The Project Gutenberg eBook, History of the Jews in America, by Peter Wiernik

Note:

Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/historyofjewsina00wier

Transcriber’s Note

Punctuation has been standardized.

The text may show quotations within quotations, all set off by similar quote marks. The inner quotations have been changed to alternate quote marks for improved readability.

Footnotes are identified in the text with a superscript number and have been accumulated in a table at the end of the text.

Transcriber’s Notes are used when making corrections to the text or to provide additional information for the modern reader. These notes have been accumulated in a table at the end of the book and are identified in the text by a dotted underline and may be seen in a tool-tip by hovering the mouse over the underline.

History of the Jews in America

Ezekiel’s Statue of Religious Liberty
in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia.

HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN AMERICA

FROM THE PERIOD OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD TO THE PRESENT TIME

PETER WIERNIK

NEW YORK

The Jewish Press Publishing Company

1912

By THE JEWISH PRESS PUBLISHING CO.

PREFACE.

There were less than ten thousand Jews in the New World three centuries after its discovery, and about two-thirds of them lived in the West Indies and in Surinam or Dutch Guiana in South America. While the communities in those far-away places are now larger in membership than they were at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, their comparative importance is much diminished. The two or three thousand Jews who lived in North America or in the United States one hundred years ago have, on the other hand, increased to nearly as many millions, the bulk of them having come in the last three or four decades. On this account neither our conditions nor our problems can be thoroughly understood without the consideration of the actual present. The plan of other works of this kind, to devote only a short concluding chapter to the present time, or to leave it altogether for the future historian, could therefore not be followed in this work. The story would be less than half told, if attention were not paid to contemporary history.

The chief aim of the work—the first of its kind in this complete form—being to reach the ordinary reader who is interested in Jewish matters in a general way, original investigations and learned disquisitions were avoided, and it was not deemed advisable to overburden the book with too many notes or to provide a bibliographical apparatus. The plan and scope of the work are self evident; it was inevitable that a disproportionately large part should be devoted to the United States. The continuity of Jewish history is made possible only by the preservation of our identity as a religious community; local history really begins with the formation of a congregation. Each of the successive strata of immigration was originally represented by its own synagogues, and when the struggle to gain a foothold or to remove disabilities was over, communal activity was the only one which could properly be described as Jewish. Economic growth could have been entirely neglected, despite the present day tendency to consider every possible problem from the standpoint of economics. But the material well-being of the Jews of the earlier periods was an important factor in the preparation for the reception and easy absorption of the larger masses which came later, and this gives wealth a meaning which, in the hands of people who are less responsible for one another than Jews, it does not possess. The Marrano of the Seventeenth or the Eighteenth Century who brought here riches far in excess of what he found among the inhabitants in the places where he settled, would probably not have been admitted if he came as a poor immigrant, and his merit as a pioneer of trade and industry interests us because he assisted to make this country a place where hosts of men can come and find work to do. Without this only a small number could enjoy the liberty and equality which an enlightened republic vouchsafes to every newcomer without distinction of race or creed.

Still these absorbingly interesting early periods had to be passed over briefly, despite the wealth of available material, to keep within the bounds of a single volume, and to be able to carry out the plan of including in the narrative a comprehensive view of the near past and the present. While no excuse is necessary for making the latter part of the work longer than the earlier, though in most works the inequality is the other way, the author regrets the scarcity of available sources for the history of the Jewish immigration from Slavic countries other than Russia. There were times when German Jewish historians were reproached with neglecting the Jews of Russia. In those times there was a scarcity of necessary “Vorarbeiten” or preparation of material for the history of the Jews of that Empire. To-day, as far as the history of the Jewish immigrant in America is concerned, the scarcity is still greater as far as it concerns the Jews who came from Austria and Roumania.

The principal sources which were utilized in the preparation of this work are: The Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society (20 vols., 1893–1911), which are referred to as “Publications”; The Jewish Encyclopedia (Funk and Wagnalls, 12 vols., 1901–6); The Settlement of the Jews in North America, by Judge Charles P. Daly, edited by Max J. Kohler (New York, 1893), often referred to as “Daly”; The Hebrews in America, by Isaac Markens (New York, 1888); The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen, by the Hon. Simon Wolf, edited by Louis Edward Levy (Philadelphia, 1895). Other works, like Dr. Kayserling’s Christopher Columbus, Mr. Pierce Butler’s Judah P. Benjamin (of the American Crisis Biographies, Philadelphia, 1906) and the Rev. Henry S. Morais’ Jews of Philadelphia, were also drawn upon for much valuable material which they made accessible. All of these works were used to a larger extent than is indicated by the references or foot-notes, and my indebtedness to them is herewith gratefully acknowledged.

Where biographical dates are given after the name of a person born in a foreign country, the date of arrival in the New World is often fully as important as that of birth or death. This date is indicated in the text by an a., which stands for arrived, as b. stands for born and d. for died.

In conclusion I gladly record my obligation to Mr. Abraham S. Freidus of the New York Public Library for aid in the gathering of material; to Mr. Isaiah Gamble for re-reading of the proofs; to Mr. Samuel Vaisberg for seeing the work through the press, and to my sister, Bertha Wiernik, for assistance in the preparation of the index.

P. W., New York, July, 1912.

CONTENTS.

[INTRODUCTION]

PART I.

THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE PERIOD.

[CHAPTER] I.

THE PARTICIPATION OF JEWS IN THE DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD.

The Jew of Barcelona who has navigated the whole known world—Judah Cresques, “the Map Jew,” as director of the Academy of Navigation which was founded by Prince Henry the Navigator—One Jewish astronomer advises the King of Portugal to reject the plans of Columbus—Zacuto as one of the first influential men in Spain to encourage the discoverer of the New World—Abravanel, Senior and the Marranos Santangel and Sanchez who assisted Columbus—The voyage of discovery begun a day after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain—Luis de Torres and other Jews who went with Columbus—America discovered on “Hosannah Rabbah”—The Indians as the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel—Money taken from the Jews to defray the expenditure of the second voyage of Columbus—Vasco da Gama and the Jew Gaspar—Scrolls of the Thorah from Portugal sold in Cochin—Alphonse d’Albuquerque’s interpreter who returned to Judaism.

[CHAPTER] II.

EARLY JEWISH MARTYRS UNDER SPANISH RULE IN THE NEW WORLD.

Children torn from their parents were the first Jewish immigrants—Jewish history in the New World begins, as Jewish history in Spain ends, with the Inquisition—Emperor Charles V., Philip II. and Philip III.—Lutherans persecuted together with Jews and Mohamedans—Codification of the laws of the Inquisition, and its special edicts for the New World.

[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.

[CHAPTER] IV.

MARRANOS IN THE PORTUGUESE COLONIES.

Less persecution in Portugal itself and also in its colonies—Marranos buy right to emigrate—They dare to profess Judaism in Brazil, and the Inquisition is introduced in Goa—Alleged help given to Holland in its struggle against Spain.

PART II.

THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH COLONIAL PERIOD.

[CHAPTER] V.

