Early American Mikvaot (Ritual Baths)

There is probably no less understood element of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jewish life in the American colonies than the ritual bath or mikveh. The ritual bath was an essential part of early modern Jewish society, and indeed remains so today for orthodox Jews today. Over the past several years, I have studied numerous early American mikvaot. The findings from this research are being published this month in the journal Religion in the Age of Enlightenment (AMS Press) in an article entitled, "Early American Mikvaot: Ritual Baths as the Hope of Israel."

I began to investigate early American mikvaot during a research trip focusing upon the early Jewish community in Newport, RI; my fascination with the subject is both academic and personal. As an academic, I am deeply interested in the daily lives of early American Jews, and mikveh provides important insights into the habits and behaviors of early American women. My intrigue with early mikvaot was also arises out of my own experiences as a Jew. As an orthodox woman in a small city, I have sometimes served as a volunteer balanit (mikveh attendant). When I left to do research one summer in Newport, I told the other mikveh attendants I would find out about early mikvaot. This turned out to be more challenging than I'd thought. Although I was told by tour guides in Newport that women in colonial times probably immersed in the ocean, this struck me as incredibly unlikely. In the summer, the Narragansett bay would hardly be the most modest place to immerse; in the winter the temperature drops well below zero, making ocean immersion also extremely uncomfortable if not deadly. Would early American Jews have cared enough to build a mikveh?

Textual evidence suggests yes. Mikveh use by women was required by Jewish law and was seen as essential to the continuance of a Jewish community. As one Jew in eighteenth-century Philadelphia noted, negligence of the mikveh by women was “highly criminal,” and if such negligence was deemed widespread, other communities might not only “pronounce heavy anathemas against us,” but also might “avoid intermarriages with us, equal as with [a] different nation or sect, to our great shame and mortification” (Marcus 1958: 135). From this colonist's point of view, lack of regular use of the mikveh by women had a negative impact on the family as a whole since offspring “born from so unlawful cohabitation are deemed bene niddot [children conceived during the menstrual period], which makes this offense the more hoeinous [heinous] and detestable, in as much as it effects not only the parents, but their posterity for generations to come“ (Marcus 1958: 135). Indeed the mikveh is considered so essential to Jewish life that some Rabbinical authorities gave it higher precedence than building a synagogue or buying a Torah scroll (Lesches 33).

Archaeological evidence also supports the theory that early American Jews built mikvaot. On the downside, there is little evidence from the United States. Although a spring runs under the Touro Synagogue and there are underground cisterns next to the synagogue, most mikvaot from early U.S. Jewish communities were built in what were (or became) dense urban centers. As neighborhoods changed and mikvaot were abandoned, later structures were built on top of them. Not surprisingly then, most remains of early mikvaot in the Americas are in the Caribbean—the most famous examples being in St. Eustatius and Willemstad, Curaçao (right). Other important mikvaot include the first American mikveh in Recife (Brazil), two mikavot in Paramaribo (below), and the recently rediscovered and excavated mikveh in Barbados (image at top). Archaeological digs of the early synagogue in Jamaica may have located a structure there as well that was a mikveh. As I argue in my RAE article, the unique features of these structures should be understood in relationship to the early mikvaot in Amsterdam.

Mikveh at Neve Shalom Synagogue Complex (Paramaribo, Suriname).
Quite possibly the oldest bor al gabei bor (one pit on top of another pit) mikveh in the Americas.
Recently renovated.

Interested in learning more about the Amsterdam mikvaot? There is a great article online by Jerzy Gawronski and Ranjith Jayasena. For more on early American mikvaot check out the first issue of RAE. Interested in supporting mikvaot in some of Americas oldest Jewish communities? Consider Chai Membership for Suriname or donate to the construction of the new mikveh in Newport, RI. In the meantime, enjoy the photos posted here!

Works cited
Lesches, Schneur Zalman.Understanding Mikveh Montreal: Rabbi S.Z. Lesches, 2001.
Marcus, Jacob Rader. American Jewry. Documents Eighteenth Century.

Photo creditsTop photo of the Barbados mikevh by and courtesy of Karl Watson, 2008. Features archaeologist Michael Stoner. Fisheye effects added by Laura Leibman.

