; Richard Gottheil; Joseph Jacobs (b. in Sydney, N. S. W., 1854; a. 1900), the folklorist and statistician; Marcus Jastrow; Morris Jastrow, Jr.; Kaufman Kohler; Frederick de Sola Mendes (b. in Jamaica, W. I., 1850; a. 1873), rabbi of the West End Synagogue of New York; Isidor Singer, and Crawford H. Toy (b. in Norfolk, Va., 1836), Professor (now “emeritus”) of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at Harvard University. This editorial board was given on the title page of the first volume which appeared in May, 1901; but several changes were made during the five years of its publication. From the beginning of the second volume Herman Rosenthal became editor of the new Department of the Jews of Russia and Poland, and it is due to his efforts that the Jews of the Slavic countries are more extensively treated in the historical and biographical parts of the Encyclopedia than was ever the case in works of Jewish science which appeared outside of Russia. Dr. Emil G. Hirsch of Chicago succeeded Morris Jastrow as editor of the Department of the Bible, with the beginning of the third volume. From the fourth till the seventh volume the name of Solomon Schechter (b. in Fokshan, Roumania, 1847; a. 1902), the President of the Jewish Theological Seminary, appears as editor of the Department of the Talmud; and from the eighth volume to the end the name of Wilhelm Bacher of Budapest (b. in Hungary 1850) appears as editor of the Department of the Talmud and Rabbinical Literature, succeeding both Schechter and Ginzberg. The editorial board was assisted by boards of American and foreign consulting editors, which included many of the best known Jewish scholars and Orientalists, and many other scholars from various countries were among the four hundred contributors who participated in the preparation of the work, in which the vast “Record of the History, Religion, Literature and Customs of the Jewish People from the earliest times to the present day” was for the first time systematized, classified and made available in a modern scientific manner.

Prof. Gotthard Deutsch.

The situation of the Jews in Roumania had been growing worse since the financial crisis of 1899, and in the last year of the century there was a stampede of Jews from that country, some of them walking hundreds of miles before they could find a place to rest or until they reached a port from which they could embark for England or America. Still, neither the Jewish immigration in general nor the immigration from Roumania could give the slightest cause for uneasiness to the government of the United States, the tide of immigration was now again rising from the lowest ebb it had reached since 1879—229,295 in 1898—and neither the 5,613 Roumanian Jews who arrived at the port of New York in 1901 nor the 6,395 who came in 1902, when the general immigration was 487,918 and 648,743, respectively, could be taken seriously as a cause for interference or protest. There would have been much more cause for protests of that nature after the great massacres in Russia several years later, when the number of Jews who arrived in one year (1906) exceeded 150,000. The interest that the Government of the United States took in the Roumanian situation is therefore believed to have been due principally to the friendly attitude of President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of State John Hay towards Jews in general.

It was, however, nothing new for the American Government to use its good offices in behalf of the persecuted Jews of Roumania. As early as 1867, Secretary of State Seward corresponded with Mr. Morris, the American Minister to Constantinople, about the persecutions of that year; and the latter reported having told Mr. Golesco, the agent of the Danubian principalities, that the sufferings of the Jews there “has all the appearance of religious persecution, and that the confidence of the Government of the United States would be impaired in the Government of Bucharest, unless the proscriptive measures against the Jews discontinued.”53

In 1870 official—or it would perhaps be more correct to call it semi-official—relations with Roumania were established temporarily, by the appointment of a consul-general of the United States in Roumania. The man chosen by President Grant for this position was a prominent Jewish attorney-at-law, Benjamin Franklin Peixotto (b. in New York, 1834; d. there 1890), who later served as United States Consul at Lyons, France (1877–85), and when he returned to New York founded (1886) the “Menorah,” a monthly Jewish magazine which existed for more than two decades. The Jewish official became an intimate friend of Prince (now King) Charles, but Roumania continued on its old way, and the riots of Ismail and Bessarabia occurred during Peixotto’s stay in Bucharest. “His reports to the United States Government resulted in that government addressing letters to its ministers at the various European courts inviting co-operation in the humane endeavor to stop Jewish persecution in Roumania. Peixotto’s reports were also the cause of a great meeting at the Mansion House in London, which called forth Lord Shaftesbury’s message of sympathy. Peixotto was instrumental, too, in founding the Society of Zion in Roumania, an organization with similar aims to the B’nai B’rith; and it was his influence as a United States official, his intimacy with the European philanthropists and the force of his own personal magnetism that finally caused the calling of the conference of Brussels, to which he was a delegate, and which culminated in the action taken by the Berlin Congress of 1878, when Roumania acquired the status of a sovereign kingdom only upon the express condition that the civil and political rights of the Jews should be recognized.” (E. A. Cardozo, in Encyclopedia IX, p. 582, s. v. Peixotto.)

Peixotto remained in Roumania six years, and about two years after he left Bucharest, Mr. John A. Kasson, the American Minister to Austria, wrote to Secretary of State Evarts (under date of June 5, 1878) that in anticipation of Roumanian independence, which was soon to be granted by the Congress of Berlin, Germany, had begun negotiations with the Roumanian Government for a commercial treaty. But Germany finally dropped the negotiations because, “according to information received here, the hostility of Roumania to the recognition of equal rights for Jews of a foreign nationality with other citizens or subjects of the same nationality would have practically proscribed a portion of the German subjects.” Yet Mr. Kasson proposes in the same letter that: “It would be to the honor of the United States Government if it could initiate a plan by which at once the condition of American Hebrews resident or travelling in Roumania and the condition of natives of the same race could be ameliorated and their equality before the law at least partially assured.” In the following year Mr. Kasson reports about the attempt to enter into diplomatic relations with Roumania, and about a conversation he had with Mr. Balatshano, the envoy and minister of Roumania to Austria, in the course of which allusion was made to the preliminary requirements of the Berlin treaty in respect to the Jews. According to the letter (dated February 16, 1879), the representative of Roumania replied “that the necessary changes would be made in their laws to give satisfaction on this point, and to establish for the Jews the basis of absolute equality with other races.” On November 28, 1879, Secretary Evarts writes to Mr. Kasson:

“In connection with the subject of Roumanian recognition, I inclose for your consideration the copy of a letter under date of the 30th ultimo from Mr. Myer S. Isaacs, president, and other officers of the board of delegates on civil and religious rights of the Hebrews, asking that the Government of the United States may exert its influence towards securing for its Hebrew subjects and residents in Roumania the equality of civil and religious rights stipulated in Article XLIV of the treaty of Berlin.

“As you are aware, this government has ever felt a deep interest in the welfare of the Hebrew race in foreign countries, and has viewed with abhorrence the wrongs to which they have at various periods been subjected by the followers of other creeds in the East. This Department is therefore disposed to give favorable consideration to the appeal made by the representatives of a prominent Hebrew organization in this country in behalf of their brethren in Roumania, and while I should not be warranted in making a compliance with their wishes a sine qua non in the establishment of official relations with that country, yet any terms favorable to the interest of this much-injured people which you may be able to secure in the negotiations now pending with the Government of Roumania would be agreeable and gratifying to this Department.

“I am, etc.,

“WM. M. EVARTS.”   

It was therefore only a continuance of its old policy when the Government of the United States, which has—as Mr. Evarts expressed it in 1879—“ever felt a deep interest in the welfare of the Hebrew race in foreign countries,” again began, in 1902, to pay attention to the pitiable condition of the Roumanian Jews. There still existed no treaty or diplomatic relations between the United States and Roumania, and a new attempt was made by our Department of State to negotiate a naturalization convention, and perhaps by these means influence that country to treat its Jews more favorably. The negotiations were carried on through the American legation at Athens, Greece, and Secretary Hay sent, on July 17, 1902, a long confidential dispatch to Mr. Charles L. Wilson, the Charge d’Affaires ad interim in Athens, which contained the largest part of the famous “Roumanian Note” to the signatories of the Treaty of Berlin, which was issued in the following month. Wilson’s reply, dated August 8, states that “since the draft of the treaty approved by the Department was submitted to the Roumanian minister for foreign affairs nothing further has been accomplished, as the Roumanian Government refused to consider the project favorably.” The Roumanian Minister to Greece frankly admitted to the American representative that the King was against the proposed treaty, because, “according to His Majesty’s opinion, a naturalization treaty would be most injurious to Roumania, for the reason that it would complicate the already troublesome Jewish question in that country.”

Three days after the date of that dispatch, John Hay issued, on August 11, 1902, the Roumanian Note, which was sent to the representatives of the United States to France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Russia and Turkey. The full text of this unique circular note, which made a profound impression in the entire civilized world, is as follows:

“Department of State.   

“Washington, August 11, 1902.   

“Excellency:—In the course of an instruction recently sent to the Minister accredited to the Government of Roumania in regard to the base of negotiations begun with that government looking to a convention of naturalization between the United States and Roumania, certain considerations were set forth for the Minister’s guidance concerning the character of the immigration from that country, the causes which constrain it, and the consequences so far as they adversely affect the United States.

“It has seemed to the President appropriate that these considerations, relating as they do to the obligations entered into by the signatories of the Treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878, should be brought to the attention of the Governments concerned, and commended to their consideration in the hope that, if they are so fortunate as to meet the approval of the several Powers, such measures as to them may seem wise may be taken to persuade the Government of Roumania to reconsider the subject of the grievances in question.

“The United States welcomes now, as it has welcomed from the foundation of its Government, the voluntary immigration of all aliens coming hither under conditions fitting them to become merged in the body politic of this land. Our laws provide the means for them to become incorporated indistinguishably in the mass of citizens, and prescribe their absolute equality with the native born, guaranteeing to them equal civil rights at home and equal protection abroad. The conditions are few, looking to their coming as free agents, so circumstanced physically and morally as to supply the healthful and intelligent material for free citizenhood. The pauper, the criminal, the contagiously or incurably diseased are excluded from the benefit of immigration only when they are likely to become a source of danger or a burden upon the community. The voluntary character of their coming is essential; hence we shut out all immigration assisted or constrained by foreign agencies. The purpose of our generous treatment of the alien immigrant is to benefit us and him alike—not to afford to another state a field upon which to cast its own objectionable elements. The alien, coming hither voluntarily and prepared to take upon himself the preparatory and in due course the definite obligations of citizenship, retains hereafter, in domestic and international relations, the initial character of free agency, in the full enjoyment of which it is incumbent upon his adoptive State to protect him.

“The foregoing considerations, whilst pertinent to the examination of the purpose and scope of a naturalization treaty, have a larger aim. It behooves the State to scrutinize most jealously the character of the immigration from a foreign land, and, if it be obnoxious to objection, to examine the causes which render it so. Should those causes originate in the act of another sovereign State, to the detriment of its neighbors, it is the prerogative of an injured State to point out the evil and to make remonstrance; for with nations, as with individuals, the social law holds good that the right of each is bounded by the right of the neighbor.