THE SHORT-LIVED DOMINION OF THE DUTCH OVER BRAZIL.

The friendship between the Dutch and the Jews—Restrictions and privileges in Holland—Dutch-Jewish distributors of Indian spices—Preparations to introduce the Inquisition in Brazil—Jews help the Dutch to conquer it—Southey’s description of Recife—Vieyra’s description.

[CHAPTER] VI.

RECIFE: THE FIRST JEWISH COMMUNITY IN THE NEW WORLD.

The “Kahal Kodesh” of Recife or Pernambuco in Brazil—Manasseh ben Israel’s expectation to make it his home—Large immigration from Amsterdam—Isaac Aboab da Fonseca and his colleagues—First rabbis and Jewish authors of the New World—The siege and the surrender—The return, and the nucleus of other communities in various parts of America.

[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.

[CHAPTER] VIII.

THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH WEST INDIES.

The community of Curaçao—Encouragement to settle is followed by restrictions—Plans of Jewish colonization—Trade communication with New Amsterdam—Stuyvesant’s slur—The first congregation—Departures to North America and to Venezuela—Barbadoes—Taxation and legal status—Decay after the hurricane of 1831—Jamaica under Spain and under England—Hebrew taught in the Parish of St. Andrews in 1693—Harsh measures and excessive taxation—Naturalizations.

[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.

[CHAPTER] X.

NEW ENGLAND AND THE OTHER ENGLISH COLONIES.

The Old Testament spirit in New England—Roger Williams—The first Jew in Massachusetts—Judah Monis, instructor in Hebrew at Harvard—Newport—Jews from Holland bring there the first degrees of Masonry—The cemetery immortalized by Longfellow—Jacob Rodrigues Rivera introduces the manufacture of sperm oil—Aaron Lopez, the greatest merchant in America—Immigration from Portugal—Rabbi Isaac Touro—Visiting rabbis—First Jews in Connecticut—Philadelphia—Congregation Mickweh Israel—Easton’s wealthy Jews—Maryland—Dr. Jacob Lumbrozo—General Oglethorpe and the first Jews of Georgia—Joseph Ottolenghi—The Carolinas—Charleston.

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.

[CHAPTER] XII.

THE PARTICIPATION OF JEWS IN THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION.

Captain Isaac Meyers of the French and Indian War of 1754—David S. Franks and Isaac Franks—David Franks, the loyalist—Solomon and Lewis Bush—Major Benjamin Nones—Other Jewish Soldiers, of whom one was exempted from duty on Friday nights—The Pinto brothers—Commissary General Mordecai Sheftal of Georgia—Haym Salomon, the Polish Jew, and his financial assistance to the Revolution.

[CHAPTER] XIII.

THE DECLINE OF NEWPORT; WASHINGTON AND THE JEWS.

England’s special enmity to Newport caused the dispersion of its Jewish congregation—The General Assembly of Rhode Island meets in the historic Newport Synagogue—Moses Seixas’ address to Washington on behalf of the Jews of Newport and the latter’s reply—Washington’s letters to the Hebrew Congregations of Savannah, Ga., and to the congregations of Philadelphia, New York, Richmond and Charleston.

[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.

[CHAPTER] XV.

THE QUESTION OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN VIRGINIA AND IN NORTH CAROLINA.

Little change in the basic systems of State institutions—Patrick Henry, Madison and Jefferson on religious liberty in Virginia—The similarity between the Virginia statute and the conclusions of Moses Mendelssohn pointed out by Count Mirabeau—The first congregation of Richmond—Article 32 of the Constitution of North Carolina against Catholics, Jews, etc.—How Jacob Henry, a Jewish member of the Legislature, defended and retained his seat in 1809—Judge Gaston’s interpretation—The first congregation of Wilmington, N. C.—Final emancipation in 1868.

[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.

[CHAPTER] XVII.

MORDECAI MANUEL NOAH AND HIS TERRITORIALIST-ZIONISTIC PLANS.

Noah’s family; his youth and his early successes as journalist and as dramatist—His appointment as Consul in Tunis and his recall—His insistence that the United States is not a Christian nation—Editor and playwright, High-Sheriff and Surveyor of the Port of New York—His invitation to the Jews of the world to settle in the City of Refuge which he was to found on Grand Island—Impressive ceremonies in Buffalo which were the beginning and the end of “Ararat”—His “Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews”—Short career on the bench—Jewish activities.

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.

[CHAPTER] XIX.

NEW SETTLEMENTS IN THE MIDDLE WEST AND ON THE PACIFIC COAST.

Increase in general immigration—Estimated increase in the number of Jews—The natural dispersion of small traders over the country—Chicago—First congregations and other communal institutions—Indiana—Iowa: Polish Jews settle in Keokuk and German Jews in Davenport—Minnesota—Wisconsin—Congregation “Bet El” of Detroit, Mich.—The first “minyan” of gold seekers in San Francisco—“Mining congregations”—Solomon Heydenfeldt—Portland, Oregon.

[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.

[CHAPTER] XXI.

THE RELIGIOUS REFORM MOVEMENT.

Political liberalism and religious radicalism of the German Jewish immigrant—The struggle with Orthodoxy hardly more than an animated controversy—No attempt made here by the Temple to swallow the Synagogue, as was the case in Germany—The first Reformers of Charleston, S. C.—Isaac Leeser, the conservative leader, the first to make a serious effort to adjust Judaism to American surroundings—Dr. Max Lilienthal—Isaac M. Wise, the energetic organizer of Reform Judaism—Dr. David Einhorn—Dr. Samuel Adler—Bernhard Felsenthal—Samuel Hirsch.

[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.

[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.

PART V.

THE CIVIL WAR AND THE FORMATIVE PERIOD.

[CHAPTER] XXIV.

THE DISCUSSION ABOUT SLAVERY. LINCOLN AND THE JEWS.

Pro-slavery tendencies of the aristocratic Spaniards and Portuguese—David Yulee (Levy)—Michael Heilprin and his reply to Rabbi Raphall’s Bible View on Slavery—Immigrants of the second period as opponents of slavery—Two Jewish delegates in the Convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln, and one member of the Electoral College in 1860—Two other Jews officially participate in Lincoln’s renomination and re-election in 1864—Abraham Jonas—Encouragement from the Scripture in original Hebrew.

[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.

[CHAPTER] XXVI.

DISTINGUISHED SERVICES OF JEWS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE STRUGGLE.

More “brothers in arms” and a larger proportion of officers in the Confederate Army than in that of the North, because most Southern Jews were natives of the country—Some distinguished officers—A gallant private who later became a rabbi—Paucity of Southern records—Generals Knefler, Solomon, Blumenberg, Joachimsen and other officers of high rank in the Union Army—New York ranks first, Ohio second and Illinois third in the number of Jews who went to the front—Two Pennsylvania regiments which started with Jewish colonels—Commodore Uriah P. Levy, the ranking officer of the United States navy at the time of the outbreak of the war, is prevented by age from taking part in it.

[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.

[CHAPTER] XXVIII.

