[An address delivered at the dedication of the Museum of American Jewish History, Fourth Street above Market, Philadelphia, Pa., July 12, 1976.]
American Jewish history is somewhat of a connoisseur's taste. Many people outside these portals may even, thank God, find it the least bit boring. I say "thank God," because if one takes even a cursory glimpse at European Jewish history, one finds that the keyword is not "bore" but "gore." Jewish history elsewhere may be shocking, disgusting, uplifting, inspiring, depressing or puzzling according to the taste or opinion of the observer, but boring it is not. Let me give you an example. Normally, the Spanish Jewish authorities are more lenient in religious rulings than the Polish. There is an exception. If a fire breaks out on Sabbath, the Spanish authorities say: Let the house burn down rather than violate the Sabbath by extinguishing it. The Polish authorities say: Put it out immediately. Why? Because in Poland if a Jew's house caught fire, it was the custom of the local people to toss the owner in too. Just a quaint local custom which reflected itself in Jewish law, since a fire on a Jew's property meant that there was automatic danger to life from his neighbors, and hence the Sabbath was superseded. Of course, the Spaniards also burned Jews on occasion, but being perfect gentlemen, they at least gave you a trial first. This did not occur in American Jewish history. We do not even reach a PG rating, with the possible exception of a son of a minister of Mikveh Israel [the old Sephardic congregation of Philadelphia] who in 1806, on being introduced to the comely Jane Picken contrived to snip off a lock of her blonde hair to place next to his credit cards or whatever people filled their wallets with in those days. We lack the excitement of violence and bloodshed. Leo Frank, the sole Jewish victim of the lynch mob, stands out in his uniqueness. The reasons are not entirely positive. The red man and the black man were available to absorb the fury which seems to demand an outlet in the form of some different and vulnerable group which can serve as an incarnation of the forces of evil. So if you are tempted to join the man walking along Chestnut Street, and yawn as I probe the experience of Jews of Spanish and Portuguese background in the U.S., do not stifle the urge. Let it ring out, for it is the chime of your personal liberty bell.
In September 1654, shortly before the Jewish New Year, twenty-three Jews stepped ashore at New York, which at the time was under Dutch rule and known as New Amsterdam. Withe began the history of the Sephardim (Jews of Iberian origin) in the American colonies. At this period it is difficult to disentangle the history of the Sephardim from that of the Jews as a whole, since distinctly separate Ashkenazi (German-Polish) commun ities did not emerge until the latter part of the next century, and the minhag (religious rite) of the Sephardim predominated until the early nineteenth century.
The twenty-three arrived from Recife in Brazil. Brazil was a Portuguese colony which had been captured by the Dutch in 1630. Under the rule of the tolerant Dutch, the Jewish community had developed and flourished. In 1656, however, Brazil was retaken by the Portuguese, and a three month amnesty was declared to give the Jews time to depart. Many returned to Holland. A boat called the St. Charles or St. Catherine (the name is uncertain) brought Jews to New York. They arrived in a virtually indigent condition, and had difficulty in settling accounts with those who had brought them there. The director-general of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant (1610-1672), a Netherlander who had himself seen service in Brazil, was disturbed by the arrival of the new immigrants. On September 22, 1654 he wrote to his superiors in Amsterdam that the Jews were unpopular locally, and, in addition, their indigence might make them a public charge. He declared that he had asked them to leave.
That winter the Sephardim of Amsterdam petitioned the directors of the Dutch West India Company to allow Jews to reside in New Netherland. They pointed out that many Jews had suffered in the defense of Recife, and had had to leave there. They could not return to Spain or Portugal on account of the Inquisition. They argued that New Netherland could support a large population, and its economic development would benefit the mother country. Moreover, many shareholders in the Dutch West India Company were Jewish, and had fostered the program of the company. Other European countries were allowing Jews to settle in their American colonies.
