by Jack Cooper
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1. Harry Simonhoff, Jewish Notables in America, 1776–1865: Links of an Endless Chain (New York: Greenberg, 1956), 72–73.
2. Ibid., 73.
3. John Bartlett and Justin Kaplan, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (New York: Little, Brown, 1992), 337.
...Benjamin Franklin donated to a synagogue building fund
Benjamin Franklin was raised as a Christian and believed in God, but he did not wish to subscribe to any particular denomination. Offended by the “intolerant orthodoxy”1 of Boston, he moved to Philadelphia, where people of diverse religions could live in harmony. Tolerance was the cornerstone of Franklin’s ideology, and he promulgated the concept his entire life. As he so aptly put it, “I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue.”2
In an era when whole colonies were organized on religious grounds, Franklin is recorded as having donated money to every denomination represented in Philadelphia, including Congregation Mikveh Israel. He also contributed to the building of a meeting hall in Philadelphia “expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something.”3
During the Fourth of July celebration in 1788, Franklin was too ill to leave his bed, but he arranged for the parade to pass under his bedroom window, and as he had stipulated, “the clergy of different Christian denominations, with the rabbi of the Jews, walked arm in arm.”4 At his death, all the clergymen of every faith in the city accompanied his casket to his grave.
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1. Walter Isaacson, “Citizen Ben’s 7 Great Virtues,” Time (July 7, 2003): 40–53.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
...obeying a biblical law saved the life of a slave owner
Abraham Moise was a successful Jewish planter on the Island of Santo Domingo. Mindful of the biblical injunctions that masters were supposed to treat their slaves kindly, Moise’s treatment of his slaves was far better than was the norm for the island.1
In 1791 there was a bloody slave uprising. The Moise family was awakened in the middle of the night by the ringleader of the slave uprising and hustled off to a departing ship in the harbor. This same slave leader later took his master’s last name and became known as the distinguished General Moise. His leadership resulted in the establishment of the “Negro Republic” of Haiti.2
Abraham Moise’s kindly treatment of his slaves undoubtedly saved him from the grisly fate of many of the other slaveholders on the island. He reached South Carolina safely and began life anew.
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1. Rabbi Dr. Joseph H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (London: Soncino Press, 1952), 207, 306, 396, 537, 767, 813, 872, 924.
2. Harry Simonhoff, Jewish Notables in America, 1776–1865: Links of an Endless Chain (New York: Greenberg, 1956), 251–52.
...a Jewish naval officer tried NOT to shoot his enemy in a duel
In 1816 Jewish naval officer Uriah Levy was attending a ball. A fellow officer, Lieutenant William Potter, apparently seeking to provoke a fight, deliberately bumped into Levy three times. Levy slapped Lieutenant Potter. Enraged, Potter called Levy a “damned Jew.” Levy responded, “That I am a Jew, I neither deny nor regret.” The next day Levy received a written challenge from Potter.
Levy, an expert marksman, arrived at the appointed place and attempted to persuade Potter to call off the duel. Potter called Levy a coward, and Levy in turn called Potter a fool. They paced off twenty steps and Potter turned and fired. He missed and Levy fired into the air. Three more times Potter fired and three more times Levy fired into the air. On the fifth shot, Potter nicked Levy’s ear. Potter then began to reload, shouting, “I mean to have his life.” This time Levy fired his pistol at Potter, killing him instantly.1
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1. Donovan Fitzpatrick and Saul Saphire, Navy Maverick: Uriah Phillips Levy (New York: Doubleday, 1963), 65.
...the navy hated the sailor but presidents loved him
Uriah Phillips Levy suffered six navy courts martial, yet achieved the highest rank possible. Uriah Levy was a committed Jew and a dedicated sailor who stood up for himself in all circumstances.
