The Jews in America Trilogy

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  Here, he wrote, “I pitched my tent, erecting a proportionable one to the extent of my numerous family on the summit of a high healthy hill, where we have experienced the civilities and hospitality of a kind Neighborhood.” It was indeed a proportionable tent that Aaron Lopez pitched—a huge, square mansion of brick with white pilasters at the corners and tall arched windows that addressed the surrounding landscape. The Lopez mansion still stands as part of Leicester Academy. In his grand house, decorated by his young and pretty wife, Aaron Lopez became a great host, and was noted for the size and opulence of his dinner parties, receptions, and balls. He became a Jewish Maecenas, a vast patron of the arts and education, a collector of paintings, and he was still under fifty, still in his prime. There were hardly any who dared suggest to him that now, with his shipping trade cut off and his business seriously limited by the war, he might be spending too much.

  He continued to keep in touch with Newport, gathering what news he could from friends who passed through the besieged city, and wrote that he had heard that “the poor inhabitants of that Town have been very much distress’d this winter for the want of fuel and provisions, those Individuals of my Society in particular, who [my informant] said had not tasted any meat but once in two months: Fish there was none at this season of the year, and they were reduced to living upon Chocolate and Coffee. These and many other Callamities and Insults the wretched inhabitants experience ought to incite our thanks to the Great Being who gave us resolution to exchange at so early a period that melancholy Spot for that we are now enjoying.” To a friend he wrote: “Your dwelling house I understand has suffered much. Your neighbor Augustus Johnson was found dead at his house. My [former] neighbor Gideon Sesson’s wife is crazy.” What he appears to have resented most was news that the occupying British officers were spreading slanderous tales about Newport womanhood. He complained that “the vertue of several of our Reputable Ladies has been attacked and sullied by our destructive Enemys.” When the chips were down, he too became a Revolutionary.

  The Revolution ended the golden age of Newport as a commercial center—though of course it would flourish again as a resort—and Aaron Lopez was never to return. In 1780, he was saddened to hear of the death, in Philadelphia, of his old friend Daniel Gomez, who had reached the lofty age of eighty-five. With his death, Daniel’s son Moses became a rich man. Aaron Lopez’ own affairs were in a somewhat shakier condition. The situation of his oldest daughter, “my darling Sally,” continued to depress him. She and Abraham Pereira Mendes had moved to Leicester with him, and the couple had taken a small house near Aaron’s. Abraham continued to display his ineptitude and poor health through one or two other business ventures in which his father-in-law tried to place him. For a while he was in the candle business, and was no good at that either. Finally, which was best, Abraham was given nothing to do. Ten years after their marriage, Sally Lopez Mendes gave birth to a tiny son, on whom she doted. It began to be said that Sally was “touched,” for after the baby’s birth she never set foot outside her house again—a strange, unhappy woman in an unhappy marriage.

  Late in May, 1782, Aaron Lopez started out for Newport in his sulky. About five miles outside Providence, at a place called Scotts’ Pond, he stopped to water his horse. Suddenly the horse stepped out of its depth and the sulky came plunging after him into the pond. Aaron Lopez was flung forward, out of the sulky. He could not swim, and the servant who tried to swim after him was unable to rescue him before he drowned. He was fifty-one years old.

  Learning of his death, Ezra Stiles, who was by now president of Yale, extolled him as

  that amiable, benevolent, most hospitable & very respectable Gentleman Mr. Aaron Lopez … a merchant of the first eminence; for Honor & Extent of Commerce probably surpassed by no Merchant in America. He did business with the greatest ease and clearness—always carried about a Sweetness of Behavior, a calm Urbanity, an agreeable & unaffected Politeness of manners. Without a single Enemy & the most universally beloved by an extensive Acquaintance of any man I ever knew. His beneficence to his Family Connexions, to his Nation, and to all the World is almost without a parallel. He was my intimate Friend & Acquaintance!

