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Jonathan D. Sarna
THE IMPACT OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ON AMERICAN JEWS
There is no dearth of literature on the subject of Jews and the American Revolution. Jewish historians have chronicled the actions of Jewish patriots, described and analyzed the contribution of Jewish financiers and merchants, and even devoted space to the controversial subject of Jewish Tories. But the impact of the American Revolution on American Jews has so far been neglected.! Consequently, we know far more about how Jews affected the Revolution than about how the Revolution affected them. The American Jewish population in the late eighteenth century numbered about 2500, scarcely one tenth of one percent of the national population. Jews' influence loomed far larger. Concentrated as they were in developing areas, Jews naturally became intimate with leading poli- ticians and businessmen. Jewish merchants and non-Jewish merchants traded freely. Discriminatory legislation, though it existed in the colonies, rarely limited Jews' right to work and worship in peace. Indeed, Jews enjoyed far better conditions in the American colonies than in most other corners of the diaspora. 3 Treatment of Jews did not, therefore, become the major factor de- termining Jewish loyalties in the struggle against Britain. Individuals based their decisions largely on business, national, and personal con- siderations. Many Jews vacillated, and pledged allegiance to both sides in the dispute for as long as they could. But when finally forced to choose, only a small minority sided wholeheartedly with the Crown. Most Jews came down on the side of the Whigs, and cast their lot for independence. They contributed what they could to the national struggle, shed blood on the field of battle, and, after the viCtory, joined their countrymen in jubilant celebration. The Revolution had an enormous impact on Jewish life in America. Most immediately, wartime conditions caused massive human disloca-
I am g-rat<·ful to Drs. Rob<·rt Handy, .Jacob R. Marcus, Micha<•l A. Meyer, and Abraham .J. l'<•ck for their comnwnts on an earli<'r draft of this essay. A Fn·nch version of this essay app<·ared in Dix-Huitieme Siecle. MODERN .JUDAISM Vol. I pp. 149-lhU 027h-1114/Hl/0012-0l49 $01.00' 19Hl by Th<• .Johns Hopkins Uni'(•rsity Press
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tions. Several families-among them the Gomezes, Frankses, Hayses and Harts-divided into two hostile camps: Whig and Tory. A few British sympathizers, notably Isaac Touro, chazzan of the synagogue in Newport, left the country altogether. Isaac Hart, a Jewish loyalist shipper who fled only as far as Long Island, was killed by patriotic Whigs. Some loyalists came in the other direction, from Europe to America. These were the Jewish Hessians, German soldiers employed by England's King George III (himself a German) to fight the rebellious colonists. Alexander Zuntz, the most famous Jewish Hessian, is credited with preserving Congrega- tion Shearith Israel of New York's synagogue sanctuary during the period when that city was under British military control. Other Jewish Hessians settled further south: in Charleston, South Carolina and Richmond, Virginia. They seem to have met with mixed receptions from the Jews who preceded them there. 5 Supporters of the Revolution were no less mobile than their Tory opponents. A large contingent from Shearith Israel fled to Stratford, Connecticut, when the British moved on New York. Later, Philadelphia became the chief haven for patriotic refugees. Shearith Israel's minister, Gershom Seixas moved there from Stratford in 1780. For Jews, as for non-Jews, war meant "fly[ing] with such things as were of the first neces- sity" when the British approached. Possessions that were left behind were usually lost forever. 6 These wartime migrations had lasting effects. People who never had met Jews discovered them for the first time, and learned how similar they were to everyone else. Jews from different parts of the country encountered one another, and cemented lasting unions. A succession of Jewish marriages took place, as Jewish children made new friends. Finally, the distribution of Jews in the colonies changed. Newport, Rhode Island, formerly one of the four largest Jewish communities in America had its port destroyed in the war. Its Jews scattered. The Savannah Jewish community also suffered greatly from the war's decimating effects. On the other hand, two cities that were spared destruction, Philadelphia and Charleston, emerged from the war with larger and better organized Jewish communities than they had ever known before. In addition to geographical mobility, the Revolution fostered eco- nomic mobility am.ong American Jews. Trade disruptions and wartime hazards took their toll, especially on traditional, old stock Jewish mer- chants like the Gomezes and Frankses. Their fortunes declined enor- mously. On the other hand, adventurous entrepreneurs-young, fearless and innovative upstarts-emerged from the war wealthy men. Haym Salomon bounded up the economic ladder by making the best both of his formidable linguistic talents, and of his newly learned advertising and marketing techniques. He and his heirs seem not to have adapted as well to the inflationary postwar economy, for when he died his family became
Jonathan D. Sarna
those who have hitherto denied them the rights and privileges enjoyed by the veriest wretches.II
