The Jews in America Trilogy

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  … And it came to pass that in the year 1654, the Portuguese came back, and from the Hollanders took their lands by force. And God had compassion on His people, and gave it favor and grace in the eyes of the mighty ruler, Barreto, who should be favorably remembered, and he caused it to be proclaimed throughout his Army that every one of his soldiers should be careful not to wrong or persecute any of the children of Israel, and that if any should wilfully transgress his command his life would be forfeited.…

  General Barreto’s proclamation pardoned “All nations, of whatever quality or religion they may be … for having been in rebellion against the Crown of Portugal.… The same shall apply to all the Jews who are in Recife and Murits-Stadt.” To find a conqueror in such a forgiving mood is rare indeed. The Jews (and the other Dutch colonists) were given three months to conclude their affairs in Brazil, and were told, according to Mendes’ diary, that they

  could sell their houses and goods at an adequate price and in the most advantageous manner. And he gave permission to our brethren initiated into the covenant of Abraham (who now number more than six hundred souls) to return to our country here. And be commanded that if there were not enough Dutch ships in the harbor, as many Portuguese ships within his dominion should be given them until a sufficient number should be obtained. And all our people went down to the sea in sixteen ships, spread sail, and God led them to their destination to this land.

  “This land,” in the case of David Franco Mendes, was familiar and sophisticated Holland. Of the sixteen ships that set sail that May, fifteen arrived at their Netherlands destination. The passengers of the sixteenth had a different fate. Blown off course and separated from its sister ships, it was set upon by Spanish pirates. Its passengers were taken prisoner, its cargo was confiscated, and the ship was set afire and sunk. The prisoners were told that as Jews they would be taken to a Mediterranean port, where they would be sold as slaves. But soon—it is not clear how many days or weeks later—the pirate vessel was sighted by the Saint Charles, which was captained by a Frenchman named Jacques de la Motthe. In a skirmish at sea, the pirates were defeated and the prisoners rescued and taken aboard the Saint Charles, which, it turned out, was bound for a place David Franco Mendes describes in his journal as “the end of the inhabited earth,” a hamlet that consisted mostly of warehouses, called New Amsterdam.

  Captain de la Motthe was not exactly a cordial host, and the Jews may well have wondered if they might have been better off in the hands of Spanish pirates. His boat was small and already overloaded, and de la Motthe insisted that they abandon much of their personal belongings. When his ship dropped anchor in what is now New York Harbor, and when the twenty-three Jews prepared to go ashore, de la Motthe refused to let any of their remaining goods off his ship until every stiver of their passage money had been paid. It is clear that, collectively, the twenty-three Jews had not enough cash to pay for a second set of transatlantic tickets, having already paid for passage from Recife to Amsterdam and wound up in the opposite direction.

  The Jews tried to reason with de la Motthe, arguing that they would soon be receiving help from friends and relatives in Holland, but the captain was adamant. Poor, without food, houses, or friends in the new land, but, thanks to their considerable Dutch connections, at least able to speak the language of the Dutch colony, the twenty-three went ashore with only the clothes they wore on their backs. They set up a camp of sorts on the banks of the Hudson, just outside the settlement, and began a long struggle to come to terms with de la Motthe.

  On Monday, September 7, 1654, about a week after their arrival, the Jews were ordered to appear before the Worshipful Court of Burgomasters and Scepens of the City of New Amsterdam. According to the court records, translated from the Dutch:

  Jacques de la Motthe, master of the bark St. Cararina [sic], by a petition written in French, requests payment of the freight and board of the Jews whom he brought here … according to agreement and contract, in which each is bound in solidum, and that therefore, whatever furniture and other property they may have on board his bark may be publicly sold by order of the Court, in payment of their debt. He verbally declares that the Netherlanders who came over with him, are not included in the contract and have satisfied him. Solomon Pietersen, a Jew, appears in Court and says that the nine hundred and odd guilders of the 2,500 are paid, and that there are twenty-three souls, big and little, who must pay equally.