In the following April the directors wrote to Stuyvesant. They sympathized with his position, but instructed him in clear terms to allow Jews to stay in New Netherland. Equality came slowly however. In 1655 the right of citizenship, which had earlier been denied, was extended to Jews, and Asser Levy became the first Jewish burgher. Jewish worship had to be conducted privately within Jewish houses. The time was not yet ripe for permitting the building of a synagogue exclusively devoted to worship. However, in February 1656 a piece of ground was granted as a cemetary plot.
The precise time when Jewish services commenced in a fixed place is unknown, although by 1700 it is clear that such services were being held, since contemporary documents speak of a "Jews' synagogue."
In 1768 Gershom Mendes Seixas, "the first American Rabbi", was appointed hazzan (reader) at the age of twenty-three years. During the revolution, Seixas was an adherent of the colonists' cause, and left New York when it was taken by the British. He moved to Connecticut, and later to Philadelphia, where he became the first minister of the Sephardi congregation Mikveh Israel of that city. After his return to New York in 1784, he organized a Hebrew school. He was invited to President Washington's inauguration of 1789, and was elected to the Board of Regents of Columbia University.
It is remarkable that mid-eighteenth century America was able to produce a native-born Sephardi capable of taking a firm religious lead in the little community. Seixas was very much a part of the general, as well as the Jewish, scene, and he was capable of taking an independent line. In 1798 he delvered a sermon on the occasion of a national fast-day which had been proclaimed to foster anti-French sentiment. Unlike most clergymen, Seixas took an anti-Federalist line; not surprisingly, since the pro-British, prestige-conscious Federalist party had distinctly anti-Jewish overtones.
In the course of his remarks Seixas declares:
It hath pleased God to have established us in this country where we possess every advantage that other citizens of these states enjoy, and is as much as we could in reason expect in this captivity, for which let us humbly return thanks for his manifold mercies.
It may be noted that Seixas hews to the traditional line in regarding even America as a "captivity" rather than a new Jerusalem.
The eighteenth century was marked by continuous growth of the city of New York, and it came to take a leading part in the new untion estalished when ties with the mother country were severed. Sephardim were active both in the religious and general communities as various documents attest. Thus there in extant in the New York City Hall of Records an indenture of apprenticeship of one Solomon Marache to Isaac Hays of New York, dated May 15, 1749, whereby his widowed mother Esther agreed to his learning the "art, trade and mystery of a merchant."
In 1840 the notorious "Damascus Affair" burst upon the Jewish scene. A Capuchin friar and his Muslim servant died in Damascus early in that year under strange circumstances. It was bruited abroad that the Jews had killed the men in order to use their blood in the Passover unleavened bread. With the concurrence of the French consul, who exercised much influence at that time, the authorities tortured Jews and extracted confessions. The intervention of the Austrian authorities on behalf of one of their nationals drew the attention of the western world to the sufferings of the Jews, and Moses Montefiore and others undertook a trip to Egypt to intercede with Mahomet Ali, under whose sway Syria then was. Ultimately those who survived their cruel treatment were released.
In New York one of the members of Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue, Solomon Joseph, drew together a committee to consider what action might be taken on behalf of Damascus Jewry. They decided to hold a protest meeting, and petition the U.S. government to intercede. An application was made to hold the meeting at Shearith Israel. It was refused. Apparently, the leaders of the synagogue did not wish to compromise the position of their coreligionists in America by a noisy intervention on behalf of foreign Jewry. As a result the meeting was held at the Ashkenazi synagogue Bnai Jeshurun. A letter signed by Israel Baer Kursheedt and Theodore Seixas was dispatched to the president of the United States. The Secretary of State replied that action had already been taken. Kursheedt, a Frankfurt Jew by birth, was a son-in-law of Gershom Mendes Seixas, and had been president of Shearith Israel prior to his removal to Richmond where he had been active in the Sephardi Synagogue. On his return to New York, he helped found the new Ashkenazi synagogue Bnai Jeshurun.