“The condition of a large class of the inhabitants of Roumania has for many years been a source of grave concern to the United States. I refer to the Roumanian Jews, numbering some 400,000. Long ago, while the Danubian principalities labored under oppressive conditions which only war and a general action of the European powers sufficed to end, the persecution of the indigenous Jews under Turkish rule called forth in 1872 the strong remonstrance of the United States. The Treaty of Berlin was hailed as a cure for the wrong, in view of the express provisions of its forty-fourth article, prescribing that in Roumania the difference of religious creed and confessions shall not be alleged against any person as a ground for exclusion or incapacity in matters relating to the enjoyment of civil and political rights, admission to public employments, functions, and honors, or the exercise of the various professions and industries in any locality whatsoever, and stipulating freedom in the exercise of all forms of worship to Roumanian dependents and foreigners alike, as well as guaranteeing that all foreigners in Roumania shall be treated without distinction of creed, on a footing of perfect equality.

“With the lapse of time these just prescriptions have been rendered nugatory in great part, as regards the native Jews, by the legislation and municipal regulations of Roumania. Starting from the arbitrary and controvertible premises that the native Jews of Roumania domiciled there for centuries are ‘aliens not subject to foreign protection,’ the ability of the Jew to earn even the scanty means of existence that suffice for a frugal race has been constricted by degrees, until every opportunity to win a livelihood is denied; and until the helpless poverty of the Jew has constrained an exodus of such proportions as to cause general concern.

“The political disabilities of the Jews of Roumania, their exclusion from the public service and the learned professions, the limitation of their civil rights and the imposition upon them of exceptional taxes, involving as they do, wrongs repugnant to the moral sense of liberal modern peoples, are not so directly in point for my present purpose as the public acts which attack the inherent right of man as a breadwinner in the ways of agriculture and trade. The Jews are prohibited from owning land, or even from cultivating it as common laborers. They are debarred from residing in the rural districts. Many branches of petty trade and manual production are closed to them in the over-crowded cities where they are forced to dwell and engage, against fearful odds, in the desperate struggle for existence. Even as ordinary artizans or hired laborers they may only find employment in the proportion of one ‘unprotected alien’ to two ‘Roumanians’ under any one employer. In short, in the cumulative effects of successive restrictions, the Jews of Roumania have become reduced to a state of wretched misery. Shut out from nearly every avenue of self-support which is open to the poor of other lands, and ground down by poverty as the natural result of their discriminatory treatment, they are rendered incapable of lifting themselves from the enforced degradation they endure. Even were the fields of education, of civil employment and of commerce open to them as to ‘Roumanian citizens,’ their penury would prevent their rising by individual effort. Human beings so circumstanced have virtually no alternative but submissive suffering or flight to some land less unfavorable to them. Removal under such conditions is not and cannot be the healthy, intelligent emigration of a free and self-reliant being. It must be, in most cases, the mere transplantation of an artificially produced diseased growth to a new place.

“Granting that, in better and more healthful surroundings, the morbid condition will eventually change for good, such emigration is necessarily for a time a burden to the community upon which the fugitives may be cast. Self-reliance and the knowledge and ability that evolve the power of self-support must be developed, and, at the same time, avenues of employment must be opened in quarters where competition is already keen and opportunities scarce. The teachings of history and the experience of our own nation show that the Jews possess in a high degree the mental and moral qualifications of conscientious citizenhood. No class of immigrants is more welcome to our shore, when coming equipped in mind and body for entrance upon the struggle for bread, and inspired with the high purpose to give the best service of heart and brain to the land they adopt of their own free will. But when they come as outcasts, made doubly paupers by physical and moral oppression in their native land, and thrown upon the long suffering generosity of a more favored community, their immigration lacks the essential conditions which make alien immigration either acceptable or beneficial. So well is this appreciated on the Continent that, even in the countries where anti-Semitism has no foothold, it is difficult for these fleeing Jews to obtain any lodgment. America is their only goal.

“The United States offers asylum to the oppressed of all lands. But its sympathy with them in no wise impairs its just liberty and right to weigh the acts of the oppressor in the light of their effects upon this country and to judge accordingly.

“Putting together the facts now painfully brought home to this Government during the past few years, that many of the inhabitants of Roumania are being forced, by artificially adverse discriminations, to quit their native country; that the hospitable asylum offered by this country is almost the only refuge left to them; that they come hither unfitted, by the conditions of their exile, to take part in the new life of this land under circumstances either profitable to themselves or beneficial to the community; and that they are objects of charity from the outset and for a long time—the right of remonstrance against the acts of the Roumanian Government is clearly established in favor of this Government. Whether consciously and of purpose or not, these helpless people, burdened and spurned by their native land, are forced by the sovereign power of Roumania upon the charity of the United States. This Government cannot be a tacit party to such an international wrong. It is constrained to protest against the treatment to which the Jews of Roumania are subjected, not alone because it has unimpeachable right to remonstrate against the resultant injury to itself, but in the name of humanity. The United States may not authoritatively appeal to the stipulations of the Treaty of Berlin, to which it was not and cannot become a signatory, but it does earnestly appeal to the principles consigned therein, because they are the principles of international law and eternal justice, advocating the broad toleration which that solemn compact enjoins and standing ready to lend its moral support to the fulfilment thereof by its co-signatories, for the act of Roumania itself has effectively joined the United States to them as an interested party in this regard.

“You will take an early occasion to read this instruction to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and, should he request it, leave with him a copy.

“I have the honor to be

“Your obedient servant,

“JOHN HAY.”   

The note made a great impression on the entire civilized world, but was followed by no practical results. The only government which took any notice of it was—as could have been expected—the British. Mr. John B. Jackson, who had in the meantime been appointed minister of the United States to Greece and was also accredited to Roumania, wrote from Athens (March 31, 1903) that, having been in charge of the American embassy at Berlin at the time when the note was received, he “understood that immediately after the same instruction has been communicated to the foreign office at London, the British Government, without in any way making known its own views contained therein, had addressed a communication to the other Governments which were parties to the Berlin treaty of 1878, inquiring what they proposed doing in the matter. So far as I am aware, however, no action was taken by any of these Governments, and the contents of the circular was never formally brought to the attention of the Roumanian Government....”

This letter, and another dated Athens, April 18, and still another dated September 7, 1903, contain statements made by Roumanian statesmen explaining the situation from their point of view, and observations made by Mr. Jackson himself during his travels through Roumania. The last letter, which closes the correspondence, ends with the remark that “the general feeling (in Roumania) is that the naturalization of Jews must be a gradual matter, as they become educated up to being Roumanians”—a feeling much more likely to be found in America than in Roumania.

There is still no treaty with Roumania, but there is an American Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary (the usual designation of an ordinary minister) sent to Roumania and accredited also to Servia and Bulgaria, who resides at the Roumanian capital, Bucharest, where there is also an American consul-general. The representation is, as was the case in the time of Peixotto, one-sided, the Roumanian Government having no representative in the United States. The Roumanian question may therefore be considered neither as solved nor as abandoned, but to be in abeyance until a favorable opportunity shall present itself for further negotiations, which may ultimately lead to the only adjustment which can be acceptable to the United States as well as to the Jews.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

HELP FOR THE VICTIMS OF THE RUSSIAN MASSACRES IN 1903 AND 1905. OTHER PROOFS OF SYMPATHY.

The Kishinev massacre—Official solicitude and general sympathy—Protest meetings and collections—The “Kishinev Petition” and its fate—Less publicity given to the later pogroms, whose victims were helped by “landsleut” from this country—The influence of pogroms on immigration—The frightful massacres in Russia in the fall of 1905, and the assistance rendered by this country—A Resolution of sympathy adopted in Congress—The 250th Anniversary of the Settlement of the Jews in the United States—Relief for Moroccan Jews proposed by the United States—Oscar S. Straus in the Cabinet.

While the correspondence about the Jews of Roumania was still carried on by our State Department, the civilized world was shocked by the reports of the brutal massacre of Jews in Kishinev in the three days of April 19–21, 1903. This massacre which is still within every one’s memory, aroused the press and the people of the United States more than the riots of 1881. “Almost from the first, the world’s indignation centered in the United States. Served by a vigorous press, whose liberal spirit voices the prevailing attitude; animated by a humanitarianism which lies at the foundation of all our public institutions; realizing also that America was the chief refuge of all victims of persecution; the people of the United States became, again, the world’s logical leaders in a campaign of humanity.”54 President Roosevelt’s opening remark in his speech to the Executive Committee of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith on June 15, 1903, when he said: “I have never in my experience in this country known of a more immediate or a deeper expression of sympathy for the victims and of horror over the appalling calamity that has occurred,” was fully justified.

The news filtered very slowly through the usual channels, and more than a week passed before the enormity of the Russian crime became fully known. On the 29th of April the following dispatch was sent by our Department of State:

McCormick, Ambassador, St. Petersburg:

It is persistently reported upon what appears to be adequate authority that there is great want and suffering among Jews in Kishinev. Friends in this country would like to know if financial aid and supplies would be permitted to reach the sufferers.

Please ascertain this without discussing political phase of the action.

HAY.   

Ambassador McCormick replied, ten days later, that it is “authoritatively denied that there is any want or suffering among Jews in Southwestern Russia and aid of any kind is unnecessary.” But the people here understood that the Ambassador reflected the official view of the Russian Government, and efforts to raise money for the thousands of families which were left destitute by pillage, and for the hundreds of widows and orphans of the martyrs, were soon made, and large sums were collected in New York, as well as in many other places. More than seventy-five meetings of protest and indignation were held in fifty localities in twenty-seven States (and the District of Columbia) during the months of May and June, the most notable of which was the one held in New York, May 27, where Mayor Seth Low presided and ex-President Grover Cleveland was the principal orator. Among the largest meetings of the other places were those of Baltimore (May 17), of Philadelphia (June 3) and of New Orleans (June 13). In the most cases the prominent non-Jewish citizens, including high officials and ministers of religion, delivered addresses or expressed their sentiments in letters. Numerous sermons against Russia were preached in various churches and hundreds of editorial articles appeared in all sorts of periodicals. Public opinion was again, as it was twenty-two years before, practically unanimous in condemning Russia, and in encouraging every enterprise for the assistance of the sufferers from its barbarity.

The response to the appeals for material help was quick and generous. The contributions were sent either directly to the central office of the “Alliance Israelite Universelle” at Paris or to one of three agencies in New York—to the Relief Committee of which Emanuel Lehman was chairman and Daniel Guggenheim, treasurer, and which was in communication with the “Alliance”; to the Relief Committee of which K. H. Sarasohn was chairman and Arnold Kohn, treasurer, and which was in communication with the Central Relief Committee at Kishinev; or to Mr. William Randolph Hearst, whose newspapers, in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, did much to arouse the public to the gravity of the situation, and who forwarded the money collected by them to Treasurer Arnold Kohn. The sum sent to Kishinev from the United States through all these agencies was set down in a report made on June 7, 1903, by the Central Relief Committee at Kishinev to the “Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden” at Berlin, at 192,443 roubles (somewhat less than $100,000). It is about half of the sum which was collected in Russia itself, and a fourth of what was contributed by all the countries of the world.