Jews and sympathetic non-Jews thus appealed to their countrymen's patriotic piety. They demanded that the Jewish contribution to America's "sacred drama" be both recognized and rewarded.l 2 It took time before these demands met with full compliance. Many Americans apparently felt that Jews' pre-Revolutionary gains sufficed. They wanted the old colonial status quo in religion to remain in effect. Under the British, Jews had eventually won the rights-sometimes in law, sometimes in fact-to be naturalized, to participate in business and commerce, and to worship. They suffered from disabling Sunday closing laws, church taxes, and special oaths, and they were denied political liberties. But devout Protestants considered this only appropriate. In their eyes, God's chosen people still labored under a Divine curse.1 3 Protestant Dissenters- Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and smaller sects-were not content with the old status quo. Their interest in Jews was minimal; the reason that they opposed the colonial system of religion was because it permitted church establishments. Since most established churches relegated Dissenters to an inferior status, or refused to recog- nize them at all, Dissenting Protestants insisted that church and state should be completely separate, and church contributions purely volun- tary. They defended these positions by appealing to the arguments of British dissenters and Enlightenment philosophers.l 4 Dissenters couched their rhetoric in the language of freedom. They endeavored to convince traditional forces that liberty of conscience and diversity of belief would not open the door to licentiousness and im- morality. The question, as they saw it, was merely one of liberty-the very question that had been decided in the Revolution. "Every argument for civil liberty," Virginia Dissenters insisted, "gains additional strength when applied to liberty in the concerns of religion."l "Liberty in the concerns of religion," to these men, undoubtedly meant liberty in the concerns of the Protestant religion. With the excep- tion of Roger Williams, whom succeeding colonial generations viewed as a dangerous extremist, prominent Dissenters generally failed to fight for the rights of Catholics, non-Christians, or non-believers. They feared that admitting them to equality would threaten the safety and moral fiber of society. Logically, however, Dissentist arguments on behalf of liberty of conscience, and church-state separation should have applied equally to non-Protestants. There was simply a disjunction between the radical ideas that Dissenters espoused, and the social realities which they were prepared to accept. The Baptist leader, Isaac Backus, for example, argued nobly that "every person has an unalienable right to act in all religious affairs according to the full persuasion of his own mind, where others are not injured thereby." Yet, he lauded Massachusetts lawmakers for decree-
The American Revolution and Jews (^153)
ing that "no man can take a seat in our legislature till he solemnly declares, 'I believe the Christian religion and have a firm persuasion of its truth'."I 6 The development of complete church-state separation in America -the post-Revolutionary development that was of greatest significance to Jews-can thus not be credited to Protestant Dissenters. Though they spread the idea of religious liberty, and so helped all minority religions, their battle on behalf of this principle ended with the victory of Protes- tant pluralism over church establishment. Jewish rights rather came about through the-work of a second group of Revolutionary-era thinkers: those inspired by the ideas of Enlightenment rationalism. Classic Enlighten- ment texts-among them the works of Locke, Rousseau, Grotius, Montes- quieu, Harrington, and Voltaire-found many readers in America. Leading patriots like Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and Paine openly avowed deistic or Unitarian principles. For these men, a utilitarian belief in the value of "all sound religion" was enough. They felt sure that reason alone would guarantee society's moral order; "my own mind," Thomas Paine said, "is my own church." 17 To Paine and those like him, Protestantism, no matter how desirable it mi~ht be, was not a prerequisite of good citizenship. The Enlightenment view of religious liberty eventually gained the upper hand in America, though Protestant pluralists continued to strug- gle-with various degrees of success-for many years. In 1777, New York became the first state to extend liberty of conscience to all native born, regardless of religion. An anti-Catholic test oath was required only of those born abroad. Virginia's justly famous "Act for Religious Freedom (1785)," written by Thomas Jefferson, was both more comprehensive and more influential. It carefully distinguished civil rights from religious opinions, and decreed that "all men shall be free to profess and by argu- ment to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities." Once the national Constitution, in Article Six and Amendment One, wrote Virginia's version of religious liberty into federal law, the claims of Revolutionary-era American Jews to equal rights were finally conceded. At least at the national level, an epochal change in Jews' legal status had come about.JB Constitutional guarantees were not binding on the states; they could legislate as they pleased. As a result, some legislatures-notably those in New England, New Jersey, Maryland and North Carolina-enacted into law only the principles of Protestant pluralism. Jews who refused to avow their faith in the Protestant religion were denied equality in state govern- ment. The implications of this were absurd: theoretically, a Jew could be President of the United States, but ineligible to hold even the lowliest political office in Maryland. Realizing this, a majority of states granted Jews full rights by 1830 (though New Hampshire held out until 1877).
