Yael: The British patrolling the seas, they intercepted this letter with the Declaration of Independence in it. And because it was written in Yiddish, they thought it was a code. They had no idea what it was. and they spent some time trying to decipher it and were never able to.
Yael: From Unpacked, this is Jewish History Nerds, the podcast where we nerd out on awesome stories in Jewish history. I’m Yael Steiner.
Schwab: And I’m Jonathan Schwab. We’re in the middle of a miniseries on Jews in the Americas. So we know there’s a a small number of Jews in America, in the 13 colonies, on the eve of independence. And now we’re getting to, I don’t know, the moment that we’re celebrating this year for America’s 250th. so where are you taking us today for that?
Yael: So you you actually preempted a little bit of what I was gonna say, which is great. In sixteen sixty-four, New Amsterdam became New York, a British colony. And then as I think a lot of our listeners know, the 13 British colonies in what is now the United States got a bit fed up fed up with the way that they were being treated by the monarchy across the pond by the government of King George III. They
They were being taxed without being represented. And, you know, they throw some tea into Boston Harbor. And all of a sudden, there is this spirit taking hold in the 13 colonies among a group of very smart, very well-organized people to found a new independent nation state.
That would be separate from Great Britain, that would take them out from under the thumb of King George. And it also would be a new kind of nation state, one that the world had really never seen before in the way in which it expanded individual freedoms. Of course, as we know today, we are far from a perfect nation. We are an imperfect nation made up of imperfect.
people, but the concept that these individuals who we now call the founders or the founding fathers, they were by and large men, by and large white men. the concept that they had was that they wanted government to be with the consent of the governed, that the people who were being constricted in some way by a legal system
had a voice in what that legal system would be.
Schwab: And this is a revolutionary idea.
Yael: Yeah. This is a revolutionary idea and a revolutionary war is fought over it. and it’s interesting to think about whether or not the war is fought over the ideas or over Great Britain’s desire to keep the territory, whether or not they actually objected philosophically to the revolutionary ideas is a different question. But
I did say that by and large, this was a movement of white men, and it was. But within that group of white men, we also had a section comprised of Jewish men. And the question of whether or not Jews are white pervades this revolutionary era. It is still a topic that people talk about today as.
We try to move into this post-racial world. Where do Jews fit in the top-down oppressive dynamics of humanity? it’s certainly not a question that has gone away. But what the way that Jews fit into this new nation is a very interesting topic to consider. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about that today philosophically, but I wanna start by talking about.
a bunch of the Jewish figures within the social sphere of the founders. When we talk about the founders, we often talk about Ben Franklin, John Adams, General George Washington, who becomes our first president.
Schwab: That would have been the first name I said.
Yael: I don’t know why I always start with Ben Franklin. I think it’s a pop cultural thing in my head. Every time I ever see him portrayed, he’s like the grandpa of the founder. He’s like the Yoda of the Founders.
Schwab: Franklin feels of of that group feels the most Jewish to me. right? Of just like if you were gonna say Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, like which of those guys, I don’t know, do you get like bagel y vibes from? I’m like, Ben Franklin.
Yael: What an interesting comment.
Yael: I totally hear that. And Ben Franklin was very tolerant of the Jews. That is not to say entirely tolerant. One of the interesting things that I learned preparing for this episode is that among the founders who advocated very strongly for religious liberties, even among the ones who were the most in favor of religious liberties, they still
used slurs for Jews, they still had negative opinions of the Jews as a nation, you know, would refer to them in some contexts as filthy or deceitful, at the same time while advocating for their equality under the law in the United States. So even even among our best friends in the founding era, you still see stereotypes. but I think
Schwab: I mean, it’s not that’s not shocking to me. Like I and the founders I think are towering figures who established America as we know it today. And it is kind of odd to see, you know, like they’ll say things like all men are created equal, while a good number of the founders own slaves who are not treated as equal.
Yael: I think there is contradiction within their individual natures, but I think it also speaks to the contradictory nature of the country as a whole. A little bit later on, we’re going to talk about the Federalists and the Jeffersonians, who were a faction that didn’t want to adopt the constitution as initially written because they worried that the constitution as drafted
by the Federalists put too much power into a central government. And and that I think is the central contradiction of the United States. We are one nation made up of several states. And not everything is always going to run in a perfect straight line. I do want to go back to what you said about Benjamin Franklin feeling Jewish for a moment because
I am a very big fan of the musical 1776. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. There’s a great movie version of it with William Daniels, who’s Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World, playing John Adams. The actor who plays Ben Franklin in the 1776 movie is Jewish. And he does, he has a Zayde vibe. that being said.