The refusal of Shearith Israel's trustees to entertain the protest meeting, and the meeting itself, mark a watershed in American Jewish history. The refusal brough an end to Sephardi hegemony, and forced the now far more numerous Ashkenazi Jews to strike out for themselves in community endeavor. The meeting itself brough about a rash of meetings, notably in Philadlphia, where the authorities of the Sephardi synagogue had no qualms, and allowed a meeting to be held on their premises. This marked for the first time a concerted political action on the part of American Jewry, basically different from earlier previous acts of supplication to permit them to live and prosper like other citizens.
American Jewry discovered that it was capable of raising its voice, being head with respect, and not suffering as a result.
This maturation in American Jewry led to a distinct change in the situation of the Sephardi communities of the U.S. In places such as London and Amsterdam, ascamot (regulations) disqualified Ashkenazim from participating in the life of the Sephardi community communally or relgiously. These communities continued up to the present as close-knit, exclusive units. Exceptions were made in favor of individuals, who, aware of their exceptional status, took care to assimilate to the community. In these places the synagogue was an outgrowth of the community; they needed the building as the center for their communal and religious life. In America the situation was different. Ashkenazim were never excluded; with the possible exception of Savannah in its early years, they rapidly formed the majority. Accordingly, it would be more accurate to say that the congregation was an outgrowth of the synagogue. The existence of the institution propagated members to fill it, even though they came from various places and had not prior community commitment to the Sephardim. The Sephardi mode of worship did indeed continue, and continued to hold high prestige, perhaps because its dignified character seemed more natural on the genteel American scene. The foundation later in the century of a "Portuguese" synagogue in Baltimore, where there were not "ethnic" Sephardim indicates the enduring esthetic attraction which the Sephardi minhag had for certain individuals. But from this time on, the United States did not in the true sense have a Sephardi community. It had respected and high status Sephardi synagogues with congregations whose links, for the most part, were composed of bricks and mortar rather than identity of cultural background.
At this point we must give some consideration to the communities which grew up in other parts of the United States.
The early Jews of Newport, R.I. have left two monuments: a beautiful Georgian synagogue erected in 1763, furnished in the characteristic Sephardi style; and Longfellow's poem inspired by the old graveyard, the sympathetic sentiments of which almost excuse its dreadful fourth line:
How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!…The very names recorded here are strange,
Of foreign accent, and of different climes;
Alvares and Rivera interchange
With Abraham and Jacob of old times…
Apart from a somewhat dubious Masonic document which may date to 1658, the first clear mention of Jews in Rhode Island, a colony set up in devotion to freedom of conscience, is in a document conveying ground to Mordecay Campanall and Moes Pacherckoe or Pacheco for a burial place, dated February 28, 1678.
By 1754 the Jews of Newport were ready for a synagogue. They appealed to the London Sephardim, and their gabay (treasurer) Moses de Jacob Franco responded with his blessings, but no money. Five years later Jacob Rodrigues Rivera and two Ashkenazim, Moses Levy and Isaac Hart, purchased a small parcel of land for £1500 Rhode Island currency. The New Yorkers sent them £150 towards the proposed building. Money was also now forthcoming from the Separdi communities of Jamaica, Curaçao, Surinam and London, and in 1763 the synagogue of K.K. Yeshuat Israel (The Holy Congregation of the Salvation of Israel) was dedicated.
Newport did not recover its former prosperity after the war of independence, and the Jewish community declined. Services were no long held, and by 1800 the sacred scrolls were lodged for safe-keeping in the home of the signatory of the letter to George Washington. In 1822 Moses Lopez, the last Jew in Newport, moved to New York, and the care of the synagogue was taken over by Nathan Gould, a christian. The synagogue was later to benefit by a bequest for its upkeep of $10,000 by Judah Touro, son of the former minister, who lived in New Orleans and had accumulated a fortune. His brother Abraham also endowed the building. The ownership of the synagogue devolved on the Shearith Israel Congregation in New York.
