New Perspectives in American Jewish History

A Documentary Tribute to Jonathan D. Sarna

Mark A. Raider, Gary Phillip Zola, Mark A. Raider, Gary Phillip Zola

• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781684580538, 9781684580521
• eBook ISBN: 9781684580545
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Theory & Criticism
• Index: History

Widely regarded as today's foremost American Jewish historian, Jonathan D. Sarna had a huge impact on the academy. Sarna's influence is perhaps nowhere more apparent than among his former doctoral students—a veritable "Sarna diaspora" of over three dozen active scholars around the world. Both a tribute to Sarna and an important collection in its own right, New Perspectives in American Jewish History was compiled by Sarna's former students and presents previously unpublished, neglected, or rarely seen historical documents and images that illuminate the breadth, diversity, and dynamism of the American Jewish experience. Beginning with the earliest known Jewish divorce in circum-Atlantic history (1774) and concluding with a Black Lives Matter Haggadah supplement (2019), the collection travels across time and space to shed light on intriguing and generative moments that span the varieties of Jewish experience in the American setting from the colonial era to the present. The materials underscore the interrelationship of myriad themes including ritual observance, Jewish-Christian relations, civil rights, Zionism and Israel, and immigration. While not intended as a comprehensive treatment of American Jewish history, the collection offers a chronological road map of American Jewry's evolving self-understanding and encounter with America over the course of four centuries. A brief prefatory note sets up the analytic context of each document and helps to unpack and explore its significance. The capacious and multifaceted quality of the American Jewish experience is further amplified here by a sampling of artistic texts such as photographs, advertisements, cartoons, and more. 

1

“CONCERNING A GATE HE SEND TO OUR KAKAM”

A Circum-Atlantic Divorce in the Eighteenth Century (1774)

HOLLY SNYDER

Divorce is hardly novel in Jewish history. It has long been an acknowledged part of Jewish law and is discussed in a number of surviving rabbinical responsa from the period prior to 1900. Yet it is rarely the subject of discussion by Jewish historians of the premodern era. This may be because while divorce was available to Jewish couples, it was rarely used as a legal remedy except in the most exigent circumstances.¹ Thus, when Hannah Minis (1744–1812) and David Leion (1749–1842) “parted from each other under writings” at Savannah, Georgia, in August 1799, after just sixteen months of marriage, Levi Sheftall (1739–1809) noted in his communal record that “No instance of the kinde ever happend here before amongst people of our [Jewish] profesion.”²

The letters presented here refer to a document for a Jewish ritual divorce (in Hebrew get, transliterated here as Gate) sent to Jamaica in 1774. This is the earliest Jewish divorce yet documented in British America; the two other eighteenth-century Jewish divorces for which we have records date from the postrevolutionary period on mainland North America.³

In this case, we do not have particulars—or even names—of the divorcing couple. What we have, instead, is a record of the other participants in this drama: the synagogue official who married them, the rabbi in Jamaica who inherited the responsibility to ensure that the get was delivered to the wife, and the other parties called upon by the rabbi for assistance in completing that task.

The initiator of the letters was Joshua Hezekiah DeCordova (1720–1797). Born and raised in Amsterdam, DeCordova was one of the few New World congregational leaders of the time who had had a rabbinical education, and as such he was something of an anomaly in early American Jewish history. During the eighteenth century, most New World congregations were led by hazanim, lay leaders who could chant the prayers, lead services, and officiate at religious ceremonies but whose understanding of Judaism was practical rather than intellectual.⁴ While rabbis occasionally visited New World communities, many congregations were too small to support a full-time rabbi. So visiting hahamim (Hebrew for sages or scholars) generally did not stay long. It was a mark of the size and sophistication of the Sephardic community in Jamaica that it was able to engage Haham DeCordova in 1755, who left a subordinate post at K. K. Mikve Israel in Curacao. DeCordova led the Princess Street synagogue in Kingston for forty-two years, a term in office that ended only with his death.⁵

