Jewish Rights in Early Connecticut
The Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and
the Puritans who founded Boston in 1630 saw themselves as authentic
successors to the ancient Hebrews.
New England was to be their New Jerusalem, a society based on the covenant
between God and Abraham.
Just as Moses had led
the Jews out of Egypt, through the wilderness and into the promised
land of Canaan, John Winthrop
had led the Puritans out of a corrupt church in England to the wilderness
of New England, where a pure church and polity could be re-established.
By their own account, biblical Jews inspired the Puritans’ vision and
aspirations.
Yet, New England’s Puritans were less than hospitable
to Jews they actually found among them. The Connecticut colony they
founded offers a clear example of the contradiction between their high
regard for biblical Jews and their reluctance to have real-life Jews
as neighbors.
According to historians
David Dalin and Jonathan Rosenbaum, the
Puritans’ goal in creating Connecticut was
largely spiritual. “The opportunity
to establish a ‘city on a hill,’” they write,
“in which the values of the Puritan community
would remain forever enshrined provided the
central appeal [to build new towns] for all
the heirs of the Mayflower.” Connecticut
colony’s 1662 royal charter declared that
“the Christian faith is the only and principal
end of this plantation.” The Puritan or Congregational
Church became the official, or “established,”
form of worship. In 1708, the Puritandominated
legislature granted limited toleration to
Anglicans, Quakers and Baptists, and in
1727, as a concession to the English Crown,
Anglicans were permitted to build their
own churches and hold services openly.
As Dalin and Rosenbaum note, however, Jews were lumped
“with heretics, Catholics [and others] to whom it was illegal to
give food or lodging under the early legal codes of Hartford and New
Haven.” The royal charter explicitly denied Jews the right to build synagogues, worship as an assembled group, purchase land for a cemetery, vote or hold public
office. It is no surprise, then, that only a handful of Jews resided
in Connecticut during the years of Puritan domination. The first reference
to a Jew in Connecticut is to one “David the Jew,” who was
arrested and fined by a Hartford court in 1659 for illegal peddling.
A more telling case is that of Jacob Lucena, identified as “Jacob
the Jew” in court records, who in 1670 was charged, in a manner
reminiscent of 2Oth-century Southern lynch mobs, with the crime of being
“notorious in his lascivious dalliance and wanton carriage and
proffers to several women.”
Lucena was found guilty of the charge and fined 20
pounds sterling, an astounding sum for those times. Two days later,
the court reconsidered and, in its mercy, reduced the sum to 10 pounds.
Still unable to pay, Lucena pleaded with Asser Levy of New Amsterdam,
one of the original 23 Jews who landed there in 1654, to come to Connecticut
to plead his case. “As a token of respect for said Asser Levy,”
the court once again halved the fine. Lucena paid it and quickly fled
Connecticut.
Despite the ban on an organized Jewish community,
a handful of Jews continued to migrate to Connecticut. By the time of
the American Revolution, the east end of Hartford’s State Street was
referred to as “Jew Street,” indicating that there was a hearty
band of Jewish residents who lived and worked together in the colony’s
capital. Jews also resided in Branford, Woodstock, Stamford, Norwalk
and New Haven. In 1818, a state convention adopted a new constitution
for Connecticut, which disestablished Congregationalism as the state’s
official church and allowed Jews the right to vote and hold public office.
The freedom to form congregations and worship publicly, however, was
still limited to Protestants.
By the 1840s, conditions
finally were ripe for change. Given their
First Amendment rights, the middle-class,
German-speaking Jewish immigrants in Hartford
and New Haven would not tolerate religious
discrimination. In May 1843, a petition
was introduced in the General Assembly on
behalf of the Jews of Hartford and New Haven
asking for an amendment to the state constitution
so that they might form synagogues and worship
openly. The Assembly’s Judicial Committee
turned down the request but recommended
legislation, rather than a constitutional
amendment, to grant Jews religious rights.
In June, the legislature enacted a bill
providing “that Jews who may desire to unite
and form religious societies, shall have
the same right, powers and privileges which
are given to Christians of every denomination.”
By the fall of 1843, a minyan was meeting in various private Hartford homes. In 1856 using a bequest
from Judah Touro of New
Orleans, the congregation, which took the name Congregation Beth Israel,
built the first synagogue in Connecticut. After 220 years, Puritan resistance
to Jewish life in Connecticut was laid to rest.
Sources: American Jewish Historical Society |