RHODE ISLAND ; JEWISH HISTORICAL NOTES VOLUME 5 NOVEMBER, 1970 NUMBER 4 Moses Seixas House (Perry Mansion), c. 1818. From painting by Sidney Wright. Courtesy Newport Historical Society. See story page 382. JEWISH HISTORICAL A VOLUME 5, NUMBER 4 NOVEMBER, 1970 Copyright November, 1970 by the RHODE ISLAND JEWISH HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION 209 ANGELL STREET, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND 02906 RHODE ISLAND JEWISH HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION 209 ANGELL STREET, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND DAVID CHARAK ADELMAN, Founder TABLE OF CONTENTS NEWPORT JEWRY—WHENCE AND WHITHER? 313 By Malcolm H. Stern A DISTINCT PEOPLE 327 By Abraham Vossen Goodman JEWISH MERCHANTS OF NEWPORT IN P HE-REVOLUTIONARY DAYS — - 332 By Jacob Mark Jacobson WHERE THEY LIVED AND WORKED IN OLD NEWPORT 382 By Seebert J. Goldowsky, M.D. JEWISH LIFE IN PROVIDENCE — - 386 By Bessie Edith Bloom HEBREW FREE LOAN ASSOCIATION OF PROVIDENCE — 414 A Translation from the Yiddish by Beryl Segal TEMPLE BETH-ISRAEL FINDS A SPIRITUAL LEADER 429 By Benton Rosen THE STORY OF A WILL - — 435 By Rabbi William G. Braude LEONARD AND ESTHER HALBERSTAD 441 By Beryl Segal BOOK REVIEWS — - 442 SIXTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING 451 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 445 By Seebert J. Goldowsky, M.D. NECROLOGY - 457 INDEX TO VOLUME V — 461 EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION JEROME B. SPUNT President ERWIN STRASMICH Vice President MRS. SEEBERT J. GOLDOWSKY .... Secretary MRS. LOUIS I. SWEET Treasurer MEMBERS-AT-LARCE OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE RABBI ELI A. BOHNEN WILLIAM L. ROBIN RABBI WILLIAM G. BRAUDE BENTON H. ROSEN SEEBERT J. GOLDOWSKY,, M.D. BERNARD SEGAL SIDNEY GOLDSTEIN LOUIS I. SWEET MRS. CHARLES POTTER MELVIN L. ZURIER SEEBERT J. GOLDOWSKY, M.D., Editor Miss DOROTHY M. ABBOTT, Librarian Printed in the U. S. A. by the Oxford Press, Inc., Providence, Rhode Island NEWPORT JEWRY —WHENCE AND WHITHERPf BY MALCOLM H. STERN* American Jewry's civil rights march reached a high point in 1790 with the letter from George Washington to the Jewish Congregation at Newport [which was read earlier today]. However, it is seldom pointed out that most of the significant phrases in that letter were not Washington's; they were quoted from the letter the first President received, penned by the Warden or chief officer of the Congregation, Moses Seixas. Seixas was also the co-author of a letter of welcome to Washington on the same occasion from King David's Lodge of Freemasons.1 One of the phrases which Washington reiterated from the letter of the Congregation was one in which the Jews were re- ferred to as "Children of the stock of Abraham." This label pro- vides the best definition of a Jew that has yet been given, for we Jews do not fit the usual human categories of race, nation, or religion, even though elements of all three terms are applicable. At this very moment the Parliament in Israel is debating the mo- mentous question, "Who is a Jew?" Except for converts, they could find no better criterion were they to choose "children of the stock of Abraham." Tonight, we shall use this as our staxiting-point for a capsule survey of Jewish history, in which we shall attempt to show that the Jews who settled in Newport and moved elsewhere, were both the products and exemplars of the long history of the Jewish people. Most of you are familiar with the Biblical narrative of Abraham, who emerged from Ur of the Chaldees about 1800 years before the Common Era to settle in the land of Canaan, but you may be less aware of the connection between him and the first Jews who settled in Newport, Rhode Island, some 1670 years after the Common Era. Let me tell you the story! Well known are the early chapters from the Bible: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob — the nomads; Joseph going to Egypt; the return to the tRead at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Rhode Island Jewish Historical Associ- ation held jointly with the 6th Annual Meeting of the League of Rhode Island Historical Societies at Temple Beth £1 (Congregation of the Sons of Israel and David), Providence, Rhode Island, on May 3, 1970. *Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern, D.H.L., D.D., serves vocationally as Director of Place- ment for the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Avocationally he is Genealo- gist for the American Jewish Archives, Curator of the American Jewish Historical Society, and a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists. 313 314 Rhode Island Jeiuish Historical Notes Promised Land under Moses; the settlement of the land under Joshua and the Judges; the establishment of the Hebrew Kingdom under Saul, David, and Solomon. After Solomon's death, his