The second figure in this piece, whose absence was the direct cause of the complications surrounding delivery of the get to the divorced wife, was Abraham Mimenton (fl. 1750–1774). Mimenton did not leave many clues behind, but some facts can be surmised from snippets of information within the letters: In 1774, Mimenton lived in Surinam, but he had previously lived in Kingston and, while there, had officiated in some capacity at the Princess Street synagogue—most likely as hazan. It was during this sojourn that he apparently performed the marriage ceremony for the divorcing couple.⁶

The remaining figures were three Jewish merchants: Jacob Alvarenga (fl. 1750–1780) in Jamaica and Abraham Pereira Mendes (fl. 1766–1774) and Aaron Lopez (1731–1782) in Newport, Rhode Island. Lopez, an émigré from Portugal to British America, was by 1774 one of the wealthiest and most successful of Newport’s mercantile class. Alvarenga and Pereira Mendes were cousins who had grown up together in Jamaica, but in 1767 Pereira Mendes left the island to marry Lopez’s daughter, Sarah (called Sally).

Rabbi DeCordova began with what would seem to us to be a simple problem: how to get a letter from Kingston to Surinam. Without the right language skills and access to an international postal system (which did not yet exist), there was no easy means for an ordinary person to achieve this end.⁷ One had to ask for help from someone else with the right connections. So DeCordova asked Alvarenga, a local merchant known to him, for assistance in achieving the delivery of a letter to Mimenton. In the two letters, we see how Alvarenga combined his strong language and writing skills with his connection to Pereira Mendes to create a polite request for a mercantile favor from Lopez, a man he had never met.

Though each letter is brief and simple on its face, what is remarkable about these two short letters is the web of transatlantic connections they reveal with just a little teasing. To resolve DeCordova’s problem required enlisting a Jewish merchant on the mainland to facilitate communications between two religious figures, previously unknown to him, in Jamaica and Surinam, for the goal of delivering the get. Remarkably, these places were more proximate to one another across the Caribbean than either was to Rhode Island, where Lopez resided. These letters thus underscore not only the long-distance performance of Jewish ritual around the Atlantic colonies but also the key role that Jewish merchants frequently played as intermediaries in matters of eighteenth-century religious practice.

Letter from Jacob Alvarenga in Kingston, Jamaica, to Aaron Lopez in Newport, Rhode Island, November 10, 1774

Source: Letter from Jacob Alvarenga to Aaron Lopez (November 10, 1774), Aaron Lopez Papers, 1773–78, Manuscript Collection VFM 734, G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, CT.

 

Kingston in Jamaica Nov^r 10^th 1774

Dear Sir

Inclosed a Letter for Mr Abraham Mimenton in / Surinam, which Our Kakam⁸ the Rev^d M^r De Cordova / and my Self beg you as a particular favour, youl / forward to him as Soon as possible, its Concerning / a Gate⁹ he Send [sic] to Our Kakam, my best Complem^ts / to you and famely, as Also to my Cousin Abm / your Son in Law & his Wife, your Comply^ce / will Greatly Oblige

D^r S^r

Your most Obedt Humble Servant,

/s/ Jacob Alvarenga

VERSO: “November 10^th 1774—/ from Jacob Alvarenga / Jamaica”

Letter from Jacob Alvarenga in Kingston, Jamaica, to Aaron Lopez in Newport, Rhode Island, December 18, 1774

Source: Letter from Jacob Alvarenga to Aaron Lopez (December 18, 1774), Aaron Lopez Papers, box 164A, folder 16, Newport Historical Society, Newport, RI.

 

Kingston Jamaica Decem^br 18^th 1774

D^r Sir

Tho I have not the pleasure of your Good acquaintance at / the same time I have taken the Liberty of Inclosing a / Letter directed to mr Ab^m Mimenton in Surinam, / which Our Kakam mr DeCordova & my self will take / it as a particular favour, you will be so Kind as to forward / to him as soon as possible, its an Answer to a Letter he / wrote to Our Kakam & Self. Concerning a Gate he sent us / for a woman he Gave Kidusim¹⁰ in this Island, which / he was in Sinna [synagogue]. & Since he went to Surinam, the / Mahamad¹¹ as also the Kakam there, obliged him to send / to her, hoping you Enjoy perfect helth in company / of all your Good family, as also my Cousin Ab^m your / son in Law. & his Spouse, in the Intereem I Remain / very Respectfully