It was generally understood that little could be accomplished by representations or remonstrances to Russia, but the desire to do something more than collect alms was very strong, and the sentiment naturally crystallized itself in an effort to ask the Government of the United States to use its good offices in behalf of the Jews of Russia. A petition was framed by the Executive Committee of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith and submitted to the President of the United States with the request that it be transmitted to the Emperor of Russia. The President received the Committee cordially, and said at the conclusion of his remarks: “I will consider most carefully the suggestion that you have submitted to me, and whether the now existing conditions are such that any further official expression would be of advantage to the unfortunate survivors, with whom we sympathize so deeply.”

The petition was couched in courteous terms, extolling the Czar personally and pleading that “he who led his own people and all others to the shrine of peace, will add new luster to his reign and fame by leading a new movement that shall commit the whole world in opposition to religious persecution.” The petition was circulated in thirty-six States and Territories, and 12,544 signatures were obtained. Among the signers were Senators, Members of the House of Representatives, Governors (22), high judicial officers, State Legislators, Mayors of cities (150), clergymen of all denominations, including three Archbishops and seven Bishops, a large number of other officials, and many prominent men in the professional and the business world. President Roosevelt consented to transmit the petition, but the Russian Government declined to receive it, and the matter was thus ended. By permission of the President, the separate sheets of the petition bearing all the signatures, suitably bound and enclosed in a case provided for the purpose, have been placed in the archives of the Department of State.55

It was impossible to arouse the general public and even the general Jewish public at the recurrent pogroms and massacres at near intervals after Kishinev. But as is always the case with Russian or Galician or Roumanian cities when they suffer from fires, it became now the custom for all natives of an afflicted city to form some sort of organization in the rather rare occasion when there existed no synagogue or benevolent society of the “landsleut,” and to collect funds for the succor of the unfortunate families of the victims at home. Each of the riots and massacres between Kishinev and the terrible October days, the largest of which occurred at Homel (September 10–14, 1903) when eight Jews were killed and nearly one hundred injured; at Bender (May 1, 1904), and at Zhitomir (May 6, 1905), where twenty-nine were killed—each of these riots was a miniature Kishinev among the natives of the stricken place or its vicinity in this country. America became for the suffering Jews of Russia the Egypt of the time of the Patriarch Jacob, and the Russian immigrant who settled here before was the prosperous brother Joseph whom God sent to the New World before them to preserve life. To the emissaries from Palestine and from religious institutions in Russia, especially the Talmudical Academies or Yeshibot, who were coming regularly to the United States for many years to make collections among the conservative immigrants who prospered here, were now added emissaries from the radical or revolutionary parties from Russia, who were enthusiastically received by the working classes and the radical element in general, and their appeals for funds were seldom in vain.

The most substantial and most beneficial form of assistance sent from here to Russia was, however, not in response to appeals through Jewish newspapers or through personal representatives of causes, of parties or of institutions, but to requests made by members of families, by relatives or by friends to be taken out of Russia as soon as possible. While public appeals were made for charity of various kinds and for defense funds and similar objects, private correspondents solicited only one thing—steamship tickets. And the private responses, while they attracted less attention, were more generous, and in many instances verged on self-sacrifice. This can be deduced from the results, i. e., from the increased Jewish immigration, which was easily absorbed and little burdensome to the general Jewish public or to the larger charities, because most of the new arrivals had near relatives or friends who took care of them in the short time which elapsed until they could find employment. The increase of Jewish immigration on account of the pogroms can best be seen by a comparison of the number of Jewish arrivals at the Port of New York, where nearly nine-tenths of them arrive, with the general immigration for the five years 1903–07 (each ending June 30). The figures for 1903 are: Jews 58,079, total immigration, 857,046; for 1904: Jews 80,885, total 812,870; for 1905: Jews 103,941, total 1,027,421; for 1906: Jews 133,764, total 1,100,735; for 1907: Jews 117,486, total 1,285,349. It is seen that while general immigration in 1904 was about 45,000 less than in 1903, Jewish immigration was about 22,000 more. On the other hand, while general immigration rose to an unprecedented height in 1907, and was larger than the preceding year by 185,000, the number of Jews arriving in New York was about 16,000 less. The Jewish immigrant is not the man who fails at home or the adventurer who cares for no home; he could get along very well where he is if he were not molested, and Jewish immigration from Russia would become as insignificant as Jewish immigration from Germany if the former country could rise to the political and social conditions of the latter.

The small pogroms which were designated above as miniature Kishinevs, and even Kishinev itself, were soon forgotten or began to look very small in comparison with the frightful massacres of the last day of October and the first days of November, 1905, with which the Russians inaugurated their quasi-constitutional regime. This time there were about a thousand Jews killed, the wounded numbered many thousands, the losses by destruction of property amounted to hundreds of millions. America again responded nobly, and a committee, of which Oscar S. Straus was chairman and Jacob H. Schiff, treasurer, collected considerably more than a million dollars, from Jews and non-Jews, mainly through the same agencies and by the same methods as the funds for the sufferers from Kishinev were collected. There were again mass-meetings at which prominent non-Jews spoke words of sympathy for the martyrs and their families and condemned the government which permitted such carnage. The general press was as friendly and sympathetic to the Jews as on former occasions. When the great march of Jewish mourners after the martyrs took place through the streets of New York, in which nearly one hundred thousand participated (December 4, 1905), several Christian churches tolled their bells in expression of sympathy with the weeping masses which passed by.

Hon. Jacob H. Schiff.

Photo by Dupont, N. Y.

There was also an official expression of sympathy from Congress. Representatives Henry M. Goldfogle and William Sulzer introduced into the House resolutions to that effect, and a third one as a substitute was introduced by Representative Charles A. Towne, who, like the former two, represented a New York City District. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs granted a hearing, on February 8, 1906, to those interested in the passage of the resolutions. In its final form the joint resolution was introduced into the Senate by the late Anselm J. McLaurin of Mississippi, and in the House by Robert G. Cousins of Iowa, and read as follows:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That the people of the United States are horrified by the reports of the massacre of Hebrews in Russia, on account of their race and religion, and that those bereaved thereby have the hearty sympathy of the people of this country.

This resolution was adopted without debate, and unanimously, by both houses on June 22, and approved by the President on June 26, 1906.

On two other occasions about the same time the friendly disposition of the people and the Government of the United States towards the Jews was manifested to the world. The first occasion was only semi-official, when the Jews of the country celebrated the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Jews in the United States, on Thanksgiving Day (November 30), 1905. Meetings and special services were held in more than seventy localities between November 24 and December 10, but the principal celebration was in New York on the above mentioned date, in Carnegie Hall, where notable addresses were delivered by former President Grover Cleveland, Governor Francis W. Higgins of the State of New York, Mayor George B. McClellan of New York City, and Bishop David Greer. Cordial letters were received from President Roosevelt and Vice-President Charles W. Fairbanks. The principal oration at that memorable meeting was delivered by Judge Mayer Sulzberger of Philadelphia. Our present Ambassador to Russia, Curtis Guild, Jr., who was at that time Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, was one of the speakers at the celebration meeting which was held in Boston, a day before the New York meeting.56

The second occasion attracted less attention, but was strictly official. The International Conference about Morocco, which was held in Algeciras, Spain, from January 6 to April 7, 1906, was participated in by the United States, and its first delegate, Henry White (Ambassador to Italy), received instruction by a special letter from Secretary of State (now Senator) Elihu Root to work for the protection of the Jews of Morocco. These instructions were accompanied by a letter received by Secretary Root from Mr.  Jacob H. Schiff, setting forth the pitiable condition of the Jews of that country and enumerating the legal restrictions to which they were subject. Through the exertion of Mr. White, a provision was inserted, on April 2, in the treaty, with which the Conference was concluded, according to which the signatory nations guarantee the security and equal privileges of the Jews in Morocco, both those living in the ports and those living in the interior. (See “American-Jewish Year Book” for 5667, pp. 92–98.) The chief value of this provision, however, consists only in its indication of the good will of the Government of the United States. Its practical value for the Jews of Morocco, as far as protection from riots and massacres are concerned, is hardly more than that of the well known “Article 44” of the Treaty of Berlin regarding the Jews of Roumania. The Jews of Morocco probably never heard of that provision, and the credit of ameliorating their condition rightfully belongs to France, which has, according to the latest agreement among European Powers, become the protector, or ruler of the Shereefian Empire.

Hon. Oscar S. Straus.

Near the end of the same year (1906) President Roosevelt appointed Oscar S. Straus, the author and diplomatist, Secretary of Commerce and Labor. The first Jew to be thus honored with a seat in the Cabinet has served twice as minister plenipotentiary (and since he left the Cabinet, again as Ambassador) to Turkey, and also succeeded the late Benjamin Harrison, former president of the United States, as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. His oldest brother, Isidor Straus (b. in Bavaria, 1845; a. 1854; drowned with the “Titanic” April 15, 1912), was a well known merchant and philanthropist in New York, who was a member of the Fifty-third Congress, and has been for many years President of the Educational Alliance. Another brother, Nathan Straus (b. in Bavaria, 1848: a. 1854), who is also known as a philanthropist and served as Park Commissioner, and, for several months, as President of the Board of Health of New York, is two years older than the former Cabinet Minister.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE JEWS IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA.

The legend about the Jewish origin of Chevalier de Levis—Aaron Hart, the English Commissary, and Abraham Gradis, the French banker—Early settlers in Montreal—Its first Congregation—Troubles of Ezekiel Hart, the first Jew to be elected to the Legislature—Final Emancipation in 1832—Jews fight on the Loyalist side against Papineau’s rebellion—Prominent Jews in various fields of activity—Congregation “Shaar ha-Shomaim”—Toronto—First synagogue in Victoria, B. C., in 1862—Hamilton and Winnipeg—Other communities—Agricultural Colonies—Jewish Newspapers.

The beginning of the history of the Jews in Canada goes back to legend. There is a tradition that the founder of the house of Levis, from whom descended Henri de Levis, Duke de Vontadur, Viceroy of Canada for some time after 1626, and his more distinguished relative, Chevalier de Levis, who was Montcalm’s successor as commander of the French forces in Canada (1759) and later became a marshal of France, were descendants of the patriarch Levi Ben Jacob, and a cousin of Mary of Nazareth.59

The earliest authentic records of the Jews of Canada go back to the period when England and France were engaged in their final contest for the mastery of the northern part of the continent. Aaron Hart (b. in London, 1724) was Commissary in General Amherst’s army, which invaded Canada from the south, and there were in the same army three more Jewish officers: Emanuel de Cordova, Hananiel Garcia and Isaac Miranda. Hart was later attached to General Haldimond’s command at Three Rivers, and at the close of the war settled in that city and became seignior of Bécancour.