NEW SYNAGOGUES AND TEMPLES. IMMIGRATION FROM RUSSIA PRIOR TO 1880.

Continued increase in the wealth and importance of the German-Jewish congregations—New and spacious synagogues and temples erected in various parts of the country in the “sixties” and the “seventies”—Problems of Russian-Jewish immigration prior to 1880—Economic condition of the Jewish masses in Russia worse in the “golden era” than under Nicholas I.—Emigration from Russia after the famine of 1867–68 and after the pogrom of Odessa in 1871—Presumption of the existence of a Hebrew reading public in New York in 1868—The first Hebrew and Yiddish periodicals.

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.

[CHAPTER] XXX.

COMMUNAL AND RELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES AMONG THE NEW COMERS.

Congregational and social activities among the new comers—Ephemeral organizations—The striving after professional education—Synagogues as the most stable of the new establishments—“Landsleut” congregations—The first efforts to consolidate the Orthodox community of New York—The Federation of Synagogues—Chief Rabbi Jacob Joseph—Other “chief rabbis” in Chicago and Boston—Prominent Orthodox rabbis in many cities—Dr. Philip Klein—The short period in which the cantor was the most important functionary in the Orthodox synagogue—Synagogues change hands, but are rarely abandoned.

[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.

[CHAPTER] XXXII.

THE LABOR MOVEMENT AND NEW LITERARY ACTIVITIES.

Difficulty of securing data for the history of the Labor Movement among Jewish immigrants—John R. Commons’ characterization of a Jewish labor union—A constantly changing army of followers under the same leaders—The movement under the control of the radical press—The leaders as journalists and literary men—They popularize the press and teach the rudiments of politics—The voter—The “Heften”—Neo-Hebrew periodicals—The Yiddish stylists—The plight of the Hebraists.

[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.

[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.

[CHAPTER] XXXV.

END OF THE CENTURY. THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. THE DREYFUS AFFAIR. ZIONISM.

Jews in the Spanish-American war—Commissioned and non-commissioned officers, privates and “Rough Riders”—Jews in the Navy: Simon Cook, Joseph Strauss and Edward David Taussig—The career of Rear-Admiral Adolph Marix—His part in the Inquiry about the “Maine” and in the war—The significance of the Dreyfus Affair—Its influence on the spread of Zionism—The American press almost as pro-Dreyfus as the Jewish—The Zionist movement in America—The rank and file consists of immigrants from Slavic countries, under the leadership of Americans.

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.

[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.

[CHAPTER] XXXVIII.

THE AMERICAN-JEWISH COMMITTEE. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND FEDERATIONS.

Formation of the American Jewish Committee—Its first fifteen members and its membership in 1911—The experimental Kehillah organizations—The re-organized Jewish Theological Seminary—Faculty of the Hebrew Union College—The Dropsie College of Hebrew and Cognate Learning—The Rabbi Joseph Jacob School—Other Orthodox “Yeshibot”—Talmud Torahs and “Chedarim”—Hebrew Institutes—They become more Jewish because other agencies now do the work of Americanizing the immigrant—Technical Schools—Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Associations—Federations of various kinds.

[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.

[CHAPTER] XL.

JEWS IN SOUTH AMERICA, MEXICO AND CUBA.

The first “minyan” in Buenos Ayres, Argentine, in 1861—Estimate of the Jewish population in Argentine—Occupations and economic condition of the various groups—Kosher meat and temporary synagogues as indications of the religious conditions—Communities in twenty-six other cities—The Agricultural Colonies—Brazil—The rumor that General Floriano Peixotto, the second president of the new Republic, was of Jewish origin—Communities in several cities—The Colony Philippson—Jews in Montevido, Uruguay—Other South American Republics—Isidor Borowski, who fought under Bolivar—Panama—Moroccan Jews are liked by Peru Indians—About ten thousand Jews in Mexico—Slowly increasing number in Cuba, where Jews help to spread the American influence.

[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.

[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.”

[CHAPTER] XLIII.

YIDDISH LITERATURE, DRAMA AND THE PRESS.

Yiddish poets of the United States equal, if they do not excell, the poets of the same tongue in other countries—Morris Rosenfeld—“Yehoash” and Sharkansky—Bovshoer and other radicals—Zunser—Old fashioned novelists—The sketch writers who are under the influence of the Russian realistic writers—Abner Tannenbaum—Alexander Harkavy—“Krantz,” Hermalin, Zevin and others—Abraham Goldfaden and the playwrights who followed him—Jacob Gordin and the realists—Yiddish actors and actresses—The Yiddish Press—The high position attained by the dailies—Weekly and monthly publications.

[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.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

[Frontispiece] (Ezekiel’s Statue of Religious Liberty)

[Col. Isaac Franks]

[Judah Touro]

[Rabbi Isaac Leeser]

[Dr. Isaac M. Wise]

[Rabbi Sabato Morais]

[Dr. Marcus Jastrow]

[Michael Heilprin]

[Lewis N. Dembitz]

[Judah P. Benjamin]

[Hon. Simon Wolf]

[Commodore Uriah P. Levy]

[Julius Bien]

[Kasriel H. Sarasohn]

[Emma Lazarus]

[Herman Rosenthal]

[Chief Rabbi Jacob Joseph]

[Miss Sadie American]

[Prof. Gotthard Deutsch]

[Hon. Jacob H. Schiff]

[Hon. Oscar S. Straus]

[Judge Mayer Sulzberger]

[Hon. Benjamin Selling]

[Prof. Solomon Schechter]

[Martha Wolfenstein]

[Mordecai Manuel Noah]

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.

PART I.
THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE PERIOD.

CHAPTER I.

THE PARTICIPATION OF JEWS IN THE DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD.

In the days when Church and State were one and indissoluble, and when all large national enterprises, such as wars or the search for new dominions by means of discovery, were undertaken avowedly in the name and for the glory of the Catholic religion, it could not have been expected that governments will make an effort to protect international trade as long as it was in Jewish hands. We must therefore go as far back as to the first half of the 14th century to find a record of Jews who went to sea on their own account in an independent way. According to the great authority on the subject of this chapter (Dr. M. Kayserling, “Christopher Columbus and the participation of the Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese Discoveries,” English translation by the late Prof. Charles Gross of Harvard University) Jaime III., the last king of Mallorca, testified in 1334 that Juceff Faquin, a Jew of Barcelona, “has navigated the whole then known world.” About a century later we find again a Jew prominently identified with navigation; but in this instance he is a scientific teacher, in the employ of an energetic prince who considered navigation as a national project of the greatest moment. Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (1394–1460), who helped his father to capture Ceuta, in North Africa, and there “obtained information from Jewish travellers concerning the south coast of Guinea and the interior of Africa”, established a naval academy or school of navigation at the Villa do Iffante or Sagres, a seaport town which he caused to be built. He appointed as its director Mestre Jaime of Mallorca whose real name was Jafuda (Judah) Cresques, the son of Abraham Cresques of Palma, the capital of Mallorca. Jafuda was known as “the Map Jew,” and a map which he prepared for King Juan I. of Aragon and was presented by the latter to the King of France, is preserved in the National Library of Paris.[2] He became the teacher of the Portuguese in the art of navigation as well as in the manufacture of nautical instruments and maps. In this work he had no superior in his day.

