The Jews in America Trilogy (77 page)

When Aunt Ellie reached this point in her stories, the children's eyes would be as wide as saucers.

*
Prayer books in Spanish synagogues were promptly reprinted in Castilian, an interesting contrast to the attitudes of American Orthodox Jews of the twentieth century, who thoroughly disapprove of Reform congregations, where English, the language of the country, is spoken.

*
This
Converso
name change is fairly typical. The
Converso
felt a need to advertise his new faith with special enthusiasm, and often selected the name of a Catholic saint.

4

THE TWENTY-THREE

On the first day of September, 1654, a tiny privateer, the
Saint Charles,
sailing under the French flag, appeared in what is now New York Harbor. It was something of a surprise to the fortress colony of New Amsterdam, which had been established on the tip of Manhattan island barely thirty years earlier, to learn that twenty-three of the
Saint Charles
passengers were Jews.

More than 150 years had passed since the Expulsion Edict, and the Catholic monarchs had long ago been placed in their uncomfortable-looking repose. And yet the twenty-three were victims of the monarchs' edict also, part of a continuing stream of escapees from Inquisitional Spain,
Portugal, and all Spanish and Portuguese possessions on both sides of the Atlantic, where the Inquisition had been quickly established.

The dispersion following the Expulsion Edict was chaotic, following no set paths. Jews who refused to convert scattered in all directions—southward into Africa, eastward into Greece and Turkey, northward into Europe. Only one rule applied: the richer the Jew, the more liberal he could be with his bribes and, therefore, the freer he was in his choice of destination. The poorest Jews fled across the Gibraltar straits into the mountains of Morocco. The richest went to Holland—and for good reason. This tiny, doughty country had, from as early as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—just as it has today—a record and reputation of tolerance, of treating “outsiders” with respect and kindness. And so the Jews who escaped to Holland from Spain and Portugal found not only a friendly atmosphere where they could reestablish their congregations, but also a place where they could practice their businesses and professions. The city of Amsterdam was already an important money capital. In Holland the Sephardim were soon prospering again and occupying positions very much like those they formerly had held in Iberia. By the early seventeenth century, the Sephardim were an important part of the Dutch economy.

And the Netherlanders of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the most cultivated people in Europe. This was the great era of Dutch painting, of Frans Hals and Rembrandt and Vermeer. It was an age of opulence and luxury, and in Holland ordinary burghers enjoyed comforts in their homes that were found only in the palaces of princes elsewhere. Across the North Sea, in England, members of the royal courts were still eating with their fingers, throwing their bones to mongrel dogs who roamed, snarling, under dinner tables. They were using their sleeves for
napkins, strewing the royal halls with rushes instead of rugs, and had barely begun to discover the use of window glass. The rich of Amsterdam, meanwhile, were living in houses with thick carpets from the Orient and beautiful furniture, eating off porcelain plates with all the table silver of modern times. The affinity between the elegant Dutch and the aristocratic Sephardim was easy to understand.

Because the oldest Sephardic families in America can usually point to a Netherlands interlude in their collective past, they have an added point of pride. As one of the New York Nathans says today: “We were ladies and gentlemen in Spain, and we became ladies and gentlemen in Holland.” Cream rises to the top, regardless of its location.

In the years following Columbus' discovery, Dutch explorers, along with explorers from other European countries, fanned out across the Atlantic, establishing colonies in North and South America, the Caribbean islands, Africa, and the Orient. As the Dutch established colonies, Sephardim from Holland followed them, helping the Dutch put their colonies in business. As a result of the Dutch colonial thrust, Sephardic communities can be found today virtually wherever the Dutch had outposts—Guiana, Polynesia, the West Indies. The oldest Jewish cemetery in the New World is the Sephardic burying ground on the Dutch West Indian island of Curaçao.

A particularly important Jewish settlement had been made in Brazil. Discovered by a Spaniard, Brazil was claimed for Portugal in 1500 by the Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvarez Cabral. Soon other nations were eyeing this vast and fertile land and its rapidly growing sugar industry. In 1624, the Dutch West India Company—backed by the Dutch government—launched a full-scale military campaign against Brazil and captured Recife, which brought Brazil into Dutch hands.

Jews, many of them Marranos, had settled in Brazil
during the century of Portuguese rule. With the Dutch victory and the abolition of the Inquisition—along with new arrivals from Holland of Sephardim who followed the Dutch conquest in a now familiar pattern—there was a great rush of reconversion to Judaism. Ex-Catholics were welcomed back into the synagogue, and before long Recife had a thriving and openly Jewish community.

The position of Jews in Brazil was now equal to that of the Protestant Dutch, with the same rights and privileges, and was considerably superior to that of the conquered Portuguese Catholics, whom the Dutch naturally endeavored to keep powerless. Unfortunately for the Jews, this state of affairs lasted only thirty years. In 1654, after a long and bloody siege by the Portuguese, the Dutch surrendered Recife, and Brazil became once more a colony of Portugal. The Jews' situation had changed utterly. The grim hand of the Inquisition reached out again.

But the leader of the Portuguese invaders, General Barreto, was a reasonably lenient man. He ordered the Jews out of Brazil, but he didn't hurry them unduly. In his diary, David Franco Mendes, one of the leaders of the Brazilian Jewish colony, and another early member of the ubiquitous Mendes clan, describes the situation:

… 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.”