D^r S^r

Your most Obliged humble Servant

/s/ Jacob Alvarenga

---

1. A remarkable responsum from thirteenth-century Spain discusses the case of a married woman who took a lover and then (likely due to her husband’s continued refusal to initiate divorce proceedings because she had provided just cause by means of adultery) converted to Christianity to force her husband’s hand in granting her a divorce. After obtaining the divorce, she and her lover moved to another city and resumed their lives as Jews, presenting themselves as a married couple even though as an adultress she could not marry again under Jewish law. See Sarah Ifft Decker, “Conversion, Marriage, and Creative Manipulation of Law in Thirteenth-Century Responsa Literature,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 6, no. 1 (March 2014), 42–53.

2. Quoted in Malcolm H. Stern, “The Sheftall Diaries: Vital Records of Savannah Jewry, 1733–1808,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 54, no. 3 (March 1965), 268–69. See also Kaye Kole, The Minis Family of Georgia (Savannah: Georgia Historical Society, 1992), 33–35.

3. The earliest known Jewish divorce on the North American mainland took place in Charleston in 1788, when Mordecai Lyon (1735–1818) divorced his wife, Elizabeth (Binche) Chapman (fl. 1782–1788) before a beit din (Jewish religious court). The case is discussed in some detail in James W. Hagy, “Her ‘Scandalous Behaviour’: A Jewish Divorce in Charleston, South Carolina, 1788,” American Jewish Archives 41, no. 2 (Fall–Winter 1989), 193–95. Though the documents do not define the nature of the wife’s behavior, Hagy suggests that it was probably adulterous conduct. The second, as described above, was the divorce of Hannah and David Leion, who “disagree[d] for a length of time before they parted” (Stern, “The Sheftall Diaries,” 268–69).

4. One such example would be Gershom Mendes Seixas (1745–1816), who served as hazan at New York’s K. K. Shearith Israel. See Jacob Rader Marcus, “The Handsome Young Priest in the Black Gown: The Personal World of Gershom Seixas,” Hebrew Union College Annual 40–41 (1969–70), 409–67. As Marcus points out, there are no documented instances of ordained rabbis officiating over North American mainland congregations in the manner that Seixas did prior to 1840 (ibid., 410–11).

5. [Isaac Dias Fernandes], “Some account of the life of the Late Revd Chief Rabbi Joshua Hezekiah De Cordova of this town,” Columbian Magazine; or, Monthly Miscellany (Kingston, Jamaica), October 1, 1797, 267–71, accessed through American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection, Series 1; Bertram W. Korn, “The Haham DeCordova of Jamaica,” American Jewish Archives 18, no. 2 (November 1966), 141–54.

6. Surviving records in Surinam suggest that the family name was actually Mementon: an Abraham Mementon, who died in 1735, was a landholder and founding member of the Jewish settlement at Jodensavanne, on the Surinam River. See Richard Gottheil, “Contributions to the History of the Jews of Surinam,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 9 (1901), 128–44; P. A. Hilfman, “Notes on the History of the Jews in Surinam,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 18 (1909), 179–208. Tombstones for Abraham Mementon and two other members of the Mementon family are still extant in the Jodensavanne Cemetery. See Aviva Ben-Ur and Rachel Frankel, Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries of Suriname: Epitaphs (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2009), 250. Hilfman provides a list of rabbis in the synagogue at Paramaribo, but our Abraham Mimenton is not among them, and there is no other record that he or anyone named Mementon served as an officiant there.

7. In the preface to the single text he published during his lifetime, titled Reason and Faith (first published at Kingston in 1788), DeCordova begged to be excused for “improprieties” in language that he claimed were due to his being “a foreigner who learned the English language, without a master, in his old age” (Emet vEmunah: Reason and Faith, or, Philosophical Absurdities, and the Need for Revelation, intended to Promote Faith among Infidels, and the Unbounded Exercise of Humanity among all Religious Men. By one of the Sons of Abraham to his Brethren [Kingston: Strupar and Preston, 1788], iii–iv; rev.ed. [Philadelphia: F. Bailey, 1791], vi). Isaac Dias Fernandes would later point to DeCordova’s program of devoted individualized study as having produced a fluent comprehension of written English, without commenting on DeCordova’s capacity to speak or write in English (“Some account of the life of the Late Revd Chief Rabbi Joshua Hezekiah De Cordova of this town,” 269).