kingdom was split; the ten northern tribes rebelling to form the independent Kingdom of Israel, and the two tribes in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem remaining loyal to the descendants of David and Solomon as the Kingdom of Judah. In 721 B.C., the Assyrians came out of the northeast and so devastated the Kingdom of Israel that the legend arose of "the ten lost tribes." Somehow the Kingdom of Judah survived for another century and a quarter. In 597, Nebu- chadnezzar of Babylon came out of the northeast and captured Judah, blinded its king as a symbol of conquest, and carried him and a large group of his leadership back to Babylonia as captives, placing a puppet king, Zedekiah, on the .throne in Jerusalem. When a revolt broke out in 586, Nebuchadnezzar returned, destroyed Jerusalem and its temple and took more captives. By every parallel in human history, this should have been the end of the Jewish story, but it wasn't. Near Eastern theology decreed that a people, its deity, and its land were a unit. A conqueror usually signified to the people that his deity was stronger than theirs. In the case of the Judeans, their prophets had taught them to believe that defeat meant that their god, Jahveh (later misread Jehovah), was angry with them and using the conqueror to punish t'hem. Sometime between the two Babylonian conquests of 597 and 586, the prophet Jeremiah, living in Jerusalem, wrote a letter to his captive brethren in Babylonia in which he urged them to settle down, marry off their children, and "seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to Jahveh {the Lord) on its behalf."2 This was the prophet's answer to the •question expressed in the 137th Psalm, "How can we sing Jahveh's :song in a strange land?"3 With Jeremiah's letter, Judaism, the world religion, which was to sustain the Jewish people through its many crises, was born. In 538 B.C. a new conqueror, Cyrus of Persia, came •out of the east, conquered Babylonia, and permitted the Jews to return and rebuild the Temple and the city of Jerusalem with its walls. In 333-332, Alexander the Great overran the Middle East, making it Greek. When he died, frustrated because "there were no more worlds to conquer", his empire was divided among his generals. Palestine fell to Ptolemy of Egypt (the ancestor of Cleopatra), but soon came under the domination of the Greek rulers of Syria, the Seleucids. One of these, Antiochus IV, attempted to introduce Greek Newport Jewry—Whence and Whither? 315 religion in his kingdom, polluted the Jerusalem Temple, and set up statues of Zeus. A group of Jewish zealots, led toy Judah, the Macca- bee (Judas Maccabeus), fought a three-year struggle. They gained Jewish independence under a nephew of Judah and his descendants, called the Hasmoneans. Unfortunately, these proved poor rulers, creating revolts from the priestly caste, and from those religious purists, some of whom founded the colony at the Dead Sea, the dis- covery of whose scrolls have created such a sensation in our day. The last of the Hasmoneans gave his daughter in marriage to the Idumean (or Edomite) king, Herod, who attempted to maintain his shaky throne in Jerusalem by enlarging and beautifying the Temple. When revolts still threatened, Herod invited Julius Caesar to come to his aid. Thuis Judea became a Roman state; the year was 44 B.C. Restlessness under Roman rule led not only to the birth of Christi- anity, but 66 years after the beginning of the Christian Era, a fresh revolt broke out, which was finally put down by Titus of Rome with the destruction of the Temple for all times. One tiny band of Jews held out for three years longer in a mountain fortress at Masada until the Romans raised a siege wall. The defenders committed suicide rather than submit to Roman slavery. In the meantime Titus had carried thousands of Jews as slaves back to Rome, where his triumphal arch at the edge of the Forum gives us the best contempo- rary picture of the ornaments of the Jerusalem's Temple. Today's visitors to the Colosseum will ,be told that it was built by the blood and sweat of 12,000 Jewish captives from Judea. This may not be accurate, but it is not impossible. Meanwhile, those Jews who had remained in Palestine continued restive under Roman rule. Another revolt in 135 C.E. was put down toy Hadrian with great cruelty, and most of the Jews were scattered abroad. Some went with the Roman legions all through the Mediterranean, over the Alps into Gaul and Germany; others fled eastward to join the Babylonian Jewish communities, where they established new centers of Jewish learning. In the 7th century, a new star arose in the Middle East — Islam. With fire and sword, the religion of Mohammed was spread east- ward to India, and westward across North Africa and up into Spain, penetrating as far as Southern France, where the onslaught was re- pelled.