The Newport synagogue remained closed until 1881, apart from occasional services conducted by summer visitors. In that year the new Jewish inhabitants of Newport - not Sephardim of course - petitioned the Newport City Council as trustee of the Judah Touro fund for permission to use the synagogue and the income on a regular basis. Congregation Shearith Israel was able to establish its rights to the building, and made provision for Sephardi services to be held there for the high holidays.
The synagogue was officially reconsecrated in 1883 with Abraham Pereira Mendes and his two sons conduction the services. Henry S. Morais was the last to maintain the tenuous thread of Sephardi tradition in Newport. His successors introduced a modified service more to the liking of their constituency, a s well as the Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew, although service in the Sephardi rite conducted by visiting ministers from New York have been held, and no doubt will continue to be held, on the fairly frequent occasions when a commemorative service is called for by the unusual historic character of Newport's beautiful Sephardi synagogue building.
In South Carolina, toleration was offered to Jews from the earliest beginnings of the colony. The eighty-seventh article of the Fundamental Constitutions published in 1669 by the Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the original Carolina proprietors, declared that it would not be reasonable to keep out
heathens, Jews and other dissenters from the purity of the Christian religion.
Doubtless his liberal secretary, the philosopher John Locke, had a hand in this formulation. The name of the first Sephardi who is mentioned in contemporary accounts has unfortunately not come down to us. In 1707 John Archdale, former governor of the province of Carolina describes in his memoirs how he communicated with certain Indians:
I…ordered him to bring these Indians with him to Charles-Town which accordingly he did. There were three men and one woman; they could speak Spanish, and I had a Jew for an Interpreter, so upon examination I found they professed the Christian Religion as the Papists do…
This incident took place in August 1695.
By 1750 there were sufficient Jews to form a congregation K.K. Beth Elohim Unveh Shallom (The Holy Congregation of the House of God and the Dwelling of Peace) was founded. A London Jew by the name of Moses Cohen was appointed Hahám and Ab Bet Din (rabbi and rabbinical judge); he earned his living as a shopkeeper however. Isaac Mendes da Cost was the first hazzan (cantor), and Joseph Tobias the president.
By the turn of the century the Jewish community of Charleston was perhaps the most prosperous in the country. The 1820 constitution of the congregation gives a vivid picture of the disciplinarians who wrote it.
No person being called to Sephar, having Portos-Hechal (opening the Ark), or going up there to offer, shall leave the same, without offering at least one shilling for the Parnass Presidente, and prosperity of the congregation, nor shall any ridiculous or unusual offering be permitted…nor shall any person, desirous of consummating a marriage with any female who has lived as a prostitute, or kept a disorderly house, be permitted such marriage under the sanction of this congregation…any person or persons publicly violating the Sabbath, or other sacred days, shall be deprived of every privilege of synagogue and the services of its officers. He or they shall also be subject to such fines and penalties as the Parnassim and Adjunta may deem fit…
Later a significant split occurred in the congregation, antedating by almost two decades a similar schism in the parent congregation in London. In 1824 forty-seven members of the Charleston Sephardi congregation petitioned for a revision of the ritual. They requested a repetition of parts of the service in English; the introduction of an English sermon, and abridgement of the service.
The petition was tabled, and no action was taken on it. This led to the formation of the "Reformed Society of Israelites," which was organized formally on January 16, 1825, and later incorporated by the South Carolina legislature.
