Jewish “Continuity” in Early America
American Jewry has expressed concern about
rising rates of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews. However,
intermarriage is by no means a recent phenomenon. Maintaining Jewish identity
in a highly tolerant, secular American culture is a challenged that has
confronted American Jewry since the earliest settlements in the New World. The
story of the Levy-Franks family, who lived in the Protestant milieu of early
18th-century New York, is particularly illustrative.
The Franks family matriarch, (Bilhah) Abigail Levy Franks,
was born in New York in 1696, one year after her parents, Moses and Rachel
Levy, arrived there from London. Abigail’s beloved Jacob Franks also
emigrated from London. He lived as a boarder in the Levy household and married
16-year old Abigail in 1712. Together, they had nine children, six of whom
survived infancy.
Both the Levy and Franks families were leaders of New York’s
tiny Jewish community, which numbered fewer than 50 families. Jacob Franks
served as parnas (president) of Shearith Israel congregation, the
oldest Jewish congregation in North America. Yet the Levys and Frankses
included among their closest friends some of New York’s elite Protestant
families: the Livingstons, Bayards, DeLanceys and Van Cortlands. As ship
owners and civic-minded New Yorkers, Moses Levy and Jacob Franks were among
eleven Jews who contributed funds to complete the steeple of Trinity church,
which served as a beacon to guide ships into New York harbor.
At a time when women were meant to forego formal education
and devote themselves to home and children, Abigail Levy Franks received a
classical education. She quoted from the contemporary novels of Fielding and
Smollett, read the works of Dryden, Montesquieu and Pope (her favorite), and
encouraged her daughters to do the same. Her hopes for her children are known
to us today through letters she wrote to her son Naphtali, who had gone to
seek his fortune in London. Abigail’s remarkable correspondence resides
today in the archives of the American Jewish Historical Society, which
published them in a volume.
Abigail prided herself on her strict observance of the
Sabbath, holy days and dietary laws, as well as her regular attendance at
Shearith Israel. Suspicious of the kitchens even of relatives, she repeatedly
sent food to son Naphtali in London and warned him not to eat anything in his
English uncle’s home "unless it be bread and butter . . . nor anywhere
else where there is the least doubt of things not done after our strict
Judaical method."
While observing kashrut in colonial New York was manageable, finding suitable mates for her children
in New York’s tiny Jewish community posed a problem for Abigail. With so few
local Jewish suitors, she worried that her daughters would have to live, in
her words, as "nuns." To cope with the shortage of eligible Jewish
mates for her sons, she encouraged Naphtali to marry his Jewish cousin in
London. He followed his mother’s advice.
Abigail was therefore profoundly dismayed when in 1743 her
daughter Phila eloped with Oliver DeLancey, the gentile son of a wealthy and
politically powerful family. Although her husband Jacob soon reconciled
himself to Phila’s marriage because it allied the Franks clan with the
well-connected DeLanceys, Abigail refused to speak to Phila or let Oliver in
her home. There is no evidence that mother and daughter ever reconciled. Jacob
was heartbroken.
Paradoxically, in at least one instance, the appearance of
a rare Jewish suitor for one of her daughters did not please Abigail. She
opposed the courtship of her daughter Richa by a member of the New York
Sephardic Gomez family because she regarded the prospective bridegroom as a
"stupid wretch." Richa later rejected the proposal of a Christian
suitor to avoid adding to her mother’s unhappiness, and finally married a
Jew in England after her parents’ deaths. While Naphtali and his older
brother both married Jewish first cousins, Abigail’s youngest son David
married one of Philadelphia’s Christian belles. Today, no known descendant
of the Franks family professes Judaism.
The story of the Franks family marriages –and
marriagelessness— illustrates the dilemma young Jewish men and women faced
when seeking spouses in colonial America. New York had only a few hundred
Jews. London, Amsterdam, Berlin and other great cities formed the center of
Jewish life. Abigail Franks’s New York had only a few hundred Jews. To
compound matters, the city’s Protestant elite considered New York’s Jews
eligible marriage partners. The dearth of potential Jewish partners and the
acceptance that greeted the city’s Jews is a challenge that the Franks
family confronted 250 years ago. While the number of Jews in New York and
America has increased exponentially, the question of how to maintain Jewish
"continuity" in America’s socially tolerant environment remains as
vital today as in the age of Abigail Franks.
Sources: American
Jewish Historical Society |