Second Image of an excerpt of a letter from Rabbi Karigal (Barbados) to Aaron Lopez (Newport), asking "me advise como está el Baño" (can you tell me how is the mikveh going) suggesting a mikveh was being (re)built in Newport. From the Collection of Menashe Lehman, printed in “Early Relations Between American Jews and Eretz Yisrael.” Algemeiner Journal 3 March, 1992 : B3.

All other photos by Laura Leibman.

Jewish Heritage Travel: Newport, RI

Newport is one of those towns of breath-taking beauty that everyone should visit at least once in their lives. At the end of the nineteenth century, anyone who was anyone in New York society had a "cottage" (mansion) in Newport. Today, the Newport Preservation Society offers tours of many of the most elegant of these homes, along with colonial gems like the Hunter House.



Before the Revolutionary War, Newport was a crucial port of call on early trade routes. It was also home to one of the most important early American Jewish communities. The collapse of the economy following the war meant many members of the Jewish community left, but many fine examples of colonial architecture remain in the town, including homes of several prominent Jewish families. The Newport Historical Society offers a wide range of tours of local landmarks. Walking tours of Jewish Newport are also available through the Touro Synagogue, America's oldest synagogue and a national historic site. Military history buffs will want to visit Fort Adams.

Interested in visiting Newport? I recommend the Inn on Bellevue. The rates are reasonable and the location is superb. If you are staying for at least a week, it is worth asking if there is a special "extended stay" rate. Those with more to spend may want to try The Hotel Viking or the Hyatt Regency Newport Hotel & Spa, located on magnificent Goat Island.



All Photos by Laura Leibman, 2007.
Top: Cliff Walk
Second: The Breakers
Third: Fort Adams
Bottom: Touro Synagogue

Passover in the Colonies

What's wrong about self-pity, anyway?

...I told myself,
"Pity should begin at home." So the more
pity I felt the more I felt at home
(Elizabeth Bishop, "Crusoe in England").

If I am ever tempted to "feel at home" in the weeks leading up to Passover, all I have to do is think of the Jews in the colonies. At least after I finish my cleaning, I can drive to the local supermarket and buy matzoh and an entire range of packaged kosher l'pesach products. I can even order food from Nosh Away in Seattle (and I often do) and they will send me a complete seder package, often for less than it would cost me to make it myself. Although early American Jews often had servants (or slaves) to help them clean, getting ready for passover would have been much harder for Jews in the American colonies.

First, there was the question of food. Early American families had a difficult time getting the food they needed even when it wasn't passover. Colonies were rarely self sufficient: as one historian notes, " the inability to produce livestock, meat, flour and lumber in the West India islands laid the basis for one of the most serious commercial problems of the mercantilist empires" (Gould 473). Fortunately, many of the Jews in the colonies were merchants or had merchants in their extended families. They shipped all sorts of items: hard woods, sugar, rum, candles, oil, leather, fur, wheat, liquor, tobacco, and yes, food. Some of this food included the basic things needed for survival. Other was food was for show or was used as status symbols. Pineapples, for example, traveled north from Suriname and the tropics, and became a symbol of hospitality prominently featured in Newport architecture.

Pineapples, are lovely, but it is hard to make a seder out of them. Two items were probably more on the minds of colonists: maztoh and meat. Today when I want to get kosher meat in Portland, Oregon, I can either buy it at the local butcher or get it shipped in frozen in bulk through NW Kosher. The latter is cheaper, but I need to plan several weeks ahead and if I order something interesting (e.g. bison), I may not get it the first time I ask. Many of the communities in the Caribbean had beef shipped from New York, Philadelphia, or Newport. One can well imagine that it took much longer for their meat to arrive than mine, and since freezing it wasn't an option, it was almost certainly salted. One colonist described salted beef as "the most important commodity of all," for Jews and non-Jews alike (Mandelblatt 19).

The kosher beef trade was an important part of early American Jewish life. Aaron Lopez and other Jews in Newport exported kosher meat to Jamaica, Barbados, and Suriname. Michael Gratz of Philadelphia sent beef to Barbados and probably Curacao. In 1752, New York's Shearith Israel devised a seal to "attest to the ritual purity of meat exported from the city under their supervision." There is a fine example of an early Kosher Certificate in Eli Faber's A Time for Planting: The First Migration, 1654-1820 (p. 68). Shearith Israel hired a shochet and paid him a yearly stipend. Philadelphia's Mikveh Israel likewise hired a slaughter. Even so, kosher meat was in such short supply that in New York fines were imposed upon anyone who bought meat on erev Shabbat or immediately before holidays with the intent to sell it abroad. (Faber 51, 69-70, 120).

