Some Jews came from Holland last summer, in order to trade. Later a few Jews came upon the same ship as De Polhemius;* they were healthy but poor. It would have been proper that they should have been supported by their own people, but they have been at our charge, so that we have had to spend several hundred guilders for their support. They came several times to my house, weeping and bemoaning their misery. If I directed them to the Jewish merchants, they said they would not even lend them a few stivers. Some of them have come from Holland this spring. They report that still more of the same lot would follow, and then they would build here a synagogue. This causes among the congregation here a great deal of complaint and murmuring. These people have no other God than the unrighteous Mammon, and no other aim than to get possession of Christian property, and to win all other merchants by drawing all trade towards themselves. Therefore we request your Reverences to obtain from the Lords-Directors [of the West India Company] that these godless rascals, who are of no benefit to the country, but look at everything for their own profit, may be sent away from here. For as we have Papists, Mennonites and Lutherans among the Dutch; also many Puritans or Independents, and various other servants of Baal among the English under this Government, who conceal themselves under the name of Christians; it would create a still greater confusion if the obstinate and immovable Jews came to settle here. Closing I commend your Reverences with your families to the protection of God, who will bless us and all of you in the service of the divine word.
Though the Jews petitioned Megapolensis, it is unlikely that they came “weeping and bemoaning.” This seems quite out of character. The Jews, who had plenty to weep about and bemoan, and who were under no misapprehensions about the very limited degree of welcome they were being given, were not emotional but methodical in their approach to the problem. Early in 1655 they drafted and sent off a lengthy petition to the directors of the West India Company in Holland. This document is remarkable not only in its coolheadedness and tact, its diplomacy and relentless logic, but also for the clarity with which it defines the political and economic position of the Jews in western Europe in the middle of the seventeenth century.
The petition begins with a deferential salutation “To the Honorable Lords, Directors of the Chartered West India Company, Chamber of the City of Amsterdam” and proceeds to a detailing of the Jews’ specific grievances. Stuyvesant had refused to give them passports or to let them travel outside the settlement, making it impossible for them to trade. This, the petition points out, “if persisted in will result to the great disadvantage of the Jewish Nation. It also can be of no advantage to the Company, but rather damaging.” The petition reminded the directors that “The Jewish Nation in Brazil have at all times been faithful and have striven to guard and maintain that place, risking for the purpose their possessions and their blood.” Next the Jews pointed out the economic advantages to be gained by allowing settlers to disperse about the country. “Yonder land,” they wrote, “is extensive and spacious. The more … people that go and live there, the better it is in regard to the payment of taxes which may be imposed there.” They reminded the “high illustrious mighty Lords” that in the past they had “always protected and considered the Jewish Nation as upon the same footing as all the inhabitants and burghers. Also it is conditioned in the treaty of perpetual peace with the King of Spain that the Jewish Nation shall also enjoy the same liberty as all other inhabitants of these lands.”
The petition then made its most telling point.
Your Honors should also please consider that many of the Jewish Nation are principal shareholders of the West India Company. They have always striven their best for the Company, and many of their Nation have also lost immense and great capital in its shares and obligations. The Company has consented that those who wish to populate the colony shall enjoy certain districts and land grants. Why should certain subjects of this state not be allowed to travel thither and live there? The French consent that the Portuguese Jews may traffic and live in Martinique, Christopher, and others of their territories.… The English also consent at the present time that the Portuguese and Jewish Nation may go from London and settle at Barbados, whither also some have gone.