In 1817 Uriah Levy fought with a marine who called him a damned Jew. Both were court-martialed and reprimanded by the navy. Nevertheless, in that same year President Monroe signed Levy’s commission as a navy lieutenant, only the second Jew to be so honored.1
In 1818, while serving aboard the USS United States, Levy was courtmartialed for a petty offense and was sentenced to be dismissed from the service. President Monroe ordered the decision reversed.2
In 1819 Levy was court-martialed for rebuking a fellow officer in offensive language. He was sentenced to be dismissed from the navy, but President Monroe again reversed the decision.3
Levy was revolted by the inhumane naval punishment of flogging and abolished the practice aboard his ship. For this offense, in 1844 he was court-martialed and sentenced to be dismissed from the service. President Tyler reduced his sentence to a one-year suspension. While the suspension was running, Tyler promoted Levy to the rank of captain.4 Congress abolished the practice of flogging in 1850.5
In 1855, a group of naval officers, charged with eliminating some officers from the navy, included Levy on their list. So thorough was Levy’s defense of his record that the decision was reversed, much to the embarrassment of the navy.6
In February of 1860, President Buchanan gave Levy command of the Mediterranean fleet and raised him to the rank of commodore, the highest rank in the navy. Levy retired from the navy in July of 1860, but President Lincoln, in an act of extreme irony, appointed Levy to be president of the navy court-martial board.7
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1. Donovan Fitzpatrick and Saul Saphire, Navy Maverick: Uriah Phillips Levy (New York: Doubleday, 1963), 70.
2. Ibid., 89.
3. Ibid., 97.
4. Ibid., 173.
5. Sol Scharfstein, Jewish History and You (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2003), 77.
6. Fitzpatrick and Saphire, Navy Maverick, 209.
7. Ibid., 244.
...Chapman Levy helped Andrew Jackson crush nullification
When South Carolina in 1832 promulgated its theory of nullification of any laws of the United States government it deemed unfit, not everybody in the state agreed. Among those dissenters was Chapman Levy, a Jewish resident of Camden, South Carolina.
The first thing Levy did was to arrange for the printing and dissemination of President Jackson’s Proclamation Regarding Nullification. Since his cohorts did not supply enough of the money for the printing, Levy paid the balance himself. The next task that Levy undertook was the organization of meetings to publicize the resistance to nullification.1
In later correspondence, President Jackson himself expressed his personal appreciation of the efforts Chapman Levy had exerted on behalf of Jackson and the nation.
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1. Joseph L. Blau and Salo W. Baron, eds., The Jews of the United States, 1790–1840: A Documentary History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 376–80.
...a Jewish family’s good deeds were as important as Gettysburg
Joseph Seligman was a German-Jewish immigrant who came to America in 1837. As he was attempting to get started in business in Selma, Alabama, Seligman was involved in an altercation in which a man was killed. Seligman’s trial was not going well, and it looked like he was about to get a long prison sentence. However, a fifteen-year-old lad who had witnessed the event came forward and offered testimony that exonerated Seligman. Joseph Seligman and other family members went on to become successful bankers.1
Following the Civil War, the State of Alabama, sorely in need of funds, sent one of its state supreme court justices to New York’s financial district seeking loans for his state. Anti-South sentiment was still running high, and the judge was having no luck at all – until he met with Joseph Seligman, now a New York banker. Recognizin
g the man as the boy who had come to his rescue so many years before, Seligman immediately granted the loan that his benefactor so richly deserved.
While Seligman was willing to help the State of Alabama after the war, his sentiments were strongly in favor of the Union during the war. When the Civil War came, Joseph Seligman and another Jewish banker, August Belmont, went to work to help the Union cause financially. Belmont went to England in 1861 and urged the bankers to support the ethical principles of the Lincoln administration. He was also successful in putting pressure on the banking houses in France, England, Germany, and Holland not to help the South even if they were not inclined to help the North.