8. Haham (transliterated here as Kakam) is the traditional Hebrew term used to denote a sage or scholar.

9. Get (transliterated here as Gate) is a ritual Jewish divorce. See also chapter 10, note 4.

10. Kidushin (transliterated here as Kidusim) is Hebrew for “betrothal.”

11. Maamad (transliterated here as Mahamad) is the Hebrew term used to describe the board of directors of a Spanish-Portuguese congregation.

2...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Note to Readers
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. “The Dynamic World of the American Jew”: Jonathan D. Sarna and the Varieties of Jewish Experience
• 1. “Concerning a Gate He Send to Our Kakam”: A Circum-Atlantic Divorce in the Eighteenth Century, 1774
• 2. “To Bigotry No Sanction”: George Washington, America’s Jews, and Religious Freedom, 1790
• 3. “And Made Them Wear a Hat”: Isaac Harby Asserts the Authenticity of Bareheaded Jewish Prayer, 1826
• 4. “The Kingdom Restored to Israel”: Mormon Apostle Orson Hyde’s Reflections on Judaism, 1841
• 5. “A Union of Heart, a Union of Action”: Isaac Leeser and the Challenge of Jewish Education in Nineteenth-Century America, 1843
• 6. “That We Might Become a Shining Example”: The Innovations of David Einhorn’s Prayerbook Olat Tamid, 1858
• 7. “A Jewish Chaplain for the Cameron Dragoons”: The Real Chaplaincy Controversy of the Civil War, 1861
• 8. “In the Strictest Jewish Orthodox Stile”: A Contract between Isaac Wolf and Congregation Etz Hayim (Pittsburgh, PA), 1864
• 9. “Solicited on the Ground of Humanity, Recognized as a National Duty”: The Board of Delegates of American Israelites and the Rise of American Jewish Politics, 1872–1873
• 10. “As to the Validity of the Tribal Laws of the Jews”: The Fascination of the American Press with East European Jewish Marital Life, 1883–1902
• 11. “For the Defense of Our Jewish Interests”: Henry Pereira Mendes’s Call for an International Synod, 1886
• 12. “Conversions to and from Judaism”: Joseph Krauskopf on American Christian Missions to the Jews, 1891
• 13. “A Careful Student of the Religion of the East”: Charles T. Strauss Converts to Buddhism at the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, IL), 1893
• 14. “Without Sacrificing the Rights of Our Citizens”: Concerning the Ottoman Empire’s Restrictions on American Jews Entering Palestine, 1899
• 15. “Moses Presents the Ten Commandments to the Children of Israel”: Emile Pissis’s Stained Glass Window of Congregation Sherith Israel (San Francisco, CA), 1904–1905
• 16. “For the Welfare of Israel in This Country”: Cyrus Adler, Henry Pereira Mendes, and the Creation of the United Synagogue of America, 1913
• 17. “They Can Ship Me Anywhere”: An Ottoman Jewish Immigrant in the American Heartland, 1913
• 18. “The Oriental Spanish Jewish Journal” La Amérika: The First Enduring Ladino Newspaper of the United States, 1913–14
• 19. “The New Jerusalem”: A Gentile Perspective on New York’s Jews at the Turn of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 1914
• 20. “The Gentleman Being Both a German and a Jew”: B. H. Roberts Nominates Simon Bamberger as Democratic Candidate for Governor of Utah, 1916
• 21. “What Justice or Redress Can Be Gained”: East European Jewish Immigrants and Legal Aid, 1917
• 22. “A Prince in Israel”: S. Felix Mendelsohn’s Eulogy for Jacob H. Schiff, 1920
• 23. “The Ladies, God Bless ’Em, Used to Hold Bazaars, but Not Now”: American Jewish Women and Philanthropy, 1920
• 24. “No Aristocracy and No Snobocracy”: Samuel H. Goldenson and the Democratization of the Synagogue, 1922
• 25. “To Make Them Positive, Self-Conscious Jews”: The Shift in Reform Judaism to a Pro-Zionist Jewish Educational Agenda, 1922–1940