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considered a people apart. The Newport Congregation therefore assured Washington that its members intended to "join with our fellow-citizens" in welcoming him to the city. But they still wrote their own separate letter. The President understood. He hoped that Jews would "continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants," even as each Jew individually sat "in safety under his own vine and fig tree." 23 Besides these displays of loyalty, Jews sought to "merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants" by organizing their synagogues on democratic principles. They may have done so unconsciously, following the example of those around them. They certainly knew, however, that Catholics and others resisted the temper of the times and in many cases continued to organize their churches on an autocratic model. By choosing to imitate patriotic Protestants, rather than the more traditionally ori- ented religious groups, Jews sided with the native born majority; in so doing, of course, they subtly courted its favor. 24 Formerly, American Jews had imitated the example of the Anglican Church, the church that was officially established in many of the colonies. Synagogues modelled themselves on the Bevis Marks Synagogue in England, and looked to the Mother Country for guidance and assistance. 25 After the Revolution, congregations prudently changed their constitu- tions (actually, they wrote "constitutions" for the first time; before 1776 they called the laws they were governed by "Hascamoth"). They became more independent, and discarded as unfashionable leadership forms that looked undemocratic. At Shearith Israel, in 1790, the franchise was widened (though not as far as it would be in other synagogues), a new constitution was promulgated, and a "bill of rights" was drawn up. The new set of laws began with a ringing affirmation of popular sovereignty reminiscent of the American Constitution: "We the members of K. K. Shearith Israel." Another paragraph explicitly linked Shearith Israel with the "state happily constituted upon the principles of equal liberty, civil and religious." Still a third paragraph, the introduction to the new "bill of rights" (which may have been written at a different time) justified synagogue laws in terms that Americans would immediately have under- stood:
Whereas in free states all power originates and is derived from the people, who always retain every right necessary for their well being individually, and, for the better ascertaining those rights with more precision and explicitly, from [form?] a declaration or bill of those rights. In a like manner the individuals of every society in such state are entitled to and retain their several rights, which ought to be preserved inviolate. Therefore we, the profession [professors] of the Divile Laws. members of this holy congregation of Shearith Israel, in the city of New York,
Jonathan D. Sarna
conceive it our duty to make this declaration of our rights and privi- leges.
Congregation Beth Shalome of Richmond followed this same rhetori- cal practice. It began its 1789 constitution with the words "We the sub- scribers of the Israelite religion resident in this place desirous of pro- moting divine worship," and continued in awkward, seemingly immi- grant English to justify synagogue laws in American terms:
It is necessary that in all societies that certain rules and regulations be made for the government for the same as tend well to the proper decorum in a place dedicated to the worship of the Almighty God, peace and friendship among the same.
