Saving Monticello: The Newsletter
The latest about
the book, author events, and more
Newsletter Editor
- Marc Leepson
Volume
XXII, Number 6 June
2025
RELIGIOSITY: Saving
Monticello, is, at its heart, as the title indicates, a story of historic
preservation. But it also deals with Thomas Jefferson and his architectural prowess.
And it includes a compelling story of not-widely-known Jewish-American history.
Said history begins with a group of Portuguese Sephardic Jews
who fled their homeland during the Inquisition in the early eighteenth century. They made their way to England, and in the spring of 1733 crossed the
Atlantic (along with some Ashkenazi Jews from Germany), landing in Savannah,
Georgia, on July 11, not long after the colony of Georgia had been founded.
That group included a prominent physician Dr. Samuel Nunez, Uriah Levy’s great-great grandfather, along with his wife Gracia (who changed her name to Rebecca in England) and their six children. One of the first things the group of Sephardic Jews—who were forbidden under the punishment of death to practice their religion in Portugal—did after arriving in Savannah was establish a synagogue they called Kahal Kadosh Mickva Israel (Holy Congregation, the Hope of Israel). Known since 1790 as Congregation Mickve Israel, it is the third-oldest Jewish Congregation in the nation.
Without doubt, the Nunez family members were devout Jews. As for their descendants—including Uriah Levy and his nephew Jefferson M. Levy—we know through their words and deeds they were proud Jews. However, the historical evidence strongly suggests that Uriah and Jefferson Levy and other Nunez descendants were not particularly “religious,” as it’s clear that they did not regularly attend synagogue services nor took part in other aspects of Judaism such as holding Passover seders and celebrating bar and bat mitzvahs.
What follows is a concise rundown on some of that
distinguished and accomplished family members’ religiosity.
As I wrote in Saving Monticello, Dr. Nunez (known in
Portugal as Samuel Nunes Ribiero) became a close friend of John Wesley, the founder of
the Methodist Church, when the English cleric lived in Savannah in the mid-1730s.
And as we have seen, Dr. Nunez was one of the founders of Mickve Israel, which
to this day uses the Torah that the Jewish settlers brought with them on their
voyage to Georgia in 1733.
Soon after the Nunez family arrived in
Savannah, 19-year-old Maria Caetana Nunez (known as Zipporah), Samuel and
Rebecca’s oldest daughter, married David Mendes Machado, 38, another
Sephardic Jew who had sailed from London, although he may have arrived several
years before the Nunez Family and the other 1733 settlers did.
David Machado was a member of another well-to-do Portuguese crypto-Jewish
family. He was a theologian and a scholar who was an expert in Hebrew and
Jewish traditions, even though he had been forced to live as a Catholic in
Less than a year after the wedding, David and Zipporah Machado moved to
New York City. They came north after he was appointed hazzan at Congregation
Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, the first Jewish
congregation established in North America. Shearith Israel was founded in 1654.
Jonas Phillips (below), Uriah Levy’s German-born
Ashkenazi Jewish maternal grandfather, born Jonah Phaibush, arrived in Charleston. South Carolina, in 1756 to
seek his fortune at age 21. A few years later, Jonas Phillips moved to Albany,
New York, where he became a Freemason and opened a store in which he sold food
and spirits.
After leaving Albany, he married Rebecca Machado (a daughter of David and Zipporah) in 1761, and settled in New York City where he operated a retail store. He also served the Jewish community as a shohet (ritual slaughterer) and bodek (meat examiner). Jonas became a naturalized citizen in April 1771. A few years later he moved his family to Philadelphia where he opened another retail store.
His most famous public religious act was the
Jonas Phillips was instrumental in raising funds to purchase a new building for Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Philadelphia in 1782, and was elected the president of that Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, which had been established in 1740. As the head of the congregation, he invited George Washington to attend the dedication ceremonies of its new building.
Uriah Levy’s second cousin, Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785-1851), a well-known American diplomat and journalist, was the recipient of a famous letter from Thomas Jefferson in which the Sage of Monticello expressed his views on freedom of religion and Judaism.
In 1818, Mordecai Noah (below)—one of the best-known American Jews in the Early Republic—had given a speech at Shearith Israel in New York, a copy of which made its way to Monticello. Jefferson wrote to Noah on May 28, saying he had read the speech “with pleasure and instruction, having learnt from it some valuable facts about Jewish history which I did not know before.”