The type of Sephardi service to which the reformers were reacting is described unsympathetically by an anonymous Christian observer in the North American Review:
Upon entering one of these edifices on a Saturday, you behold the assembly seated or standing with their hats on, and generally wearing an air of much greater indifference, than is witnessed even among Christians, during the season of public devotion. The priest, with a few attendants, is stationed on a high enclosed platform in the centre of the floor. As an instance of the little interest, which is excited by the immediate business of the place, we recollect, that once, while we were fixing our attention on the intonations of the chanting priest, a highly respectable elder of the congregation arose and crossed the area, and taking his seat next us, bgan the discussion of a curious point of Hebrew phraseology; after which, he entered upon much more general conversation, leaving on our minds at last the impression of his being a polite and hospitable entertainer, rather than of what we know he really was, a devout fellow worshipper.The whole of the liturgy is conducted in the Hebrew language with the exception indeed of occasional portions, which, in some synagogues, it seems, are uttered in Spanish …
Owing to the rapidity of uttering the liturgy, it is generally finished in about three hours …
During its repetition, the members of the congregation, except a few of the most devout, are seen coming in and going out of the synagogue at all times, and but a very slight check seems to be imposed upon the usual inclinations of the children. There is nothing in the shape of a discourse, or religious instruction of any kind, except, we believe on a very few annual or occasional festivals. At these solemnities some enlightened member of the body is called upon to deliver an appropriate English discourse.
In his Reminiscences, I.M. Wise already refers to this congregation of "influential merchants, bankers, lawyers, physicians, authors, politicians, public officials, most of them rich and descended from old Portuguese families" as the "Reformed Congregation."
In 1879 the congregation adopted a reformed prayer book drawn up by its rabbi David Levy - although the board insisted that references to the Messiah and bodily resurrection be retained! Mixed seating was introduced, and the hat and prayer shawl became optional. The silk hat and frock coat were no longer seen. The congregation continues an active life at the present day, but the only overt connexion with its Sephardi past are the letters K.K. which precede its name.
Savannah was another early site of Sephardi settlement. In January 1733 a ship left London in the charge of one Captain Hanson carrying forty-two Jews to settle in the new colony of Georgia. It took six months to arrive, having been subjected to several lengthy delays. It carried two Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi family, the Minis and the Sheftalls; the remainder were Sephardim. The early records of the colony were preserved in Hebrew or Yiddish by the Sheftall family in the form of diaries; they were translated into English in the late eighteenth century and preserved in a manuscript now in the Keith Reid collection of the University of Georgia. A synagogue was founded two years later, and named K.K. Mikva Israel (Hope of Israel).
In 1789 the Hebrew congregation of Savannah sent George Washington an address of congratulations on his victory, becoming the first Jewish congregation to do so, and the only religious group in Savannah to do so. In response, Washington wrote:
May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivered the Hebrews from their Egyptian oppressors planted them in the promised land - whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation - still continue to water them with the dews of heaven, and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is Jehovah.
The congregation was incorporated in 1790 as the "Parnass and Adjuntas of the Mickveh Israel at Savannah."
Jacob de la Motta, the son of the first hazzan, is a good example of the successful Sephardi of early nineteenth century America, well-educated, devoted both to Jewish tradition and to the ideals of America. He was born in Savannah in 1789, and moved to Charleston with his family as a young boy. He attended the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania from which he graduated at the age of twenty-one. He practiced in Charleston for a short time, became an army surgeon during the war of 1812, and went into practice in New York. Gershom Mendes Seixas died during his stay there, and he delivered a eulogy which was later published. De la Motta returned to Savannah in 1818 where he became prominent in the field of medicine; his attempts to be elected city alderman were not successful, however. He was prominent in the masonic movement, and gave the dedicatory address at the dedication of the new Savannah synagogue in 1820. The address elicited from Thomas Jefferson the comment that "religious freedom is the most effectual anodyne against religious dissension." In 1823 he moved to Charleston, where his orthodoy caused him to join the party opposing the introduction of an organ in the synagogue service in Charleston, and doubtless helped spur Isaac Leeser's eulogy after his death in 1845:
true to the martyr spirit of his ancestors he honored their profession by his practice, and thus consecrated his time to the service of his religion.
