Authors: Stephen; Birmingham

The Jews in America Trilogy (114 page)

Belatedly realizing that something should be done to save Monticello, Mr. Levy willed it to the government when he died in 1862. His heirs successfully contested the will, and one of them, Jefferson M. Levy, did make an effort to repair some of the damage that had been done to the historic house, but he lacked the resources to carry out such a tremendous task.

Over the years a number of prominent people recommended that the government buy and restore Monticello as a memorial to the third President. Nothing was done, however, and Monticello continued to deteriorate.

This account does a great disservice to both Uriah and his nephew. Jefferson Levy had no lack of “resources,” and was an extremely rich man who spent enormous sums restoring and refurbishing Monticello. He made repeated trips to Europe in search of the mansion's original furniture, wallpapers, and rugs, and when the originals were unobtainable he had costly copies made from whatever sketches could be found. Under Jefferson Levy's stewardship, Monticello became one of the great showplaces of the
early twentieth centuryâit attained, in fact, the sort of elegance and grandeur that Thomas Jefferson had conceived for it, but had never lived to see. The house was the scene of many lavish parties and entertainments. Jeff Levy's sister, Mrs. Amelia Von Mayhoff, acted as his hostess, a role she clearly relished, and a long list of dignitaries from official and diplomatic Washington, as well as titled folk from Europe, were frequent guests at Monticello. Levy nieces alive today remember being ushered into the great drawing room, where a typically opulent reception was going on, the guest list including the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. And yet, for some reason, no history book has yet taken note of any of this.

Today, most of the guides at Monticello look blank when any mention is made of Uriah Phillips Levy, and only a few have the vaguest knowledge of Monticello's associations with the Levy name. None of the guides, on a recent visit, was aware that Uriah's mother, Rachel Levy, is buried on the grounds. Her grave is in a small enclosed plot not far from the gift shop.

Several years ago, Harold Lewis, whose wife was one of Jefferson Levy's nieces, was astonished and outraged on a visit to Monticello to discover a bronze plaque which stated simply that a certain Uriah Levy had at one point bought the estate for $2,500 and later sold it for $500,000. The implications of Jewish greed and sharp practice seemed quite clear. After a great deal of difficulty and much correspondence with Monticello's trustees, Mr. Lewis was successful in having the plaque reworded.

Others have been equally dutiful to the past. In Manhattan in the late 1960's, one of the historic areas threatened by real estate developers was a triangular piece of land between East Ninth and Eleventh streets and Second and Third avenues, through which narrow Stuyvesant Street
passes diagonally. Within this area are the old Church of Saint Mark's in-the-Bowery, dating from 1799, and thirty-three neighboring houses from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This is the site of the bouwerieâor farmâof Governor Peter Stuyvesant, and in the churchyard of Saint Mark's are buried eight generations of Stuyvesants, along with the Dutch governor himself. Early in 1969, New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission announced that it had succeeded in having the district declared a historic one, meaning that no exterior changes to the church, the churchyard, or any of the buildings can be made without the approval of the commission. (There has since been a controversial decision to let the old graveyard, which was being desecrated by vandals, double as a children's playground.)

The announcement of the designation of the area, which should in any case preserve it for some time to come, was made by Harmon Hendricks Goldstone, a New York architect, and chairman of the Landmarks Commission. The announcement made much of Peter Stuyvesant's grave, but overlooked the fact that Mr. Goldstone is himself a direct descendant of Abraham de Lucena, one of the first Jews to arrive in Manhattan in the year of the Twenty-Three.

It gives Mr. Goldstone a certain amount of quiet pleasure, and a feeling of the right thing done, to know that he has been at least partly responsible for protecting the final resting place of the choleric little governor who gave his ancestors such a shabby welcome all those hundreds of years ago.

Mr. Goldstone's mother, Mrs. Lafayette Goldstone, is, of course, as bewilderingly connected as her son to all the old familiesâHendricks, Tobias, Levy, Seixas, Hart, Nathan, and the rest. It is she who was such a faithful correspondent, through the years, of Mr. Justice Cardozo, and she achieved considerable acclaim as a poet, writing under
the name May Lewis, a combination of her middle and maiden names. (She is a sister of the above-mentioned Harold Lewis.) She became, at one point, an ardent Zionist, at a time when that was not a popular stance among upper-class Jews.

During the Hitler era, at the point when the Third Reich decreed that Jews must wear the badge of the yellow star, as their Inquisitional predecessors had done, Rabbi David de Sola Pool of Shearith Israel had a yellow star stitched to his vestments to symbolize what his people in Europe were suffering. The sight of the New York rabbi wearing the star stirred Mrs. Goldstone deeply, and moved her to write what she considers her most important poem:

O earliest morning stars that sang together,

And choruses of night that answered them,

The ancient stars, the sacred, the resplendent,

The shepherds' star

That rose on Bethlehem;

And even those small emblems that men make,

The stars of knighthood, bright for honor's sake;

The little service stars that shall burn through

Their hours of grief and pride,

And liberty's white spangled stars that ride

Valiant forever on their field of blue.

Is this the symbol that the brutal hand,

The blundering will to harm, the vicious hate,

Has wrought into a badge, a mark to brand?

Wear it, O Jew, upon your helpless arm;

Your race is worthy such insignia;

Be proud, be grateful it is not your fate

To bear a swastika.

Mrs. Goldstone has already celebrated her ninety-second birthday. She lives comfortably in a large Park Avenue
apartment with a view of Central Park, surrounded by fine old furniture, silver, china, and some splendid family portraits, several by her ancestor Jacob Hart Lazarus, the Astor family portraitist. She doesn't get out as often as she used to but still entertains regularly at little teas, with a merry fire going in the fireplace, and she goes regularly to the synagogue. She has watched many of her relatives drift away from their ancient faith, and takes it philosophically, but was saddened that a relative who had married a non-Jew now considers herselfâfrom a religious standpointâ“nothing.” In the family, both Jewish and Christian holidays are celebrated.

She is still an energetic lady. Not long ago, walking in the park, she avoided ruining a new pair of shoes by taking them off and running barefoot to the nearest exit to escape a downpour. A favorite taxi driver, who serves as a kind of chauffeur, taking her on errands and visits around the city, asked her the other day the secret of her good health, spirits, and great age. Stepping out of the cab, she answered, “I believe in God.”

*
Despite all sorts of socially discriminatory measures, snubs and countersnubs. In New York, for instance, the elite German-Jewish men's club, the Harmonie, would not admit Sephardic members. In retaliation, the Sephardic Beach Point Club in suburban Westchester would take no Germans. This condition persisted well into the twentieth century.

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