 1746 - 1816 (70 years)
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| Name |
Gershom Mendes Seixas [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] |
| Prefix |
Hazan |
| Alt. Birth |
14 Jan 1745 [11] |
| Born |
14 Jan 1746 |
New York  [6, 8, 9] |
| Gender |
Male |
| Alt. Birth |
15 Jan 1746 |
New York [5, 12] |
| Occupation |
Newport, Newport, RI |
| Mohel |
| Reference Number |
1166 |
| Residence |
Newport, Newport, RI |
| Residence |
1776 |
Stratford, CT |
| Residence |
1780 |
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Residence |
1784 |
New York, New York (Manhattan), NY |
| Died |
2 Jul 1816 |
New York [5, 8, 9, 11, 12] |
| Buried |
New York |
| Person ID |
I1166 |
aojd |
| Last Modified |
11 Nov 2011 |
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| Notes |
- Gershom Mendes Seixas, 1746-1816.
Son of Isaac Mendes Seixas. He was the first native-born minister in the United States and one of the most noted of early American Jews. During the Revolutionary War he fled first to Stratford, Connecticut where he joined his father (1776), residing as well in Norwalk, Connecticut. In 1780, he moved his family to Philadelphia (1780), where he served as minister and helped establish Congregation Mikveh Israel. He returned to New York in 1784, one year before his first wife Elkalah died. He may have been present at the inauguration of George Washington in New York in 1789. As Hazzan (prayer leader) of Congregation Shearith Israel, he also served at times as the community's mohel (circumciser), teacher, and shochet (ritual slaughterer). He founded the oldest existing Jewish philanthropic organization in New York, Hebra Hased Va-Amet (1802- ), a funeral society. He also initiated the formation of a charity society, Kalfe Sedaka Mattan Basether (1798-1816). He was a trustee of Columbia College from 1784-1814. He married Elkalah Myers-Cohen (1749-1785) in 1775 in New York and they had four children: Isaac (died in infancy), Sarah Abigail (1778-1854), Rebecca Mendes (1780-1867), and Benjamin (1783-1847). He then married Hannah Manuel (1766-1856) in 1786 and they had eleven children: David (1788-1864), Grace (1789-1826), Samuel (1792-1852), Joseph (1794-?), Elkalah (?-1831), Rachel (1801-1827), Joshua (1802-187?), Theodore J. (1803-1882) and his twin Henry (1803-1822), Lucy Orah (1804-1825), Selina (1806-1883), and Myrtilla (1807-1859).
Anne Joseph:
PORTRAIT IN SCRAPBOOK ------------------------ The unattributed miniature of Gershom Seixas is reported upon by Hannah London in her 1926 book Portraits of Jews. At that time it was owned by his great-granddaughter, Mrs. Annie Nathan Meyer of New York.
Rabbi Seixas was born in New York City on 14 January 1745 (for some reason, FTM will not accept this in the date column). He was the son of Isaac Mendes Seixas and Rachel Levy, who in turn was the daughter of Moses Levy.
The first wife of Rabbi Seixas was Elkalah Cohen, whom he married in 1775; his second wife was Hannah Manuel whom he married in 1789.
As an ardent patriot during the Revolutionary War, he protested taxation without representation. When the British were about to enter New York, he closed Synagogue Shearith Israel, of which he was minister, rather than fly the British flag. In 1789, after the Revolution, George Washingtron invited him, together with thirteen other clergymen, to his inaugural in New York. At this ceremony Rabbi Seixas offered a prayer invoking God's blessing upon the First President and the new nation. Rabbi Seixas was a trustee of Columbia College. He died in New York in 1816.
Source: London, Hannah R. - Miniatures of Early American Jews. 1953 ------------------------ Gersham Mendes Seixas' grave in the St. James Place (Chatham Square) Cemetery in New York is one of those decorated on Memorial Day, since he is counted among the soldiers and patriots of the American Revolution. He is described in the records as "Minister of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. Born in New York City on January 14, 1745 (for some unknown reason, FTM uses 1745/46 - interestingly, Stern gives the birth date as 15 Jasnuary 1746), son of Isaac Mendes Seixas, Associator. Preached the American cause in the Revolution, closed the synagogue and removed the holy scrolls to Stratford, Connecticut, when the British occupied New York City. Died in New York City, July 2, 1816."
Source: An Old Faith in the New World by David and Tamar deSola Pool ------------------------ Gershom Mendes Seixas was the only Jew among one of the 13 American religious leaders invited to invoke a blessing at George Washington's inauguration in 1789. The first American-born leader of a Jewish congregation, his title was hazzan, rather than rabbi. Gershom was the son of Isaac Mendes Seixas and Rachel Levy Seixas. Reverend Seixas, as he was known, fathered 16 children by his two wives, Elkalah Myers-Cohen and Hannah Manuel. Seixas became minister of Congregation Shearith Israel in 1768 and, when the British occupied New York in the Revolution, he served as minister to Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia until 1780, when he returned to New York. Seixas was the first American bazzan to preach in English in a synagogue. Seixas sat on the board of trustees of King's College, later renamed Columbia University, and was widely respected among the non-Jewish social and political leadership of New York.
Source: Loeb Miniatures Database - Miniature and bio. [13, 14]
- (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011
Gershom Mendes Seixas, America's first native-born Jewish clergyman, did not, in fact, bear the title rabbi, as is sometimes said. Indeed America was not to have an ordained rabbi until 1840. Rather, it was as hazzan— cantor, but also a leader, preacher and communal representative— that Seixas served New York's Congregation Shearith Israel for forty years.
Seixas was born out of the controversial marriage of an Ashkenazi woman and a Sephardic man. His father, Isaac Mendes Seixas, a struggling merchant who'd set out from London to the Caribbean, eventually reaching New York in 1738, was of an elite Sephardic lineage. His mother, Rachel Levy, belonged to a family of merchants, who as Germans, however successful, were in the eyes of America's Sephardic majority socially inferior. "The Portugueze here where in a Violent Uproar abouth it," is how the scene around the Seixas-Levy union was described by Abigail Franks, Rachel's half sister. Gershom would certainly display the markings of this 'mixed' marriage— Yiddish words would dot his letters over the years, all the while serving as the hazzan of a Sephardic synagogue (admittedly New York's only synagogue at the time.)
Seixas' education was at a small Hebrew parochial school, lasting most likely no later than age thirteen. He probably also received some Talmudic instruction from his father, but was otherwise self-taught in Jewish and secular literatures. He worked for several years as an apprentice to a craftsman until, at twenty-two, he was elected hazzan of Shearith Israel.
In 1775 he married Elkaleh Myers-Cohen. However, these proved difficult times. Three weeks after his first child was miscarried, Seixas and his wife made the choice to flee New York as the British were poised to occupy the city. They stayed in Stratford, Connecticut for several years. There, Elkaleh gave birth to their second child, Sarah Abigail, who some believe was her father's favorite and who would marry future American Jewish leader, Israel Baer Kursheedt.
In 1780 they quit Stratford for the revolutionary capital, Philadelphia. Here Seixas presided over America's second oldest congregation, Mikveh Israel. When the war ended, and displaced New Yorkers began to return, it was not without a struggle that Mikveh Israel allowed Seixas to leave Philadelphia. But leave he did; New York was to be his home for the rest of his life. He was to have two more children with Elkaleh and ten with his second wife, Hannah Manuel.
His duties as hazaan were by no means limited to leading prayers; he was responsible for education, circumcision and slaughtering, and served as the leader of New York's small and tight-knit Jewish community. Seixas also functioned as a representative to the secular world. From 1784 to 1815, he served along side Alexander Hamilton and John Jay as a Regent of Columbia College, the first Jew to hold such a post.
Characteristic of Seixas' service at Shearith Israel was his delivery of sermons, not something a hazzan had traditionally done. This was, no doubt, the influence of American Protestantism, as were the titles by which Seixas was most commonly known— minister or reverend. His sermons too, spoken in English, displayed the theological impact of Protestant thought as well as liberal Enlightenment ideals. Not to say that this was a conscious fusion; Seixas was echoing a process, or series of processes, well under way. Spanish, the communal language of Sephardic communities for centuries, was giving way to English as Ashkenazi Jews began to outnumber Sephardi, and as American Jews developed a greater feeling of comfort in this new country. And therein lies the ultimate significance of Seixas' mixed lineage, indeed of his tenure at Shearith Israel: the emergence of a distinct forms of American Judaism. [15]
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| Sources |
- [S81] .
- [S285] .
- [S7] (Reliability: 3).
- [S3] CHAPTER 5 PG 9 (Reliability: 3).
- [S3] SECTION III, CH 5 PG 10 (Reliability: 3).
- [S4] PG. 313 CORRECTIONS TO PG. 263 SEIXAS (1) (Reliability: 3).
- [S13] EDGAR NATHAN JR., JUSTICE, DIES AT 73, 2 MAY 1965, PG. 88 (Reliability: 3).
- [S59] EMAIL 6 AUG 2010 ARYEH GREEN TO DAVID M. KLEIMAN (Reliability: 3).
- [S634] EMAIL 6 AUG 2010 ARYEH GREEN TO DAVID M. KLEIMAN (Reliability: 3).
- [S13] MOSES M. KURSHEEDT: 19 APR 1942. (Reliability: 3).
- [S79] .
- [S4] PG. 263 SEIXAS (1) (Reliability: 3).
- [S337] (Reliability: 3).
- [S376] BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES OF THE SEIXAS FAMILY - DAVID G. SEIXAS (Reliability: 3).
- [S294] SEIXAS, GERSHOM MENDES (Reliability: 3).
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