http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--americasfirstjew0912sep12,0,29125,print.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire
America's first Jewish immigrants are celebrated 350
years after their arrival
By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press Writer
September 12, 2004, 10:11 AM EDT
NEW YORK -- They were only "23 souls, big and small," exhausted after surviving storms and pirates on the high seas.
Those five words describe America's first Jews, who fled persecution in Brazil by sailing into unknown waters. They were captured by buccaneers in the Caribbean before a French ship rescued them and took them to what is now New York.
On that day in September 1654, Jewish history in America was born. The exact day the ship docked is unclear, but a document dated Sept. 7, 1654, mentions the 23 men, women and children who stepped off the St. Catherine.
In the coming months across the United States, which now has about 6 million Jewish citizens, the 350th anniversary of the refugees' landing is being marked with lectures, exhibits and gatherings.
In Washington, the Library of Congress is hosting an exhibit on Jewish life called "From Haven to Home." The National Foundation for Jewish Culture will recognize Jewish talent behind about 100 movies, from the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup" to Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List."
And in Orlando, Fla., an exhibit opening Nov. 14 _ called "Beauty, Brains and Brawn" _ highlights the lives of some great Jewish women of North America, from Illinois labor leader Rosa Sonnenschein and comedian Gilda Radner to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
A New York-based organization called Celebrate 350 serves as a Web-linked hub for the hundreds of nationwide activities surrounding the anniversary.
The first 23 Jewish settlers arrived just before Rosh Hashanah, the religious New Year that celebrates the creation of the world while the faithful rethink their prickly human destiny.
After months at sea, the tiny Jewish community was at the mercy of the Dutch who ruled New Amsterdam on the Hudson River. The Dutch Reformed governor, Peter Stuyvesant, who had voiced his personal prejudice even against other Christian denominations, viewed the Jewish refugees as "very repugnant." Still, the 23 demanded to stay. They had no choice.
"But the Jews had to be unobtrusive, and the governor said that if they got sick or were in need, they had to take care of their own," said Rabbi Marc Angel, spiritual head of today's Shearith Israel congregation founded 350 years ago by the first "23 souls, big and small" as they're called in an early Dutch document.
Jews could practice only a few trades, and couldn't hold civic office or public religious services. Their de facto leader was Asher Levy, a Kosher butcher who insisted on showing up with two friends for guard duty, defending the Dutch colony like other residents and winning the Jews' first legal rights in America.
He had dared to lead "an uprising, an act of civil disobedience for a great and high purpose," said Judith Kaye, New York state's chief judge and a member of Shearith Israel.
"The Jewish legacy is one of struggle _ and achievement," said Kaye. "It's always been a struggle, and it's certainly a struggle today."
After many decades of worship in private spaces, America's founding Jewish community consecrated its first synagogue in 1730 on the site of a one-time Dutch grist mill, in what today is lower Manhattan. Shearith Israel's small Mill Street synagogue was for years North America's sole Jewish house of worship, until a synagogue was erected in Savannah, Ga., then others in Philadelphia, Charleston, S.C., and Newport, R.I., where the Touro Synagogue opened its doors in 1763. It's now the oldest synagogue still standing in the United States.
"I'm inspired by beginnings _ by how does one begin a new life on the ruins of the past?" said Elie Wiesel, who will speak on Oct. 14 at Manhattan's 92nd Street Y about "American Jewry at 350: A Vision for the Future" _ part of a yearlong 92nd Street Y series broadcast live via satellite around the country.
The worn out millstones from the 18th century synagogue site still greet worshippers entering Shearith Israel's current, 107-year-old edifice on Manhattan's Upper West Side across from Central Park, illuminated by Tiffany stained glass windows and lined in rich woods and red velvet. A new exhibit there features a Torah scroll that was damaged by fire and water during America's Revolutionary War.
Those who prayed at Shearith Israel have included U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, three founding members of the New York Stock Exchange and poet Emma Lazarus, who penned the words on the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor huddled masses yearning to be free..."
She wrote from the communal memory of America's Jews.
Said Wiesel, a Nobel prize-winning Holocaust scholar and survivor who lives in New York: "They came here, chased by persecution, fanaticism, intolerance and meanness. But they managed to transform memories of suffering into an American vision of moral harmony among cultures, religions and society."
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On the Net:
Shearith Israel:
http://www.shearith-israel.org/
Celebrate 350: Jewish Life in America 1654-2004:
http://www.celebrate350.org
Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press