Jefferson went on to denounce “religious intolerance,” which he called “a vice.” He concluded that the only “antidote” to religious intolerance would be federal laws that protected “our religious as they do our civil rights by putting all on an equal footing.”
As for Uriah Levy, a late 20th century magazine article
about him bore the headline, “When Monticello had a Mezuzah.” Even though the words
were not meant to be taken literally, a careful search in recent years for
signs that one or more mezuzahs adorned door frames at Monticello during the long
(1834-1923) Levy Family ownership came up empty.
That absence is another reason that historians believe that—though
Uriah Levy was an outspoken and proud Jew; was the victim of vicious
anti-Semitism during his 50-year Navy career; and an ardent admirer of Thomas
Jefferson because of his dedication to religious freedom—there is little evidence that he formally
practiced the religion of his ancestors.
Levy likely limited his Judaic practice to being a member of Shearith
Israel in New York where his great grandfather David Machado had served as
hazzan a century before. And by becoming the first president of Washington
Hebrew Congregation, which formed in 1852.
One
other thing: As I noted in Saving Monticello, in 1855, Uriah Levy, along
with many other naval officers, had been dropped from the Navy's active-duty
lists. He fought his removal and based his defense on anti-Semitism. During a
lengthy trial, Levy made a long passionate speech in which he trumpeted his
Judaism.
“My case,” he said, “is the case of every Israelite in
the Union.” He then asked rhetorically: “Are the thousands of [Jewish people],
in their dispersion throughout the earth, who look to America as a land bright
with promise, are they now to learn, to their sorrow and dismay, that we too
have sunk into the mire of religious intolerance and bigotry?”
Elected
to the Jewish American Hall of Fame in 1988, UPL was honored by the U.S. Navy
with the naming of a World War II destroyer escort the U.S.S. Levy. And the first permanent Jewish Chapel built by American armed
forces, the Commodore Levy Chapel at the Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia, was
dedicated in his name in 1959.
Not
to mention the U.S. Naval Academy’s imposing Commodore Uriah P. Levy Jewish
Center and Chapel (in photo, above), which opened its doors in 2005.
And there’s this: The tombstone Uriah Levy later erected on his mother’s grave at Monticello (below) includes the Hebrew month and year of her death. It is inscribed: “To the memory of Rachel Phillips Levy, Born in New York, 23 of May 1769, Married 1787. Died 7, of IYAR, (May) 5591, A.B. (1839) at Monticello, Va.”
One of Uriah Levy’s brothers, the peripatetic sea captain Jonas Phillips Levy, like his brother Uriah, took part in religious affairs in the mid-nineteenth century, and seems to have taken a bigger role in practicing his religion. At least he did when he and his family were living in the Nation’s Capital in 1862 and he became an active member of Washington Hebrew Congregation and is credited with making the first monetary contribution to that synagogue after its founding that year.
As for Jonas’ son, Jefferson Levy, the
globe-trotting Gilded Age millionaire real estate and stock speculator and
three-term member of Congress from New York City, seems not to have been
particularly religious.
He likely was a member of Shearith Israel, since he is
buried in Beth Olam Cemetery in Queens, near his Uncle Uirah, in a
section associated with Shearith Israel. His gravestone contains no Hebrew
words, though. JML’s brother and business partner, L.
Napoleon Levy (1854-1921), on the other hand, was a mover and shaker at Shearith
Israel.
As I noted in this
newsletter two years ago, L.N. Levy served as the congregation’s president for
much of the time between 1895 and 1921, the year of his death 1921.
EVENTS AND COMMERCE: I have a growing number of events scheduled later
this summer and into the fall, most of them for my new book, The Unlikely
War Hero, a slice-of-life biography of the extraordinary Vietnam War story
of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest ranking American prisoner held in
Hanoi during the war.
I’m also lining up talks, podcasts and other events for the
new paperback version of Lafayette: Idealist General.
Many of my upcoming events are speaking engagements
for historic preservation and other groups. Some are open to the public. For details, go to this page on my website: marcleepson.com/events
If you’d like to arrange a talk on The Unlikely War Hero, Saving Monticello, Lafayette, or any of my other books, please email me at marcleepson@gmail.com
To order signed copies of my books, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering
This issue is dedicated in loving memory to my brother, Evan Leepson (July 18, 1947 – June 12, 2025), a man of deep religious faith.
