Within the Community
The internal communal life of Philadelphia and New
York Jewry is revealed by the Constitution and By-Laws of the
Jewish Foster Home Society of the City of Philadelphia, 1855, which
was organized and run by the leading ladies of the community; and by
the Constitution and By-Laws of the Hebrew Benevolent Society of
the City of New York, New York, 1865, then in its
forty-third year of service as the umbrella organization for Jewish
charities.
We note with special satisfaction that the Library
of Congress has a copy of Substance of Address
on Laying the Corner Stone of the Synagogue “Temime
Dereck, ” New
Orleans, 1866. The address was by Philip Phillips
(1807-1884), who had served as a member of
the House of Representatives from Alabama,
1854-55. His participation in a synagogue celebration is one of the first, if not the first, by a Jew who had
served in the U.S. Congress.
Founded
as a home “for destitute and unprotected children of Jewish
parentage” by Jewish ladies of Philadelphia.
A leading spirit in this, as in all leading
Jewish women's endeavors in Philadelphia,
was its grande dame, Rebecca Gratz. The
special Sabbath regulations which conclude
the pamphlet provide:
On Friday previous to the Sabbath, the children shall be bathed,
combed and dressed,-the children shall then be assembled, when
the matron shall read to them the prayer for the eve of the
Sabbath; after supper they shall sing, Ain Kalohaynoo.
Constitution and By-Laws of the Jewish Foster Home Society ... , Philadelphia, 1855. General Collection.
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Phillips's participation in Jewish life began
early. At age eighteen, he was one of the founding members of the
Reformed Society of Israelites in his native Charleston, South
Carolina, and served as its secretary at age twenty-one. In 1856, as
a resident of Washington, D.C., he contributed ten dollars to the
city's Hebrew Congregation towards purchase of a Torah scroll. A year later he served as spokesman for a Baltimore
delegation which had come to call upon President Buchanan to protest
against a commercial treaty with Switzerland permitting Swiss cantons
to discriminate against American Jews who might be visiting there.
Phillips was admitted to the South Carolina bar in
1828, then moved to Mobile, Alabama, where, in 1834, he was elected
to the state legislature and became a leading political figure. In
1853, he was elected to Congress, and when his term ended he remained
in Washington to practice law before the Supreme Court.
The last in a group
of nine published addresses of Philip Phillips, member of the
House of Representatives from Alabama, 1854-55, is the Substance
of Address on Laying the Corner Stone of
the Synagogue “Temime
Dereck” of New Orleans in 1866. It is one of the
earliest-if not the first-participations in a synagogal function
by a congressman. This copy was presented to John Selden, Esq. by
W. H. Allen Phillips, Washington, February 14, 1884.
Philip Phillips, Substance of Address ..., New Orleans,
1866. General Collection.
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Because of his wife's pronounced Southern
sympathies (she was the former Eugenia Levy of Charleston), they had
to leave the city during the Civil War and settled in New Orleans. In
his consecration address, Phillips voiced the universalistic
sentiments of his first Jewish affiliation, the Reformed Society of
Israelites:
I
look into the future ... I see the coming
day, radiant in glory ... in which, though
differing in creed and forms of worship,
the voices of all shall unite in the
grand anthem, “Hear, 0, Israel,
the Lord our God, the Lord is One!”
The
Phillips Papers housed in the Library's Manuscript
Division contain a brief autobiographical
sketch, called “A Summary of the Principle
Events of My Life,” and two
works by his wife. One is a diary entitled “Journal
of Mrs. Eugenia Phillips,” the other a
memoir, “A Southern Woman's
Story of Her Imprisonment During the War of
1861-62.” A fiery and outspoken
Confederate sympathizer, Eugenia often found
herself at odds with Union officials. In the
journal page below, Phillips describes the
indignities of her confinement after her arrest
by federal officers in Washington, along with
two daughters and her sister Martha, on August
23, 1861. Released after a three-week imprisonment,
Phillips relocated to New Orleans, where she
mocked the funeral of a Union soldier, thereby
running afoul of the notorious General Benjamin “Beast” Butler,
who issued a special order imprisoning her
at Ship Island, where conditions were harsh
and primitive.
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Eugenia Phillips (1819-1902).
[Journal
kept August 23, 1861-September 26, 1861].
Diary page, August 28, 1861.
Manuscript Division
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Philip's
writings are staid and proper, Eugenia's,
fiery and dramatic. Because of his legal
and oratorical skills, he sat in Congress;
because of her intense Southern loyalties,
she languished in “Beast” Butler's
prison. After the war both returned to Washington,
where Phillips resumed his law practice and
became one of the capital's leading attorneys.
He died in 1884 and was buried in the Levy
family plot in the Jewish cemetery of Savannah,
Georgia.
Sources: Abraham J. Karp, From
the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress,
(DC: Library of Congress,
1991).
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