During the latter part of the nineteenth century Mickveh Israel gradually became a reform synagogue. There does not appear to have been any strong movement towards reform as there was in Charleston; it just slowly occurred. Its present spiritual leader, Rabbi Saul J. Rubin, informs me that the only current survival of Sephardi tradition is the hymn El Nora Gnalila which is still sung to the traditional chant, unaccompanied, before the Atonement closing service.
It would be superfluous to describe to a Philadelphia audience the distinguished history of the Portuguese Jewish congregation of this city. The roster of its prominent members and leaders reads like an honor roll of American Jewry. Nor can we speak of the Sephardi communities of Richmond or New Orleans, which lighted a little hour or two and now are but a memory.
Rather an attempt will be made to assess the meaning of the experience of the two surviving communities in this country, in Philadelphia and New York, which carry on the tradition of the crypto-Jews of Lisbon and Belmonte.
As a point of reference let us give some consideration to the mother congregation of the western Sephardim, K.K. Talmud Torah, founded in 1639 in Amsterdam by the merger of three earlier congregations. The Amsterdam Jews dwelt among a people who for practical reasons extended to them full toleration, but were not intrinsically friendly towards them, and had questions as to the legitimacy of their presence in their midst. The famous Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, consulted as to whether Jews might properly settle in Holland, responded in the affirmative, but declared in his Remonstratie (1615) that they should be limited to 300 families in Amsterdam, should be required to register with the authorities, and assert their belief in God, and be prohibited from marrying Gentiles. In its inner life the community was strongly tradition-bound, leading the minutely regulated life of Orthodox Judaism. It is described in glowing terms by a contemporary observer Shabbetai Bass, in the introduction to his bibliographic work Siftei Yeshenim (Amsterdam, 1680.) He observed with awe their magnificent and crowded synagogue; their successful educational system; their command of written and spoken Hebrew. In an unselfconscious traditional community such as this, the esthetic and antiguarian aspects of their existence were of no significance. Ceremonies were observed whether they were esthetic or not. The woman who would by tradition esthetically light candles on Friday night would unesthetically spit in the presence of her brother-in-law if required perchance to perform the halitsa ceremony, Deuteronomy 25:9 by virtue of the same tradition. While the cantor would delight the eye by waving the palm branch and citron on the Feast of Tabernacles, the ritual circumcisor would refrain from praying that the issue of a forbidden union should, like other children, be preserved unto his parents, for such children in the words of the Amsterdam prayer books "do not deserve preservation." Ahad Ha'am in his essay Past and Future has adequately explained the disdain of the traditional Jew for antiquarianism; he studies the sacrifices not because of their connection with the past, but because for him they constitute an immediate part of the future. When this future is killed, there is a compensatory stress on the past - what we call "the Jewish heritage." The life of the traditional community proceeded because so it was ordained immutably; there was no need for reference to esthetics, antiquarianism or gentile approbation. In such a community "progress" was not a term with meaning. Perfection was immediately at hand for the individual who chose to espouse the way of Torah to the full, and his "success" was the assurance of a place in the world to come. Money and progeny were symptoms rather than goals; they showed that God was favoring the individual who nonetheless must take care that the favors he received in this world did not detract from his enjoyment of the next. A Spinoza is sufficient proof that outside thinking was penetrating; but the bulk of the community found no reason to quarrel with the excommunication which was imposed upon him for his más obras ed opinoins (evil acts and opinions) as the language of the edict had it.
Individuals reared in this tradition met with a very different circumstance if they chose to follow the new fashion of going west. The American colonies needed manpower, and even Jews qualified. In 1740 the Parliament in Westminster passed an act permitting Jews to naturalize after seven years' residence in the American colonies, after taking an oath in keeping with their conscience. Significantly this act begins
whereas the Increase of People is a Means of advancing with Wealth and Strength of any Nation or Country …
The fact that all white men in America were in some sense intruders created a different relationship between Christian and Jew in the New World. It is symbolic that a diorama of Francis Salvador the Sephardi being mortally wounded by Indians was erected in the B'nai B'rith building in Washington. It seemed to say that the Christian-Jew antagonism has been replaced by a White-Red one. A new man had appeared to take on the Jew's satanic role. It is interesting to note too that the diorama was established by another Sephardi, Thomas Jefferson Tobias (note the name), whose ancestry, in Dr. Malcolm Stern's words, "reads like a Who's Who of American colonial Jewry."