There were, of course, no Jews on the other side of the struggle, for France at that time suffered no Jewish inhabitants in her colonies, nor Jewish soldiers in her armies. But it was a Jew, Abraham Gradis (d. 1780), the head of the great French banking house founded by his father, David Gradis (naturalized in Bordeaux, 1731; d. 1751), who furnished money and supplies to the French King to carry on the unsuccessful war with England. Abraham Gradis had founded (in 1748) the Society of Canada, a commercial organization, under the auspices of the French government, and erected magazines in Quebec. Exceptional privileges were later granted to him and his family in the French colonies, and full civil rights were accorded him in Martinique in 1779. But the house of “the Rothschilds of the 18th century” was finally ruined by the insurrections in Santo Domingo and Martinique, combined with the losses which were occasioned at home by the French Revolution. (See Wolf, “The American Jew ...” pp. 476–82.)

About the time of the Canadian conquest by England (circa 1760) a number of Jewish settlers took up their residence in Montreal, including Lazarus David (b. 1734), Uriel Moresco, Samuel Jacobs, Simon Levy, Fernandez da Fonseca, Abraham Franks, Andrew Hays, Jacob de Maurera, Joseph Bindona, Levy Solomons and Uriah Judah. Lazarus David was a large land owner and was noted as a public spirited citizen. Several of the others held offices in the English army; there were also among them some extensive traders, who did much for the development of the newly acquired colony. After they had been reinforced by other settlers, a congregation, called “Shearit Israel,” was organized in 1768, which for nearly a century remained the only Jewish congregation in Canada. Most of the members were Sephardim, and they stood in close communion with the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of London, who presented them with two scrolls of the Law for the newly founded congregation. At first the congregation met for worship in a hall on St. James Street; but in 1777 the members built the first synagogue, at the junction of Notre Dame and St. James Streets, close to the present court house, on a lot belonging to the David family, whose founder, the above mentioned Lazarus David, died one year previously, and was the first to be interred in the cemetery which the congregation acquired in 1775. His son, David David (1764–1824), was one of the founders of the Bank of Montreal in 1808.

The Rev. Jacob Raphael Cohen was the first regular minister of the Montreal congregation of whom there remains any record. He came there in 1778 and remained until 1782, when he went to Philadelphia, where he became rabbi of Congregation Mickweh Israel. The president or parnas of the Montreal congregation in 1775 was Jacob Salesby (or Salisbury) Franks, a member of the family whose other branch played an important part in Philadelphia in the period of the Revolution. Abraham Franks (1721–97) supported the British in repelling the American invasion, while his son-in-law, Levy Solomons, who later became parnas of the Montreal congregation, was commanded by the invading American general, Montgomery, to act as purveyor to the hospitals for the American troops. But after the death of General Montgomery and the retreat of the American forces from Canada, Solomons, who was never paid for the services he rendered to the invaders, was exposed to the resentment of the British, as one suspected of sympathy for the revolting colonists. He and his family were expelled from Montreal by General Burgoyne, but eventually was permitted to return.

In 1807 Ezekiel Hart, one of the four sons of Commissary Aaron Hart, was elected to represent Three Rivers in the Legislature. He declined to be sworn in according to the usual form, “on the true faith of a Christian,” but took the oath according to the Jewish custom, on the Pentateuch, and with his head covered. At once a storm of opposition arose, due, it is said, not to religious prejudice or intolerance, but to the fact that his political opponents saw in this an opportunity of making a party gain by depriving an antagonist of his seat. After heated discussions and the formality of a trial, he was expelled, and when his constituents re-elected him, the House proposed passing a bill to put his disqualification as a Jew beyond doubt. But the governor, Sir John Craig, dissolved the Chamber before the bill could pass. After a bill, in conformity with a petition by the Jews, was passed in 1829, and sanctioned by royal proclamation in January 1831, authorizing the Jews to keep a register of births, marriages and deaths, they felt encouraged and made another attempt to secure recognition of their civil rights. When a new bill extending the same political rights to Jews as to Christians was introduced in the Legislative Assembly in March, 1831, it met with no opposition. It rapidly passed both the Assembly and the Council, and received the royal assent June 5, 1832. The Jews of Canada were thus emancipated about a quarter century before their co-religionists in the mother country. Mr. Nathan of British Columbia was the first Jewish member of the Canadian Parliament.

When Canada was convulsed in 1837–38 by the rebellion led by Papineau and others, a number of Jews fought on the Loyalist side. Two members of the David family held cavalry commands under Wetherell at the action at St. Charles, and took a distinguished part in the battle of St. Eustache. Aaron Philip Hart, grandson of the commissary, temporarily abandoned his large law practice to raise a company of militia, which rendered valuable service. Jacob Henry Joseph and his brother Jesse were with the troops on the Richelieu and at Chambly. Several Canadian Jews won distinction in various capacities in the first half of the last century. Dr. Aaron Hart David (b. in Montreal, 1812; d. there 1882), a grandson of Lazarus David, was dean of the faculty of medicine of Bishop’s College; Samuel Benjamin was the first Jew elected to the Montreal City Council; and Jesse Joseph (b. in Berthier, Canada, 1817; d. in Montreal, 1904), one of a family of merchant princes, established the first direct line of ships between Antwerp and Montreal, and was appointed Belgian Consul in the latter city. His brother Jacob was connected with the promotion of early Canadian railways and telegraph lines, and another brother, Gershom, was the first Jewish lawyer to be appointed a queen’s counsel in Canada. All these men were officers of the synagogue, at the time when its rabbi, Rev. Abraham de Sola (b. in London, 1825; d. in New York, 1882), was professor of Semitic languages and literature at the McGill University.

The Congregation Shearit Israel passed through a crisis when the old synagogue building had to be demolished, when the land on which it stood reverted to the heirs of David David, after his death in 1824. It was again forced to worship in a hall, until the new synagogue on Chenneville Street was dedicated in 1838. It had no regular minister after the retirement of Rabbi Cohen, until nearly 60 years later, when Rabbi David Piza was appointed in 1840 and was, six years later, succeeded by Rabbi Abraham de Sola, who was in turn succeeded by his son, Dr. Meldola de Sola (b. 1853), who is still one of the ministers of the congregation, his associate being Rev. Isaac de la Penyha.

A second congregation, of Polish and German, or Ashkenazic Jews, was organized in Montreal in 1846, but existed only for a short time. Another effort was made about twelve years later with more success, and the result was the congregation “Shaar ha-Shomaim,” which was established in 1858. Abraham Hofnung, M. A. Ollendorf and Samuel Silverman were among the most active of its charter members, and the Rev. Samuel Hofnung was its earliest minister, who was soon succeeded by Rev. M. Fass. The first building of this congregation was in St. Constant Street, and was dedicated in 1860. In 1886 it removed to its present edifice in McGill College avenue. It has now two rabbis, Rev. Dr. Herman Abramowitz and S. Goldstein. In 1863 was founded the Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society (now called the Baron de Hirsch Institute and Hebrew Benevolent Society), through which Baron de Hirsch and his executors did much for the education and colonization of the Russian immigrants who began to come to Canada in considerable numbers after 1881. The present Jewish population of Montreal is probably about 40,000, and it has ten synagogues, besides the two mentioned above. Of these, the Bet David Congregation (established 1888) is designated as Roumanian; the Bet Israel Congregation, of which Rev. Hirschel Cohen is rabbi, is surnamed “Chevra Shaas”; the B’nai Jacob Synagogue (founded 1885) is mainly Russian. There is also an Austro-Hungarian Congregation, a Galician (“Chevra Kadisha Jeshurun”) and a Reform Temple (Emanuel, founded 1882). There is also the usual complement of charitable, educational, fraternal and social organizations, including Talmud Torah, a branch of the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York, and a Jewish Lads’ Brigade. The Jewish community in Montreal and in Canada generally is in many respects like the communities of the United States of a similar size. But owing to the dissensions between religious denominations, and especially the complicated school question, there is more open partisan hostility to Jews, both on the part of the press and in public life, than in the United States, where the government is strictly secular.

About 1845 a sufficient number of Jews had settled in Toronto, Ont., to begin to think about the organization of a synagogue; but little was accomplished until 1852, when a cemetery was purchased and the Holy Blossom congregation was established. Mark Samuel, Lewis Samuel and Alexander Miller did much to sustain the congregation in its early struggles. It grew in strength and numbers under the presidency of Alfred D. Benjamin during the closing years of the nineteenth century, and it became necessary to remove from its first building in Richmond Street to the present commodious edifice in Bon Street (1902). Toronto, which had 1425 Jews in 1891 and 3,038 in 1901, now has considerably over 10,000, with about ten congregations and several charitable and fraternal organizations.

The discovery of gold in British Columbia in 1857 led to the settlement there of a number of Jews, who built a synagogue in Victoria in 1862. In 1882 a synagogue was erected in Hamilton, and several years later the Jews of Winnipeg (who numbered 645 in 1891) organized two congregations. There are now seven congregations in Winnipeg, with a Jewish population of about 8,000. It also has among the various communal organizations a Hebrew Liberal Club and a Hebrew Conservative Club. North Winnipeg is now represented in the Provincial Parliament of Manitoba by S. Hart Green (b. ab. 1885), the honorary secretary of the Congregation Shaare Shomayim and the president of the local B’nai B’rith Lodge.

There are now Jewish communities in more than twenty-five separate localities in Canada, and the total number of Jews is about 70,000 and growing very fast (it was only 16,060 in 1901). Besides the towns mentioned, there are Jews in Berlin (Ont.), Belleville, Brandford, Calgary (Alberta), Chatham, N. B.; Dawson (Yukon Territory), Glace Bay, C. B.; Halifax, London, Magnetowan, Ont.; Ottawa, Quebec, Regina (Saskatchewan), St. Catherine’s, St. John, Sydney, Sherbrooke, Vancouver, Woodstock and Salt River, N. B.; Yarmouth and Yorkton.

There are in Canada about a dozen Jewish agricultural colonies, most of which were founded or promoted by the Baron de Hirsch Fund. The most important of them are Bender, Hirsch, Ox Bow and Qu’appelle. There are altogether about 700 Jewish farms occupying more than 110,000 acres, and sustaining a farming population of about 3,000.

Montreal has a Yiddish daily newspaper, the “Canadian Eagle,” and an English Jewish weekly, “The Jewish Times,” and there is a Yiddish weekly in Winnipeg called the “Canadian Jew.”

CHAPTER XLI.

MEN OF EMINENCE IN THE ARTS, SCIENCES AND THE PROFESSIONS.

Jews who attained eminence in the world of art and of science—Moses J. Ezekiel—Ephraim Keyser—Isidor Konti—Victor D. Brenner—Butensky and Davidson—Painters: Henry Mosler, Constant Mayer, H. N. Hyneman and George D. M. Peixotto—Max Rosenthal and his son, Albert—Max Weyl, Toby E. Rosenthal, Louis Loeb and Katherine M. Cohen—Some cartoonists and caricaturists—Musicians, composers and musical directors—The Damrosch family, Gabrilowitsch, Hoffman and Ellman—Operatic and theatrical managers and impressarios—Playwrights and actors—Scientists: A. A. Michelson, Morris Bloomfield, Jacob H. Hollander, Charles Waldstein and his family—Charles Gross—Edwin R. A. Seligman, Adolph Cohn, Jaques Loeb, Simon Flexner and Abraham Jacobi—Fabian Franklin—Engineers: Sutro, Gottlieb and Jacobs—Some eminent physicians and lawyers—Merchants and financiers.

While the social and political success of the Jews in a country are usually taken as an indication of its liberalism and the equality of its citizens, regardless of their creed, the contribution of Jews to its intellectual and artistic achievements is the best proof that this equality brings its own reward for the general good. We have seen in the preceding chapters how the Jews of the United States assisted in the material development of the country, how they participated in the battles for its independence and for its preservation, and how they are now doing their share of the country’s useful work as working men, as business men, as professional men, etc., some of them having occupied before, and others occupying now, prominent positions in various walks of life. It remains now to cite several instances of Jews who attained distinction in the noble callings of the artist and the scientist, reflecting glory on their professions, as well as on the country of their birth or adoption.

Moses Jacob Ezekiel (b. in Richmond, Va., 1844), the sculptor, now residing at Rome, is probably the greatest Jewish artist that this country has produced. He was educated at the Virginia Military Institute, from which, after serving as a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, he graduated in 1866. He then studied anatomy at the Medical College of Virginia, and in 1868 removed to Cincinnati, going from there a year later to Berlin, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Art. He was admitted to membership in the Berlin Society of Artists for his colossal bust of Washington, which is now in the Cincinnati Art Museum, and he was the first foreigner to win the Michael Beer prize. During a visit to America in 1874 he executed in marble the group representing “Religious Liberty”—the tribute of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith to the centennial celebration of American independence. The statue was unveiled in 1876 in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia (see the frontispiece). Upon his return to Rome Ezekiel leased a portion of the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian (Emperor of Rome, 284–305) and transformed them into one of the most beautiful studios in Europe. He has been elected a member of various academies and received other distinctions. Among his best known productions are: busts of Eve, Homer, David, Judith and Liszt; the Fountain of Neptune, for the town of Neptune, Italy; the Jefferson Monument, for Louisville, Ky.; Virginia Mourning Her Dead, at Lexington, Va., and a dozen heroic statues (of Phidias, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Rembrandt, etc.), which are placed in the niches of the Corcoran Art Gallery at Washington.

Ephraim Keyser (b. in Baltimore, Md., 1850) is another prominent Jewish-American sculptor. He was educated at the public schools and the City College of Baltimore, and later studied at the Royal Academies of Fine Art in Munich and Berlin. He maintained a studio in Rome from 1880 to 1886, lived in New York from 1887 to 1893, when he settled in his native city as instructor in modelling at the Maryland Institute Art School, and also (since 1902) at the Rhinehart School for Sculpture. Among his best known works are the statue of Major-General Baron De Kalb, erected by the United States Government at Annapolis, Md., the tomb of President Chester A. Arthur at the Rural Cemetery, Albany, N. Y., and portrait busts of well known men.

Isidore Konti (b. in Vienna, 1862; a. 1890) executed the most important of his works after he came to the United States. He did much decorative, monumental and ideal work for the Chicago Exposition in 1893, for the Dewey Arch, the Buffalo Exposition of 1901 and the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, having made for the latter more than twenty different groups. Among his other works are a marble fountain at Yonkers, N. Y., where he resides, and a group representing South America for the building of the International Bureau of American Republics in Washington. Konti received numerous medals for his work here and abroad, and is a member of various societies of artists, numismatists, etc.

Victor David Brenner (b. in Shavly, Russia, 1871; a. 1890), the medallist and sculptor, is now best known to the general public as the designer of the “Lincoln penny.” He received awards from the Exposition and the Salon in Paris, 1900; from the Buffalo Exposition of 1901 and the World’s Fair of St. Louis in 1904. He has works in the Paris Mint, Munich Glyptothek, Vienna Numismatic Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Julius Butensky (b. in Novogrudek, Russia; a. 1905) is another sculptor and medallist of the younger generation who did his best work since he came to this country, of which the best known is the statue at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York representing “The Beating of Swords Into Plowshares”; and a medal presented to Henry Rice (b. in Germany, 1835) on his retiring from the presidency of the United Hebrew Charities of New York. Joseph Davidson, also a native of Russia, who came here as a child and developed his talent in New York, is one of the youngest sculptors whose work has attracted favorable attention.

Henry Mosler (b. in New York, 1841), the genre painter, occupies a prominent position among American artists. He was taken to Cincinnati when a child, and began to study art there at the age of ten. In 1863 he went to Europe, where he continued his study of art, first in Dueseldorf and later in Paris. He came back to Cincinnati in 1866, but returned to Europe in 1874, and spent the following twenty years in Munich and Paris. A picture which he exhibited in the latter city in 1879 was afterwards purchased by the French government for the Luxembourg gallery, being the first work so purchased from an American artist.

Constant Mayer (b. in Besancon, France, 1832), the French painter, who arrived in the United States in 1857 and lived here more than a generation before he returned to his native country, was among the best known artists of his time here. Herman Naphtali Hyneman (b. in Philadelphia, 1849), who studied for eight years in Germany and France, and George D. M. Peixotto (b. in Cleveland, O., 1857), eldest son of Benjamin F. Peixotto, are recognized as masters among American portrait painters, the latter also having done notable work as a mural decorator. Other well-known Jewish artists are: Max Rosenthal (b. in Turek, Russian-Poland, 1833; a. 1849), who was artist for the Government during the Civil War, making illustrations for reports of the United States Military Commission, and who afterwards etched many historical portraits and painted a considerable number of pictures; Albert Rosenthal (b. in Philadelphia, 1863), widely known as etcher and painter of portraits of famous Americans, his son and pupil; Max Weyl (b. in Germany, 1837; a. 1855), best known as a landscape painter, and Toby Edward Rosenthal (b. in New Haven, Conn., 1848), who won medals in Europe and America, a genre and portrait painter, who resides in Munich, Bavaria; Louis Loeb (b. in Cleveland, O., 1866; d. in New York, 1909), a painter and illustrator; Miss Katherine M. Cohen (b. in Philadelphia, 1859), a well-known sculptor and painter.

Among the caricaturists or cartoonists of the day deserve to be mentioned Frederick Burr Opper (b. in Madison, O., 1857); Henry (Hy) Mayer (b. in Worms, Germany, 1868; a. 1886) and Reuben Lucius Goldberg (b. in San Francisco, 1883).

The number of Jews who achieved distinction as musicians, composers of music, musical directors, etc., is very large, and only a few of them can be mentioned here. Dr. Leopold Damrosch (b. in Prussia, 1832; d. in New York, 1885) came to New York in 1871 as conductor of the Arion Society, and soon became very successful, both as a violinist and as conductor of his own compositions. He was successively director of the Philharmonic Society, of the Symphony Society and of the Metropolitan Opera House of New York. His older son, Frank H. (b. in Breslau, Germany, 1859), who was director of music of the New York public schools for eight years, is (since 1905) at the head of the Institute of Musical Art in that city, which was founded by a bequest made for that purpose by the late Solomon Loeb. A second son, Walter Johannes Damrosch (b. in Breslau), the composer and director, married Margaret J. Blaine, the daughter of the great American statesman, James G. Blaine, who was a candidate for the presidency in 1884. A daughter of Dr. Damrosch is married to David Mannes, the director of the New York Music School Settlement.

Among the eminent Jewish musicians who frequently visit the United States are the pianist, Joseph Gabrilowitsch, a native of Russia, who married the only surviving daughter of the great American humorist, Samuel L. Clemens (1835–1910, better known as “Mark Twain”), Joseph Hoffman, and Mischa Ellman, the violinist, likewise a native of Russia.

In the operatic and theatrical world Jews are predominant as managers and impressarios. The best known among them are David Belasco (b. in San Francisco, Cal., 1859), who is also a dramatic author; Abraham Lincoln Erlanger (b. in Buffalo, N. Y., 1860), whose brother, Mitchell Louis, was elected a justice of the Supreme Court of New York County in 1906; Daniel Frohman (b. in Sandusky, O., 1853), and his brother, Charles (b. there 1860).

Charles Klein (b. in London, Eng., 1867) is a well-known playwright, two of whose most successful plays, “The Auctioneer” and “The Music Master,” were especially written for David Warfield (b. in San Francisco, 1866), also a Jew, who is in the front rank of the theatrical profession in this country. These plays were produced under the management of David Belasco, and it presents only one of many such instances on the American stage in which the author, the actor or actress playing the leading part and the manager, or impressario, are all Jews. Oscar Hammerstein (b. in Berlin, 1847; a. 1863) is an inventor, playwright, builder and manager of theatres and opera houses, who has rendered valuable service in the development of operatic productions in the United States. Sydney Rosenfeld (b. in Richmond, Va., 1855) is the author of dramas, operettas and musical plays which have found much favor with the public.

In the world of science many Jews have attained eminence as original investigators and as university professors. Professor Albert Abraham Michelson (b. in Strelno, Germany, 1852) was brought as a child to San Francisco, and was from there appointed to the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., graduating in 1873. He was an instructor in physics and chemistry at the Naval Academy in 1875–9, and was in the office of the Nautical Almanac in Washington until 1880, when he resigned from the United States Navy. After spending several years studying in Germany and France he became professor of physics at the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, O. (1883–9). For the following three years he occupied a similar position at Clark University, in Worcester, Mass. Since 1892 he has been professor and head of the department of physics in the University of Chicago. He is a member of various learned societies here and abroad, including a corresponding membership in the Academy des Sciences of the Institute de France. He won numerous prizes and medals for his great scientific achievements, some of which, like the Copley Medal, awarded by the Royal Society of London, and the Nobel Prize for physics (both in 1907), indicate that he is recognized as one of the greatest scientists of the age. He is best known as the discoverer of a new method for determining the velocity of light. His younger brother, Charles Michelson (b. in Virginia City, Nev., 1869), editor of the “Chicago American,” and their sister, Miss Miriam (b. in Calaveras, Cal., 1870), is a dramatic critic and has also written numerous short stories and several novels.

