Sit-in At The Shul
Chiel, Arthur
SIT-IN AT THE SHUL The story of the Touro Synagogue revolt ARTHUR CHIEL This year, marking George Washington's 250th birthday, the United States Postal Service is releasing a commemorative...
...Myer...
...It became a living congregation again...
...The summer brought hope for peace...
...I asked my wife, who is a native Newporter, and she said she had heard something like it when she was a little girl...
...By 1926 there were approximately 125 Jewish families, with some 100 children of school age, in Newport...
...The trusteeship of New York's Shearith Israel remained firm until East European Jews began streaming into Newport in 1881-1882, and challenged the authority of the absentee overseers...
...Although the community experienced a modest revival following the Revolution, the remnants of the community gradually moved on to the now thriving cities of New York, Boston, Richmond, Charleston and Savannah...
...The opposing faction engaged Rev...
...The Torah scrolls and sacred ritual objects were taken to New York and deposited for safekeeping with the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue, Congregation Shearith Israel...
...The contest broke out anew and continued over the next three years...
...At this stage, the Newport controversy broke out in full force...
...When Abraham Touro, son of Chazzan Isaac Touro, died in Boston in 1822, he left a substantial bequest in trust with the Legislature of the State of Rhode Island...
...As the Jewish community faded, a kindly Newport non-Jew, Stephen Gould, volunteered to care for the synArthur Chiel, rabbi of Congregation B'nai Jacob in Woodbridge, Connecticut, is a researcher of American Jewish history...
...In his diary, Gould wrote, on May 5, 1816, "Widow Rivera, aged 96, sailed for New York...
...A truce was worked out between the struggling factions...
...The varying cultures of early colonists provided America with a rich and rewarding legacy...
...A daring fellow, Burke "researched the law and found that there is a statute in this state [Rhode Island] which provides that anybody who interferes with a religious gathering commits a misdemeanor...
...A native of Kingston, Jamaica, educated in England, he was a cultured gentleman who was frequently called upon to lecture before church and social organizations...
...How fitting it is that the Touro Synagogue stamp should be issued in the 250th anniversary year of the birth of George Washington...
...Because the dissidents were now the larger congregation, their request was approved by the City Council...
...President L. Napoleon Levy of Shearith Israel then brought court action against the Newport City Council, charging that it had overstepped its bounds...
...Back in 1759, the erstwhile Jewish community ?f Newport, in appealing to Jews elsewhere for help in building the synagogue, had written, "We reflect on how much it is our Duty to Instruct Children in the Path of Virtuous Religion...
...I protested to the officer in charge, Captain Gar-nett...
...When Mendes died in 1893, the struggle broke into the open...
...When the British occupied Newport in December 1776, the majority of the Jewish population, along with several thousand other Newporters, fled its beloved seaport town...
...Two chevrot emerged, each vying for control...
...The dissidents, calling themselves Touro Congregation, petitioned the Newport City Council for a ministerial stipend from the Judah Touro Fund, which was under Council administration...
...Having seen the entry accomplished, Attorney Burke left the scene of action...
...But the winter saw its withering...
...Stearns, the Assistant Attorney-General, had told me he would defend this matter if there was no breach of the pe,ace...
...The money was to go to New York's Congregation Shearith Israel for the preservation of the Newport Synagogue and its cemetery...
...Henceforth, Shearith Israel trustees would be responsible for the sacred Newport properties...
...Chazzan Isaac Touro, who had served the congregation since 1759, took his sad leave of Newport, together with his wife, Rebecca, their two young sons and their daughter...
...Mendes' was "high-Sephardic," with its emphasis on decorum, its own language pronunciation and special liturgical melodies...
...The Newport Jeshuat Israel (Salvation of Israel) members were henceforth to pay "an annual rental of one dollar" to the New York congregation...
...In 1854, Chazzan Touro's other son, Ju-dah, a tycoon in New Orleans, died...
...It exploded in spring, 1902, when the dissident Touro Congregation hired John C. Burke, a young Irish attorney...
...Attorney Burke therefore recommended that his rebel clients "forcibly enter the Synagogue, have a religious gathering and a Rabbi on the altar and carry on their religious rites...
...Abraham P. Mendes to minister to the Newporters' religious needs, but stipulated that the Sephardic rites, as practiced of old, must be observed...
...H. Pereira Mendes, to Newport for the summer of 1899...
...To persecution no assistance...
...He then asked his officers if there had been a breach of the peace and they said no...
...In October 1822, Gould recorded in his journal that "Moses Lopez, the last Jew, left Newport for New York...
...President Harry Truman sent a congratulatory message characterizing the historic event in these words: "The setting apart of this historic shrine as a national monument is symbolic of our tradition of freedom, which has inspired men and women of every creed, race and ancestry to the development of our national culture...
...The family went to Kingston, Jamaica, where Touro officiated until his death in 1784...
...The synagogue and its congregation, which observed Sephardic ritual, flourished until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775...
