 1696 - 1756 (59 years)
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| Name |
Bilhah Abigaill Levy [3, 4] |
| Born |
26 Nov 1696 |
New York  [5, 6, 7] |
| Gender |
Female |
| Alt. Birth |
26 Nov 1696 |
London, Middlesex, England [3, 4, 8] |
| Reference Number |
395 |
| Residence |
New York [4] |
| Died |
16 May 1756 |
New York, New York (Manhattan), NY [3, 4, 6, 7, 8] |
| Person ID |
I395 |
aojd |
| Last Modified |
20 Mar 2012 |
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| Notes |
- (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011
Moses Raphael and Richea Asher Levy's eldest child, Bilhah Abigail Levy, provides one of the fullest, most dynamic pictures of a colonial Jewish woman. With her son Naphtali away in England, Abigail, as she was known, frequently wrote him, discussing matters political, social, familial, American and Jewish, and the numerous surviving letters from this correspondence of the 1730s and 40s, provide invaluable insights into colonial American Jewish life.
Born in New York, a year after her father became a freeman, it was in this city that she would remain for her entire life, although after a painful incident later in life she would write of her desire to leave city behind. Abigail's parents provided her with a classical education, something evidenced by the references to mythology and classical learning we find peppering her letters, and by the strong literary engagement she maintained— an admirer of Fielding, Dryden, Montesquieu and, her favorite, Pope. When Abigail was in her teens, her parents took in a boarder recently arrived from London, Jacob Franks. At sixteen, in 1712, Abigail wed the young merchant.
Together they had seven surviving children, who served as the primary focus of her attention. Abigail provided her children, including her daughters, with an education like that she had received. At the same time, it proved hugely important to her that her children maintain their Judaism. She prided herself on her observance of the Sabbath, frequent synagogue attendance and the strict levels of kashrut she maintained at home. She would send kosher meat to her son Naphtali in London, and even advised him against eating in her brother-in-law's house. Two of her children did not end up marrying Jews. And while there exist no letters dealing with her son David's marriage to a Christian, daughter Phila's intermarriage is one of the central dramas played out in her letters to Naphtali.
When in 1743 it came to light that Phila had secretly wed Oliver DeLancey several months prior, her mother quit town and, avoiding even the Franks country home in Harlem, left for Flatbush. There she composed a pained letter to Naphtali, though so overcome with grief was she that she complained, "I can hardly hold my Pen whilst I am writing." She cried to her son in England, "My Spirits Was for Some time Soe Depresst that it was a pain to me to Speak or See Any one... I Shall Never have that Serenity nor Peace within I have Soe happily had hitherto. My house has bin my prisson Ever Since I had not heart Enough to Goe near the street door. It's a pain to me to think off goeing again to Town And If you Fathers business would Permit him to Live out of it I never would Goe Near it Again I wish it was in my Power to Leave this part of the world I would come away in the first man of war that went to London." Despite her daughter's, her family's and her friends' pleadings, Abigail never again spoke with Phila.
In spite of her disapproval of her daughter's intermarriage and generally high levels of religious observance, Abigail seems to have had little patience with the small Jewish community of New York around congregation Shearith Israel. "And Indeed I don't offten See her," Abigail wrote to Naphtali, gossiping about a member of the community, "Nor any of our Ladys but at Synagogue for they are a Stupid Set of people." Yet she was very much at the center of this community, with both her father and husband having served as the parnas of Shearith Israel. Still, in her letters she continually picks on a certain Jewish provincialism. Writing to Naphtali concerning a book on Judaism she had just read, Abigail wrote, "Its Very Entertaining for me for I confess it to be agreeable to my Sentiments on our Religeon Whoever wrote it I am sure was noe Jew for he thought soo reasonable You will Say Perhaps I pay a Compliment in that Expression to myself but I must Own I can't help Condemning the Many Superstitions we are Clog'd with & heartly wish a Calvin or a Luther would rise amongst Us I Answer for my Self, I would be the first of there followers."
Abigail died two decades before the Revolution and so did not live to see her children— Tories— fall into public disrepute and flee the new county for England. The letters of Abigail Franks provide us with a wealth of insights into life in colonial America and the early Jewish community in New York and display her wonderful personal complexities and contradictions. [9]
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| Sources |
- [S287] .
- [S285] .
- [S4] PG. 154 LEVY I (1) (Reliability: 3).
QUAY 3
- [S3] CHAPTER 5 PG 9 (Reliability: 3).
- [S4] PG. 311 CORRECTIONS TO PG. 154 (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).
- [S7] (Reliability: 3).
- [S294] FRANKS, BILHAH ABIGAIL LEVY (Reliability: 3).
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