Even though the famous names that we know from the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which is the 250th anniversary that we’re celebrating, John Hancock, again, you know, Reverend Witherspoon from New Jersey, there were I’m just naming characters now that I remember from 1776. There were no Jews that signed the Declaration of Independence. There were people who were friends of the Jews, including Benjamin Rush, who we might come back to later.
But there were Jews who were very important, critical, you might even say, to the fighting and winning of the Revolutionary War. The first one I want to talk about is probably the most famous one and maybe one that you’ve heard of before.
Schwab: This is it my boy Haym Salomon.
Yael: It is your boy, Haym Salomon. What makes him your boy?
Schwab: He’s I I think that I wrote a report on him in fifth grade or something. And also there is a script
Yael: Or after you did your state report on Rhode Island.
Schwab: It was maybe maybe this was even earlier.
Yael: You must have been doing a colonial unit.
Schwab: And there’s a Haym Salomon Square in my hometown, Queens, New York.
Yael: It’s very small. It’s very small. In one of the lectures that I listened to, is I heard it’s like a triangle at the intersection of two streets.
Schwab: Yes. Yeah. And I distinctly remember reading this biography of him and there’s a scene in this book, which I guess is somewhat dramatized or something, where he he coughs into a napkin and then sees blood, but I didn’t understand the significance.
Yael: Well, he is. I would say the thing about Haym Salomon is that his importance to the Revolutionary War might be slightly overstated in the Jewish community, but it is definitely understated in the world at large because he was extremely important. But there is, I think, a widespread belief among
fairly decently educated Jews that financed the entirety of the single revolution. That is an overstatement. Yeah. That being said, he was a very important source of funds for the Continental Army. And his particular skill with respect to finance was that he had a very
Schwab: Yeah.
Yael: Very good knack for negotiating foreign exchange, which meant that he was able to take unstable government bills, debts, treasuries. You know, this is maybe taking it a little bit too much into the realm of high finance, but he was able to take this, what we would call on the bar exam, commercial paper and turn it into hard cash.
that the Continental Army could use to procure supplies. And that was extremely, extremely important because without him, the Continental Army would have starved at certain points during the war. And also the soldiers probably would have mutinied for lack of pay. So a a critically important figure, but not the only financier behind the Continental Army.
Schwab: He the most major Jewish figure? Like, is that why he’s overstated in in like a Jewish context? Because he’s he’s the guy. Like, he’s the most important Jewish outer circle founding father.
Yael: You could think of him as a f and not if not a founding father, maybe a founding brother or founding cousin. He was he was in the realm. Yeah. And he and he did become the prime financial broker for Robert Morris, who was the superintendent of finance for the Continental Army and all the revolutionary forces. Because he extended so much credit to the government over this commercial paper.
He was never fully repaid because, you know, this is something that happens even still today. If you want to settle all of this, you know, non-hard wealth, you need somebody on the other side to make you whole. And he actually died almost penniless. Wow. So his he I would say that he is the most important Jew in the Revolutionary War because of the quantum of.
money that he provided that was extremely necessary, but also the extreme personal risk that he took in providing it. It wasn’t as though he had other fountains of wealth to pull from. So he is by far, I would say, the most famous Jew of the revolution. I’m not sure that anyone in your grade did a report on any of the other people we’re about to talk about, though it is, though it is possible.
In our last episode, you might recall, I mentioned a gentleman named Francis Salvador, who was an important figure in South Carolina, who was the first Jew killed in the Revolutionary War. He was killed by indigenous people who were fighting on behalf of the British. So there were soldiers. We think that there were approximately 100 soldiers fighting in the Continental Army, at least.
Schwab: That’s right.
Yael: Their pro rata share was fought by Jews in the colonies. They definitely had at least one-tenth of one percent of the manpower of the Continental Army. It’s possible that it was even a s a smidge higher than that. and I read somewhere that of all of the Jews in the 13 colonies, 4% of them fought for the Continental Army. Because there were only 2,500 Jews.
Schwab: Right. It’s a very, very small
Yael: Number So a hundred sending a hundred men to war is a significant sacrifice. The highest ranking Jewish official in the Continental Army was a man from Georgia named Mordecai Sheftall, or Sheftel, depending on you know your personal preference. And he served as the deputy commissary general of issues, which is quite the title, unclear as to what it means.
what it does mean is that he was in charge of procurement. So again, another commercially relevant position. when Savannah felt
Schwab: Yeah, I mean like I maybe we’re like over but like that makes a lot of sense given what we’ve talked about in a number of episodes this season that like Jews were at the time very, very involved in trade, in I don’t know, the the the worldwide merchant organization, like they would have a lot of contacts and have a lot of of experience moving and shipping and exchanging goods. So it’s not shocking to me that a
that there would be a a Jew who was very high ranking within that.
