Thursday, October 16, 2025
Elder of ZiyonIt was one small meal for Jews, but a political leap forward for Jewish history. In 1788, Philadelphia hosted a parade celebrating Pennsylvania's ratification of the Constitution, and the procession was followed by a feast. An eyewitness reported that "there was a number of long tables loaded with all kinds of provisions, with a separate table for the Jews, who could not partake of the meals from the other tables." It is difficult to find a prior civic celebration in Jewish diaspora history that is its like. In a single setting, Jews were embraced as equals by their fellow Philadelphians, as full partners in the nascent constitutional republic, while at the same time feeling entirely able to observe the dietary habits that set them apart.
That single kosher table, prepared for observant Jews amid a patriotic feast, symbolized the new republic’s promise of inclusion. What most people don’t know is that the man behind that table, Isaac Moses, was far more than a caterer - he was one of the men who financed the Revolution that made such a celebration possible.
The full story of the kosher table is in a letter written by 95-year old Naphtali Phillips in 1868. He wrote:
The procession then proceeded from about Third Street near Spruce, northward towards Callowhill Street, then wheeled towards Bush Hill, where there was a number of long tables loaded with all kinds of provisions, with a separate table for the Jews, who could not partake of the meals from the other tables; but they had a fill supply of soused [pickled] salmon, bread and crackers, almonds, raisins, etc. This table was under the charge of an old cobbler named Isaac Moses, well known in Philadelphia at that time.
The fact that 100 or more American Jews may have served in the armed forces is of no great historic significance. Their commercial activities were far more important in an agrarian economy where industry and manufacturing were minimal and the coasts were blockaded by the powerful British fleet. The farmers and townspeople had to have yard goods and tea; it was imperative that the soldiers be supplied with uniforms, blankets, and shoes. One way to relieve the shortage was to arm merchant ships and send them out as privateers to prey on enemy commerce. This Jews did, arming small ships heavily and packing them with large, tough crews who scoured the seas for valuable British cargoes.....After a fashion, privateering was a form of blockade-running. Many American ships got through the English naval barrier, for the enemy could not guard every cove and inlet of the long coast. Certainly one of the most daring of the blockade-runners was the firm of Isaac Moses & Co. Its three partners Isaac Moses, Samuel Myers, and Moses Myers had an Amsterdam buying office which shipped their goods to Dutch St. Eustatius in the Caribbean. From there the company's ships made the run to an American port, trusting to fate that they could slip past the cordon set up by the English cruisers. Isaac Moses and his associates were great Whigs. Shortly after the War broke out in 1775, when the Americans set out to conquer Canada, the three partners voluntarily offered the Congress $20,000 in hard currency in exchange for Continental paper which-as they might have foreseen-ultimately proved worthless. If it was any consolation, they received the grateful thanks of John Hancock for their generous gift.
Moses was the president of both New York's Shearith Israel synagogue and, after he moved when the British occupied New York, Philadelphia's Mikveh Israel.
Moses wrote a letter to the Continental Congress in 1779 asking for gunpowder to protect his ships as they attempted to evade the British blockade. His humility in this request is something to behold.
To the Honorable the Congress of the United States of North America:
The petition of Isaac Moses, now of the city of Philadelphia, merchant, most humbly sheweth:
That your petitioner, having loaded a schooner, letter of marque, and fitted her with every necessary but gun powder, in a warlike manner, has made all the search in his power for that article, but finding himself every where dissappointed, is now under the dissagreeable necessity of troubling Your Honours, and to pray that you would be pleased to spare him, out of the public stores, two or three hundred weight of powder.
He flatters himself his principals as a true Whig and friend to the liberties of this country are so well known to some of your members that it is needless to mention them here, or to remind your body of the assistance he has afforded these United States from time to time in the importation of divers articles which he spared them, but particularly when he and his partners spared these states upwards of twenty thousand dollars in specie, in exchange for Continental dollars...
Your petitioner submits to your honourable House to consider how unsafe it would be in him to risk his property at these times on the high seas without having proper means of defence with it, and pledges himself either immediately to pay for the powder, or to reemburse the public with an equal quantity of that article, and that either on the return of his vessel, or at the time that she ought to return. Your petitioner therefore flatters himself your honourable House will be pleased on these considerations to grant him his request;
And he, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
Isaac Moses July 27th, 1779
I don't know if he ever got that gunpowder, but it didn't affect Moses' patriotism. In fact his company went bankrupt after the war but he remained a staunch supporter of the new United States.
Wikipedia's page on Moses is just a stub, although it notes that Moses was one of the founders of the Bank of North America, which after a series of mergers and acquisitions is now part of Wells Fargo. He was also a major stockholder of the Bank of New York. His children continued in international trade, especially with China and Mexico.(I find this interesting because my impression was that Jews were successful in trade by having other Jews to trade with; I'm not sure that this was the case in those countries.)
No one seems to remember him outside this article. But Isaac Moses did more than most soldiers to help found the United States,
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