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The Infectious Exuberance of Joshua Seixas

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The Infectious Exuberance of Joshua Seixas A TEACHER FOR THE TEMPLE: THE INFECTIOUS EXUBERANCE OF JOSHUA SEIXAS RICK GRUNDER Sunstone Symposium at Kirtland, Ohio, October 17, 2015 Well into the second half of the nineteenth century, a number of Latter‐day Saints continued to note proudly their brief course of study under ʺProf.ʺ Joshua Seixas at Kirtland, Ohio in early 1836. I believe that this instructorʹs exuberant personality and dedicated style of teaching became significant factors in the influence of the Hebrew language upon early Mormons. Seixasʹ qualities may be suggested further to have facilitated early Saintly self‐confidence and perceptions of scholarly discipline. Considerable work has been produced since the 1930s regarding this man and the story of his classes conducted in the first Mormon temple and nearby.1 In this paper, I will isolate aspects of Seixasʹ engaging conver sation and pedago gy in order to set them in pointed context. I will finish with examples from a sociologically illuminating letter which Seixas wrote to a young non‐Mormon pupil on August 30, 1832, presented publicly here for the first time. ʺYou recollect how Seixas used to drill us,ʺ recalled Oberlin president James H. Fairchild in 1840, ʺ—that laughter loving man . .ʺ2 John Buss, a student at 1 Portions of this paper have been synthesized from my various related entries in Mormon Parallels: A Bibliographic Source (see particularly under Seixas and Stuart). For earlier studies of note, see particularly Backman, Goldman, Ogden, LeRoi C. Snow, Walton, and Zucker (itemized in the list of SOURCES CITED, further below). IMAGE of the Kirtland Temple drawn in 1846, reproduced here from Howe, 283. 2 Quoted in Fletcher, 370, citing ʺJ. H. Fairchild to Mary Kellogg, June 2, 1840 (Fairchild MSS),ʺ and ʺGrandfatherʹs Story, An Autobiography of James Harris Fairchild (Oberlin–[c 1906]), 20‐21.ʺ © 2015 Rick Grunder Hudson, Ohio, claimed in his daily journal entry for December 8, 1835: ʺI never saw any man yet who talked so much and had so much to say as Mr. Seixas in recitation in my life before.ʺ After completing his course of Hebrew, Buss concluded that, ʺI am very well satisfied that he is a man of great learning.ʺ3 A young Mormon woman named Eliza, knowing that her brother Lorenzo ʺintended crowning his studies with a thorough knowledge of Hebrew,ʺ wrote to lure him from Oberlin to Kirtland, Ohio, where Seixas was scheduled to start in January. ʺ. [A] school was soon to commence there,ʺ as she told it years afterward, ʺunder the tuition of an able Hebrew professor, for the sole study of that language. Accordingly he came, but not with the most distant idea of embracing the faith of the Latter‐day Saints . .ʺ4 Joshua SEIXAS (ʺSAY‐shusʺ; 1802‐187‐?) was born into one of the most distin‐ guished Jewish families of America, and taught at his late fatherʹs Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City during the 1820s and beyond.5 With plenty of children to support, however, Joshua had to make a solid living, so he also taught individuals and privately‐contracted groups of students on the side, many of them Christians in far‐flung locations. He seems to have worked up practical, concentrated techniques of instruction, delivered with humor and charm all the way from Washington to Boston to northeastern Ohio. In the 1830s, he lived in Bostonʹs Charlestown neighborhood, attracting young scholars and impressing more seasoned luminaries as well. By May, 1835, we find Seixas sending a letter from Utica, New York,6 evidently riding a convenient contemporary wave of reactionary prejudice against the supposedly corrupting influences of pre‐Christian Greek and Latin texts, in favor of Hebrew studies instead, or New Testament Greek. According to Oberlin historian Robert Samuel Fletcher, this radical trend was only tried by certain questionable new institutions of learning.7 And one of those schools, coincidentally just outside of Utica, was the small, racially‐integrated Oneida 3 LeRoi C. Snow, 69 (columns 3 and 1, respectively). In addition, Fletcher (370) published these same quotes with slight differences but without change in meaning. Both Snow and Fletcher worked from the same second‐hand transcriptions. 4 Eliza Snow, 6. 5 Joshuaʹs father Gershom Mendes Seixas was a trustee of Columbia College, an honored guest at the inauguration of George Washington, and, ʺfor forty years,ʺ as characterized by Dr. Louis C. Zucker, ʺthe outstanding Jew in the nation.ʺ Zucker, 45. Professor Shalom Goldman tells of Joshua teaching during the 1820s ate th Polonies Talmud Torah School of Congregation Shearith Israel (Goldman, 66), which survives in New York City to the present day. Bibliographer Peter Crawley adds that Seixas was the main Hebrew instructor there for a long period of time, Crawley 28 (Vol. 1, p. 62). 6 Seixas 1835. 7 ʺIt was only young institutions of doubtful scholarly character that actually experi‐ mented with a reformation.