Yael: It’s not to say that he wasn’t in combat. I don’t know if he was out on the field shooting, but he was in Savannah during the Battle of Savannah. And when Savannah fell, he and his son were both arrested. And they were taken to a British naval ship prison. And when they were kept in this prison, it was revealed to
you know, the warden or the corrections officers, the the soldiers manning the prison, that these were Jews and observant Jews. And they gave him pork as his rations to be eaten on the prison ship. He refused to eat pork, which I think says a tremendous amount about his devotion to his Jewish practice.
And not only did they try to serve him pork, but they actually smeared like pork fat on the utensils that they gave him. I don’t know the source of that. And I don’t know if that’s something that he knew or if that’s just something that they did to laugh amongst themselves, but it is a pretty awful thing to do to someone. he and his son do manage to escape and
The later in the war or in the revolutionary period, he gets involved in privateering. and which is not piracy. It’s a different thing, but he has a license to take British ships and capture the people on board, capture their loot. and he invests heavily in the privateering industry after his escape.
from the British pork jail.
Yael: One thing that I think is interesting to note about Mordecai Sheftall is that he was the son of a gentleman named Benjamin Sheftall, who was an abolitionist, which is in extremely unusual in Georgia. Extremely, extremely unusual in general and particularly unusual in Georgia. There were Jews among the abolitionists, but there were also Jews among
The slaveholders. And there were also Jews among the loyalists who remained in concert with the British. So I just want to say one thing about slaveholding because we’re not gonna address it really in this episode. The idea that has spread among certain circles that Jews controlled the slaveholding industry is false.
Schwab: Slave owners, yeah.
Schwab: Which circles are those exactly?
Yael: Not ones that could possibly be making the news right now. that being said, the Jews were just as involved in the slaveholding industry as everyone else. The same way that they represented their percentage of the population in the Continental Army, they basically represented the same percentage of the population among slaveholders. and while I
Schwab: In fact, the same thing as loyalists, like jet just as much as I was just saying, like there were Christians who were revolutionaries and Christians who were loyalists, like there were Jews who were revolutionaries and Jews who were loyalists, like
Yael: And interestingly enough, Mordecai Sheftall’s brother, the son of Benjamin Sheftall, who was the abolitionist, Levy Sheftall, was a loyalist. So even in the same family, you had an abolitionist father, a militaristic soldier son in the revolutionary forces, and another son who remained a loyalist. there was one thing that I wanted to say about the percentage.
The fact that Jews participated in the revolutionary forces in a percentage that matched their percentage of the population is that Jews for the most part did not have a militaristic tradition because in whatever lands they came from, they were not permitted to fight in the military.
Schwab: talked about this that the like first among the first Jews in New Amsterdam, Asser Levy had to sue for the right to do guard duty because he wouldn’t be permitted to do guard duty. Like Jews were generally and this changes later when Jews are like conscripted into the army in Russia.
Yael: They sell.
Yael: And and one thing that I read that I thought was interesting is that Jews only started to be permitted to fight in other militaries subsequent to the American Revolution, possibly influenced by the American Revolution, because figures like Lafayette and Kosciuszko went back to France and Poland after fighting on behalf of the revolutionary forces, and they began allowing Jews to fight.
In their militaries. With respect to how the military and the people at large felt about their fearless leader, General Washington, it would be an understatement to say that they loved him. The synagogue in Richmond wrote a prayer to thank God for the gift of General Washington and his services. And it was written as an acrostic.
spelling out a washington in Hebrew with the letter Vav because there is no W sound in Washington. At the Weitzman Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, I have seen an acrostic ode to Lincoln, spelled Lincoln, as I think we’ve discussed before. And I absolutely love that little piece of
Jewish Americana. So it’s I don’t think I’ve seen the Washington one, but it is a very to me, I find it a very charming artifact.
We have some other people involved, whether they’re involved militarily, financially, emotionally. there was a man named Jonas Phillips who wrote back to his relatives in Europe that there was a declaration of independence of the colonists and explained what it was and what was going on among the revolutionary people.