While this Jewish scholar helped the Portuguese to many notable achievements in their daring voyages, another one, at a later period, was almost the direct cause of their being overtaken by the Spaniards in the race for new discoveries. For it was Joseph Vecinho, physician to King João, of Portugal, considered by the high court functionaries to be the greatest authority in nautical matters, who influenced the King to reject the plan submitted by Christopher Columbus (1446?–1506), and thereby caused the latter to leave Portugal for Spain in 1484.

Columbus came to Spain when Ferdinand and Isabella, with the aid of the newly introduced Inquisition, were despoiling the wealthy Marranos, who were burned at the stake in large numbers. The last war with the Moors had already begun.

Another and more famous Jewish scholar was to make amends for whatever suffering was caused to the great discoverer by Vecincho’s fatal advice. Abraham Ben Samuel Zacuto, who was born in Salamanca, Spain, about the middle of the 15th century and died an exile in Turkey after 1510, was famous as an astronomer and mathematician, and in his capacity as one of the leading professors in the university of his native city was formerly the teacher of the above named Vecinho. He was more discerning than his pupil, and when he learned to know Columbus, soon after the latter’s arrival in Spain, he encouraged him personally and also gave him his almanacs and astronomical tables, which were a great help in the voyage of discovery. Zacuto was among the first influential men in Spain to favor the plans of Columbus, and his favorable report caused Ferdinand and Isabella to take him into their service in 1487. The explorer was then ordered to proceed to Malaga, which was captured several weeks before, and there made the acquaintance of the two most prominent Jews of Spain in that time—the chief farmer of taxes, Abraham Senior, and Don Isaac Abravanel. These two men were provisioning the Spanish armies which operated against the Moors, and were in high favor at Court. Abravanel was one of the first to render financial assistance to Columbus.

Louis de Santangel and other Marranos interposed in favor of Columbus when he was about to go to France in January, 1492, because Ferdinand refused to make him Viceroy and Life-Governor of all the lands which he might discover. Santangel’s pleadings with Isabella were especially effective, and when the question of funds remained the only obstacle to be overcome, he who was saved from the stake by the King’s grace at the time when several other members of the Santangel family perished, advanced a loan of seventeen thousand florins—nearly five million maravedis—to finance the entire project. Account books in which the transfer of money from Santangel to Columbus, through the Bishop of Avila, who afterwards became the Archbishop of Granada, were recorded, are still preserved in the Archive de India of Seville, Spain.

“After the Spanish monarchs had expelled all the Jews from all their Kingdoms and lands in April, in the same month they commissioned me to undertake the voyage to India”—writes Christopher Columbus. This refers to the Decree of Expulsion, but the coincidence of the actual happening was still more remarkable. The expulsion took place on the second day of August, 1492, which occurred on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Ab, the day on which, according to the Jewish tradition, is the anniversary of the destruction of both the first Holy Temple of Jerusalem in the year 586 B. C. and also of the second Temple at the hands of the Romans in the year 70 C. E. The day, known as “Tishah be’Ab,” was observed as a day of mourning and lamentation among the Jews of the Diaspora in all countries and is still so observed by the Orthodox everywhere to this day. Columbus sailed on his momentous voyage on the day after—the third of August. The boats which were carrying away throngs of the expatriated and despairing Jews from the country which they loved so well and in which their ancestors dwelt for more than eight centuries, sighted that little fleet of three sailing craft which was destined to open up a new world for the oppressed of many races, where at a later age millions of Jews were to find a free home under the protection of laws which were unthought of in those times.

Neither all the names nor even the number of men who accompanied Columbus on his first voyage are known to posterity. Some authorities place the number at 120, others as low as 90. But among the names which came down to us are those of several Jews, the best known among them being Louis de Torres, who was baptized shortly before he joined Columbus. Torres knew Hebrew, Chaldaic and some Arabic, and was taken along to be employed as an interpreter between the travellers and the natives of the parts of India which Columbus expected to reach by crossing the Ocean. Others of Jewish stock whose names were preserved are: Alfonso de Calle, Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, the physician Maestro Bernal and the surgeon Marco.

Land was sighted October 12, 1492, on “Hosannah Rabbah” (the seventh day of the Jewish Feast of the Booths), and Louis de Torres, who was sent ashore with one companion to parley with the inhabitants, was thus the first white man to step on the ground of the New World. As the place proved to be not the Kingdom of the Great Khan which Columbus had set out to reach, but an island of the West Indies, with a strange hitherto unknown race of copper-colored men, it is needless to say that the linguistic attainments of the Jewish interpreter availed him very little. After he managed to make himself somewhat understood, he was favorably impressed with the new country and finally settled for the remainder of his life in Cuba. He was the first discoverer of tobacco, which was through him introduced into the Old World. It is also believed that in describing in a Hebrew letter to a Marrano in Spain the odd gallinaceous bird which he first saw in his new abode, he gave it the name “Tukki” (the word in Kings I, 10 v. 22, which is commonly translated peacock) and that this was later corrupted into “turkey,” by which name it is known to the English-speaking world.

It may also be remarked, in passing, that the belief identifying the red race which was surnamed Indian with the lost ten tribes of Israel, began to be entertained by many people, especially scholars and divines, soon after the discovery of America. It attained the dignity of a theory in the middle of the 17th century when Thorowgood published his work: “The Jews in America; or, Probabilities that the Americans are of that Race.” (London, 1650.) This view was supported among our own scholars by no less an authority than Manasseh Ben Israel, who wrote on the same subject in his “Esperança de Israel” which was published in Amsterdam in the same year.

Columbus wrote the first reports of his wonderful discovery to Louis de Santangel and to Gabriel Sanchez. The letter to the first is dated February 15, 1493, and was written on the return voyage, near the Azores or the Canaries.

It was decreed by a royal order of November 23, 1492, that the authorities were to confiscate for the State Treasury all property which had belonged to the Jews, including that which Christians had taken from them or had appropriated unlawfully or by violence. This gave Ferdinand sufficient means to provide for the second voyage of Columbus (March 23, 1493). The King and the Queen signed a large number of injunctions to royal officers in Soria, Zamora, Burgos and many other cities, directing them to secure immediate possession of all the precious metals, gold and silver utensils, jewels, gems and other objects of value that had been taken from the Jews who were expelled from Spain or had migrated to Portugal, and everything that these Jews had entrusted for safe keeping to Marrano, relatives or friends, and all Jewish possession which Christians had found or had unlawfully appropriated. The royal officers were later ordered to convert this property into ready money and to give the proceeds to the treasurer, Francisco Pinelo, in Seville, to meet the expenditure of Columbus’ second expedition.