  Who was “Solomon Pietersen, a Jew”? He is not included in the pages of Dr. Stern’s book, nor does he appear to have been one of the twenty-three Saint Charles passengers. Had he preceded the twenty-three in some way? Perhaps so. His willingness to go before the court in their behalf indicates that he had a certain familiarity with the burgomasters of New Amsterdam, and he obviously spoke fluent Dutch. There is also evidence (his name, for one thing) that Pietersen was an Ashkenazic,* or German, Jew, and—for all his helpfulness—there are indications that Pietersen’s efforts were not universally appreciated by the twenty-three Sephardim, who considered Pietersen’s origins decidedly lower class—a Sephardic-Ashkenazic conflict that would billow in America for centuries to come. In any case, Pietersen’s plea got the Jews an extension of time, but not much, for the record continues:

  That the Jews shall, within twice twenty-four hours after date, pay according to contract what they lawfully owe, and in the meantime the furniture and whatever the petitioner has in his possession shall remain as security, without alienating the same.

  During the two-day moratorium, the Jews’ only hope was that help might somehow appear in the harbor from friends in Holland, even though the friends had no idea they were in America, and probably by this time assumed they had been lost at sea. When twice twenty-four hours had elapsed, the court was reconvened and de la Motthe appeared to demand the specific sum of 1,567 florins. He also placed in evidence a list of the Jews’ property held on shipboard. The list was pathetically scant, consisting mostly of articles the Spanish pirates had not wanted. Through all this the woebegone little group remained silent.

  What were their names, these unwelcomed and unwilling pioneers? The court records mention only one or two specific names, and spellings are offered capriciously. The court preferred to treat the “twenty-three souls, big and little” as a group, and in phraseology ominously reminiscent of the Expulsion Edict. Many records of America’s first Jewish community are lost or incomplete and are complicated by Marrano aliases. But from what can be pieced together about them, it seems probable that the twenty-three consisted of six family heads—four men (with their wives) and two other women who in all likelihood were widows, since they were counted separately—and thirteen young people. The heads of these families were Asser Levy, Abraham Israel De Piza (or Dias), David Israel Faro, Mose Lumbroso, and—the two women—Judith (or Judica) Mercado (or De Mercado, or de Mereda) and Ricke (or Rachel) Nunes.

  The court was clearly of two minds about their situation. The colony needed able-bodied men, and had made it a policy to welcome immigrants, indigent or wealthy. But the court could not ignore de la Motthe’s fiercely worded petitions, and de la Motthe was eager to be on his way. The solution was a compromise. The court offered the Jews a further delay, of four days this time, and then directed that if their debt was not settled the captain could “Cause to be sold, by public vendue, in the presence of the officer, the goods of Abraham Israel [De Piza] and Judica de Mereda, being the great debtor, and these not sufficing, he shall proceed in like manner with the others to the full acquittal of the debt and no further.”

  By now the Jews and their predicament had become the talk of New Amsterdam, and the pros and cons of the case were being argued all over the colony. As a result, when the four days had passed, with no salvation in the form of a ship appearing, and when the Jews’ property was brought ashore and arrayed on the pier to be sold at auction, a group of New Netherlanders who had been defending the Jews arrived early, began buying up items at nominal prices, and then handed them over to
their original owners. It was one of the earliest recorded examples of what might be called Christian charity in America. This was not, however, a development calculated to please M. de la Motthe, who, as soon as he learned what was happening, ordered the sale stopped. He then turned matters over to a young Dutch lawyer named Jan Martya.

  Under normal procedure, petitioners before the Worshipful Court of Burgomasters had to bring their cases to the court on days when it was scheduled to be in session, and each case had to wait its turn. But a ruling did exist which stated that in return for “each member of the Council, five guilders; and for the Court Messenger two guilders,” the Worshipful Court would hold a special hurry-up session and forget about what other cases might be pending. It was a provision that obviously favored the rich, and Martya, acting in de la Motthe’s behalf, paid the necessary guilders and an “Extraordinary meeting” was promptly announced at the Stadt Huys (State House), which was actually a chamber over a taproom where “beer was sold by the whole can, but not in smaller quantities.” One gathers that beer had its place in the normal proceedings of the court.