ʺ Fletcher, 365. 2 © 2015 Rick Grunder Institute of Science and Industry, which in 1834 ʺstruck all Latin out of the curriculum and substituted Hebrew for it.ʺ8 Seixas, in other words, was working westward, following a fresh and eager, more innovative clientele. On May 29, 1835, he sent a letter to Rev. John J. Shipherd, co‐founder of the new college at Oberlin, offering his services and . ʺCollegiate Buildings, Oberlin,ʺ as drawn in 1846 (Howe, 315) ʺ. undertaking to give a reading knowledge of Hebrew in six weeks, classes meeting one hour a day.ʺ ʺHe attracted considerable attention,ʺ says Fletcher, who describes Seixasʹ printed letterhead as incorporating testimonials to the effect that he had conducted classes ʺwith much successʺ in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Princeton Theological Seminary, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and (of particular interest to us here), ʺat Andover Theological Seminary . .ʺ9 Of course Seixas didnʹt precisely teach at these institutions in any official capacity, but rather, in geographical proximity to them. Because of his Jewish heritage, he faced employment barriers which kept him off the official rosters of most Christian institutions. But he had uncommon credentials, and people liked him. We may wonder if there werenʹt plenty of Gentile scholars of Hebrew running around America at the time who could have filled this niche with more orthodoxy, but one doesnʹt get that impression in practical terms. No less a figure than Moses Stuart, Professor of Sacred Literature at Andover Theological Seminary since 1810 ‐ probably Americaʹs greatest exegetical scholar of the day ‐ 8 Fletcher, 365‐66. The Oneida Institute was at Whitesboro, New York, four miles from Utica. 9 Fletcher, 369, citing ʺTestimonials printed on one page of a letter: J. Seixas to [John J.] Shipherd, May 29, 1835 ([Oberlin College] Treas. Off., File H).ʺ (369 n.72). © 2015 Rick Grunder 3 submitted his own Hebrew grammar, fourth edition, to Seixas after the sheets had come from the press in 1831. The pages had been revised half a dozen times already, but Seixas found a hundred and fifty more mistakes, which Stuart regretfully insisted adding to the end of the volume, crediting ʺ. the keen and practised eye of Mr Joshua Seixas; who being a Hebrew by birth, and the son of a Rabbi, has such a knowledge of the Hebrew language as may be called vernacular. Mr S. is at present employed as a teacher of the Hebrew; . .ʺ10 Stuart would not forget such an advantage, and he turned to Seixas again in 1835. ʺI have availed myself, in the present edition,ʺ wrote Stuart in the preface to his fifth Hebrew grammar, . of the corrections and of some additions, which my friend Mr. J. Seixas, in a very obliging manner, has suggested to me. For his attention bestowed on this subject, and the labour which he has performed in making the suggestions just noticed, I return him my most sincere sthank and acknowledgments. 11 Notice Stuartʹs warm personal regard for Seixas! Here, I hope, we come to the fun part of this paper. Others have written about linguistic influences of Seixas upon Joseph Smithʹs Book of Abraham,12 an area in which I am not qualified to comment. Seixasʹ own Hebrew grammar (as expanded in its second edition, 1834, designed for use even without an instructor),13 has been a focal point of such studies in particular. But today, let us attempt to get at the manʹs personality and style instead, and try to imagine the likely tone and impact of Seixasʹ teaching and conversations with our spiritual ancestors here in Kirtland, nearly two centuries ago. If Seixas was punctilious to a fault, Iʹll wager that he was seldom demeaning. ʺMy dear friend,ʺ began Seixas in that May 1835 letter from Utica back to Stuart at Andover, 10 Stuart 1831, Errata p. [1]. Mormon Church President John Taylorʹs own copy of this edition can be viewed at: https://archive.org/stream/grammarofhebrewl04stua#page/n1/mode/2up (ac‐ cessed September 30, 2015). 11 Stuart 1835, iii. 12 Zucker, 47‐55; Walton, 41‐43: ʺThe creation story in the Book of Abraham seems to have roots in the Hebrew Bible and in Seixasʹ Grammar as well as in Josephʹs creative or prophetic gifts . ,ʺ 43. 13 Seixas states in the preface to his 1834 grammar: ʺThe additions are designed to facilitate the acquisition of Hebrew, and make assistance from the living teacher less indispensable. The lessons and rules, though comparatively few and brief, are, I believe, sufficient to give an easy and rapid insight into the general formation of the language. Some yearsʹ experience as a teacher, and the favorable opinions of those whom I have had the pleasure of teaching, convince me that with proper attention to the following rules, and with the aids of oral instruction as given to my classes, any one desirous to become acquainted with this language may be enabled in a short time and with little trouble, to read with much pleasure and satisfaction.ʺ Seixas 1834, [iii].
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