The reply from Amsterdam was slow in coming, and the permission it gave was given begrudgingly. Clearly the directors shared some of Stuyvesant’s misgivings. But the reminder that there were Jewish shareholders of importance in the company was what turned the vote in their favor. In their letter of instruction to Stuyvesant dated April 26, 1655, the directors said:
We would like to effectuate and fulfill your wishes and request that the territories should no more be allowed to be infected by people of the Jewish Nation, for we see therefrom the same difficulties which you fear, but after having weighed and considered the matter, we observe that this would be somewhat unreasonable and unfair, especially because of the considerable loss sustained by this nation, with others, in the taking of Brazil, as also because of the large amount of capital which they still have invested in the shares of this company. Therefore, after many deliberations we have finally decided and resolve to apostille [i.e., to note] upon a certain petition presented by said Portuguese Jews that these people may travel and trade to and in New Netherlands and live there and remain there, provided the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or to the community, but be supported by their own nation. You will govern yourself accordingly.
One wonders whether, if the loss of Brazil had not driven the price of West India Company stock down, the directors would have been even this sympathetic. In any case, with this mealymouthed and decidedly reluctant verdict, the Jews gained their second important victory in the new land—only one of many more that were to come.
* Dominie Joannes Polhemius was a Dutch religious who had arrived in New Amsterdam aboard the Saint Charles. This letter confirms the fact that the twenty-three Saint Charles passengers were not technically the first Jews to set foot upon American soil.
6
LITTLE VICTORIES
In Holland, where so many of the better off and the intelligentsia had fled, the phoenix was adopted as the symbol of the Sephardic Jews, representing their rise from the ashes of the Inquisition. In the mid-seventeenth-century Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, however, a creature more symbolic of persistence would have had to be chosen—the tortoise, perhaps, because the story of the early years of the first Jewish families in Manhattan is one of endurance.
The chief enemy continued to be Peter Stuyvesant, who had called them “godless rascals.” A handful more had arrived by the spring of 1655—“from the West Indies and now from the Fatherland!” Stuyvesant wrote with alarm, regarding the trickle of immigrants as something akin to an invasion. Among the newer arrivals joining the original twenty-three was one Abraham de Lucena. Though Mr. de Lucena clearly appears to have been some sort of leader in the little Sephardic community in New Amsterdam, his importance has since become more genealogical than historical, since such old New York families as the Nathans and the Hendrickses find in him a common ancestor. Not much is known about the first de Lucena. It was noted that he came to New Amsterdam from “the Fatherland”—or Holland—it is also recorded that he could “barely speak Dutch.” One assumes, then, that he was a recent escapee from the Inquisition, and that he had not tarried in Holland long during his journey from Spain.
Without a democratic government or a clear body of laws, rules in the settlement were subject to wide interpretation, and Stuyvesant made full use of this latitude. In 1655, the “Jewish problem,” in Stuyvesant’s eyes, loomed so large—there were perhaps twenty families—that he announced that Jews were not wanted as guards or soldiers for the city. This was a devious measure because, in effect, it denied them the right to stand guard over their own homes, which in those days was the most important duty a member of the civil guard had to perform. Stuyvesant based his ruling on what he claimed to be the unwillingness of the colony’s regular soldiers “to be fellow-soldiers
with the aforesaid nation and to be on guard with them in the same guard house,” and he therefore declared “to prevent further discontent” that Jews were to “remain exempt from … general training and guard duty.” He added the galling statement that, for “the privilege of remaining exempt,” each male Jew between the ages of sixteen and sixty would have to pay a tax of 65 stivers—about a dollar in present currency—per month. It was the Jew tax of Europe all over again.
More anti-Semitic legislation followed. In the summer of 1655, Stuyvesant announced that Jews would not be allowed to own their own houses. At a public auction in December a young man named Salvador Dandrada bought a small house, in either defiance or ignorance of this order, at what is now the east end of Wall Street. When it was discovered that Dandrada was Jewish, the purchase was declared annulled and the house placed on the auction block all over again, to be sold to someone else.
