The Jews in Colonial and Revolutionary Periods
BY HAROLD BERMANAt this time, when the sesquicentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is being celebrated, the role of the first Jewish settlers in the early history of the country is of particular interest. The part played by the Jews in the life of the nation up to the time of the Declaration of Independence is dealt with in this series, the present dealing with the Hebraic influences on the Pilgrim Fathers and the growth of the Jewish settlement in Rhode Island, founded on the broad basis of religious freedom and outstanding for its tolerant attitude to all sects.—THE EDITOR.
It is a fact, too little known to most people, that the Pilgrim Fathers, the real founders of the American Commonwealth, and the builders of this now so mighty and free nation, were animated by the old Hebraic spirit that they had imbibed from their daily and attentive perusal of the Old Testament. The Pilgrim Fathers, in their revolt against the Church and Governmental authorities in the homeland, which revolt drove them to seek asylum first in the more hospitable Holland and afterwards to cross the Atlantic in search of a new home, drew their inspiration from the Books of Moses and the Prophets. And when, after much peril and hardship, they finally did reach a haven of safety, they set about to organize their new life on the old Judaic pattern.
In the writings of the time, the Pilgrims frequently refer to themselves as “Christian Israel,” James I, their persecutor, is “Pharaoh,” the Atlantic was the “Red Sea” that they had crossed in order to reach the “New Canaan,” to get to America. “Whither the Shekinah had guided them through the sea.” “Hebrew mortar,” says Lecky, “cemented the foundations of American democracy,” while the historian John Fiske affirms that “the same ethical impulse which animated the glowing pages of Hebrew poets and prophets, and which has given to the history and literature of Israel their commanding influence in the world” has also influenced the early American colonists.
And later on, when fate had ordained it that the colonies should undergo the test of fire in the days of the Revolution, to prove their heroism and devotion to the country of their birth or adoption by their action of self-sacrifice and daring that such luminous pages in the annals of the period form.
What is said above is especially true of the Rhode Island colony.
It was the great privilege of Israel of old,” reads the foreword to the 1658 revision of the Pilgrim Code, “and so was acknowledged by them, Nehemiah the 9th, 13th. That God gave them right judgment and true lawes and accordingly wee can safely say that wee have had an eye primarily and principally unto the aforesaid Platforme.” “Ye Judicals of Moyses,” says Bradford, “are immutable and perpetual.”
The sentiment in the American colonies being such, it stands to reason that the Jews, suffering from persecution in all Christian countries at that time and undergoing actual martyrdom and untold tortures in some of them, should seek asylum in the colonies planted by a freedom-loving people in a land situated on the further side of the wide ocean, far, far removed from the flames of the Inquisition and the ferocity of persecuting rulers and fanatical populaces. And so we find Jewish settlers in practically all of the thirteen American colonies; a greater number in some of them, a lesser number in others, but everywhere forming a highly intelligent and active element, contributing of their best to the economic and cultural development of the growing settlements.
For this broad-minded attitude, so much in contrast with the narrow-mindedness and intolerance that characterized the neighboring Puritan Colony of Massachusetts, the founders of Rhode Island received not a little of scolding and reprobation, it is true. Cotton Mather, the great Massachusetts Divine, refers sneeringly to the new colony as “the common receptacle of the convicts of Jerusalem and the outcasts of the land.” But this sneering did not at all deter Roger Williams and his noble-minded associates from proceeding with their task of establishing on the American continent one little spot that shall serve as a haven of refuge and safety for all men, irrespective of the creed that they profess or even the absence of any. This was an attitude centuries ahead of time, an ideal not yet entirely translated into life even in our present day.
No sooner did the news of the founding of the Rhode Island Colony reach the Jews of New York, still subjected to many lurking restrictions and annoyances at the hands of its Dutch rulers, than an active movement began amongst them for emigration into the new colony. In 1657 quite a few of the New York Jewish settlers left for Rhode Island, and there were presently augmented by the arrivals from Brazil the West Indies and other points. In 1755 (before the N. Y. exodus), the Jewish Community of Newport, R. I., counted 40 families. Their number increased with the passing of time, and with the growth of the town as a commercial center.
How important Newport was considered commercially in Colonial days can be learned from a perusal of contemporary documents, the records of the customs entries of that and other ports, as well as by reading the pages of subsequently-written history. “He was thought a bold prophet,” says the historian Eggleston, “who then said that New York might one day equal Newport.”
Among the earliest known and most active Jewish settlers of Newport were Jacob Rodriguez-Rivera and his son-in-law Aaron Lopez. Rodriguez-Rivera arrived at Newport in 1743, while Lopez came in 1748. Both were exceedingly enterprising and active men of business, contributing not a little to the industrial and commercial prosperity of the rising settlement. It is a matter of record that of the 150 vessels engaged in general trade at Newport at this period, Lopez owned not fewer than 30—or 20 per cent. Jacob Rodriguez-Rivera was extensively interested in whaling, in the manufacture of candles (of which he had in operation no fewer than 13 factories at one time), in the manufacture of whaleoil and other widely-used products. Indeed, the extent of Rivera’s traffic in these necessities was such that his sway extended to practically the entire New England region, so that it had been facetiously remarked by some students of the period that the true progenitor of the Oil Trust was not John D. Rockefeller, but Jacob Rodriguez-Rivera of Newport, and the oil thus monopolized was not the modern petroleum, but the oil extracted from the blubber of the whale. Its ramifications, however, Inter-Colonial in their scope, affecting the inhabitants of most of the New England colonies.
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