Hazzan Isaac Touro^{[1, 2]}

1738 - 1783  (45 years)

• Name	Isaac Touro  [3, 4, 5]
  Prefix	Hazzan
  Born	1738	Holland   [6, 7]
  Gender	Male
  Alt Birth	28 Apr 1743	Amsterdam, , Noord-Holland, NLD   [5, 8]
  Immigration	1760  [6]
  	to America
  Arrival	1779	New York
  	Evacuation from Newport with British troops
  Arrival	1782	Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies
  Died	8 Dec 1783	Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies   [6, 7, 9]
  Alt. Death	1784	Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies   [10]
  Reference Number	616
  Person ID	I616	aojd
  Last Modified	14 Nov 2011

  
  

  Family ID

  F241

  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Children	1. Judah Touro,   b. 16 Jun 1775, Newport, Newport, RI ,   d. 18 Jan 1854, New Orleans, LA  (Age 78 years)   2. Abraham Touro,   b. 1774, Newport, Newport, RI ,   d. 18 Oct 1822, Boston, MA  (Age 48 years)   3. Rebecca Hays Touro,   b. 1779, Newport, Newport, RI ,   d. 19 Dec 1833, New York, New York (Manhattan), NY  (Age 54 years)   4. Nathan Touro,   b. 1 Jan 1781, New York, New York (Manhattan), NY ,   d. Bef 1784  (Age 2 years)
  Family ID	F235	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Notes

  (Research):AJLLJ Portraits Database 5 Aug 2011 Isaac Touro arrived in Newport in 1758, the answer to this burgeoning Jewish community's request for a spiritual leader. Although a congregation— Yeshuat Israel— seems to have been established as early as 1658, a century later the sixty to seventy families that made up the affluent community found themselves in need of a hazzan and a synagogue. Touro would help with both. Touro, then twenty years old, was from a Dutch Sephardic family— who in Spain had been the de Toros— and had trained in Amsterdam for the rabbinate though was never ordained. Before his arrival in Newport, Touro seems may have spent time in Curacao, Suriname or New York, and certainly in Jamaica. It was from there that he arrived in 1758, as city of Newport reached its commercial peak. He developed a close friendship with Aaron Lopez, the "merchant prince" of Newport who along with Jacob Rodriguez Rivera served as one of the major benefactors for the erection of Newport's Jewish house of worship. Construction of the synagogue began the following year, and upon its completion in 1763, Touro dedicated the building, which stands today as the oldest in the United States. In attendance that day was Ezra Stiles— Congregationalist minister, academic, theologian, and later president of Yale College. The service, he wrote, "could not but raise in the mind a faint idea of the Majesty and Grandeur of the Ancient Jewish Worship mentioned in Scripture." Indeed, Touro and Stiles developed a very close friendship. They carried on theological discussions, and Touro helped Stiles with his Hebrew studies. Stiles, who had profound interest in Jewish texts and communal life, would become a very accomplished Hebraist and a professor of Semitic languages at Yale, possessing some level of mastery or proficiency of Aramaic, Arabic, Chaldean, and Amharic as well. Indeed, as president of Yale, on several occasions he delivered his commencement address in Hebrew, and required for several years that all students learn Hebrew. This, however, did not go over quite as well as he had hoped. "From my first accession to the Presidency," Stiles wrote, "I have obliged all the Freshmen to study Hebrew. This has proved very disagreeable to a Number of the Students. This year I have determined to instruct only those who offer themselves voluntarily." In June 1773, Touro married Reyna Hays, sister of Moses Michael Hays. They would have three children together Abraham, Judah and Rebecca. A Loyalist, Touro remained in Newport when the British took over the city in 1776. Many of his congregants, however, fled to Massachusetts or Philadelphia. Facing financial uncertainty, he moved first to New York and then to Jamaica, where he briefly served as hazzan. He died there at age forty-six. Touro's wife and children would return to America live with Hays. Touro's legacy, in many ways, was secured by his sons, both of whom would become successful businessmen and generous philanthropists. In his will, Judah left a large sum for the maintenance of the Jewish cemetery and synagogue in Newport over whose dedication his father had officiated— vestiges of a once wealthy and vital Jewish community, largely dormant at the time of Judah's death. In the years since, the synagogue has come to be popularly known as the Touro Synagogue, and it stands as a centerpiece of American Jewish iconography. [11]

  
  

• Sources

  [S81] . [S285] . [S4] PG. 104, 300 (Reliability: 3). QUAY 3 [S4] PG. 104, 300 (Reliability: 3). [S39] "MEET THE FAMILY" PDF CHART, (Reliability: 3). [S4] PG. 300 (Reliability: 3). QUAY 3 [S4] PG. 300 (Reliability: 3). [S39] (Reliability: 3). [S38] . [S335] (Reliability: 3). [S294] TOURO, ISAAC (Reliability: 3).