  All over again, the case against “David Israel and the other Jews” was recited, and Martya added in sterner tones:

  Whereas their goods sold thus far by venue do not amount to the payment of their obligations, it is therefore requested that one or two of the said Jews be taken as principal which, according to the aforesaid contract or obligation, cannot be refused. Therefore he hath taken David Israel and Moses Ambrosius* as principal debtors for the remaining balance, with request that the same be placed in confinement until the account be paid.

  This, revealing that legal language has grown no less convoluted over the years, was the first time prison had been mentioned. And the Jews, who had no guilders with which to pay for their share of the court’s attention, could do nothing but ask for the mercy of the court. But the court decreed:

  … having weighed the petition of the plaintiff and seen the obligation wherein each is bound IN SOLIDUM for the full payment [we] have consented to the plaintiff’s request to place the aforesaid persons under civil arrest (namely with the Provost Marshall) until they have made satisfaction.

  It was not, however, a total victory for de la Motthe, because the decree contained a proviso that may have come as a surprise to him. The order sent the two men to debtor’s prison only provided that “He, de la Motthe, shall previously answer for the board, which is fixed at 16 stivers per diem for each prisoner, and is ordered that for this purpose 40–50 guilders proceeding from the goods sold shall remain in the hands of the Secretary, together with the expenses of this special court.” Collecting his money was becoming an increasingly expensive chore for de la Motthe.

  With two men jailed and the sale resumed, the prospects for the twenty-three were discouraging. September passed, and October nights were growing chilly. Though there was scattered help from sympathetic residents of the little colony, the encampment by the river faced slow starvation. Then Solomon Pietersen—who had made himself the chief defender of the twenty-three—stepped to center stage again.

  In the small print of the agreement the Jews had signed when taken aboard, Pietersen uncovered a helpful fact. The passage money was not owed to de la Motthe alone. The other officers, and even the crew, of the Saint Charles were entitled to a share. Armed with this, Pietersen went to each officer and sailor and, in individual pleas, asked each to wait for his money until the ship’s next call the following year. Each would be paid then, he promised, and with full interest. To de la Motthe he pointed out that the proceeds of the sale nearly equalled his personal share, and this he could keep. On October 26, 1654, the Worshipful Court declared:

  Solomon Pietersen appeared in Court and exhibited a declaration from the attorney of the sailors, relative to the balance of the freight of the Jews, promising to wait until the arrival of the ship from Patria. Wherefore he requests to receive the monies still in the Secretary’s hands for Rycke Nunes, whose goods were sold, over and above her own freight debt, in order to obtain with that money support for her. Whereupon was endorsed: Petitioner Solomon Pietersen as attorney was permitted to take, under security, the monies in Secretary’s hands.

  And so, after an ordeal of nearly two months, the settlers who had inadvertently become America’s first “minority group” were free—or at least somewhat free—to make a living.

  And they could practice their religion. With the boys over thirteen, there were probably enough males to form a minyan to celebrate the first Rosh Hashanah in America on September 12, 1654 (5415 according to the Hebrew calendar). Within a year, the congregation of Shearith Israel—“Remnant of Israel”—was founded. The settlers were not allowed a house of worship, but they could hold services in their own houses; a few years later, they were permitted to rent quarters for services. At first they were refused land for a cemetery but, by 1656, they had acquired “a little hook of land” for a burial ground. Its exact location is unknown. By 1682, the congregation was permitted to purchase the Chatham Square Cemetery, which exists today. It was not until 1730 that the congregation succeeded in erecting the first synagogue building in America, a tiny structure in Manhattan’s Mill Street.

  The parnas, or president, of the synagogue that year was Emily Nathan’s great-great-great grandfather, as Aunt Ellie would remind the children. A Nathan—Emily’s brother, Justice Edgar J. Nathan, Jr.—was parnas until his death in 1965. His son Edgar Nathan III now serves.