Maurice Bloomfield (b. in Bielitz, Austria, 1855), who was brought here at the age of twelve, is a prominent Sanskrit scholar and is recognized as the chief living authority on the Atharva Veda. He has written several important works on his special subjects, and has been professor of Sanskrit and Comparative philology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., since 1881. Jacob H. Hollander (b. in Baltimore, 1871), who was appointed by President McKinley special commissioner to Porto Rico and later treasurer of that island colony, is professor of political economy at the same university. Professor Hollander was appointed by President Roosevelt United States special agent on taxation in Indian Territory (1904), and was in the following year sent as special commissioner to the Republic of San Domingo to investigate its public debt, and was the confidential agent of the Department of State with respect to Dominican affairs. Since 1908 he has been the financial adviser of the Dominican Republic. Professor Hollander takes an active interest in Jewish affairs, and has contributed valuable papers on Jewish history to the publications of the American-Jewish Historical Society, of which he is an officer.

Professor Charles Waldstein (b. in New York, 1856), the great authority on Greek art and archeology of Cambridge University, England, is another American-Jewish scholar of the highest type, who is interested in Jewish matters. Among many other books, he wrote The Jewish Question and the Mission of the Jews (1899). Louis Waldstein, the pathologist and author (b. in New York, 1853), and Martin Waldstein (b. 1854), the chemist, are his older brothers. Lewis Einstein (b. in New York, 1877), formerly secretary of the American Embassy in Constantinople, and later secretary of legation in Peking, who has recently been appointed by President Taft as United States Minister to the Republic of Costa Rico, is a brother-in-law of Professor Waldstein.

Charles Gross (b. in Troy, N. Y., 1857; d. 1909), professor of history and political science at Harvard University, who was at the time of his death considered the chief authority in the world on English mediæval and economic history, was one of the vice-presidents of the American-Jewish Historical Society, and contributed to our historical literature a profound study on The Exchequer of the Jews in the Mediaeval Judiciary of England, and an English translation of Dr. Kayserling’s notable work on the participation of the Jews in the discovery of the New World.

Professor Edwin R. A. Seligman (b. in New York, 1862), a member of the well known family of financiers and philanthropists, who began to lecture on economics in Columbia University, New York, in 1885, and has been professor of political economy there since 1891, is a recognized authority on the question of taxation and the author of standard works on the subject. Adolphe Cohn (b. in Paris, France, 1851; a. 1875), a son of the French-Jewish philanthropist, Albert Cohn (1814–77), has been professor of romance, languages and literatures at Columbia since 1891. Jaques Loeb (b. in Germany, 1859), the eminent biologist, who taught at American universities for about twenty years, is now at the head of the department of experimental biology in the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York. The head of that institute is likewise a Jew, Dr. Simon Flexner (b. in Louisville, Ky., 1863), formerly professor of pathology and anatomy at Johns Hopkins University (1891–99) and at the University of Pennsylvania (1899–1904). His serum for the cure of cerebro-spinal meningitis is one of the great medical achievements of the age.

Dr. Abraham Jacobi (b. in Westphalia, 1830; a. 1853), who came to New York after his participation in the revolutionary movement in Germany in 1848, was for more than fifty years professor of the diseases of children at the University of New York (Columbia, 1870–1902). He was highly honored on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of his birth in 1910, and was in the following year elected president of the American Medical Association.

Fabian Franklin (b. in Eger, Hungary, 1853), a nephew of Michael Heilprin, came here as a child and was educated in Washington. He was a civil engineer and surveyor from 1869 to 1877, and a professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, 1879–95. For the following thirteen years he was editor of the “Baltimore News,” and is now (since Oct., 1909) associate editor of the “New York Evening Post.”

Adolph Heinrich Joseph Sutro (b. at Aix-la-Chapelle, Rhenish Prussia, 1830; a. 1850; d. in San Francisco, 1898) was educated at the polytechnic schools of his native country, and when he came to America he was soon attracted by the discovery of gold in California, and from there went to Nevada. He projected and later (1869–79) built the Sutro tunnel under the Comstock lode, and when it was finished he settled in San Francisco, of which city he was elected Mayor in 1894. It was said that he owned about one-tenth of the area of San Francisco, including Sutro Heights, which he turned into a beautiful public park and which became the property of the municipality after his death. His library, which consisted of over 200,000 volumes, contained over 100 rare Hebrew manuscripts.

Abraham Gottlieb (b. in Bohemia, 1837; a. 1866; d. in Chicago, 1894) graduated from the University of Prague, and was engaged as an engineer in the construction of an Austrian railroad when he went to America and settled in Chicago. When he was elected president of the Keystone Bridge Company, he removed to Pittsburg (1877). In that capacity he constructed many bridges in various parts of the country, including the Madison Avenue bridge in New York City. He returned to Chicago in 1884 and was for a time connected (as consulting engineer and as chief engineer of the construction department) with the World’s Columbian Exposition. He also took an active interest in Jewish affairs, and was for a time president of the Rodeph Shalom congregation in Pittsburg, and later of Zion congregation, Chicago.

Charles M. Jacobs (b. in Hull, England, 1850), who designed the tunnels which connect the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Long Island Railroad with the center of New York, is an English Jew, who is considered to be the greatest authority on tunnel building, both here and abroad.

Jews are well represented in the front ranks of the medical and the legal professions. Among the eminent physicians, besides those mentioned formerly, are men like Dr. Isaac Adler (b. in Alzey, Germany, 1849; a. 1857), Dr. Max Einhorn (b. in Grodno, Russia, 1862; a. 1884), both of New York; Dr. Jacob da Silva Solis-Cohen (b. in New York, 1838) and his brother, Solomon (b. in Philadelphia, 1857), who reside in Philadelphia, and Dr. Nathan Jacobson (b. in Syracuse, N. Y. 1857) of the Syracuse University, Samuel Untermyer (b. in Lynchburg, Va., 1858) of New York, Louis D. Brandeis (b. in Louisville, Ky., 1856) of Boston, Levy Mayer (b. in Richmond, Va., 1858) of Chicago, and Judge Max C. Sloss (b. in New York, 1869, recently re-elected Justice of the Supreme Court of California) of San Francisco, are but a few of the Jewish lawyers who have attained eminence in their profession.

While the number of Jews who are prominent in commerce, finance and industry is considerable, and some families, like the Guggenheims, Lewisohns, Schiffs or Strauses of New York, and men like Julius Rosenwald and Edward Morris (b. 1866) of Chicago, stand high in the world of large affairs, none of them is classed among the small number of immensely wealthy Americans. It is rather in the diffusion of wealth, in the large number and large proportion of well-to-do and affluent, than in the pre-eminence of the Jew as the greatest of capitalists, that the condition of the Jews in America is seen to the best advantage.

CHAPTER XLII.

LITERATURE: HEBREW AND ENGLISH. PERIODICALS.

Curiosities of early American Jewish literature which belong to the domain of bibliography—Rabbinical works: Responses, commentaries and Homiletics—Hebrew works of a modern character—Ehrlich’s Mikra Ki-Peshuto and Eisenstein’s Ozar Israel—Neo-Hebrew Poets and literati—Jewish writers in the vernacular—“Ghetto Stories”—Writers on non-Jewish subjects—Scientific works—Writers on Jewish subjects and contributors to the “Jewish Encyclopedia”—A. S. Freidus—Non-Jewish writers about Jews—Daly—Frederic, Davitt and Hapgood—Journalists, editors and publishers—The Ochs brothers; the Rosewaters—Pulitzer and de Young of Jewish descent—The Jewish denominational press in English—The “Sanatorium.”

Jewish literature in the New World, as in almost all countries of the Old World, begins with Hebrew works of a religious nature, and branches out on one side into the special dialect which is spoken by the Jews among themselves, and on the other—into the vernacular. The strictly religious work is not the only one written in Hebrew for any length of time, for there is always a movement towards secular knowledge, which usually begins with a tendency to study Hebrew for its scientific value rather than for its sacredness. In modern times this process of development can be traced clearly in Germany, Holland, Poland and Russia, as well as in America, although here we are yet at the very beginning of our literary activity, and what has been accomplished until the present time may in the future be of more interest to the bibliographer than to the historian of literature. All that was written here by Jews for Jews in Hebrew, Judeo-Spanish and English until about the middle of the nineteenth century, including the works and periodicals that have been mentioned in the preceding chapters, while the authors or editors were under consideration, mostly belongs to the domain of curiosities.62 It was only in the second half of the last century, when the number of Orthodox Jews and of those able to read modern Hebrew was fast increasing, that a serious attempt to write books for them was made in this country.

The strictly rabbinical works, like “responses” on disputed points of religious law or practice, commentaries on parts of the Talmud, and homiletic works, represent the continuation of the most ancient form of Jewish literature, and deserve to be treated first. According to Mr. Eisenstein, the honor of being the author of the first book of American “responsa” belongs to Rabbi Joseph Moses Aronson (d. in New York, 1874), author of Matai Moshe, a work which, like numerous others by orthodox rabbis of this country, was printed in Jerusalem. Other rabbinical works, of which there were written in this country a larger number than is generally supposed, include Heker Halakah (New York, 1886), by Rabbi Aaron Spivak, formerly of Omsk, Russia; Sefer Har-El on tractate Bikkurim of the Jerusalem Talmud by Rabbi Abraham Eliezer Alperstein (Chicago, 1886); Shoel Ke-Inyan (Jerusalem, 1895), by Rabbi Shalom Elhanan Joffe (b. in Russia, 1845); ha-poteah, we-hahotem, by Rabbi Benjamin Gitelson of Cleveland (New York, 1898); Torat Meir on Rashi’s Talmudical commentary, by Meir Freiman (New York, 1904); Yegiot Mordecai on the Talmud by Mordecai Garfil (Piotrkow, 1907); Bet Abraham, by Rabbi Abraham Eber Hirshowitz (Jerusalem, 1908). The venerable Rabbi A.  J. G. Lesser is the author of Bet ha-Midrash (Chicago, 1897), which contains homiletics and halaka, and Rabbi Moses Simon Sivitz of Pittsburg (b. 1855) is the author of four books on various rabbinical subjects, all printed in Jerusalem. The number of works on “derush” or homiletics is still larger, and includes ha-Emet ha-Ibriah (Chicago, 1877) and Or Haye Lebabot (New York, 1885), by Jehiel Judah Levinsohn (d. in New York, 1895); Ateret Zebi, by Rabbi Zebi Lass (New York, 1902); Nehmad le-Mare, by Zeeb Dob Wittenstein (Cleveland, 1903); Shebil ha-Zohab, by Rabbi Baruch Kohen (New York, 1903); Maaseh Hosheb, by Rabbi H. S. Brodsky of Newark (New York, 1907). Teome Zebiah (Chicago, 1891), by Baruch Ettelson (1815–91), on some difficult passages in Agadah, and Shaare Deah (New York, 1899), by Rabbi Shabbetai Sofer, belong to the same class, though of a somewhat different nature.