Laborious petitions were written to the Dutch West India Company in Holland, itemizing the wrongs and injustices the Jews had suffered, and these were dispatched on their slow journey across the sea. The four principal negotiators were now Salvador Dandrada, Jacob Henriques, Abraham de Lucena, and Joseph d’Acosta and, again, it was the weight of the shares in the company owned by these four men—d’Acosta particularly—that provided them their best leverage. It was enough, at length, to bring about a letter to Stuyvesant from his superiors. The directors told the governor that they had learned “with displeasure” that he had forbidden Jews “to trade at Fort Orange and South River, and also the purchase of real estate, which is allowed here in this country without any difficulty.” The directive did not give the Jews complete equality, however. They were still “not to establish themselves as mechanics … nor allowed to have open retail shops.”
The unwillingness to let Jews enter retailing was based on an interesting economic theory, a holdover from the old world. In seventeenth-century Holland it was thought that Jews, because of their supposed “talent” at international and wholesale trade, should be channeled into these activities, for the good of the country. It is certainly true that contributions of Dutch Jews to international finance helped balance Holland’s economic position in relation to her competitors—England, Portugal, and Spain. It was claimed that retailing “distracted” Jews from their more important international business, and the same focus of their attention was deemed necessary in New Amsterdam as well. Here, after all, trade between the colonies was becoming increasingly important. Why Jews were not wanted as “mechanics” is, however, not entirely clear.
Jews were also ordered to carry on their religion “in all quietness … within their houses, for which end they must … endeavor to build their houses close together in a convenient place”—in other words, in a ghetto of sorts. At the same time, the directors rather sternly told Stuyvesant that they expected their orders from now on executed “punctually and with more respect.” It was another victory, and led the way a year later, to Jews being given full rights as burghers, or citizens, of New Amsterdam.
In 1664, the Dutch ceded their American colony to the British, New Amsterdam became New York, and the climate changed again. Instead of Peter Stuyvesant, there was a reactionary government in England to deal with. The restrictions continued. Jews were not permitted to indulge in retail trade, nor could they worship in public. It wasn’t long, though, before these rules became impossible to enforce. The Jews were becoming too important an element in the colony to be kept out of the mainstream of New York commercial life. They were soon to be a political force to be reckoned with as well. Moses Levy, who operated a small but profitable general store in Manhattan, became the first Jew in America to be elected to a public office when he was chosen” Constable of the South Ward.” Mr. Levy, however, was not impressed by the honor and announced that he did not wish to serve, preferring to pay the five-pound penalty for not serving rather than taking on this time-consuming and low-paying job.
Moses Levy was also one of New York’s earliest philanthropists, and in his giving he was laudably ecumenical. In 1711, he was one of seven New York Jews who contributed to a fund for the building of the steeple of the original Trinity Church, the landmark that today stands rebuilt at the head of Wall Street. In 1727, the affluence of Mr. Levy led to a minor misfortune, and to another “first” for Jews that was somewhat less auspicious. Moses Susman, also Jewish, robbed Mr. Levy of “gold, silver, money bags, rings &c,” and was caught red-handed. Little is known of Susman, whose name suggests that he was German, except that he spoke no English and possessed “no goods or Chattles Lands or Tenements.” The controversy between Susman and Levy may have been an instance of the hostilities that lingered between the older-arrived Sephardim and the newer-arriving Jews from northern Europe. In any case, Mr. Levy decided to deal sternly with the thief, and the court, finding him guilty, demanded the sentence that was in those days customary for men convicted of this crime—that Susman be “hanged by the neck till he be dead, and that he be hanged on Wednesday the twelfth of July between the hours of ten and eleven in the forenoon.” Thus Moses Susman achieved the dubious honor of being the first Jew in America to be executed. The record notes that a Mr. Noble was ordered paid “two pounds Current Money of New York” for erecting the gallows.
By the early 1700’s, two families, the Levys and the de Lucenas, had become easily the two most prominent Jewish families in New York. Abraham de Lucena, who started out trading with the Indians for pelts, soon became one of New York’s most important fur merchants and was among the major contributors when donors were sought for the purchase “in trust for the Jewish Nation” of the first Jewish Cemetery in the New Bowery. His son,* Abraham Haim de Lucena, was the second rabbi of the Shearith Israel congregation and was able to afford a large and comfortable house of stone—a sign of advanced status—with a view of the harbor.