Seligman, for his part, toured Europe and sold more than two hundred million dollars in United States securities, mostly in Germany and Holland, where Seligman was fluent in the languages. This was such a significant sum that historian W.E. Dodd expressed the opinion that Seligman’s effort with the bonds was worth as much as the Battle of Gettysburg.2
What made the feat of these Jewish bankers more remarkable was the fact that the European upper classes, those most likely to have money to invest, were generally in favor of the South gaining its independence.
Good deeds were not limited to the American branch of the Seligman family. After the death of President Lincoln, his wife Mary Todd Lincoln began to suffer from delusions. Although she was provided for in Lincoln’s will, she imagined herself to be in need of money, and she went so far as to sell her clothes.
Unable to recover from her grief, she moved to England with her son Tad. It was there that she was found by Henry Seligman, who was in Frankfurt as head of the family banking business. Seeing that Mrs. Lincoln was living in poverty and that her son was ill, Henry Seligman wrote letters to several senators and his brother Joseph used his influence with Congress and with President Grant. Soon Mrs. Lincoln was awarded an annual pension of three thousand dollars, later raised to five thousand.
This family of immigrant Jews certainly made significant contributions to their adopted country.
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1. Harry Simonhoff, Jewish Participants in the Civil War (New York: Arco, 1963), 84–85.
2. Ibid.
...an anonymous Jewish donation helped shorten the Civil War
In 1863, US intelligence services learned that the British government was building two ironclad ships for the Confederacy to use against the Union blockade, which was preventing the South from selling its cotton for badly needed cash to help fund the war.
Because the metal ironclads would be so hard to sink, the Union feared that they would be able to open gaps in the blockade to permit Confederate ships to resume their trade with England. The British, for their part, were anxious to receive the cotton, so that they could reopen their shuttered textile mills and put their people back to work. The French were also desirous of seeing the blockade fail, so that they could pursue their own commercial interests with the South.
When the American government raised the issue with the British, the latter denied that the ships were for the Confederacy and demanded to see definitive proof of the allegations that they were helping the South. They further demanded that the witnesses against the Crown be made available for cross-examination and that the United States Government post a five-million-dollar deposit in gold coin to indemnify the British of any losses incurred by them due to the delay.
Since the American ambassador had no authorization to post such a bond, and since the sailing date of the ironclads was imminent, the cause appeared to be lost. At this point, a Jewish banker came forward with a no-conditions-attached offer to put up the money with the proviso that his name was never to be revealed. Questioned as to why he would make such a magnanimous gesture, he replied that it was in gratitude for the US government’s granting of full citizenship to Jews, and it was his way of repaying the kindness. The offer was accepted, the Confederacy never received the ships, and the South was beaten into submission much more rapidly than if they had been able to market their cotton to pay for the war.
The story was known only to a few people until 1890, when it was published in Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration, written by L.E. Crittendon, a former official in the Lincoln administration. Other people corroborated the story, but the name of the benefactor was never revealed.1
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1. Harry Simonhoff, Jewish Participants in the Civil War (New York: Arco, 1963), 47–52.
...Yale University’s emblem and motto are Jewish in origin
The official emblem of Yale University depicts an open Bible on whose pages are the Hebrew words urim v’tumim. Below the Bible is the Latin phrase Lux et veritas.1
In ancient times, the high priest (Kohen Gadol) of the Israelites wore on his outer garment a breastplate (ephod). Mounted on the breastplate were twelve precious stones, one for each of the twelve tribes descended from the patriarch Jacob. In times of stress or momentous events, the king or the prophet would go to the high priest to view the stones on the breastplate in order to ascertain God’s will in the matter at hand.2
When the elders of Yale University were seeking an emblem that would best exemplify the purpose of their university, they decided on an image of the open Bible with the words urim v’tumim. Knowing that many people did not have a knowledge of Hebrew, they added the Latin translation of urim v’tumim, “light and truth,”3 which is really the goal of any institution of higher learning.
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1. For an image and discussion of the emblem, see http://www.yale.edu/emeritus/yale_shield.html.