One of the specific instances of these confiscations which deserves to be mentioned, is the order to Bernardino de Lerma to transfer to Pinelo all the gold, silver and various other things which Rabbi Ephraim (who is sometimes referred to in contemporary documents as Rabi Frayn, also as Rubifrayn, and who was perhaps the father of the great Rabbi Joseph Caro, author of the Shulhan Aruk, etc.), the richest Jew in Burgos, had before emigrating left with Isabel Osoria, the wife of Louis Nunez Coronel of Zamora. Not merely the clothing, ornaments and valuables which had been taken from the Jews were converted into money, but also the debts which they had been unable to recover were declared by order of the Crown to be forfeited to the state treasury, and stringent measures were adopted to collect them. A moderate estimate places the sum thus obtained at six million maravedis, to which ought to be added the two millions contributed by the Inquisition of Seville as a part of the enormous sums which it wrested from Jews and Moors. According to another order, issued in the above-named date, it was from this Jewish money that Columbus was paid the ten thousand maravedis which the Spanish monarchs had promised as a reward to him who should first sight land.[3]

In the days of suffering and disgrace which came to Columbus after his discoveries, Santangel and Sanchez remained faithful to him and often interceded in his behalf with Ferdinand and Isabella. They both died in 1505, about one year before the great discoverer whose success they made possible. Their immediate descendants occupied high positions in the royal service.

Columbus was not the only renowned discoverer of that time who was directly and indirectly assisted by Jews. The great and cruel Vasco da Gama, who did for Portugal almost as much as Columbus did for Spain, could hardly have carried out his important undertakings without the help of at least two Jews. One of them was the above-mentioned Abraham Zacuto, who, like many of his unfortunate brethren, went from Spain to Portugal after the calamity of 1492. He was highly favored by King João and by his successor, Dom Manuel, and the latter consulted him on the advisability of sending out under Vasco da Gama’s command the flotilla of four boats which was to reach India by the way of Cape of Good Hope. Zacuto pointed out the dangers which would have to be encountered, but gave it as his opinion that the plan was feasible and predicted that it would result in the subjection of a large part of India to the Portuguese crown. Zacuto’s works and the instruments which he invented and made available materially facilitated the execution of the enterprises of Vasco da Gama and other explorers. As in the case of Columbus and Spain, da Gama sailed in the year of the expulsion of the Jews from the country which fitted out his expedition (1497). When he returned Zacuto was an exile in Tunis, though he probably could have remained in Portugal, just as Abravanel could have remained in Spain.

It was during his return voyage to Europe, while staying at the little island of Anchevide, sixty miles from Goa (off the Indian coast of Malabar) that Vasco da Gama met the second Jew who became very useful to him and to Portugal. A tall European with a long white beard approached his ship in a boat with a small crew. He had been sent by his master, Sabayo, the Moorish ruler of Goa, to negotiate with the foreign navigator. He was a Jew who, according to some chronicles, came from Posen, according to others from Granada, whose parents had emigrated to Turkey and Palestine. From Alexandria, which some give as his birthplace, he proceeded across the Red Sea to Mecca and thence to India. Here he was a long time in captivity, and later was made admiral (capitao mór) by Sabayo.

The Portuguese were overjoyed “to hear so far from home a language closely related to their native speech.” But he was soon suspected of being a spy and was forced by torture to join the expedition and—as a matter of course—to embrace Christianity. The admiral acted as his godfather and his name came down to us as Gaspar da Gama or Gaspar de las Indias. He was brought to Portugal, where he was favored by King Manuel and “rendered inestimable service to Vasco da Gama and several later commanders.” He accompanied Pedro Alvarez Cobral on the expedition in 1500 which led to the independent discovery of Brazil, which became a Portuguese possession. On the return voyage Gaspar met Amerigo Vespucci, who received much information from him and mentions him as a linguist and traveller who is trustworthy and knows much about the interior of India.

On another expedition in which he accompanied his godfather in 1502, Gaspar found his wife in Cochin. She had remained true to him and to Judaism since he was carried away by the Portuguese, but probably both of them considered it unsafe for her to join him. He again journeyed to Cochin in 1505 in the retinue of the first Viceroy of India, which also included the son of Dr. Martin Pinheiro, the Judge of the Supreme Court of Lisbon. The young Pinheiro carried along a chest filled with “Torah” scrolls which were taken from the recently destroyed synagogues of Portugal. Gaspar’s wife negotiated the sale in Cochin, “where there were many Jews and synagogues,” obtaining four thousand parados for thirteen scrolls. The viceroy later confiscated the proceeds for the state treasury and sent an account of the whole affair to Lisbon.

Another Portuguese commander and governor of India, Alphonse d’Albuquerque, obtained much information and valuable assistance from his interpreter, a Jew from Castille whom he induced to embrace Christianity and to assume the name Francisco d’Albuquerque. His companion Cufo or Hucefe underwent the same change of religion and visited Lisbon, but soon found himself in danger and escaped to Cairo, where he again openly professed Judaism.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY JEWISH MARTYRS UNDER SPANISH RULE IN THE NEW WORLD.

We have seen in the preceding chapter that the Jews were expelled forever from Spain and Portugal at the time when these two nations, with considerable assistance from professing and converted Jews, discovered the New World and took possession of it. Nothing could therefore have been farther from the thoughts and the hopes of the Jews of those dark days than the idea that America was to be, in a far-away future, the first Christian country to grant its Jewish inhabitants full citizenship and absolute equality before the law. For nearly a century and a half no professing Jew dared to tread upon American soil, and even the secret Jews or Marranos were as much in danger in the newly-planted colonies as in the mother countries under whose rule they remained for a long time.

The first Jewish immigrants in the New World were children who were torn away from the arms of their parents at the time of the expulsions, and even they were persecuted as soon as they grew up. The Marranos who sought a refuge in America in these early days were soon followed by the same agencies of persecution which made life a burden to them in their old home. We meet in America for more than a century after its discovery almost the same conditions as in Spain and Portugal after the Jews were exiled. Where the history of the Jews in Spain ends—says Dr. Kayserling—the history of the Jews in America begins. The Inquisition is the last chapter in the record of the confessors of Judaism on the Pyrenean peninsula and its first chapter in the western hemisphere. The Nuevos Christianos concealed their faith, or were able to conceal it, as little in the New World as in the mother country. With astonishing tenacity, nay, with admirable obstinacy, they clung to the religion of their fathers; it was not a rare occurrence that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the martyred Jews sanctified the Sabbath in a most conscientious manner, by refraining from work as far as possible and by wearing their best clothing. They also celebrated the Jewish Festivals, observed the Day of Atonement by fasting, and married according to the Jewish customs. They clung to their faith and suffered for it even as late as the eighteenth century, which means that the Jewish religion was handed down secretly and preserved in the seventh and eighth generation after the exile. Many went to the stake or died in the prisons of the Inquisition in the New World; many others were transported in groups to Spain and Portugal and gave up their lives as martyrs in Seville, Toledo, Evora or Lisbon. Their religious heroism will be apparent in all its magnitude when the immense documentary material which is heaped up in the archives of Spain and Portugal, and other places on this side of the ocean, will have been sifted and worked up. (“Publications,” II, p. 73.)