Matzoh was another story. Matzoh production was often a local affair, though it was sometimes imported. In larger communities, matzoh production was supervised and controlled by the Rabbi, Chazzan, or Parnassim. In these communities, matzoh was available for purchase, but was also distributed in large quantities free to the poor. The Touro Foundation still owns an eighteenth-century matzoh board on which the congregation made its matzot (below). Even so, a lot of planning was in order: many of the colonies did not produce wheat, so presumably months before the holiday began, congregations and individuals would need to arrange for wheat to be shipped from other locations. Sometimes people did import already baked matzoh: Aaron Lopez once ordered 250 pounds of maztot from New York, probably for the use of his (large) extended family. Shearith Israel also distributed haroset to its congregants, and (as unlikely as it sounds) Aaron Lopez once exported haroset to Jews in the West Indies (Rader 978-979)

Matzoh Board (Eighteenth Century)
During the colonial period, this board was used at Touro Synagogue (Newport, RI)
to prepare the dough for Matzoh (unleavened bread) used in the Passover season.
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress,
Religion and the Founding of the American Republic Exhibit, "America as a Religious Refuge"

Prayer books were often imported from Amsterdam and London, though starting in 1761 an English siddur was available out of New York. Haggadot were probably imported from Amsterdam, which was well known for its elaborate, illustrated editions. A Venice hagaddah published in 1609 and then 1629 became the prototype for many Sefardi haggadot of the era. Likewise the Ashkenazi haggadah published in 1695 in Amsterdam (later known as the "Amsterdam Haggadah") was widely imitated and reprinted. You can read more about these and other early haggadot at the Library of Congress website. These haggadot and other Jewish publications out of Amsterdam were highly influential and were even imitated on the gravestones produced by the Amsterdam community and exported to the colonies.

If I have time in between cleaning, I will suggest some activities for students. In the meantime, I hope you have a happy and kosher pesach!

Seder Haggadah shel Pesah (Passover Haggadah) (Venice, 1629).

The illustrations on these printed pages of the Venice Haggadah
depict events in the life of the patriarch Abraham.
The binding of Isaac is illustrated in the woodcut on the bottom left.

Works Cited:

Eli Faber, A Time for Planting: The First Migration, 1654-1820. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992.

Clarence P. Gould, ‘Trade Between the Windward Islands and the Continental Colonies of the French Empire, 1683–1763’,Mississippi Valley Historical Review 25: 4, 1939.

Bertie Mandelblatt, "A Transatlantic Commodity: Irish Salt Beef in the French Atlantic World," History Workshop Journal 63: 18-47.

Jacob Marcus Rader, The Colonial American Jew, 1492-1776. Detroit: Wayne State U.P., 1970.

Image at Top of Page: Seder Haggadah shel Pesah (Passover Haggadah)
(Amsterdam, 1695). Moses (right and above) and Aaron,
his older brother and the founder of the Jewish priesthood,
are depicted on the title page of the Amsterdam Haggadah.

Photos by author: Pineapple photo taken of wild pineapples at Jodensavanne (Jew's Savannah) in Suriname; Pineapple architectural motif taken at the William Hunter House, Newport RI. The Hunter House was right next door to "The Lantern" (now destroyed), the home of Jacob Rodriguez Rivera, one of Newport's most important Jewish settlers.

Cemetery Cats

This post is dedicated to the felines of the Atlantic World: those sun-loving souls who spend their days (and nights) lounging in the cemeteries that grace the Atlantic Rim. This week I feature two cemetery cats: Wunzie (Newport) and Iyar (Ouderkerk aan de Amstel) as well as their sepulchral companions, the lions carved onto Beth Haim Ouderkerk gravestones.

Cat Number One: Wunzie. Officially, Wunzie lives down the street from the Trinity Church Cemetery in Newport, RI. Last time I was in Newport, however, Wunzie spent most of her time sunning herself on table stones and chasing bugs among the upright markers. A black and white DSH (domestic short hair: veterinary speak for "cat mutt") with a sparkling personality, Wunzie likes to ham it up for the camera.

