The Last of the Jews? (review)

During the colonial era a small number of Sephardic and Central European Jews established roots in American soil. Some of the more successful of these formed cross-colonial and even international business ties cemented with familial bonds. A high degree of toleration provided a fertile environment in which to form synagogues in the few port cities where they congregated in sufficient numbers, rise economically, and participate in government and civic affairs. These First (Jewish) Families of America formed an elite. Nonetheless the mixture of success, toleration, and paucity of eligible partners contributed to the assimilation or ending of the line in future generations escalating in the Jacksonian era.

Myron Berman first touched on this phenomenon in Richmond Jewry, 1769-1976: Shabbat in Shockoe (1976). In The Last of the Jews? he chose Jacob Mordecai, his wives (half-sisters Judith and Rebecca Myers), their descendants, and relatives through marriage for a case study. The Mordecais became tied to the Myers of New York, the Hayses of Boston, the Gratzes of Phildelphia, the Touros of New Orleans, and the Ettings of Baltimore, a veritable Who Was Who of early American Jewry.

Largely a failure in business, Jacob Mordecai established an academically advanced female academy in Warrenton, North Carolina. He emerged as an important lay leader of Richmond's Beth Shalome. He wrote Jewish apologetics as well as traditional defenses against Reform noteworthy for their mastery of Jewish and secular sources. Progeny included a doctor, army officers, authors, bankers, and founders of another women's school.

Yet this is not so much a family biography as it is a monograph on the reasons for assimilation and continuity. Berman explicated this theme in his question: "Is it possible for Judaism or any other minority religious or ethnic group to persist for any length of time in America given the allure of the majority culture?" (p. 101). An attorney and rabbi, Berman believes the Mordecai saga provides a mixed message. During the 1930s the last remaining Jews retaining the Mordecai name passed away and few descendants followed Judaism. Yet Berman also noted substantial continuity of Judaism within the family for almost three centuries. He thus ends with a hopeful note for Jewish survival into the future as individuals and communities remain highly aware of the dangers of assimilation and continue to forge creative solutions to an ever changing Jewish identity.

Historian Berman is at his best in explaining why some assimilated and others retained tradition. He identifies such variables as the availability of Jewish education, religious and cultural life, proximity to a Jewish community, individual choice and circumstances, the loose-knit social structure of the frontier environment, toleration and acceptance. Berman considers some of these uniquely southern. But what ultimately sets this first Jewish elite apart from later groups is that their class consciousness precluded their "intermarriage" with later waves of Central and Eastern European Jews. Instead they chose to marry Christians, select from the very limited number of endogamous partners, or remain celibate.

Berman uses the appropriate primary sources but could have profited from a greater immersion in secondary literature. A reading of Gary Zola's biography of Isaac Harby (1994) would have provided interesting parallels as would Kay Kole's genealogy of the Minis family (1992). Neither are Dianne Ashton's work on Rebecca Gratz (1997), Sheldon Hanft's study of Jacob Mordecai's academy (American Jewish History, 1989), Emily Bingham Simms' University of North Carolina dissertation on Mordecai's children nor important studies of Jewish women's history noted in the bibliography. Nonetheless this is a worthy addition to our understanding of the social history of American Jewry particularly during the first half of the nineteenth century.