Saving Monticello : The Newsletter
The latest about the book, author
events, and more
Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson
Volume XIII, Number 6 June
1, 2016
OLDEST CONGREGATION
& SYNAGOGUE: Here’s a
quick two-part quiz:
- What is the oldest Jewish
congregation in the United States?
- What is the nation’s oldest synagogue?
If you answered Shearith Israel in New York City as the
oldest congregation and Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode, Island, as the
oldest synagogue, you go to the head of the class.
As I wrote in SavingMonticello, Shearith Israel was the
first Jewish congregation established in North America. It was founded in 1654
by the first Jews who arrived in Niuw Amsterdam, as New York City was then
known, from Recife, Brazil. Until 1825, it was the only Jewish congregation in
the city.
Shearith Israel
moved to its fifth and current home, a magnificent building at 70th
Street and Central Park West (above),
in 1897. Uriah Levy’s great grandfather, David Machado—who married Maria
Caetana Nunez, the daughter of the family patriarch Dr. Samuel Nunez—moved from
Savannah, Georgia, to New York to serve as hazzan of Shearith Israel in the
1740s. A hundred years later Uriah Levy joined the Congregation. His nephew L.
Napoleon Levy (a brother of Jefferson Levy) served as president of Shearith
Isreal in the 1890s. I had the pleasure of doing a talk there on the Levy
Family and Monticello in March of 2002.
The congregation that would make its home in
Touro Synagogue—which does not have a Nunez/Phillips/Levy family connection—was
founded in 1658 as Nephuse Israel, also by Sephardic descendants of Jewish
families who first went to the Caribbean to escape certain death during the
Spanish Inquisition. The current Touro Synagogue was dedicated in 1763, making
it the oldest in the nation.
Touro—which was named for two of its congregants—recently
won a legal battle with Shearith Israel in the District Court of Providence. It
had to do with Touro’s proposed sale of an extremely valuable pair of 18th
century silver ornaments called rimonim that sit on top of Torahs. Touro wanted
to sell the finials to raise millions to keep the synagogue operating.
Shearith Israel argued that it owned not just the rimonim,
but also the Touro synagogue itself. That’s because many of Touro’s congregants
had moved to New York and joined Shearith Israel in the late 1700s and early
1800s. They closed the building, and took the keys to Touro and many other objects,
including Torahs and rimonim, with them to Shearith Israel.
The objects were returned about a hundred years later when Rhode
Island experienced a large wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern and Central Europe
and the long-dormant Touro reopened.
“The central issue here is the legacy of some of the
earliest Jewish settlers in North America, who desired to make Newport a
permanent haven for public Jewish worship,” Judge John J. McConnell wrote in his
decision, in which he ruled that Shearith Israel had been the trustee—not the
owner—of Touro.
For more info on the dispute, here's an article in The New York Times.
EVENTS:
·
Saturday,
June 11 – 11:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
book signing of Saving Monticello at
the Gift Shop at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia.
- Tuesday, June 14 – 10:20 a.m.
talk on Flag: An American Biography,
Brethren Village Retirement Community “Lunch & Learn” event, 3001 Lititz Pike,
Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
- Saturday, June 18 – 11:00 a.m. –
4:00 p.m. book signing of Saving
Monticello, Flag, Desperate
Engagement, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed at “Eat Local, Read Local” event, Cascades
Library, Potomac Falls, Virginia
- Sunday, June 19 – 10:45 a.m. talk
on Flag and book signing at LZ
Maryland Writers’ Hootch, Maryland State Fairgrounds, Timonium, Maryland
- Saturday, June 25 – Luncheon talk on Lafayette and book signing for Virginia Sons and Daughters of the Pilgrims, Charlottesville, Virginia.
Please email me if you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello—or for any of my other
books, including What So Proudly We
Hailed and Lafayette: Idealist
General, my concise bio of the Marquis de Lafayette—at marc527psc@aol.com For more
details on other upcoming events, go to http://bit.ly/SMOnline
That’s the “Author Events” page on my website,
www.marcleepson.com
Facebook,
Twitter: If you’re on Facebook, please send me a friend request. If
you’re on Twitter, I’d love to have you as a follower.
Gift
Ideas: If you would like a
personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, e-mail me at Marc527psc@aol.com Or go to this page of my website: http://marcleepson.com/signedbooks.html
to order copies through my local bookstore, Second Chapter Books in Middleburg , Virginia Lafayette