2. Yehoshua M. Grintz, “Ephod”; also “Oracle,” Encyclopedia Judaica, CD-ROM Edition (Jerusalem: Keter, 1977).
3. Dagobert D. Runes, ed., The Hebrew Impact on Western Civilization (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), 24.
...a soldier’s heroism spawned a word
In the late 1800s, Galveston rabbi Henry Cohen was puzzled by the word fronthall, which he had often heard in reference to a person of unusual courage. He investigated and found that the word described a Jewish Confederate soldier named Max Frankenthal. Enlisted as a drummer boy, Frankenthal fought in many battles, the most memorable being the one known as the Bloody Acute Angle.
In 1893 Colonel A.T. Watts, a participant in the battle, wrote a description of the battle in a letter to the Galveston Daily News. After describing the battle, Colonel Watts, by this time a prominent judge, ended his letter with the following:
In conclusion, I cannot forego the mention of one individual, Fronthall, a little Jew, though insignificant in appearance, had the heart of a lion. For several hours he stood at the immediate point of contact, amid the most terrific hail of lead, and coolly and deliberately loaded and fired without cringing. After observing his unflinching bravery and constancy, the thought occurred to the writer – I now understood how it was that a handful of Jews could drive before them the hundred kings; they were all Fronthalls!1
Thus, a word, albeit a short-lived one, was born.
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1. Harry Simonhoff, Jewish Participants in the Civil War (New York: Arco,1963), 263–64.
...a Jewish woman ran a Jewish school using a Christian Bible
In the mid 1800s, Rebecca Gratz spent her life doing good deeds for others. When she noticed that Jewish children had little or no opportunity to learn about their faith, she became concerned. Impressed by the Christian Sunday schools, Rebecca decided to start a Jewish Sunday school. Since the only Bible in print at that time was the King James Version, Rebecca taped over the portions she did not want the children to read. Much of the early text materials were also Christian in nature. Nevertheless, the school was a success and served as a prototype for similar Jewish schools on the east coast of the United States.1
It is widely believed that the heroine of Sir Walter Scott’s famous novel Ivanhoe was modeled after Rebecca Gratz. Scott’s novel tells of a Jewish maiden who refused to marry out of her faith. How did
Scott in England get to know Rebecca Gratz? When Washington Irving’s fiancée Matilda Hoffman was ill, it was Rebecca who nursed her back to health. On a subsequent trip to England, Irving recounted the story to his friend Sir Walter Scott. Scott was so impressed with the narrative about Rebecca Gratz that he made her the heroine of his book. In later correspondence with Irving, Scott is alleged to have written, “How do you like your Rebecca? Does the Rebecca I have pictured compare well with the pattern given?”2
Although Rebecca Gratz raised her sister’s nine orphaned children, she herself never married. Another persisting legend is that she did indeed fall in love with a non-Jew named Ewing. Ewing was the lawyer son of a prominent Christian clergyman. The story goes that he proposed marriage to Rebecca, but she refused to marry out of her faith. He eventually married someone else, but he died at the age of thirty-nine.3
Rebecca lived to the age of eighty-eight and contributed to the formation and operation of important Jewish social service and educational institutions in Philadelphia.
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1. Elinor Slater and Robert Slater, Great Jewish Women (New York: Jonathan David, 1994), 113.
2. Ibid., 113–14.
3. Ibid., 112–13.
...the pants were Levi’s
In 1850, Levi Strauss came to California during the gold rush. He didn’t intend to mine for gold, but he did hope to mine a few dollars from the miners by selling rough cloth for tents and wagon covers. When some of the miners told Strauss that they were in need of pants that could withstand incredibly hard wear, Strauss came up with the idea of sewing the tent material into pants. The pants were strong enough, but the rough material tended to chafe the miners’ skin. Strauss then substituted a softer but still tough material called serge de Nimes (twill fabric from the French city of Nimes), which came to be known as denim. As the miners began to notice the durable pants some other miners were wearing, they would ask, “Whose pants are these?” The reply would be, “These are Levi’s,” and thus a name was born.1