It then offered membership and voting privileges to "every free man residing in this city for the term of three months of the age of 21 years ... who congregates with us." By inviting, rather than obligating all Jews to become members, Beth Shalome signalled its acceptance of the "voluntary principle" in religion. Like Protestant churches it began to depend on persuasion rather than coercion. This change did not come about without resistance. In 1805, Shearith Israel actually attempted to collect a tax of ten dollars from all New York Jews "that do not commune with us." But the trend was clear. The next few decades would see the slow transition from a coercive "synagogue-community" to a more voluntaristic "community of synagogues." As early as 1795, Philadelphia became the first city in America with two different synagogues. By 1850, the number of syna- gogues in New York alone numbered fifteen. The voluntary principle and synagogue democracy naturally resulted in synagogues that paid greater heed to members' needs and desires. Congregational officers knew that dissatisfied Jews could abandon a synagogue or weaken it through competition. In response to congregant demands, some synagogues thus began to perform conversions, something they had previously hesitated to do for historical and halachic reasons. Other synagogues showed new leniency toward Jews who intermarried or violated the Sabbath. Leaders took their cue from congregants: they worried less about Jewish law, and more about "being ashamed for the Goyim ... hav[ing] a stigma cast upon us and be[ing] derided." 29 The twin desires of post-Revolutionary American Jews-to conform and to gain acceptance-made decorum and Americanization central synagogue concerns. In the ensuing decades, mainstream Protestant customs, defined by Jews as respectable, exercised an ever greater influ- ence on American Jewish congregational life. Not all changes, of course, reflect conscious imitation. When Christian dates replaced Jewish dates in some congregational minutes, for example, the shift probably reveals nothing more than the appointment of a new secretary-a more Ameri- canized one. When Jewish leaders consulted "with different members of
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inquiry might be carried out, see Horst Dippel, Germany and the American Revolution 1770-1800 (Chapel Hill, 1977) and Max Kohler, "Phases in the History of Religious Liberty in America with Special Reference to the Jews," Publications of the American jewish Historical Society (PA]HS), 11 (1903), pp. 53-9.
- On the general subject of war and religion, see Salo Baron, "Impact of Wars on Religion," Steeled by Adversity (Philadelphia 1971), pp. 417-53; and the magnifi- cent bibliography in Keith L. Neilson, The Impact of War on American Life: The Twentieth Century Experience (New York, 1973). A valuable sociological study that has informed this essay is Stanislaw Andrzejewski, Military Organization and Society (New York, 1954).
- Jacob R. Marcus, The Colonia/American few (3 vols., Detroit, 1970); Doris G. Daniels, "Colonial Jewry: Religion, Domestic and Social Relations," American jewish Historical Quarterly(= A]HQ), 66 (1977), 375-400. Leo Hershkowitz, "Some Aspects ofthe New York Jewish Merchant and Community 1654-1820," A]HQ, 66 (1976), pp. 10-34.
- For the history of Jews and the American Revolution, I have relied through- out this essay on Richard Morris, "The Jews, Minorities and Dissent in the American Revolution," Migration and Settlement: Proceedings of the Anglo-American Jewish Historical Conference (London, 1971), pp. 146-164; Marcus, Colonia/American few, pp. 1249-1326; idem, The few and the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Documentary (Cincinnati, 1975); Samuel Rezneck, Unrecognized Patriots: The jews in the American Revolution (Westport, 1975); and Robert T. Handy, "The American Revolution and Religious Freedom," The Sol Feinstone Lecture for 1979 delivered at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (New York, 1979).
- Jacob R. Marcus, American Jewry Documents: Eighteenth Century (Cincinnati, 1959), p. 52; and Myron Berman, Richmond's Jewry, 1769-1976 (Charlottesville, 1979), pp. 3, 78.
- Berman, Richmond's jewry, p. 15; Edwin Wolf 2nd and Maxwell Whiteman, The History of the jews of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1975), pp. 76-145; Jacob R. Marcus, The Handsome Young Priest in the Black Gown: The Personal World of Gershom Seixas (Cincinnati, 1970), pp. 2, 66.
- Wolf and Whiteman, Philadelphia, pp. 100, 114-203; David de Sola Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone (New York, 1952), pp. 288, 415; Marcus, Colonia/American few, pp. 320, 368; Morris A. Gutstein, The Story of the jews of Newport (New York, ( 1936), pp. 191-227; Charles Reznikoff and Uriah Z. Engelman, The jews of Charleston (Philadelphia, 1950), pp. 676-7.
- Marcus, Colonial American jew, pp. 1~95, 1318-9; Miriam Freund, jewish Merchants in Colonial America (New York, 1939), esp. 81; Hershkowitz, "New York Jewish Merchant," pp. 28-29; Rezneck, Unrecognized Patriots, pp. 81-97; Nathan M. Kaganoff, "The Business Career of Haym Salomon As Reflected in His Newspaper Advertisements," A]HQ, 66 (1976), pp. 35-49; and Maxwell Whiteman, Copper for America: The Hendricks Family and a National Industry 1755-1939 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1971), pp. 30-45.
