THE "PREHISTORIC" PERIOD

There is a legend that many of the Native American peoples are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel – the Chumash, for example, who inhabited the area in and around, what is today, Los Angeles. Is it possible that this tribe was named after the Five Books of Moses? Are they, and other such tribes, among those who are descended from the ancient Israelites? This can be open to speculation (or DNA), but the first American/Israelite contact of which there is definite record occurred in 1759 with the visit of Rabbi Moshe Malkhi of Safed to the Spanish/Portuguese Congregation Shearith Yisrael in New York, the oldest congregation in North America and presided over by Rabbi Joseph Pinto. The following year, Rabbi Malkhi arrived in Newport RI, one of the main mercantile centers in North America at that time, and visited the Yeshuat Yisrael Synagogue headed by Rev. Isaac Touro, a hazan from Jamaica. These visits were the result of the Halukkah system in Palestine, an ancient system that sought to send out emissaries to the Diaspora

communities to raise funds for the poor in the Homeland.

THE ORGANIZING OF HALUKKAH

It wasn’t until 1761, when Halukkah in, what is today, the United States, became organized after an appeal from London to help the Jews of Safed in the aftermath of the recent earthquake that devastated the town. New York, therefore, became the center of Halukkah funding from North America with Daniel Gomez as its treasurer assisted by Hyman Levy who would later become a major subscriber to the Bills of Credit that was issued by the Continental Congress. Other halukkah centers were later established in North America, most notably Newport and Philadelphia.

THE EARLIEST EMISSARIES

Rabbi Malkhi was followed by Rabbi Raphael Carigal of Hebron who visited twice in 1771 and 1773, and then, two years later, by Rabbi Samuel Cohen of Jerusalem. But it was Rabbi Carigal who left a lasting impression in colonial America. He had, previously, visited the Jews of Surinam and Curacao and had, at one time, officiated as Chief Rabbi of Barbados. On Shavuot 1773, he was in Yeshuat Yisrael in Newport where he gave a sermon that was attended by Joseph Wanton, the Governor of Rhode Island, and Rev. Ezra Stiles, President of Yale. Entitled “The Salvation of Israel”, it was preached in Spanish and Hebrew and became the first Jewish sermon in America to be published. It was translated by one of the leading Jewish merchants of Newport during that time, Abraham Lopez. Halukkah was suspended during the Revolutionary War, but afterwards, it resumed.

MORDECHAI MANUEL NOAH

In the early decades of the 19th century, American, and American Jewish interest in active Jewish Restoration to its homeland was first aroused. This “nationalist” idea was best personified by Philadelphia-born Mordechai Manuel Noah, playwright, editor, and diplomat. As editor of the National Advocate in 1818, he was the recipient of a letter written by President John Adams in which he stated his hope that the nation of Israel will soon return to its homeland. Noah made it a point to acquaint himself with many of the Palestinian emissaries who came to the US as well as with the organizers of halukkah. In the 1820s, he declared the island of Ararat in upstate New York as a place of refuge for Jews where they would all be gathered and eventually brought to the Land of Israel. And as he considered the indigenous Americans to be descended from the ancient Israelites, indigenous Americans were invited to participate. The project failed, however, and thereafter, he advocated the immediate settlement of the ancient Jewish homeland.

THE JEWISH IMMIGRANTS TO AMERICA FROM GERMANY

During this time, thousands of Jews had immigrated to the US from German-speaking countries. Many were adventurous, being among the pioneers into the American west. The majority were reform and progressive in outlook, and had no tolerance for the orthodox way of life, the belief in the Messianic Redemption – and certainly not Halukkah which they viewed as nothing more than charity and beggary. Orthodoxy, however, was still a substantial part of this immigrant population.

As this community gained ascendancy, eventually overtaking the previously dominant Sephardim, leaders began to emerge from among both orthodox and reform, and the relationship to the Land of Israel was shaped accordingly. Orthodox Rabbis Israel Baer Kursheedt of Congregation B’nai Yeshurun in New York and Isaac Leeser of Mikve Yisrael Congregation in Philadelphia, followed the lead of Western European Jewry and established, in 1832, the American branch of the Trumat Hakodesh Society which transferred halukkah funds to Palestine via Europe, bypassing the need of the emissaries. This was in reaction to the suspicious activities among some of the emissaries who began to arrive in the US. The Society lasted for 20 years.