Intolerance reigned supreme in America almost immediately after its colonization, and the secret Jews who settled there were not permitted to enjoy peace or prosperity. Juan Sanchez of Saragossa, whose father was burnt at the stake, was the first to obtain permission of the Spanish government to trade with the newly-discovered lands. In 1502 Isabella permitted him to take five caravels loaded with wheat, barley, horses and other wares to Española (Little Spain, the large West Indian Island containing Haiti and Santo Domingo), without paying duty. In 1504 he was again permitted to export merchandise to that country. Other secret Jews went to the new places and settled there, some even obtaining positions in the public service. As early as 1511 we hear already of measures taken by Isabella’s daughter, Queen Juana of Castille, against “the sons and grandsons of the burned” who held public office. The Inquisition was introduced there by a decree of that year, and one of its first victims was Diego Caballera of Barrameda, whose parents, according to two witnesses, had been prosecuted and condemned by the same tribunal in Spain.

The Inquisitor-General of Spain, Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros, on May 7, 1516, appointed Fray Juan Quevedo, Bishop of Cuba, his delegate for the Kingdom of Terra Firma, as the mainland of Spanish America was then called, and authorized him to select personally such officials as he needed to hunt down and exterminate the Marranos. Emperor Charles V. (1500–1558), with the permission of his former teacher, Cardinal Hadrian (1459–1523), the Dutch Grand-Inquisitor of Aragon who later became Pope (Hadrian or Adrian VI. 1522–23), issued an edict on May 25, 1520, whereby he ordained Alfonso Manso, Bishop of Porto Rico, and Pedro de Cordova, Vice Provincial of the Dominicans, as Inquisitors for the Indies and the islands of the ocean.

At first the secret Jews were not the only victims of the persecutions and not even the most numerous among them. “There were many heathenish natives who were forcibly converted by the mighty clerical arm of the Spanish conqueror, but who nevertheless remained at heart loyal to their hereditary belief and practised their idolatrous customs with as much zeal as the fear of discovery and consequent punishment would allow.” Fiendish atrocities were committed in the name of religion against those Indian Marranos, and the fearful persecutions depopulated the country to such an extent that the tyrants themselves perceived that they must desist.

The Inquisition in Spain itself had, however, fallen more or less into desuetude during the reign of the above-mentioned Emperor Charles V., who was the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, and had inherited their Spanish and American possessions. It was revived and invigorated under the more bigoted rule of his son, King Philip II. (1527–1598), who ascended the Spanish throne in 1556, after his father’s abdication. Under the new reign the laws of the Inquisition were codified and promulgated at Madrid on September 2, 1561. A printed copy of the new code was sent to America in 1569. Another document, dated February 5, 1569, issued by Cardinal Diego de Spinosa, General Apostolic Inquisitor against Heresy, Immorality and Apostasy, addressed “to the Reverend Inquisitors Apostolic ... in his Majesty’s Dominions and Seignories of the Provinces of Piru (Peru), New Spain and the new Kingdom of Granada and the other provinces and Bishoprics of the Indies of the Ocean” consists of forty sections prescribing the rules of procedure. (See Elkan Nathan Adler, The Inquisition in Peru, Publications XII, pp. 5–37.)

A later document containing the general edicts to be read on the third Sunday of Lent and the fourth Sunday of Anathema in every third year in the Cathedral of Lima and all the towns of the districts, was printed in Peru itself shortly after 1641, and records the names of the places which were included in the jurisdiction of those issuing it. It reads: “We, the Inquisitors against Heresy, Immorality and Apostasy in this city and Archbishopric of Los Reyes (Lima) with the Archbishopric of Los Charcas and Bishoprics of Quito, Cuzco, Rio de la Plata, Paraguay, Tucuman, Santiago and Concepcion of the Dominions of Chile, la Paz (Bolivia), Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Guamanga, Areguipa, and Truxillo, and in all the Dominions, Estates and Seignories of the Provinces of Peru, and its Viceroyalty Government and district of the Royal Audiencias thereto appertaining.” In this document we find the name of a new Christian sect which is to be punished for heresy together with the unbelievers who were known to the Inquisition of the earlier period. Lutherans are now enumerated among heretics after the Jews and the Mohamedans. Among the books and engravings which are considered as heretical and indecent are mentioned the books of Martin Luther and other heretics, the Alcoran or other Mohamedan books, “Biblias en romance” (Bibles in the vernacular) and others prohibited by the censorships and catalogues of the Holy Office, etc. Then follow lengthy descriptions of how to detect Jews, Mohamedans and Lutherans; and in the case of the first even the drinking of Kosher wine and the making of a “berakah” or pronouncing a blessing before tasting it are not omitted from the practices which characterized the secret Jew whom the Inquisition was to discover and punish.

But it seems that the Marranos came to America in large numbers despite all the severity of Philip II. His son Philip III. (1578–1621), who succeeded him in 1598, endeavored to prevent their emigrating to the New World and issued in the beginning of the seventeenth century, the following edict:

“We command and decree that no one recently converted to our holy faith, be he Jew or Moor, or the offspring of these, should settle in our Indies without our distinct permission. Furthermore we forbid most emphatically the immigration into New Spain of any one [who is at the expiration of some prescribed penance] newly reconciled with the Church; of the child or grandchild of any person who has ever worn the ‘san benito’ publicly; of the child or grandchild of any person who was either burnt as a heretic or otherwise punished for the crime of heresy, through either male or female descent. Should any one [falling under this category] presume to violate this law, his goods will be confiscated for the benefit of the royal treasury, and upon him the full measure of our grace or disgrace shall fall, so that under any circumstances and for all time he shall be banished from our Indies. Whosoever does not possess personal effects, however, should atone for his transgression by the public infliction of one hundred lashes.”

This characteristic specimen of anti-immigration legislation of three centuries ago, including what would in the colloquialism of to-day be called a “grandfather clause,” was the cause of much suffering; but it is not possible to state with any degree of certainty how far it was effective. It is probable that the number of Marranos in the “Indies” which belonged to the King of Spain went on increasing until about the middle of the seventeenth century, when certain territories were for the first time opened for them in the New World where they could practise Judaism openly.

CHAPTER III.

VICTIMS OF THE INQUISITION IN MEXICO AND IN PERU.

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 IV.

MARRANOS IN THE PORTUGUESE COLONIES.

While the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal, which took place five years after the great expulsion from Spain, was in many respects more cruel and accompanied by greater atrocities, notable among which were the forced conversions and the robbing of children from their Jewish parents to be brought up as Christians, the conditions in the Portuguese colonies, including Brazil, were somewhat more favorable for the reception of Jewish refugees than in the Spanish possessions of the New World. This happened because the conditions in Portugal itself were much more favorable to the Jews prior to the era of expulsions, and the sudden severity against the Jews in 1497, which was almost unexpected, was due to the influence of the Spanish rulers. It was Queen Isabella of Spain who prevailed on King Manuel of Portugal (reigned 1495–1521), her future son-in-law, to exile the Jews of his dominion, vowing she would never set foot on Portuguese soil until the country was clear of them.