The first substantial Hebrew book printed in America, Abne Joshua (New York, 1860), by Joshua Falk ben Mordecai ha-Kohen, though nominally a rabbinical book, actually belongs to the more secular class of literature, which borders on Haskalah. The same can also be said of Holzman’s Emek Rephaim (New York, 1865), and perhaps also of Tub Taam in defense of the Jewish method of slaughtering cattle for Kosher food, by Aaron Zebi Friedman of Stavisk (1822–66), which is said to have been translated into English, German and French.63 Ha-Mahnaim (New York, 1888), by Mayer Rabinowitz, and Wolf Schur’s Nezah Israel come nearer to the spirit of modernity or “enlightenment,” while works like ha-Dat we-ha-Torah (New York, 1887) and Meziat ha-Shem we-ha-Olam (ibid, 1893), by Shalom Joseph Silberstein (b. in Kovno, 1846; a. 1881), go far in the direction of free thinking. Valuable contributions to the Science of Judaism were made by Nehemiah Samuel Libowitz (b. in Kalna, 1862; a. 1881), author of a biography of Leon Modena (New York, 1901) and other works; by Benzion Eisenstadt, author of Hakme Israel be-America (ibid, 1903); by Arnold B. Ehrlich (b. in Wlodowka, Russia, 1848), author of a remarkable commentary on the Bible which he calls Mikra Ki-Peshuto (Berlin); by Abraham H. Rosenberg (b. in Pinsk, 1838; a. 1891), of whose Ozar he-Shemot, a Cyclopedia of Biblical literature, four volumes were issued in New York; and by Judah David Eisenstein, a prolific writer in Hebrew and English, who is now editing the Ozar Israel, a Hebrew Encyclopedia, of which seven volumes have appeared, and to which the editor is himself the principal contributor of articles. Rabbi Mordecai Zeeb (Max) Raisin (b. 1879) is the author of a short “History of the Jews in America” in Hebrew, which appeared in Warsaw, Poland, in 1902.

Of literature in the restricted sense, or fiction, hardly anything worth mentioning was written in Hebrew in America. But the study and writing of neo-Hebrew cannot be thought of without the production of poetry, and some collection of Hebrew songs possessing considerable merit were published in this country, mostly by authors who acquired their reputation abroad before arriving in this country. The poetical works of Naphtali Hirz Imber, Menahem Mendel Dolitzki and Isaac Rabinowitz (“Ish Kovno,” d. in New York, 1900, aged 54) belong to that class, and the same can be said of the quasi-scientific works of Joseph Loeb Sossnitz (1837–1910) and Ephraim Deinard (b. 1846), who has recently compiled a list containing about six hundred names of works in Hebrew and Yiddish which appeared in the United States. There were also some earlier writers of Hebrew poetry in America, notably Moses Aaron Schreiber, who composed the Centennial poem Minhat Yehudah in 1876, and the hazzan Hayyim Weinshel (1834–1900), author of Nitei Naamonim (New York, 1891). Gerson Rosenzweig, the epigramatist and author of the excellent Talmudical parody, Maseket America, who has also translated the American national songs into Hebrew, came here a young man, and his talent is more distinctively American.

The Hebrew periodical literature, which begins with Hirsch Bernstein’s ha-Zofah be-Erez ha-Hadashah (1870–76), which was mentioned in a former chapter, was never securely established in this country up to the present time. Most of the Hebrew Journals or magazines, like Deinard’s weekly ha-Leomi and Rosenzweig’s monthly Kadimah, existed for less than a year. The Hekal ha-Ibriyah, edited by N. B. Ettelson and S. L. Marcus in Chicago, appeared from 1877 to 1879 as a supplement to their Judeo-German Israelitische Presse. Michael Levi Rodkinson (Frumkin, d. in New York, 1904, aged 59), who later prepared a translation of parts of the Babylonian Talmud into English, edited his weekly ha-Kol in New York for about two years (1889–90). Wolf Schur’s he-Pisgah, which was later called ha-Tehiyah, appeared irregularly in New York, later in Baltimore, and still later in Chicago, during the last decade of the nineteenth century. The monthly Ner ha-Maarabi, edited by Abraham H. Rosenberg and later by Samuel Schwarzberg, existed less than three years (1895–97), and another monthly, ha-Modia la-Hadashim, edited by Herman Rosenthal and Abraham H. Rosenberg (1900–1), had a still shorter life. The weekly ha-Ibri, which was founded by K. H. Sarasohn and edited by Gerson Rosenzweig, appeared regularly from 1892 to 1898. Moses Goldman (b. 1863; a. 1890) began the publication of his ha-Leom as a monthly in 1901; it later appeared for several years as a weekly and afterwards for a short time as a daily. Since its suspension America had no other Hebrew periodical until the neo-Hebrew litterateur, Reuben Brainin, began to publish in New York (1911) his weekly ha-Deror, of which fifteen numbers appeared. Rosenzweig’s monthly ha-Deborah and Rabbi T. Isaacson’s ha-Rabbani, also a monthly, are now the Hebrew periodicals appearing in the United States.

The contribution of Jews to American literature consists mostly of descriptions of Jewish life, and of what has lately became known as “ghetto stories.” Emma Lazarus, whose work was described in a preceding chapter, did not confine herself to Jewish themes, and was followed in this respect by other Jewish writers of her sex, like Mary Moss, the critic; Martha Morton, the playwright, and Emily Gerson Goldsmith, the author of Juvenile stories. Annie Nathan Meyer, the founder of Barnard College (Columbia University, New York), also belongs to this class of writers; while Martha Wolfenstein (1869–1906) of Cleveland, O., belongs to the front rank of the other class of writers who attempted to depict Jewish life in this country or abroad. To the latter class belong Herman Bernstein (b. 1876; a. 1893), who writes on Russian as well as on Jewish subjects; Rudolph Block (b. in New York, 1870), the journalist, who writes of Jewish life under the pen-name “Bruno Lessing”; Ezra S. Brudno (b. 1877); Abraham Cahan, the labor leader and Yiddish journalist; Isaac K. Friedman (b. in Chicago, 1870), and James Oppenheim (b. in St. Paul, Minn., 1882), who has also written on other than Jewish subjects. To the same class may be added Rabbi Henry Iliowizi (b. in Russia, 1850; d. in London, Eng., 1911), who has lived in the United States more than twenty years and has written poetical and prose works, mostly on Jewish and Oriental subjects. Bret Harte, the poet and novelist, was of Jewish descent, but he cannot be considered a Jewish author.

Martha Wolfenstein.

Photo by Elton, Cleveland, O.

The works written on scientific subjects by Jews who have attained eminence in various branches of knowledge, some of whom were mentioned in the preceding chapter, are of a comparatively high standard of value. To these may be added the works of the art critic, Bernhard Berenson (b. in Wilna, Russia, 1865), who now resides in Italy; of the anthropologist, Franz Boas (b. in Germany, 1858), of Columbia University, and of the statistician, Isaac A. Hourwich (b. in Wilna, 1860; a. 1891), who is also an occasional contributor to the Jewish press. Morris Hillquit (b. in Riga, Russia, 1869; a. 1886), the Socialist leader and historian of Socialism in the United States, has likewise often written for various radical periodicals. Arnold W. Brunner (b. in New York, 1857), the architect, has written works on “Cottages” and on “Interior Decorations.”

A considerable number of works on a variety of Jewish subjects were written by American-Jewish scholars. David Werner Amram (b. in Philadelphia, 1866) wrote The Jewish Law of Divorce (1896); Maurice Fishberg (b. in Russia, 1872; a. 1890) is the author of The Jews: a study of Race and Environment (1911); Julius H. Greenstone (b. in Russia, 1873) wrote on The Messiah Idea in Jewish History (1906); while Max J. Kohler, Geo. A. Kohut, Henry S. Morais and numerous others wrote on American-Jewish history in separate works, in the “Publications” and in the Jewish Encyclopedia. Isaac Markens (b. in New York, 1846) is the author of The Hebrews in America (1888), whose valuable material, like that contained in the works of the others mentioned here and in the notes, was utilized in the preparation of the present work. Abraham Solomon Freidus (b. in Riga, Russia, 1867; a. 1889), the eminent Jewish bibliographer at the head of the Jewish department in the New York Public Library, which contains one of the most valuable collections of Hebraica and Judaica in the world (donated by Mr. Jacob H. Schiff), is the author of bibliographical lists of Jewish subjects and of “A Scheme of Classification for Jewish Literature,” which is of great value to Jewish bibliophiles and librarians. Alois Kaiser (1840–1908) and William Sparger are authors of A Collection of the Principal Melodies of the Synagogue (Chicago, 1893), and Platon G. Brounoff (b. in Russia, 1863), the composer, has published, among other works, a volume of Jewish folk-songs.

The most notable of the books on Jewish subjects written by Gentiles in the United States is The Settlement of the Jews in North America, by Charles P. Daly (1816–99), which was one of the sources of the present work. Dr. Madison C. Peters has written several popular and sympathetic works about the Jews; while Harold Frederic’s The New Exodus (New York, 1892) gives a vivid description of the conditions in Russia at the time of the renewed expulsions from Moscow and other places in 1891. Hutchins Hapgood, author of The Spirit of the Ghetto, and Myra Kelly (Mrs. Allan Macnaughton; d. 1910) are among those who attempted to describe the Jewish immigrant in his new surroundings in the thickly settled quarters in the first period after his arrival, when he was in many respects unintelligible to himself, as well as to others.

As journalists, editors and publishers of newspapers, a number of Jews have occupied, and still occupy, prominent positions. Mordecai Manuel Noah was one of the influential newspaper men of New York in his time (see above p. 162). Edwin de Leon, who has also been mentioned in a former chapter, was the editor of the Southern Press of Washington, which was at that time considered the representative organ of the southern people at the national capital. Barnet Phillips (b. in Philadelphia, 1828; d. 1905) was for more than thirty years connected with the New York Times, which is now published by Adolph S. Ochs (b. in Cincinnati, 1858), who married a daughter of Rabbi Isaac M. Wise. A younger brother, George Washington Ochs (b. in Cincinnati, 1861), is now at the head of the Public Ledger of Philadelphia, and still another brother, Milton Barlow Ochs (b. in Cincinnati, 1864) was managing editor of the Chattanooga Times and is now the publisher of the Nashville American. Morris Phillips (1834–1904) was the chief editor and proprietor of The New York Home Journal for a generation. Edward Rosewater (b. in Bohemia, 1841; a. 1854; died in Omaha, Neb., 1906) was for many years the editor of the Omaha Bee, which became under him one of the great newspapers of the Middle West, and is now edited by his son, Victor Rosewater (b. in Omaha, 1871), who was a member of the Republican National Committee for the State of Nebraska. Philip Rapoport (b. in Germany, 1845) was for nearly twenty years editor of the Indianapolis Tribune. Samuel Strauss, of Des Moines, Ia., owned the Register and Leader there, and was later publisher of the New York Globe. Joseph Pulitzer (b. in Hungary, 1847; a. 1864; d. 1911) of the New York World was of Jewish descent, and so is Michael Harry de Young (b. in St. Louis, 1848), who owns and edits the San Francisco Chronicle. Solomon Solis Carvalho (b. in Baltimore, 1856), the son of the artist, Solomon N. Carvalho, is the general manager of W. R. Hearst’s newspapers. A large number of Jews hold various positions on the staffs of newspapers and magazines all over the country, from editors, literary, dramatic and musical critics down to reporters. Many are also engaged in the business parts of the work, as publishers, advertising managers, etc.