Yael: And he wrote it in Yiddish. and in Yiddish he said that there were a number of rukim, which apparently means thugs among the revolutionary forces. And the British. I don’t know if the Continental Army had a naval force at all, for that matter. I know they had that like little canoe that took Washington across the Delaware. They intercepted this letter.
with the Declaration of Independence in it. And because it was written in Yiddish, they thought it was a code. They had no idea what it was. and they spent some time trying to decipher it and were never able to, because Yiddish was not something that they were familiar with by sight. Somebody named Barnard Gratz wrote a letter
also to a relative of his in Yiddish. And we’re I hope to come back to Barnard Gratz’s son-in-law later when we talk about the Jew Bill in Maryland, which will come a couple of decades after the war in the early 1800s. Gratz wrote a letter in which he says, I would tell you about the king’s speech, but it was narishkeit.
Schwab: And he says narishkeit.
Yael: He it’s in Yiddish. He uses the word narishkeit, which I absolutely love. we’ve talked about a whole bunch of people. There’s one other guy that I want to mention, his name is Isaac Franks. Isaac Franks lives in Philadelphia and George Washington stays in his house.
I believe it’s during a yellow fever epidemic and George Washington needs a safe place to stay away from the infected troops. And so he is able to stay at the home of Isaac Franks, who’s connected to the you know, high society Franks family in New York that I think we talked about a little bit last week. and Franks, I don’t know if I should mention this, but I just think it’s too funny not to mention.
Franks issues Washington a bill for his stay at his home. And the bill includes a line item for a missing fork and for the stay of Washington’s ducks. When I saw this, I didn’t really understand why Washington was traveling with ducks. And I still don’t know for sure. I it does I did find a lot of things that said he was an avid duck hunter.
But while I was trying to figure out why George Washington traveled with ducks, I did come up with
Schwab: I really wanna know why he stole the fork or one of the ducks, maybe.
Yael: But while I was trying to find out why Washington was traveling with ducks, I came upon what I think is a really bad slash good joke. Can I tell you a joke? Yeah. What’s the difference between George Washington and a duck? Any guesses?
Schwab: Yeah.
Schwab: What’s the difference between George Washington and a duck?
Yael: I don’t know. You wanna know? A duck has a bill on his face and George Washington has his face on a bill. I thought that was No no. I saw it when I Googled George Washington and ducks. I’m not a great joke. I hope we keep the I know that this is not it’s not related to history at all, but I hope we keep it in the episode. Okay.
Schwab: You thought of that yourself or you
Schwab: That is excellent.
Yael: We’ve talked about a whole bunch of people. I’m sorry that I can’t give you a seamless narrative as to how they all impact each other, but I did want to give you a sense of the Jewish characters that peopled the Revolutionary War period. One person who I have yet to mention, and I think it’s because for me he’s a bridge from the war portion that I wanted to talk about to the more philosophical.
Political science portion of the discussion is Gershom Mendes Seixas, who was the first American-born Jewish clergy person in the Thirteen Colonies. he was the chazan of the Shearith Israel congregation in New York that we talked about at considerable length.
in the last episode, a Spanish-Portuguese synagogue that was populated by both Ashkenazim and Sephardim, but remains a Sephardic synagogue by rite and liturgy and practice. he was fairly educated man. He was an autodidact. He was on the board of Columbia University. He was very much a moral voice.
For the Jews of the time. And as we mentioned last week, New York was far from the most important Jewish community in the Thirteen Colonies. Newport, Savannah, Charleston, Philadelphia were also a very important sites at this time. Lancaster, Pennsylvania had developed a community at this point in time, as well as some other places. Lancaster, because it was almost the furthest west that anyone had gone.
at this point in history that any white people or Europeans had gone at this point in history. It was kind of the edge of the frontier, and Jews very much were always at the forefront of exploration, whether or not it was because they didn’t feel welcome in certain places or because they had this exploratory spirit. I can’t say, but a Jewish community did develop there as well. That being said,
Yael: One thing I didn’t mention is that the British occupied New York for the vast majority of the war years. So anyone who was sympathetic to the revolutionary cause was not welcome there and in fact could be arrested for treason. So Seixas made the decision in seventeen seventy six as the British approached New York to close the synagogue.
Take the Torahs and bring the congregation into exile in Philadelphia. As we also mentioned in the last episode, Philadelphia had a growing congregation called Mikveh Israel. most of the patriotic revolutionary Jews of the age found their way to Mikveh Israel at some point during the Revolutionary War because Philadelphia was the center of power.
for the continental forces. So Gershom Seixas goes to Philly.
Schwab: how who will I just noticed ’cause I’m working on the next episode. we will mention him again because he has a descendant or relative who will we will be talking about later this season. Very it’s like a very big important family.
Yael: okay, interesting.