  The fact that much of Aaron Lopez’ business was the business of slavery appears to have made little difference to the noted educator and antislavery preacher. Stiles, apparently, was against slavery in the abstract, while quite aware that a number of his intimate friends and acquaintances made their money in it. He did, however, find it quite difficult to reconcile the long list of glowing qualities he attributed to Mr. Lopez with the fact that Aaron Lopez was a Jew. His eulogy continues: “Oh! How often have I wished that sincere, pious, and candid mind could have perceived the evidence of Xtianity, perceived the Truth as it is in Jesus Christ, known that JESUS was the MESSIAH predicted by Moses and the Prophets!” He then goes on to pray that those in charge of heaven will perhaps overlook Aaron Lopez’ Jewishness and admit him anyway, despite his “delusions,” into “Paradise on the Xtian System, finding Grace with the all benevolent and adorable Emanuel who with his expiring breath & in his deepest agonies, prayed for those who knew not what they did.”

  The size of Aaron Lopez’ estate was respectable for its day, but hardly what it might have been had it not been for his extensive hospitality during the Leicester years. And when it became divided between his youthful wife and that vast horde of seventeen children, his fortune began to seem a disappointing one. Each child received an inheritance of about eighty thousand dollars.

  When, around 1858, Longfellow visited the old Jewish cemetery at Newport, he was so moved by the experience that he wrote a poem about it. “How strange it seems!” he wrote, “These Hebrews in their graves,/Close by the street of this fair seaport town/ …/The very names recorded here are strange …/Alvares and Rivera interchange/With Abraham and Jacob of old times.…” Longfellow mused:

  How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,

  What persecution, merciless and blind,

  Drove o’er the sea—the desert desolate—

  These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?

  They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,

  Ghetto and Judenstrass, in murk and mire;*

  Taught in the school of patience to endure

  The life of anguish and the death of fire.…

  Aaron Lopez was among those who reposed there during Mr. Longfellow’s visit.

  * Longfellow obviously was not too clear on the living conditions of Jews in medieval Spain.

  10

  MISALLIANCES AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS

  As more Ashkenazic Jews trickled in from Germany and central Europe, they found that the Sephardic culture, tradition, and form were what prevailed among Jews in America. The newcomers were accepted—albeit a trifle disdainfully—into the Sephardic synagogues, and became, as it were, honorary Sephardim. The Sephardic Old Guard made it quite clear to the Johnny-come-latelys that their elevated status was being bestowed upon them without being actually earned. No small degree of social difference existed between the “new” Sephardim and the authentic Sephardim, and this was not helped by the fact that the “rough-spoken” (meaning they had foreign accents) Germans, finding themselves Sephardic blue bloods in name, if not by inheritance, often took to putting on airs and otherwise pushing themselves forward socially in a way that the Old Guard found thoroughly offensive. It was a case of titled Spaniard versus ghetto German, of third- and fourth-generation American versus foreign-born, of rich versus poor, of the cultivated versus the uncouth. In a situation like this, there were bound to be reactions.

  In New Orleans, for example, the general instability of the Jewish community—still predominantly Sephardic, but with an admixture of Ashkenazic “outsiders”—was not helped by a visit from young Mathias Gomez, one of Daniel Gomez’ great-nephews. Mathias got into an argument with a young man of Ashkenazic extraction over, of all things, the correct wording of a quotation from a poem. It seemed terribly trifling, b
ut not to Mathias when his Ashkenazic acquaintance called him a “fool.” Immediately, Mathias insisted on the aristocratic privilege of challenging the man to a duel. They fought with muskets at forty paces, and each fired four times with no shot reaching a target. Normally, this is considered sufficient exercise to call off a duel, but Mathias insisted on a fifth shot, which wounded his opponent in both legs and killed Mathias himself instantly. He had made his point, however, that nobody, but nobody, should insult a Gomez.