Mordecai Manuel Noah.

The most important of the older Jewish periodicals in the vernacular were mentioned in former chapters. The Menorah Monthly, which was for many years edited by Moritz Ellinger (b. in Bavaria, 1830; d. in New York, 1907), was the best Jewish magazine in America, as well as the one which existed for the longest time. The New Era Illustrated Magazine, which was published for several years by Isidor Lewi (b. in Albany, N. Y., 1850), of the editorial staff of the New York Tribune, was an other valuable periodical. The Zionist Maccabean is now the only Jewish monthly magazine published in America. There is one semi-monthly, the B’nai B’rith Messenger, of Los Angeles, Cal. (established 1897), and over twenty weeklies, most of which are of only local interest. The more important are: The American Hebrew of New York, established 1879, by Philip Cowen (b. in New York, 1853); the American Israelite and its Chicago edition, founded by Isaac M. Wise in 1854; The Emanuel of San Francisco, Cal., which was founded in 1895 by Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger (b. in Amsterdam Holland, 1852; d. 1908); The Hebrew Standard of New York, established 1883 by Jacob P. Solomon (b. in Manchester, Eng., 1838; d. in New York, 1909); The Jewish Comment of Baltimore, established 1895, of which Louis H. Levin (b. in Baltimore, 1866) is the editor; The Jewish Exponent of Philadelphia, established 1886; The Jewish Voice of St. Louis, established, in 1884, and still edited by Rabbi Moritz Spitz (b. in Hungary, 1848); the Reform Advocate of Chicago, established, in 1891, and still edited by Dr. Emil G. Hirsch. One bi-monthly which deserves to be mentioned is the Sanatorium, edited since 1907 by Dr. C. D. Spivak (b. in Kremenchug, Russia, 1861) and published as the organ of the Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society of Denver, Colorado.

CHAPTER XLIV.

PRESENT CONDITIONS. THE NUMBER AND THE DISPERSION OF JEWS IN AMERICA. CONCLUSION.

Dispersion of the Jews over the country and its colonial possessions—The number of Jews in the United States about three millions—The number of communities in various States—The number of Jews in the large cities—The number of the congregations is far in excess of the recorded figures—The process of disintegration and the counteracting forces—The building of synagogues—Charity work is not overshadowing other communal activities as in the former period, and more attention is paid to affairs of Judaism—The conciliatory spirit and the tendency to federate—Self-criticism and dissatisfaction which are an incentive to improvement—Our great opportunity here—Our hope in the higher civilization in which the injustices of the older order of things may never reappear.

Jews are living at present (1911) in every State and Territory of the United States, and there are small communities in Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands. There are some forms of Jewish organizations, synagogues, lodges or cemetery associations in more than 750 separate localities, from places where there is only a “minyan” on the High Holidays at the beginning of the Jewish year, to the immense Jewish community of New York City, which is estimated to consist of nearly 1,000,000 souls. Wherever actual figures as to the number of Jewish inhabitants in smaller places and the number of synagogues in larger cities are obtained, they are usually far in excess of the published figures and estimates, and there seems to be justification for placing the number of Jews in the country at not far below 3,000,000, if not actually at that number. While the largest communities, as well as the largest number of communities, remain in the East and the Middle West, the dispersion is much more extensive than is generally supposed.

There are, for instance, nearly forty cities and towns in Texas which have Jewish communities; other Southern States, like Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia, have each about, or nearly, half that number, and Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee about ten each. Each of the new States of Arizona and New Mexico have three or four Jewish communities, Oklahoma has five; Florida, in the extreme South, and Maine, the furthest North, each have about a half dozen; California has more than both of them together; Washington has three, and Oregon one. Of the other far Western States Utah has two communities, Montana two, Nevada one, Idaho one, Wyoming one and Colorado nine.

Coming to the nearer Western States and toward the border States, we find four communities in Nebraska, eight in Kansas, twelve in Missouri, thirteen in Iowa, eight in Kentucky and five in West Virginia. North Dakota has five, Minnesota eight, while Wisconsin, with nineteen, and Michigan, with twenty-four, show the result of proximity to the great Central States where Jews have been settled in considerable numbers for the last two generations. Among those States Illinois has the largest number of Jews, owing to the great community of Chicago, while the number of cities containing Jewish communities—twenty-three—is somewhat smaller than that of Indiana, which has twenty-six, and of Ohio, with its twenty-seven. We notice the same in the two greatest States in the East, where, if we consider Greater New York City as one community, the number of places containing Jewish organizations is slightly less than in Pennsylvania, which has sixty-two such places. New Jersey has more than forty, and of the New England States Massachusetts leads with thirty-five, and Connecticut is second, having twenty. Rhode Island has seven; Vermont and New Hampshire four each. The list is completed with one community in the District of Columbia, five in Maryland and one in Delaware.64

Philadelphia and Chicago are, besides New York, the only two cities which contain about 100,000 or more Jews each. Boston has about three-fourths of that number, Baltimore, Cleveland and St. Louis about 50,000 each, and after them come in the order named: Newark, San Francisco, Pittsburg and Cincinnati (with about 30,000 each); Detroit, Buffalo, Providence and Jersey City, each having about half of that number, while Rochester, Syracuse, New Haven, Milwaukee, Louisville, New Orleans and Kansas City belong to the class which have 10,000 or more. The twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul would belong to that class if they were considered as one, which they really are. Washington, the national capital, belong to the class of cities having between 5 and 10,000 Jews, which includes Albany, N. Y.; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas, Tex.; Denver, Colo.; Pall River, Mass.; Hartford, Conn.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Los Angeles, Cal.; Memphis, Tenn.; Omaha, Neb.; Paterson, N. J; Portland, Ore.; Scranton, Pa.; Seattle, Wash., and Trenton, N. J. There are some old and important settlements containing less than 5,000, but the number which would have to be included in a class of communities of that size is too large to be mentioned.

Congregations are continually being organized and synagogues built in localities where none existed before, thus showing a gradual dispersion of Jews to all parts of the country, while new houses of worship in the large cities usually owe their erection to consolidation or to the settlement in new neighborhoods. But only the buildings which are entirely devoted to religious services are apt to be noticed by those making records or gathering statistical material, while the small congregation which worships in a private dwelling is usually overlooked. The statistics about Jewish congregations in the United States are for this reason more defective than the figures about any other phase of Jewish activity, and the total given by the above mentioned Year Book (for 5669, p. 65), i. e., 1745, for the entire country, should be doubled to be nearer the truth, even if the lowest estimate of the number of Jews in the country is accepted as the most probable one.

If it must be admitted that a process of disintegration is going on, in which the pessimist sees something worse than a transformation or re-adjustment to new conditions in a new world, it is, on the other hand, obvious that a strong effort is made to counteract the forces of dissolution. The various elements of the community, representing many countries and different strata of immigration, are coming together in a conciliatory spirit, as if instinctively impelled to co-operate. The widespread activity in the building of synagogues, in which many whose attitude was formerly indifferent, and even hostile, now participate, is only one phase of the attempt to preserve Judaism in this country. Much is done for charity and for Jewish education, the latter receiving more attention than ever before. The public school systems of most of the larger cities, following New York’s example, have taken over the largest part of the work which was done before in Jewish institutions to Americanize the immigrant. Not only the proportion, but the actual number, of the dependents on charity is decreasing, and while the needs of Jewish charitable institutions are still great, more attention can now be paid to specifically Jewish matters than at the time when the problem of the material wants of the immigrants was overshadowing every other communal activity.

The attempts to organize on a more general scale, and to consolidate or federate existing organizations, which are frequently made and are more often successful than in the preceding periods, are the clearest manifestation of the spirit of the times in American Jewry. In most of the large cities outside of New York the important local Jewish charities are now federated, and the plan of federation is continually gaining in favor. The federations, of which there are now more than a dozen, and many other benevolent institutions of large and of smaller communities, are represented in the National Conference of Jewish Charities of the United States (organized 1899).

There is also noticeable in our communal life, as in American public life in general, that tendency to self-criticism which often degenerates into slander—that eternal dissatisfaction with things accomplished and with present conditions, which implies a sincere desire to achieve still better results. While this discontent and the poor opinion which many of us have of the spiritual condition of the Jews in America are of immense value as incentives to improvement, it dims the eye of the foreign observer, especially if he comes from a country where complacency and self-praise are the rule. It may still be too early to summarize the communal activities of the Jews in America, or to attempt to indicate how far we have approached the solution of the most pressing problems. But signs of throbbing life are visible everywhere, and the interest of the individual Jew in Jewish affairs is increasing. There is, therefore, every reason to believe and to hope that the opportunity which is afforded here to set the Jewish house in order—the best, and perhaps the first, in the diaspora—will be utilized to its full extent by the future generations of native American Jews.

We are happy to have no Jewish problem here, in the sense in which the term is understood in the backward countries of the Old World. We need not waste a part of our best energies in repelling attacks from an anti-Semitic press or a Judophobe party, and our usefulness to ourselves as well as to our neighbors is thereby enhanced. Members of strange and hostile races and nationalities get along together in this country much better than anywhere else in the past or the present time, and their native children emerge from the “melting pot” united by a patriotism and a desire for improved conditions and improved relations which characterizes the American. The secularity of the Government and the diversity of religious beliefs preclude the spread of the denominational bigotry which is the real cause of the persecution of the Jews in other countries; while the liberty and equality which are vouchsafed to every citizen must themselves be lost before the unfavorable conditions which prevail elsewhere can confront us here. The Jew can become an American and at the same time preserve his religious distinctiveness, which he can lose only by his own negligence or disloyalty. Let us hope that those who now earnestly work to strengthen and build up Judaism in America will be successful, and that the fate or Divine Providence which has preserved us for thousands of years brought us here to participate under new circumstances in the advancement to a higher civilization in which the injustices of the older one may never reappear.