Interestingly enough, Wunzie isn't the only "Anglican by choice" to hang around Trinity. Not all of the conversos who arrived in Newport from the Iberian Peninsula returned to Judaism. One of Aaron Lopez's cousins, for example, named James Lucena decided to become an Anglican instead. James eventually returned to Portugal (and Catholicism), but his son John Charles Lucena married a non-Jewish woman and was buried in an Anglican cemetery in London. Here are a few shots of Wunzie in her favorite haunt. If anyone in Newport knows how Wunzie is doing, let me know!

Wunzie Modeling a "Table Stone," Trinity Church (Anglican) Cemetery, Newport RI

Wunzie Catching a Bug, Trinity Church (Anglican) Cemetery, Newport RI

Cat Number Two: Iyar. Iyar is an official graveyard cat of the historic Portuguese-Jewish cemetery in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel in the Netherlands. She lives in the Caretaker's House with her younger cat companion and her master, Dennis Ouderdorp, who knows more about Jewish Cemeteries than anyone I have ever met. (Because I lack social graces, I only have a picture of Dennis's cat, and not Dennis himself.) Named for the Hebrew month of Iyar (meaning "Rosette" or "blossom"), Iyar is the matriarch of the cemetery. You will notice that like Wunzie, Iyar is a black and white DSH. Coincidence? I think so. The day I was in Ouderkerk ann de Amstel it was pouring rain, so I don't have quite as many photos of Iyar as I'd like, but here is another of her on one of the flat Sephardic table stones.

Iyar on an unidentified Table Stone, Beth Haim Ouderkerk

Iyar and her companion aren't the only cats in Beth Haim Ouderkerk. Although the earliest gravestones at Beth Haim Ouderkerk are free of images of living things, by the 1650s the use of vegetation appears, followed by death’s heads and human hands in the 1660s. By the 1680s animals, angels and biblical scenes with humans appear. One of the most popular animals to grace the stones are lions, several styles of which can be found in the cemetery. Lions are an important Jewish symbol, and often appear on Jewish ceremonial art, such Arks, Torah crowns, and menorot. The JHOM speculates that, "It is possible..that these lions, particularly those on many Torah Ark doors and curtains, are symbolic replacements of the original cherubim that once adorned the Ark of the Tabernacle in the Mishkan (portable Temple in the wilderness) and the Temple in Jerusalem." Lions—associated with the tribe of Judah and the Davidic monarchy—evoked the messiah and hence are an important eschatological reference. Lions are also associated with the Spanish-Portuguese name "Leon" (literally "lion") and are a common heraldic symbol (for example they are found on the coat of arms for "Castile and Leon," Spain and the Netherlands). Many of the lions in Beth Haim Ouderkerk are on heraldic lions (for example above right, gravestone of Benjamin Senior Teixeira, 1744). They can also be found, however, in biblical scenes, such as the one below depicting Daniel and the lions.

Detail of Gravestone Depicting Daniel and the Lions, Beth Haim Ouderkerk

Photo Credits: All Photos Laura Leibman, 2007-2009. Courtesy of Beth Haim Ouderkerk aan de Amstel.

Synagogue: View from the Gallery

One of the standard features of the synagogues of the Jewish Atlantic World is a women's gallery: a balcony supported by columns on two or three sides of the synagogue.

The concept of using a balcony for a women’s section comes from descriptions of the Temple: although at first there was no roof to the Women’s Court, a balcony on top of pillars was added later and screened in with latticework.

In the synagogues in Amsterdam, London and the new world sometimes latticework was used (as in the Esnoga and Bevis Marks) and sometimes a railing was used (as in Jamaica and Newport's Touro Synagogue). In Antiquity, latticework in synagogues was used to represent the firmament: the division between heaven and earth. The view from the women’s balcony in the synagogue, then, was paradoxically both elevated and restricted: through the geometric pattern of the lattice, the women viewed the service as if looking down through the firmament to earth.

Here are some views from the Balcony along with a haunting video of Vanessa Paloma singing the Ladino song "El Dio Alto" from the balcony of the Esnoga.

Vanessa Paloma in the Balcony of the Esnoga

The Balcony of Kahal Kadosh Shaare Shalom, Jamaica

The View from the Balcony of Neve Shalom Synagogue, Suriname

The View from Below:

Looking up at the Balcony in Mikve Israel (the "Snoa"), Curacao

View from the ground floor of the Touro Synagogue including of balconies HABS, Library of Congress)

Grave Matters: Converso Funerary Art

When Isaac Lopez was buried in 1762, he joined the remains of many of his extended kin and other members of the Yeshuat Israel [Salvation of Israel] congregation. The Hevra kadisha (Burial Society) of Newport washed his body and prepared it for burial. The leader of the burial society then led the men in seven circuits around the body (Emmanuel PRECIOUS STONES 81). These circuits not only embedded the dead into the memory of the community, but also helped transition the deceased from the world of the living to the world to come.In Judaism, seven is a holy number symbolizing God, completion, and the covenant.One sign of this covenant was separation.