Asser Levy, a “connection” of Moses Levy, offered a similar success story. Six years after reaching Manhattan on the Saint Charles, he had obtained a butcher’s license. By 1678 he had prospered sufficiently to build a slaughterhouse at the water gate at the bottom of Wall Street and, adjacent to this, he also opened a tavern. Levy’s Tavern was a popular spot because the proprietor was a cordial fellow who also extended a bit of credit here and there. Levy’s substantial house stood nearby. In 1671, Asser Levy loaned the Lutherans enough money to build their first American church. He owned the land on which the first synagogue was built, and helped support the congregation by charging them no rent. When Asser Levy died, in 1682, his estate was valued at the then princely sum of £53 in cash, plus considerable land and a large inventory of goods in which he traded as a sideline, including one otter skin and 504 Jew’s harps.
An even more important accomplishment of Asser Levy was that he had managed to form the first business partnership with a non-Jew that has been recorded in America, taking into the slaughterhouse, tavern and Jew’s harp business one Garret Janson Roos. Since there were only six licensed butchers in the city, each was required to take an oath of office. Mr. Roos took his oath “on the faith of a Christian.” Mr. Levy, however, took “the oath that Jews are accustomed to take,” and was also granted special permission “to be excused from killing hogs, as his religion does not allow him to do it.” Mr. Roos became head of the hog-killing department.
It must have seemed as though the golden era Jews had enjoyed in medieval Spain was about to return in the new world. Other families were rising to wealth and prominence and, with these, respectability. The Gomez family, wheat merchants, were rivaling the Levys and de Lucenas in importance, to the extent that when a Gomez son married Rebecca de Lucena, Abraham Haim de Lncena’s daughter, it was considered a match of two leading American families, of the highest social order. Gomezes also married Levys and de Leons and Nuneses and Hendrickses. In 1729, the Gomezes became the first Jews to advertise their products on any sort of scale, and the tiny weekly New York Gazette carried the following item:
All persons who sha
ll have occasion for good Stone-Lime next spring or summer, may be supplied with what Quantity they shall have occasion for by Lewis Gomez in the city of New-York, at a reasonable Price.
“You notice,” one of the Nathans commented in connection with this advertisement—for Nathans are descended from Gomezes, too—“what perfect English our family used, even then.”
* Possibly his grandson; the genealogical line is blurred at this point.
7
“GOMEZ, THE ONIONS BEGIN TO SMELL!”
“They walk with heads held high,” a contemporary writer said of the members of New York’s tiny (perhaps a hundred families in a city of ten thousand) eighteenth-century Jewish community. “These haughtiest of Chosen People must deem themselves the princes of the earth.” They may also have walked with a certain feeling of relief. Because, while families like the Gomezes were finding it possible to prosper in the new world, dark and frightening rumors drifted back to them from across the ocean—tales that their rabbis told them in the synagogue of what Jews who had elected to remain in Spain and Portugal were undergoing. Deep in the background of every American Jew’s conscience, throughout those Inquisitional years, was an awareness of what was happening to his relatives and coreligionists in the land the Jews called the Sepharad. It was a frustrating awareness, too, because those who had escaped the Inquisition could do absolutely nothing to help those who had not.
And, once the Inquisition had begun, there seemed to be no way to stop it. It grew like a malignant disease for nearly four hundred years, and when at last it died, its death was slow and hard and painful. It was founded in 1479, and the last public burning took place in 1781, but even then the Inquisition was not over. Executions continued under the Holy Office until as recently as 1826. The last man to hang was a young Valencian, who, in public prayer, was said to have uttered—witnesses swore they had heard him—a blasphemous “Praise be to God,” instead of the required “Ave Maria.” His body swung in the plaza mayor for all to see.
The Jews in America Trilogy Page 58