If the outward circumstance was changed, the inner condition was changing too. Deism was born with Lord Herbert of Cherbury's De Veritate forty years before the twenty-three arrived in New York. If the spirit of the enlightenment was able, as it did, to penetrate the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, how much more volnerable was the western Jew to the new anti-religious thinking! Moreover, while Christianity had to cope with the onslaught of natural religion, Judaism had to cope both with the impact of fresh scientific thinking and the continued enticements of the dominant faith. Little wonder that irreversible changes began to occur in the life of the Jewish community. To this one must add a feature of "natural selection;" the Jews most devoted to the faith of their fathers were more likely to remain in the European centers, where their religious needs could assuredly be filled, than to pioneer in new lands.
Three ways were open to the Sephardi communities in the face of this situation. The first was reform, breaking down the tight discipline which the community formerly exercised, backed up by various fines and other penalties, and altering the mode of religious expression to conform to a new reality - the acceptance of English as the substantive language, and American as the substantive Zion. This solution, however distasteful it may be to the traditionalist, represented a search for reality. It was chosen by Savannah, Charleston, New Orleans - as well as the old communities in the islands - Jamaica, Curaçao, St. Thomas, by Curaçao, incidentally, in our own lifetime. An alternative was to stress esthetics and antiquarianism. This route stressed the esthetic superiority of the Sephardi to the Ashkenazi tradition; the beauty of the songs, the rituals, the words, even if the words are unintelligible. It points up the ancient character of the tradition, its quaintness, its relationship to an idyllic past peopled with dons and hidalgos and grandees. Hence the Bet Hamidrash (house of study) gives way to the Archives chamber. This route was chosen by New York and Philadelphia. It led also to the rearguard battle to maintain the Sephardi rite in Newport. The Philadelphia community is carrying this solution to its logical conclusion by choosing a location in the Independence Mall area, where it will be essentially a monument to the Jewish presence in the United States, rather than serving a local constituency. At this point the community has not only surrendered its putative messianic future in the Ahad Ha'am sense, it has even surrendered its present and becomes an institution living in the past in its totality. We can afford this luxury, and there is no need to deny its reality.
The last possibility among the three that I have mentioned was chosen by Richmond, and that was extinction.
From the classic American viewpoint of the "melting pot" the Sephardi was the ideal citizen. For the most part he melted beautifully, contributing his dreams and his genes to the mainstream of American life. Of course attitudes towards not so readily digested substances have changed in the ethnic as well as in the dietetic world. Fiber, we are now told, may keep you free from cancer, and, if you will pardon the expression, will keep you regular too. Now we find that our ethnic groups keep the wider society healthy and regular - in election year at any rate.
From the orthodox Jewish viewpoint, the Sephardi demonstrates what happens when a sub-branch of the Jewish community fails to develop the educational means to its survival. He was a pathfinder, the orthodox will observe, to whom one may be grateful, and an object lesson of which one must take note - if his deviant ritual has been replaced with one of equal authenticity, no matter.
The antiquarian-esthetic can rest happy that Marrano Sephardi tradition flickers on manfully in two eastern cities of the United States, and barring an unusual catastrophe, will not disappear. The congregations Remnant of Israel and Hope of Israel are now both remnants, albeit proud ones, carrying aloft the banner of the past. The hope surely lies elsewhere - in the schools, houses of worship, organizations, and, yes, the people who flourish, unblessed by long recorded history, from sea to shining sea.