In the preceding centuries the Jews, though they were recognized and treated as a separate nation in Portugal even more than in Spain, their condition when judged by the standards of the dark ages was much more favorable and well nigh secure. There are no records of systematic persecutions in Portugal before the exile from Spain. The influence of the Church grew much more slowly in the former country, and its kings followed the old Spanish policy of protecting the Jews and Moors against the encroachments of the clergy long after it was abandoned by Spain. Marranos and other Jews who escaped from the Inquisition to Portugal before the Spanish expulsion were—because the King did not want or did not dare to harbor them—permitted to go to the Orient but not to Africa, because in the latter place they could become dangerous to him as allies of the Moors. So it came to pass that while in the more extensive Spanish domains across the Atlantic we hear only of individual crypto-Jewish settlers and more of their misfortunes and the Autos da Fé of which they were the victims, than of their successes, we learn of considerable settlements of Marranos in Brazil early in the sixteenth century.

But even the better conditions in the Portuguese territories must not be taken in the sense which such a term would imply to-day or even a hundred years ago. The Portuguese policy was cruel and vaccillating, only a little less so than that of its larger and more consistent neighbor. King Manuel forbade the neo-Christians, in 1499, to leave Portugal, the prohibition was removed in 1507 and again put into effect in 1521. His successor John III. (reigned 1521–57) was even less favorably disposed towards the secret Jews who remained in his Kingdom, and in 1531 the Inquisition was introduced there by the authorization of Pope Clement VII. The Marranos bought from John’s successor King Sebastian (reigned 1557–78) the right of free departure for the sum of 250,000 ducats. But there were other involuntary departures in the periods when the emigration of those suspected converts was prohibited. For a considerable time in the 16th century Portugal sent annually two shiploads of Jews and criminals to Brazil, and also deported persons who had been condemned by the Inquisition. The banishment of large numbers to Brazil in 1548 is especially mentioned.

Jews or Marranos were soon settled in all the Portuguese colonies, and they carried on an extensive trade with various countries. “As early as 1548 (according to some, 1531) Portuguese Jews, it is asserted, transplanted the sugar-cane from Madeira to Brazil.” Some of them began to feel so secure that they dared to profess Judaism openly. The result was the introduction of the Inquisition into Goa, the metropolis of the Portuguese dominions in India, with jurisdiction over all the possessions of that country in Asia and Africa, as far as the Cape of Good Hope. It was therefore but natural for the hunted and despairing new-Christians to sympathize with the Dutch who were at that time (beginning at 1567) fighting for their freedom, and to help them later against Portugal itself in the New World and in the Far East. The charge that the Marranos of the Indies sent considerable supplies to the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Hamburg and Aleppo, who in turn forwarded them to Holland and Zeeland, is probably not true. But the act would have certainly been justified in times when the Marranos were legally burned alive when convicted of adhesion to the religion of their forefathers. The charge also proves that the Jews and Marranos of various and distant countries were then believed to be in communication, and to render assistance to one another or to their friends when the occasion required it. We may recognize in such charges the false accusations which were circulated about Jews from times immemorial to our present day; but it nevertheless tends to prove that the Jews retained some recognizable importance as international traders even in times when their fortunes were at the lowest ebb.

Except for the brief period in the 17th century (which is dealt with more extensively in a subsequent chapter), in which Brazil came under the domination of the Dutch, it remained almost entirely free of Jews until the present time. The time was approaching when liberal and enterprising nations, pursuing a more enlightened and more profitable policy, were beginning to grant the Jewish refugee not only shelter and security, but also the religious liberty and broad human tolerance which were almost unknown in the Catholic countries in the Middle Ages. The dawn of a new era began for the Jews in Europe with the ascendency, first of Holland and then of England, and the Children of Israel were soon to share openly in the invaluable benefits which the discovery of the New World brought to mankind in general.

PART II.
THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH COLONIAL PERIOD.

CHAPTER V.

THE SHORT-LIVED DOMINION OF THE DUTCH OVER BRAZIL.

The United Provinces of Netherland, or, as it is commonly called, Holland, became a safe place for Jews as soon as the Union of Utrecht (1579) made its independence reasonably secure. When the liberator of these provinces, William of Orange (“The Silent,” 1533–84), was installed as Stadtholder in 1581 he declared that “he should not suffer any man to be called to account, molested or injured for his faith or conscience.” This implied, and actually resulted in, better treatment of the Jews, which led to their enjoying a larger degree of prosperity and security in Holland in the following century than anywhere else. The friendship between the Jews and the Dutch which commenced at that period has never, unto this day, been marred by systematic persecution or any retrogressive step. It proved mutually beneficial in various parts of the world, and has cost Spain and Portugal much more than is ordinarily known even to students of History.[4]

But while the treatment was immeasurably better, the vicious principle of separation remained. The Jews in Holland were as much a nation apart, in theory at least, as in Spain and Portugal before the expulsion. They did not enjoy the full rights of citizenship (until they received it, somewhat against their will, during the French invasion at the end of the eighteenth century) and were not even free from other restrictions. They were not permitted to serve in the train bands or militia of the cities, but paid a compensation for their exemption therefrom. The prohibition of intermarriage with Christians could hardly be considered a hardship for Jews of the seventeenth century; but the fact that they were not allowed any mechanical pursuit or to engage in retail trade has a much deeper significance. It explains, at least partly, why the Dutch succeeded where the Portuguese failed, notably in that Indian trade, whose interruption by the Turkish conquest of Constantinople was the cause of searching new water routes to the East and of the discovery of the New World.

Having exiled their best international traders and kept those remaining as Marranos in constant terror, the Portuguese could not derive the full benefit from that lucrative trade in spices which was to be the reward of their great discoveries. When the sixty years’ captivity—as the domination of Spain over Portugal, from 1580 to 1640, is called—brought, among other disasters, the capture of the Portuguese Indian possessions by the Dutch, the superiority of the latter’s methods were soon apparent. They succeeded with more ease “since, with true commercial spirit, they not only imported merchandise from the East to Holland, but also distributed it through Dutch merchants to every country in Europe; whereas the Portuguese in the days of their commercial monopoly were satisfied with bringing over the commodities to Lisbon and letting foreign nations come to fetch them.” It is not difficult to surmise who were those Dutch merchants who distributed the spices to every country in Europe, when we think of that class of wealthy Marrano immigrants in Holland who were not permitted to follow mechanical pursuits or to engage in retail trade. Holland’s tendency was clearly apparent. The Jews, mostly Portuguese, were permitted to use their wealth, their abilities and their foreign connections to carry on and extend that trade which languished in the hands of those who banished them. The Jews were exceedingly grateful for the opportunity which Holland afforded them to be useful to themselves and to her, and the very effective results of the friendship between the Jews and the Dutch were soon apparent in the ensuing struggle between the latter and the Portuguese over the possession of Brazil.