  Today, New York families such as the Nathans, the Seixases, the Cardozos, and the Hendrickses—who are all able to locate the names of the earliest settlers far back in the tangled branches of their family trees—can view the settlers’ accomplishments with a certain quiet pride. In the years around the turn of the last century, when Mrs. William Astor was throwing her celebrated balls for the people Ward McAllister had labeled “the Four Hundred”—and when a later-arriving German-Jewish elite had begun high-hatting Mrs. Astor and calling itself “the One Hundred”—one of the little Nathans, no stranger to the family’s intense sense of hubris, asked his mother, “Who are we?” “We,” said Mrs. Nathan with a little smile, “are the Twenty-Three.”

  * From Ashkenaz, a people mentioned in Genesis, who in medieval rabbinical literature became identified with the Germans.

  * Probably Mose Lumbroso.

  5

  “THESE GODLESS RASCALS”

  At the heart of the Jews’ early difficulties, and a factor that would continue to cause them grief for a number of years, was the openly hostile and anti-Semitic attitude of Governor Peter Stuyvesant. In the land where the Pilgrims, just a few years earlier, had come to find religious freedom, bigotry was no rarer, nor were its expressions much different, than today. At the height of the de la Motthe affair—on September 22, 1654—Stuyvesant had written to the headquarters of the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam to say:

  The Jews who have arrived would nearly all like to remain here, but learning that they (with their customary usury and deceitful trading with the Christians) were very repugnant to the inferior magistrates [members of the Worshipful Court] as also to the people having the most affection for you; the Deaconry also fearing that owing to their present indigence they might become a charge in the coming winter, we have, for the benefit of this weak and newly developing place and the land in general, deemed it useful to require them in a friendly way to depart; praying also most seriously in this connection, for ourselves as also for the general community of your worships, that the deceitful race—such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ—be not allowed further to infect and trouble this new colony, to the detraction of your worships and the dissatisfaction of your worships’ most affectionate subjects.

  Peter Stuyvesant, a harsh and despotic man, was a bigot in the classic sense. He had already been reprimanded by the company for his persecutions of Lutherans and Quakers in the colony, and he had made himself generally unpopular with everyone by his efforts to inc
rease taxes and prevent the sale of liquor and firearms to the Indians. What was the basis of his distrust, even fear, of a handful of impoverished Jews? The charge of “usury” was a common one, and Jews had learned, in a grim way, to be amused by it. The ironic fact was that usury was invented by a seventeenth-century Dutch Christian, Salmasius, who published three books on the subject between 1638 and 1640 urging the adoption of usury as an economic tool. His views had been quickly adopted by most Christian, as well as Jewish, moneylenders. Among the Jews, meanwhile, were men who, in Brazil, had been respected businessmen, as they had been in Holland before that. There could have been no real reason to suppose they had come to New Amsterdam to indulge in anything dishonest.

  There were, however, certain characteristics of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews that Christians found off-putting. The Sephardim were characterized by a certain dignity of manner, an implacable and unbroachable reserve. They possessed not a little of the Spanish temper. From early portraits we see their high-cheekboned, often haughty, faces. There was a sense of aloofness, of distance, about them that passed for arrogance or extreme self-pride. The records of the de la Motthe hearings all describe the Jews as sitting rigidly in their seats, saying nothing, retreated into the grandeur of silence. But Peter Stuyvesant’s attitude shows, more than anything else, that the spirit of the Inquisition had crept, in little ways, all over the world, and that the ancient superstitions and accusations against the Jews had followed it—that the Jews were sorcerers, ritual murderers of children, poisoners of wells, killers of Christ.

  There were others who shared Stuyvesant’s views. The Reverend John Megapolensis, head of the Dutch Church in New Amsterdam, had, the same year as the Jews’ arrival, succeeded—with Stuyvesant’s full help—in denying the Lutherans permission to build their own church in Manhattan. A few months later, in a state of alarm, Megapolensis wrote to his archbishop in Holland: