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As Elzina lay on her deathbed, I received an
e-mail from Dr. Elizabeth Hirschman. Entitled simply “Cooper
Ethnicity” it suggested that my mysterious, yet historically
prominent Cooper family was of Sephardic Jewish derivation. I
knew immediately Beth was right. We embarked on a long journey
of collaboration, applying for grants, writing books and
speaking at conferences. The simple message we would like to
share is this: Melungeons were crypto-Jews. They were children
of Israel, some Semitic, some from converted populations such as
the French and Spanish, and knew it, often recalling their line
of descent or adoptive line from patriarchs Judah, Levi,
Benjamin or David. How long they have lived in the lower
Appalachians is anyone’s guess. In the following paragraphs I
should like to sketch some recent events that have established a
Jewish identity for the Melungeons. I will mention some of the
leading figures and surnames, along with their places of origin.
I will introduce as many pictures into the narrative as
possible, since I believe pictorial evidence is compelling. I am
sure what I have to write will bring down thunderous
disapproval, so I would just like to say that this piece has
not been prepared for publication as a
scholarly article. It was done as a favor to Helen Campbell and
her readers at Melungeons.com. Although there are no footnotes,
I will include certain suggestions for further reading. I make
no apology for the tentative and speculative nature of the
essay. These are my people. I think Brent Kennedy, Beth and YOU–
and the readers of Melungeons.com -- all have a moral imperative
to uncover the true story of the Melungeons.
The background of crypto-Judaism in America must
start with the scattering of the Biblical Jews.
Some cardinal dates include:
·
70 C.E., the destruction of the Second Temple in
Jerusalem by the Romans…
·
132-35—the repression of the revolt of Bar Kochba
(and if we are to believe the evidence of Bat
Creek Cave in East Tennessee, flight of some
Jews to the New World)…
(For further reading, see J. Huston McCulloch,
“The Bat Creek Inscription—Did Judean Refugees
Escape to Tennessee?” Biblical Archaeology
Review, vol. 19, no. 4, July-Aug. 1993, pp.
46-53)
·
Conversion of many Visigoths to Judaism in the
centuries during which the Roman Empire
declined…the establishment of a Judaic kingdom
in southern France by Charlemagne’s grandfather
Theodoric…
·
Welcoming of the Arabic conquerors and their
Berber armies into Spain by the Jews
·
Expulsion of the Jews from Norman England in 1290
(some of the ennobled ones like the Stuarts and
Coopers subsequently hid on their estates in
Wales and Scotland, where central authority was
weak)…
·
Phillip Augustus’s act of expulsion of French Jews
following soon on the heels of this…
·
In Spain, anti-Semitic rioting and forced baptisms
beginning in 1390, coming to a climax with the
1492 expulsion of Jews and Moors by Ferdinand
and Isabella…
·
A brief respite for many Jews in Portugal…
·
The efforts of the Spanish Inquisition to punish
Judaizers (it was not dismantled until 1820)…
·
Ghettoizing of Italian Jews in the 1500s, with a
similar trend of concentrating Ashkenazi Jews on
shtetls in the East…
·
A shifting network of safe havens in the Moslem
world such as the important Jewish colonies at
Thessalonica, Rhodes, Smyrna, Istanbul,
Alexandria and Tunis…
·
Livorno/Leghorn, the first attempt to establish a
“state,” then Marseilles, Bordeaux, Amsterdam,
Hamburg, London, Glasgow and Aberdeen in
Scotland, and finally Watauga and Texas.
When the indigenous people of the
Americas were recognized by
the Protestants of Europe as descendants of the lost tribes of the Hebrews,
Menasseh ben Israel, the chief rabbi of
Amsterdam, petitioned Cromwell toreadmit
Jews into England (The Hope of Israel,
1648)
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The book he wrote was
more a public relations gesture than an
attempt at a scholarly demonstration that
Indians were Israelites. He knew Puritans
coveted the crown of the New Millennium they
said their Messiah would award to the
Christian sect who united all peoples,
including the Jews and Indians, in one faith
and one country. The synagogue to which I
belong in Savannah, the third oldest in
America, is named after this influential
book—Mickve Israel. While no act of reentry
was passed, Jews began to trickle in as
aliens with limited rights, and throughout
the Georgian period they exerted a strong
influence on trade, monetary and foreign
policy, wisely keeping behind the scenes.
Probably the gains they managed to win from
Britain’s Parliament were partly the result
of a covert bond they experienced with the
scions of certain old British crypto-Jewish
families. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st
earl of Shaftesbury and one of the Lord
Proprietors of the English colonies, was a
secret Mason and suspected crypto-Jew. It
was his secretary John Locke, the
philosopher, who drafted the famous articles
of religious toleration for the South
Carolina colony in 1675. Shaftesbury fell
from grace because of his opposition to
James’s marriage with the Spanish enfanta
and died in exile in Amsterdam. A religious
congregation began to form in London about
this same time, led by Spanish-Portuguese
Jewish merchants, who delicately called
themselves “People of The Nation.” The
symbol of the Sephardic presence, Bevis
Marks Synagogue, just celebrated its 300th
anniversary last year, with Prince Charles
as a guest of honor. He said he had never
noticed this architectural masterpiece
before. That was because it was built on a
side street in the Financial District,
facing in, so as not to attract notice or
give offense. By settled policy, even the
monuments of crypto-Jews were unobtrusive.
Incidentally, London is the origin of the
expression “Duke’s mixture,” something I
often heard from my Melungeon mother. Dukes
Fields in East London contained the teeming
multitudes of poor immigrants of every
nationality. It was there that the Ashkenazi
Great Synagogue rose.
In British ports of call such as Barbados,
Jamaica, New York, Newport, Charleston and St. Eustachius, Jews
could become citizens of the land in a legal process called
denizening, even vote, serve in the armed forces and hold
office, unlike in Mother England. For Jews, this opened the door
to an extraordinary series of efforts to migrate to the New
World and build communities for themselves. Merchants, hatters,
carpenters, iron-workers—they arrived in the ports of
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston and Savannah. Many later
blended with the Indian nations in the interior. In some
cases—among the Lumbees, Pamunkey and Cherokee—Sephardim
families took over the tribal hierarchy. Jewish Cherokee chiefs
such as Will Webber, John Ross, George Guess, John Looney,
George Lowrey and Sam Houston signed treaties, wrote laws and
constitutions, and led their people westward to Arkansas,
Oklahoma and Texas. A Sephardic Jew, Luis Moses Gomez, fleeing
from the Spanish Inquisition, came to New England, made a pact
with the Mohican Indians and built Gomez Mill House in Newburgh,
N.Y., the oldest surviving Jewish residence in North America.
Gomez was also the first parnas (president) of Sheareth Israel,
New York’s oldest synagogue. The subsequent story of these “big
city” Jews is detailed by Stephen Birmingham in his delightful
book The Grandees. They financed and fed George
Washington’s army, thus winning the War of Independence, and
gave the world Saks 5th Avenue, the Saxe-Coburg
ruling dynasty, Waldorf-Astoria, Barnard College and a host of
other institutions
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