Yael: Yes, it is a very big important family. And the only reason that I know how to pronounce his name is because he was on the board of Columbia University, of which I am an alum, the Jewish community at Columbia University has an award named after him. that’s so cool. So they have a dinner, the Seixas dinner, at which they present the Seixas award. And that is the only reason I know how to pronounce Seixas, which is spelled S-E-I-X-A-S. So not, you know, not the most intuitive.
Yeah. Seixas sneaks back into New York once or twice during the war, which is extremely dangerous because he very, very easily could have been arrested for treason. But there is a wedding that takes a Jewish wedding that takes place in New York during the Revolutionary War. You’re smiling like you know this story.
Schwab: No, I it’s just a funny stuff. Like, all right, wherever you’re going is great. Willing to r he’ willing to risk his life to attend
Yael: so willing to risk his life to go back to New York to officiate a wedding, and the wedding that he officiates is the wedding of Samuel Lazarus. Samuel Lazarus, a Sephardic Jew, is the grandfather of Emma Lazarus.
Schwab: Lazarus, yeah. Who’s also she’s also related to the Seixas family.
Yael: is that who you were talking about? Amazing.
Schwab: ‘Cause he’s e’s like a cousin or something. like they’re he’s not just officiating the wedding, he’s related in some
Yael: They’re all marriage. It is I’m glad you brought that up because marriage is an interesting problem for some of the colonial Jews because there are so few of them. many of the original The original, yes, the OG, the predecessor to today’s horrible ill that has befallen us. a lot of the
Schwab: Shidduch crisis.
Yael: The clans married each other. That being said, they married other prominent Jewish families. That being said, also a lot of Jews married non-Jews. And what’s really interesting about the Jews that married non-Jews at the time, at least among the prominent families, is that for most of them, these Jewish people stayed very involved with the community. And
raised their children, regardless of whether or not the Jewish parent was the mother or the father, a lot of them raised their children with a Jewish identity. And a lot of the Jews that you read about in these histories of the Revolutionary War and colonial times, there will be some sort of side sentence mentioning that their wife was
Christian or they converted to Christianity later in life, but they were still considered a Jew, both by society at large and by the Jewish community. There was not this excommunication that you would think. And I don’t know if it’s because these people were not learned halachically, or if there were not enough of them that they could spare.
anyone? we did learn about one family last week where a daughter did intermarry and it caused tremendous, tremendous pain to the
Schwab: The mom with the letters, yeah.
Yael: Yeah, exactly. Abigail Levy Franks or Franks Levy. her daughter married into the Delancey family, which was a fairly anti-Semitic family in and of itself. But the community was comprised of converts, people who were halachically Jewish, people who are not halachically Jewish. And I didn’t s maybe I’m wasn’t looking at the quote unquote right sources.
But I did not see that very much as cause for concern for the lineage of the Jews, at least in that era. as we mentioned, their rab quote unquote rabbis, like really truly learned ordained rabbis, did not come to the United States until well into the 1800s. And questions of Jewish law were determined by.
The most learned person in the community, which was not very often a learned person at all. so I just it was interesting to me that I didn’t seem to see any questions of Jewish law arise in these discussions. though there were people in the community who never married more than
probably was common in other communities. And they do believe that that is because they could not find an appropriate Jewish person to marry, which also may have led to the community not growing as quickly as one might have thought. So back to Gershom Mendes Seixas, he was also one of 14 clergy people that was invited to George Washington’s inauguration in New York.
And to me, that goes to show that there was an inherent assumption that Jews were part of the citizenry of this new country. And that takes
Schwab: Even though like George Washington was Christian, the founding fathers were all Christian, like that the inauguration should be attended by ministers of different faiths.
Yael: Yeah. And I I think, you know, if you look at the writings of the founding fathers, there are often questions of whether or not certain roles can be filled by Jews. And the question that often comes up, and this is I think where we may want to take a break and come back, and this is something we’ll talk about.
In part two, were Jews citizens, but they were citizens that the Christians were tolerating? Or was there really no distinction between a Christian and a non-Christian citizen in the new country? And that’s not something that really gets openly debated until the adoption of the Constitution in 1789.
Schwab: Thanks for listening to Jewish History Nerds, brought to you by Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand.
Yael: If you like this show, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and please give us a rating and review. It really helps new listeners find the show.
Schwab: Unpacked.media for everything Unpacked related and go to Spotify or YouTube to watch our latest videos.
Yael: Most importantly, be in touch. Write to us at nerds@unpacked.media. We really love to hear from you. Jewish History Nerds is hosted by me Yael Steiner.
Schwab: And by me, Jonathan Schwab. Our education lead is Dr. Henry Abramson, and our editors are Rob Perra and Ari Schlacht.
Yael: We’re produced by Jenny Falcon. Thanks for listening.