- John B. McMaster, A History of the People of the United States (New York, 1928), II, p. 586; Evarts B. Green, The Revolutionary Generation, 1763-1790 (New York, 1946), pp. 367-71; Franklin M. Littell, From State Church to Pluralism (New York, 1971), p. 34; Hyman B. Grinstein, "The American Synagogue Laxity of Religious Observance 1750-1850," (Unpublished M.A. Thesis, Columbia Uni- versity, 193:>); idem, The Rise oj the jewish Community of New York 1654-1860 (Phila- delphia, 1945), p. 336; Bertram W. Korn, "Judaism in the Ante-Bellum Period,"
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A]HQ, 53 (June 1964), pp. 341-51; Leon A. Jick, The Americanization of the Synagogue (Hanover, N.J., 1976), pp. 7-9; Douglas H. Sweet, "Church Vitality and the American Revolution," Church History 45 (1976), pp. 341-57.
- Morris U. Schappes (ed.) A Documentary History of the jews in the United States, 1654-1875 (New York, 1971), p. 69.
- E. Milton Altfeld, The Jews' Struggle for Religious and Civil Liberty in Maryland (Baltimore, 1924), p. 97; cf. Edward Eitches, "Maryland's Jew Bill," A]HQ, 60 (March 1971), pp. 258-79.
- For other examples, see Wolf and Whiteman, jews of Philadelphia, p. 112; Rezneck, Unrecognized Patriots, pp. 159, 160, 169; and J.R. Marcus, Memoirs of American Jews 1775-1865 (Philadelphia, 1955), I, p. 136.
- Abraham V. Goodman, American Overture: jewish Rights in Colonial Times (Philadelphia, 1947); Oscar and Mary Handlin, "The Acquisition of Political and Social Rights by the Jews in the United States," American jewish Year Book, 56 (1955), pp. 43-54; Marcus, ColonialAmerican]ew, pp. 397-515.
- Anson P. Stokes, Church and State in the United States (3 vols., New York, 1950); Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cam- bridge, 1967), esp. 246c272; John W. Pratt, Religion, Politics, and Diversity: The Church-State Theme in New York History (Ithaca, 1967); Robert T. Handy, A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities (New York, 1971); William McLoughlin, New England Dissent 1603-1833 (2 vols., Cambridge, 1971); Cushing Strout, The New Heavens and New Earth: Political Religion in America (New York, 1974).
- Quoted in Bailyn, Ideological Origins, p. 261.
- William G. McLoughlin (ed.), Isaac Backus on Church, State and Calvinism (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 487, 436; cf. idem, New England Dissen~ pp. 389, 594, 612, and passim
- Joseph L. Blau, Cornerstones of Religious Freedom in Amen·ca (New York, 1964), p. 71.
- Handlin, "Acquisition of Political and Social Rights," pp. 54-65; Stanley F. Chyet, "The Political Rights of the Jews in the United States: 1776-1840," American jewish Archives, 10 (1958), pp. 14-75; cf. James H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship (Chapel Hill, 1978).
- See, in addition to works cited above nn. 11, IS, Leon Heuhner, "The Struggle for Religious Liberty in North Carolina with Special Reference to the Jews," PA]HS, 16 (1907), pp. 37-71; Stokes, Church and State, pp. 860-883.
- Conrad Cherry (ed.), God's New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971); Milton Konvitz,]udaism and the American Idea (New York, 1978).
- Marcus, Colonial American few, pp. 971-4; David de Sola Pool, An Old Faith in the New World (New York, 1955), pp. 126-38; Grinstein, jewish Community of New York, pp. 269-70.
- Rezneck, Unrecognized Patn"ots, p. 163; Marcus, jews and the Amen·can Revolu- tion, pp. 246-50. Catherine Albanese, Sons of the Fathers (Philadelphia, 1976), p. 214, offers a different symbolic interpretation of this ceremony.
- Joseph L. Blau and SaloW. Baron (ed.), The jews of the United States 1790- 1840: A Documentary History (New York, 1963), pp. 8-11; Marcus, American jewry Documents, pp. 167-70.
- J. R. Marcus, Early American jewry (Philadelphia, 1953), II, pp. 486-93; cf. Edward F. Humphrey, Nationalism and Religion in America 1774-1783 (Boston, 1924).