  It was said by the Sephardim, who had undergone so much horror and terror for the sake of their faith during the Inquisition, that the Jews of the rest of Europe might be Jewish, but they weren’t very. They were said to lack piety, and to be easily swayed by Christian thinking and Christian methods. A case in point was certainly the New Orleans community. Everything went reasonably well in New Orleans as long as a member of one of the old Spanish families was in charge of the congregation. But when a German suddenly inherited the job of chief rabbi—well, a hundred fifty years later the New Orleans Jewish community still remembers what happened.

  He was Albert J. “Roley” Marks, who described himself as a “Part-Time rabbi,” and who actually earned his living as a bit player in southern traveling theatrical companies. He had earned his nickname because one of his best performances was said to be that of Rowley in The School for Scandal. He was also of somewhat roly-poly proportions, which made the sobriquet appropriate. He was once described by a contemporary as:

  a little below the middle size, measuring in his stockings, about four feet and some inches. A gleam of good humor is always beaming on his countenance, except when he experiences a twinge of the gout (unfortunately pretty often), and he is one of the best-natured fellows in existence.

  “Roley” Marks’s acting range was considerably limited by his size. His specialty parts were comic old men, and he was famous for a way he had of laughing on stage. “It would do your heart good to see one of his laughs,” a critic of one of his performances wrote. “I say see one of them, for nothing in particular is heard when he laughs; a sort of turning up of his eyes, a filling up of his cheeks with wind, and suddenly letting it burst forth, at the same time giving himself a half turn, stooping as if to spit, indulging in a sly wink at the public, and swinging his cane about—and it is done.” He performed in such popular dramas of the day as Governor Heartall, Old Smacks, and Andrew Mucklestane. Of his performance in the title role of the latter, the same critic wrote:

  Andrew Mucklestane! Ah! How often have I witnessed his impersonation of this character, which is nothing more or less than a sentimental Scotch fisherman, very benevolent in his feelings, and ever ready to rescue runaway countesses and drowning children! And to see Rowley sweating through the “business” of this character is a treat to all lovers of the romantic drama. Rowley introduces thirteen falls in his performance, and more than once has it been found necessary to prop the stage before subjecting it to his energetic manoeuvres.…

  How did such a charming buffoon manage to become chief rabbi of the Sephardic congregation in a sophisticated city like New Orleans? Apparently his good nature won the congregation over in a weak moment, and he was given the job. He also worked as a part-time inspector at the customhouse and as a fireman. He was made a director of the Firemen’s Charitable Association, helped it put on burlesques and reviews for fund-raising purposes, and composed a ditty called “The Fireman’s Song,” in return for which the City of New Orleans appointed him “Poet Laureate of the Firemen.”

  His antics, however, were somewhat differently regarded by the Sephardic elders of the synagogue, who began referring to him as “a stain on the Jewish clergy.” It was reported that “Roley” Marks did not keep the dietary laws, that he had not bothered to have his sons circumcised, and that at one point, on the festival of Purim, he found himself too busy with other activities to conduct the services. At last, during a Rosh Hashanah service, an older member of the congregation rose boldly to his feet and announced to the assemblage that it was a disgrace that a man should act as rabbi “who did not have his sons initiated into the covenant of Abraham,” and who “got beastly drunk on the day when his two sons died.” This was too much for even “Roley” Marks’s good nature. He banged his fists on the pulpit and shouted, “By Jesus Christ! I have a right to pray!”

  It would have been easier to blame “Roley” Marks’s outrageous behavior on his “low” Ashkenazic origins if it could have been claimed that the “old” Sephardic members of the New Orleans synagogue were all, to a man, acting on their best behavior. Alas, many were not. There was the case of Victor Souza, of pure Spanish bloodlines on both sides (his mother was a Pereira), who became engaged to a girl named Rose Bourdeaux, a Catholic. Nineteen days before the marriage, Victor underwent Roman Catholic baptism and the pair were married by Père Antoine in New Orleans’ Saint Louis Cathedral. This did not prevent Victor Souza’s being identified as an “Israelite” in the church records several years later, and the scandal of his intermarriage was as nothing compared with the announcement, not long afterward, that he and his partner, Decadie Baiz—another member of an “old” Sephardic family that had distinguished connections both in New York and on the island of Saint Thomas—had “absconded and defrauded their creditors whom they have shamefully deceived.” A thousand dollars was offered for the capture of the pair, or five hundred dollars for either, and the Catholic convert was described in the “Wanted” poster:

  Victor Souza, a Jew, is about 4 feet 11 inches high, has a large face, large nose and a small mouth; his face is red and his beard strong and black. D. Baiz, a Jew, about 5 feet 3 or 4 inches high, full face and pock marked, strong black beard.…

  Victor Souza was caught, tried for fraud, convicted, and sent to prison.