The Dutch commenced the realization of their ambitious scheme for the conquest of Brazil in the second decade of the seventeenth century, at a time when the large number of Marranos who lived there were terrorized by rumors of the introduction of the inquisition. These rumors became current as early as 1610, when it was reported that the physicians of Bahia, who were mainly new-Christians, prescribed pork to their patients in order to lessen the suspicion that they were still adhering to Judaism. In connection with some of the earliest Brazilian intrigues in favor of the Dutch, mention is made of one Francisco Ribiero, a Portuguese captain, who is described as having many Jewish relatives in Holland. About 1618 the Inquisition in Oporto, Portugal, had arrested all merchants of Jewish extraction. Many of the victims were engaged in Brazilian trade, and the Inquisitor-General applied to the government to assist the Holy Office to recover such parts of their effects as might be in the hands of their agents in Brazil. Accordingly, Don Luis de Sousa was charged to send home a list of all the new-Christians in Brazil “with the most precise information that can be obtained of their property and place of abode.” It seems highly probable that it was the Dutch war alone which prevented the introduction of the dreaded Tribunal in Brazil.

The Dutch West India Company, which was formed in 1622 in furtherance of the project of conquering Brazil, had Jews of Amsterdam among its large stockholders, and several of them in its Board of Directors. One of the arguments in favor of its organization was “that the Portuguese themselves—some from their hatred of Castille, others because of their intermarriage with new-Christians and their consequent fear of the Inquisition—would either willingly join or feebly oppose an invasion, and all that was needful was to treat them well and give them liberty of conscience.”

When the Dutch fleet was sent to Bahia all the necessary information was obtained from Jews. The city was taken in 1624 and Willeken, the Dutch commander, at once issued a proclamation offering liberty, free possession of their property and free enjoyment of religion to all who would submit. This brought over about two hundred Jews, who exerted themselves to induce others to follow their example. Bahia was re-captured by the Portuguese in 1625, and though the treaty for its deliverance provided for the safety of the other inhabitants, the new-Christians were abandoned and five of them were put to death. Many others, however, seemed to have remained there for several years.

Another foothold was gained by the Dutch when the city of Recife or Pernambuco, which had a large Crypto-Jewish population, was captured in 1631. Most of the Jews and new-Christians from Bahia and other Brazilian towns soon removed to that city. The conquerors appealed to Holland for colonists and craftsmen of all kinds, and many Portuguese Jews came over in response to that call. Robert Southey, the historian of Brazil, asserts that the Jews there made excellent subjects of Holland. “Some of the Portuguese Brazilians gladly threw off the mask which they had so long been compelled to wear, and joined their brethren in the Synagogue. The open joy with which they celebrated their ceremonies attracted too much notice. It excited the horror of the Catholics; and even the Dutch themselves, less liberal than their own laws, pretended that the toleration of Holland did not extend to Brazil.” The result was an edict by which the Jews were ordered to perform their rites more privately.

When in 1645 Vieyra was inciting the Portuguese to re-conquer Brazil, he pointed particularly to Recife, calling attention to the fact that “that city is chiefly inhabited by Jews, most of whom were originally fugitives from Portugal. They have their open Synagogues there, to the scandal of Christianity. For the honor of the faith, therefore, the Portuguese ought to risk their lives and property in putting down such an abomination.” The Portuguese, who had shortly before thrown off the Spanish yoke and regained their independence at home, responded to that call and redoubled their effort to reconquer their gigantic South American colony. But although the history of that first really Jewish settlement in the New World was brief, extending over less than two decades, it was so brilliant in itself and had such far-reaching consequences in the settlement of Jews in other parts of America that another chapter must be devoted to its description.

CHAPTER VI.

RECIFE: THE FIRST JEWISH COMMUNITY IN THE NEW WORLD.

The rebuke to the joyful demonstrations of the Jews in Recife did not prevent the establishment there of the first real Jewish community in the New World. The Dutch Stadtholder of Brazil, John Maurice, of Nassau, was a just and honorable official who encouraged the development of the community and its steady increase by immigration. The Jews of Recife, who were soon numbered by thousands, called themselves “Kahal Kodesh” (The Holy Congregation) and had a governing body consisting of David Senior Coronel, Abraham de Mercado, Jacob Mucate and Isaac Casthunho. One of the earliest settlers there was Ephraim Sueiro, a step-brother (or brother-in-law) of the famous Rabbi of Amsterdam, Manasseh Ben Israel (1604–57). Don Francisco Fernandez de Mora, who had a grandchild in Amsterdam, held important offices; while another member of the community, Gaspar Diaz Ferrena, was considered one of the wealthiest men in the country. Dr. Kayserling, in his paper on “The Earliest Rabbis and Jewish writers in America” (“Publications” III, p. 13 ff.) quotes from the correspondence between the old Vossius and Hugo Grotius, in which they speak of the intention of their mutual friend, the above-named Rabbi Manasseh, to emigrate to Brazil in order to improve his material condition, which was unsatisfactory in Amsterdam, notwithstanding the high communal position which he held there. He dedicated the second part of his “Conciliador” to the prominent men of the congregation of Recife, probably in anticipation of the expected journey, which, however, was never made.

But though the man who was later to induce Oliver Cromwell to admit Jews into England did not come, other reputable Hebrew scholars soon arrived to lend lustre to the new congregation. In 1642 about six hundred Spanish-Portuguese Jews from Amsterdam embarked for Brazil, accompanied by two men of learning, Isaac Aboab da Fonseca (1605–93) and Moses Raphael de Aguilar (d. 1679). Aboab became the Chacham or Rabbi—the first in America. Aguilar, who was also a grammarian, became the reader or cantor. A congregation was also organized at Tamarica, which had its own Chacham, Jacob Lagarto, the first Talmudical author in the Western Hemisphere. A certain Jacob de Aguilar is also mentioned as a Brazilian rabbi of that time. Considerable numbers of Jews also resided at other places in Brazil, particularly at Itamarica, Rio de Janeiro and Parahiba. But Recife was the great center, and its fame soon spread even into the Old World. Nieuhoff, the historian, writes that the Jews there had built stately homes, that they had a vast traffic and purchased sugar mills. Several years later they raised large sums to assist the Dutch in defending the coast.

The last and most important immigrants were barely settled when the sanguinary struggle between the Portuguese and the Dutch for the possession of the colony began in 1645. A conspiracy into which native Portuguese entered for the purpose of assassinating the Dutch authorities at a banquet in the capital was discovered and exposed by a Jew, and a possible sudden termination of Dutch rule was averted. Open war broke out in 1646 and Recife had to endure a long and costly siege. Jews vied with Dutch in suffering and in bravery, and there is a record of the fact that Marranos in Portugal used their influence to call the attention of the government of the Netherlands to the gravity of the situation in South America. But the resources of the West India Company were exhausted by the possession of Brazil, and as the home government would not or could not give it proper support, the heroism and the self-sacrifice of both Dutch and Jews served only to prolong the struggle. It probably also served to cement the friendship between the defenders, who were later to dwell together for longer periods in other parts of America.

History of the Jews in America / From the Period of the Discovery of the New World to the Present Time

History of the Jews in America

PREFACE.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

PART I.THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE PERIOD.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

PART II.THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH COLONIAL PERIOD.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

PART I.
THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE PERIOD.

PART II.
THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH COLONIAL PERIOD.