OTHER COMMUNITIES IN THE FIRST PERIODS OF INDEPENDENCE.
Rabbi Gershom Mendez Seixas—Growth of the Jewish community of Philadelphia on account of the War—Protest against the religious test clause in the Constitution of Pennsylvania—Benjamin Franklin contributes five pounds to Mickweh Israel—Secession of the German-Polish element—New Societies—Jewish lawyers; Judge Moses Levy—Congressman H. M. Phillips—The Bush family of Delaware—New Jersey and New Hampshire—North Carolina: the Mordecai family and other early settlers.
While the Jewish community of New York was not entirely dispersed, like that of Newport, by the outbreak of the Revolution, a great majority resolved to leave the city before it was occupied by the British (Sept. 15, 1776). The patriotic minister of the Congregation Shearit Israel, Rabbi Gershom Mendez Seixas (b. in New York, 1745; d. there July 2, 1816), who was the spiritual head of the community since 1766, early espoused the cause of the colonies, and it was mostly due to his influence that the congregation closed the door of its Synagogue on the approach of the British. Most of those who left went to Philadelphia; Rabbi Seixas himself first went to Stratford, Conn., where he remained about four years, and where several of his former congregants joined him. In 1780 he, too, went to Philadelphia, but returned to New York after the war (March, 1784), when the Synagogue was reopened and he resumed his former position. He later (1787) became a trustee of Columbia College, and was one of its incorporators whose name appeared on the charter.
There was, however, notwithstanding the statement of Dr. Benjamin Rush that “the Jews in all the States are Whigs,” a sprinkling of Tories in New York Jewry, who remained at home, and some of them occasionally held services in the Synagogue during the British occupation, under the presidency of Lyon Jonas, and subsequently of Alexander Zuntz, a Hessian officer, who settled in New York. On the reorganization of the congregation at the close of the Revolution, Hyman Levy succeeded Zuntz as president, and the congregation presented an address of congratulation to Governor Clinton on the outcome of the war. Rabbi Seixas was one of the fourteen ministers who participated in the inauguration of Washington as President, in New York, on April 30, 1789. A list of the residents of New York in 1799 whose residences were assessed at £2,000 or over includes the names of Benjamin Seixas, Solomon Sampson, Alexander Zuntz and Ephraim Hart.
The community was still small—not quite half as large as that of Newport in the preceding period; there were only about 500 Jews in New York at the commencement of the War of 1812. But it was slowly growing and several of the first communal institutions date from that time. A Hebrah Gemilut Hasodim, for the burying of the dead, was organized in 1785; the Polonies Talmud Torah was founded in 1802, with a fund which Myer Polonies bequeathed to the congregation for that purpose in the preceding year. The Hebrah Hesed we-Emet was organized in the same year.
The Jewish community which gained most in the time of the war was that of Philadelphia. The little building in Sterling Alley, where the Congregation Mickweh Israel prayed at that time, soon became too small, and a three-story brick house, in Cherry Alley, between Third and Fourth Streets, was hired. But even the new place was soon too small, and a plain building was constructed on a lot in Cherry Street, west of Third Street, which was bought for the purpose. It was dedicated on September 13, 1782, by Rabbi Seixas. A list of the members of the congregation at that time contains 102 names[18] and the percentage of Ashkenazic (German and Polish) names is much larger than in similar lists of earlier dates.
A year after the Synagogue was built the Jews of Philadelphia for the first time appeared as an organized body in any public proceeding. On the 23d of December, 1783, the minister, Gershom Mendez Seixas; the parnass, Simon Nathan; and Asher Myers, Barnard Gratz and Haym Salomon, as members of the Mahamad or Board of Trustees, in behalf of themselves and brethren, addressed the Council of Censors in relation to the declaration required to be made by each member of the Assembly, which affirmed that “the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments were given by Divine inspiration,” and also in relation to that part of the Constitution which declared that “no other test should be required of any other civil magistrate in that State.” They represented that the provisions deprived them of the right of ever becoming representatives. They did not covet office, they said, but they thought the provision improper, and an injustice to the members of a persuasion that had always been attached to the American cause. This memorial appeared to have had no immediate effect; but it doubtless had its influence in procuring the ultimate modification of the test clause in the Constitution of Pennsylvania.
Rabbi Seixas was succeeded in Philadelphia by the Rev. Jacob Raphael Cohen (d. Sept., 1811), who was formerly a reader or hazzan in Montreal, Canada, and New York. The congregation was weakened by the departure of a considerable number of members after the war, and probably also by the death of Haym Salomon, who was one of its most generous contributors, and found itself in financial difficulties about the year 1788. After an application to the General Assembly of Pennsylvania for permission to set up a lottery to pay the amount due on the Synagogue building was not granted, the congregation issued a general appeal to citizens of all sects. Among the non-Jews who sent in contributions in response to this appeal was the great Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) and the astronomer, David Rittenhouse (1732–96), the former contributing five pounds and the latter two.
In April, 1790, the Legislature passed an act to allow the Hebrew Congregation to raise eight hundred pounds sterling by a lottery. The managers were: Manuel Josephson, Solomon Lyon, Solomon Hays, Solomon Etting, William Wistar and John Duffield. The last two were not Jews, but were placed among the trustees probably to give the project some influence with members of other denominations.
The inevitable secession of the Ashkenazic element took place in 1802, when the “Hebrew-German Society Rodef Shalom,” one of the earliest German-Jewish congregations in America was formed. It was reorganized and chartered in 1812. Among its earliest rabbis were Wolf Benjamin, Jacob Lipman, Bernhard Illowy, Henry Vidaver, Moses Sulzbacher and Moses Rau.