  The business feuds between those of Ashkenazic origins and the Sephardim were probably the worst of all, even though the men were all of one, supposedly unifying, congregation. One of the most disgraceful battles in New Orleans took place between Mr. Solomon Audler and Mr. L. A. Levy, Jr. The Audlers had come from Germany, and had made some money manufacturing something called Asiatic Lenitive, a ninety-proof patent medicine advertised “for the cure of toothaches, headaches, and other diseases.” Solomon Audler also ran a leather and dry goods store. The Mr. Levy was one of several Sephardic Levy families who were now scattered up and down the Atlantic Coast. The quarrel was over an overcoat.

  It seems that a certain Mr. Phillips (also old Sephardic) was selling a consignment of linen overcoats at auction, and he had promised his friend Levy a coat, if any were left over, at the same price the coats had brought at auction. After the auction, when Levy went to Phillips’ establishment to look over the remainder from the sale, he could not find an overcoat that fit him. So he—rather high-handedly, it seems—exchanged one of the remaining coats for a coat that did fit him out of a pile of coats purchased by Mr. Audler. Levy then paid Phillips for the coat. When Mr. Audler found out about the switch in coats he was not amused. He had, after all, made his selection of coat sizes with a reason. So he sent Mr. Levy a bill for the coat, which Levy, seeing no need to pay for his coat twice, refused to pay. Audler then sued Levy for the price of the coat, lost his suit, and, in a fury, stormed Mr. Levy at his place of business and called Levy a thief. Immediately Levy challenged Audler to a duel, but Audler haughtily refused the challenge, saying that Levy was “not a gentleman and therefore not entitled to satisfaction.” Levy promptly ordered a handbill printed and distributed in the streets, which proclaimed:

  Notice to the public.… S. Audler having gravely insulted me this morning … I deem it my duty in justice to my reputation, to state to the public, that my friends called upon the said individual for satisfaction, which he did not grant, I hereby proclaim him to the public, as a coward, and no gentleman, and beneath the notice of the community.

  The tempest in a teapot continued to escalate. Audler, not to be put down by mere handbills, took an advertisement in the newspap
er in which he demanded to know:

  I have been required to give gentlemanly satisfaction, to whom? I would ask—to a man? a gentleman? No! it is to one who cannot prove himself a gentleman, for the act of which he stands charged by me cannot be termed the act of a gentleman. A man he is not; it needs but a glance to perceive it; he was well aware at the time he wrote the challenge that he could not obtain a gentlemanly satisfaction from me, otherwise he would not have demanded it.

  Audler ran his advertisement not only in New Orleans but also—doubtless to impress his friends and relatives—in the newspapers of New York and Philadelphia as well. Levy, not to be outdone, added the city of Charleston to the list of cities in which he ran his advertisement, which contained this sort of frenzied invective:

  This self-same Audler—this vendor of worn-out harness—this wash-tub dealer has the impudence and characteristic daring inherent in triflers called me … “a Thief” … Sol Audler!!! and who does not shrink at the very letters of his name. He has been is and ever will be the detestation of the honest man, the land mark for the Coward, the beacon for the Insolvent debtor, the light house for the smuggler … Oznaburgs, Italian silk cottonades, old swords and belts &c. &c. groan loudly a requiem for the ledger of his poor creditors … this blackened lump of infamy … the public must condemn him for calling me a Thief when he himself is so notoriously known as an adept in the business.…