Jewish law requires that Jews be buried separately from their gentile neighbors, and in 1677 the Jews of Newport purchased and established a burial ground at the edge of town on the corner of what is now Kay Street and Bellevue Avenue (Gradwohl 20). The cemetery was far from both the town’s Protestant cemeteries, and the houses and businesses of most Jewish residents. After being prepared for internment, Isaac’s body was brought here and buried. A year later a gravestone was erected and “unveiled.”
Like the seven circuits made by mourners around the coffins of the dead, the gravestone laid over the tomb had a redemptive quality: it, like other stones in the cemetery, embedded the deceased in the Jewish community of Newport for all eternity, but also insisted upon the interrelatedness of Spanish, Portuguese, Jewish, and Colonial worlds of Isaac’s family. Like many of the Jews buried in the Touro cemetery, Isaac’s father Moses (1706-1767) was a converso or “crypto-Jew”; that is, he was a descendent of Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity and who had for centuries practiced Catholicism in public, and a form of Judaism in private.

Moses Lopez had come to Newport to escape a late wave of the inquisition in Portugal after his New Christian relatives denounced him for “Judaizing.” Moses was the older half-brother of Aaron Lopez, one of Newport’s most famous merchants. When Moses came to the Americas, he gave up his Portuguese Christian name (José Lopez Ramos) for a Hebrew one (Moseh) and its English equivalent (Moses). His wife was his first cousin Rebecca Rodriguez Rivera (? -1793), whose father Abraham Rodriguez Rivera (? -1765) had escaped the Spanish inquisition and fled to England and later Newport (Rodrigues Pereira 568, 579). Moses was naturalized in New York in 1740/41 and most (or all) of his children were born in Newport (Stern 175). Several of Moses and Rebecca’s children died young, but only the stones of Isaac (1762) and Jacob (1763) remain.


Acknowledgments:
This entry is an excerpt from a conference presentation given at the American Studies Association Conference in 2007. Research was funded by NEH and a Ruby Grant.

Classroom Resources: Gravestones 1

One of the goals of this website is to make more resources on early American Jews easily available to classroom teachers.

Recently I visited the class of Holly Litwin at Portland Jewish Academy. Her fifth grade students were studying the American colonies. Holly was noticing how few resources there were for young students on Jewish life in the colonies. One of the activities we did while I was there was an analysis of gravestones from Jews in the colonies. I choose three stones: one for a small Jewish boy (Isaac Lopez), one from a slave owned by the boy's uncle (Aaron Lopez), and one by a man from Curacao (Gabriel A Levy).

I included an example of a slave's stone because slavery had come up as a topic in their general studies of the colonies. Years ago the Nation of Islam proposed that Jews were responsible for the slave trade. This allegation is clearly false. It is important for students to understand, however, that almost every aspect of the economy in the colonies was tied to slavery either directly or indirectly: Jews often were prohibited from selling slaves, but some men (like Aaron Lopez) did have slave ships. You can read more about this issue in a wonderful book by Eli Faber called Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight, that clears up a lot of misconceptions about Jewish involvement in the slave trade. Holly's students were interested in the fact that some Jews owned slaves, and some students were sad about it. I wondered if I was right to bring it up at all?

One of the things that makes gravestones from the Jewish Atlantic World so fascinating is that they often contain "graven images"; that is, images traditionally considered forbidden by Jewish law. We talked about what the second commandment said, and why Jews in the colonies might have wanted to make gravestones with these images anyway. We also talked about colonial diseases. Students broke into groups and answered the questions on the first page about one of the three stones. Then we got back to together as a class and talked about each one of the stones in turn.

Here is the Gravestone Handout we used. Feel free to use it in your own class.

If you are interested in learning more about why scholars are interested in gravestones and how to analyze them, see my Gravestones Study Guide on my Indian Converts Collection website.

Question: If you teach young students about early American Jews, would you bring up the issue of slavery? Why or why not?