• 26. “Conscious of Their Identity, They Marry Whom They Choose”: The Elopement of Irving Berlin and Ellin Mackay, 1926
• 27. “To Observe the Sabbath in Its Time-Honored Way”: Temple Adath Israel (Louisville, KY) Debates the Elimination of Sunday Worship Services, 1931
• 28. “The Man Who Crystallizes Greatness in the Twentieth Century”: Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel (Philadelphia, PA) Honors Albert Einstein, 1934
• 29. “Destiny Has Bound Us Together”: Albert Einstein Speaks to Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel (Philadelphia, PA), 1934
• 30. “Don’t Hush Me!”: American Jewish College Students and Jewish Identity in the Interwar Period, 1939
• 31. “Ensuring Our Future”: The Creation of the Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs, 1939
• 32. “Farming as a Life Occupation”: Peter Salm and the National Farm School (Bucks County, PA), 1939–42
• 33. “Citizenship, Civic Virtue, and Safeguarding Democracy”: Israel S. Chipkin on American Jewish Education, 1941
• 34. “Pilgrims,” also Known as “Mayflower and ‘Illegal’ Passenger Ship”: Arthur Szyk and the Twin Promised Lands of America and Palestine, 1946
• 35. “The Greater Sin”: Jacob M. Rothschild’s Yom Kippur Sermon on American Jews, the South, and Civil Rights, 1948
• 36. “What the Jews Believe”: A Liberal Rabbi Explains Judaism to the Readers of Life Magazine, 1950
• 37. “Our Simple Duty as Jews”: Herbert A. Friedman’s Radio Address for the United Jewish Appeal, 1957
• 38. “Valiant Builders and Fighters and Dreamers”: Abba Hillel Silver on American Jewish Relations with Israel, 1957
• 39. “We Must Change Our Line”: Will Maslow’s Report on the Conference of the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs, 1960
• 40. “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Love Levy’s”: Levy’s Real Jewish Rye Advertising Campaign, 1961
• 41. “An Intolerable Situation and a Moral Blot on Humanity”: American Jews Respond to the Plight of Soviet Jewry, 1964
• 42. “Israel’s Essential Emissary”: Golda Meir on the Cover of Time Magazine, 1969
• 43. “To Secure Israel’s Survival and Security”: President Gerald R. Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger Meet with American Jewish Leaders, 1976
• 44. “Power in the Promised Land”: The Incredible Hulk and Sabra, 1981
• 45. “Overlooked, Out There on the Rim, in the Southern Part of America”: Eli N. Evans, Macy B. Hart, and the Project of Southern Jewish History, 1987
• 46. “A Natural Alliance”: Alexander M. Schindler on Black–Jewish Relations, 1987 and 1992
• 47. “To Shift from the Child to the Family”: American Jews and the Challenge of Continuity, 1988
• 48. “The World Is Not the Same since Auschwitz and Hiroshima”: Kathy (Schwartz) Cohen’s Reflections on Tisha Beav, 1988
• 49. “To Combat Homophobia”: Jewish Activist Gays and Lesbians, 1994
• 50. “Global Identity Free of Prejudices and Boundaries”: The Indian-American-Jewish Artist Siona Benjamin’s Tikkun Ha-Olam, 2000
• 51. “Taking This Prohibited Act and Using It to Feel More Jewish”: American Jews and Tattoos, 2000–2020
• 52. “Leveling the Playing Field”: Women and American Jewish Organizational Life, 2008
• 53. “It’s Important for People to Know I Am Who I Am”: Transgender American Jews, 2016
• 54. “The Kotel Belongs to All Jews Worldwide”: The American Jewish Committee and the Western Wall Controversy, 2017
• 55. “The Full Humanity and Precious Value of Every Individual Black Life”: The Haggadah Supplement of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, 2019
• Glossary
• Select Bibliography of Works
• About Jonathan D. Sarna
• About the Contributors
• Index