The leaders of reform Jewry, on the other hand, were Rabbis Isaac Mayer Wise of Hebrew Union College and David Einhorn of Baltimore who preached that the best path for the revitalization of Palestine lay in “practical colonization” and away from the Halukkah method. But they were also strong opponents of a national revival in the ancient homeland and when the Zionist movement was in its infancy, they, along with the orthodox, were among its most outspoken opponents. However, because of their long held beliefs in “practical colonization”, these reform, anti-Zionist, German-American Jewish immigrants, can be considered the first outspoken group of Zionists in the US. Gradually, though, mainstream Zionism made inroads even in this community. Among its first advocates was Rabbi Bernard Felsenthal of Chicago in 1900 resulting in the condemnation by many of his reform colleagues. Soon, three faculty members of Hebrew Union College who were also pro-Zionist - Henry Malter, Max Margolis, and Max Schlessinger – resigned in protest of the College’s newly-appointed president, Dr. Kaufman Kohler’s, anti-Zionist views.

THE BEGINNING OF AN AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL

American Jewish pilgrimages to Palestine, made by both prominent and ordinary American Jews, began around the 1830s. Such pilgrimages would often raise their communal status in the Jewish community back in the United States. Among the earliest of the more prominent pilgrims were: Mendes Cohen of Baltimore, first American to explore the Nile; William Pollock of New York, a Halukkah activist, who went in 1834; Simeon Abrahams, Halukkah activist, earned an honorary rabbinical degree in Jerusalem in 1848; James Nathan, leader in the Jewish community, who visited the Temple Mount area; and Edwin de Leon of South Carolina who as American Consul-General in Egypt in the 1850s also protected American missionary work in Jaffa.

The beginning of a settled American community, however, had an unusual start. In 1844, Warder Cresson, a Quaker from Philadelphia, had just been appointed American consul of Jerusalem. He had gone to Palestine in that capacity and also as missionary in order to convert Jews to Christianity, but on his way there, a rumor had circulated in the halls of Congress that he was mentally unstable. When Cresson reached Jerusalem, he was informed that his appointment had been withdrawn. Undeterred, he set about preaching the gospel. However, he became enamored with the piety of the local Jews in spite of conversion attempts by the Christian missionaries as well as the constant oppression by the Turkish rulers, who had controlled Palestine since 1516, and the Arab settlers. By 1848, therefore, he became Jewish and adopted the name, Michael Boaz Israel. He returned to the States the following year to settle some family affairs, and four years later, he went back to Palestine – permanently. Thus, the first American Jew to make aliyah was a convert to Judaism, and American Jews would make aliyah ever since. In 1852, Cresson, now Israel, attempted to establish, with the support of a Jewish-Christian Society in England, a Jewish farm settlement in Emek Rephaim in Jerusalem as a model for future Jewish farm settlements. It was unsuccessful.

From 1854-60, the Jerusalem neighborhood Mishkenot Shaananim was built. The building of this neighborhood, the bulk of which was paid for through the last will and testament of Judah Touro, the son of Isaac Touro and New Orleans businessman, was led by the British philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, and Gershom Kursheedt, member of the New Orleans City Council, chief executor of the Touro will, and son of Israel Baer Kursheedt.

HALUKKAH OUT WEST

With the opening up of the west to American settlement, Jews too joined in the migration. Along with the new Jewish communities that were established in this period, centers were also organized to deal with Jewish social and economic problems as well as halukkah. Therefore, new halukkah centers emanated from such places as Cincinnati and Denver. But it was from California that a majority of halukkah contributions originated, with San Francisco being the largest center in the western US – a result of the Gold Rush of the late 1840s. It was also from San Francisco that many of the pilgrimages to Palestine had come, such as that of Hyam Joseph in 1851, who went along with a Jewish notable from Philadelphia, IA Lehman. In the tiny pueblo of Los Angeles, the local Hebrew Benevolent Society, part of which was devoted to halukkah, was established in 1854 by Phillip Newmark, a prominent German Jewish merchant in the city, and Samuel Labatt, Sephardi merchant and pioneer from Houston. By the late 1860s, a certain Haim Sneersohn became the first emissary to reach Los Angeles by way of Washington and many other cities across America, and by the 1870s, it was said that halukkah emissaries to America had succeeded in making contact with Jewish communities from Maine to California.