...The Touro Synagogue, and what it stands for, is a graphic representation of a central part of that legacy...
...Their Orthodoxy was Ashkenazic...
...In advance of the action he alerted the Newport police chief...
...He conducted "united" services in the historic synagogue, side by side with Rev...
...The Newport Synagogue's attractive design and its distinction as the oldest surviving Jewish house of worship in the country led the United States to name it a National Historical Site on March 5, 1946...
...He left a trust of ten thousand dollars, to be administered by the city of Newport, to pay for the upkeep of the synagogue and cemetery and to go towards the salary of a Jewish clergyman at such time in the future when the synagogue might be reopened...
...Reporting on the event at a later time, Burke wrote: "I told him something important was to happen on a certain evening that was nothing that would involve him in a political nature, but I wanted him at the Police Station in case anything was done by his police that was unauthorized...
...These Ashkenazi newcomers made application to the Newport City Council for the use of the historic synagogue for their devotions...
...By 1791 the Newport Synagogue had virtually closed...
...Touro Synagogue was designed by Peter Harrison, a noted colonial architect, and was dedicated in 1763...
...Finally, more than a century and a half later, that appeal was heeded, through the establishment of a religious school for Jewish children...
...The young Irish attorney, who achieved a distinguished legal career in the ensuing years, had proved himself to be a contemporary Roger Williams, a champion of freedom of religion on behalf of Newport Jewry...
...In his recollection of the incident, which he wrote when he was in his 90s and a much-respected jurist, Burke reported: "I went home to dinner and while home I felt or heard a terrible turmoil in the city...
...I jumped on my bicycle and rode down the hill to the synagogue and found the police forcibly taking the Jews out of the synagogue...
...In the 1850s, affluent Jews from New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans began to summer in Newport...
...If license may be taken, Longfellow's sixth stanza should, today, be emended to read: Open are the portals of their Synagogue, Anew Psalms of David now the silence break, Again a Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue, In the grand dialect the Prophets spake...
...Following their lawyer's advice, a cadre from Touro Congregation carried out a break-in action on Monday evening, April 21, 1902, the first night of Passover...
...agogue and cemetery...
...Thus a Jewish community of 164 years came to an end...
...In the meantime, New York's Shearith Israel asserted its trusteeship authority by appointing the Dutch-born Rev...
...It was a synagogue long in the making, for Jewish settlement in Newport dates back to 1658, some two decades after the remarkable Roger Williams established Rhode Island as a colony with a religious open-door policy...
...The stamp honors Newport's Touro Synagogue and recalls President Washington's 1790 address to that congregation, in which he uttered the ringing phrases: "To bigotry no sanction...
...David Baruch to replace Mendes...
...In announcing the issuance of the new postage stamp, Postmaster-General William F. Bolger said: "I think we all recognize that the birth of this great nation was brought about not only by the work of one group of people, but rather was achieved through the courage, perseverance and dedication of individuals representing diverse ethnic and economic groups...
...Each claimed the right to use the synagogue...
...After protracted negotiations, Congregation Shearith Israel of New York agreed to the reopening of the synagogue...
...The Newport uprising now entered into the litigation stage, and Burke determinedly carried the battle through the Appellate Court and all the way up to the Rhode Island Supreme Court...
...To help affect harmony among the Newporters, Shearith Israel sent its own chazzan, Dr...
...The Newport immigrant Ashkenazim finally won their victory over New York's Shearith Israel Sephardic hidalgos] On February 1,1903, a "peace conference" was held at which an agreement was reached...
...In 1818, Congregation Shearith Israel took proprietary rights of the synagogue and the cemetery...
...For a full decade, from 1883 to 1893, Mendes served the rebom Newport congregation...
...Their language, Yiddish, was not his...
...Shaky though it was, the arrangement remained in effect until Baruch's death in 1899...
...The Council referred the local petitioners to Shearith Israel for permission to use the synagogue, to engage a rabbi and to use the Touro Funds to meet the necessary expenses...
...They proceeded to engage Rev...
...M. Myer to lead its services in its own rented quarters...
...It was a riot call...
...They returned to occupy the synagogue, where they continued their Passover prayer "sit-in" throughout the night and on into the next day...
...Shearith Israel of New York appointed Rev...
...This congregation had close ties with the Newport Synagogue through family connections...
...I told him that the matter had been planned and that Mr...
...From time to time, the Newport Synagogue was opened for the funeral of a member of one of the old families, whose remains were brought back to Newport for interment in the ancestral cemetery...
...But while he was an ambassador of good will to the community-at-large, he had his difficulties with the steadily growing Jewish community...
...Clergyman and congregants were cultures apart...
...Little did Henry Wadsworth Longfellow realize, in 1852, when he wrote his elegy for a Newport Jewry departed, "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport," that the community would yet come alive...
...The old synagogue with its one classroom could not accommodate a religious school for this number of students, so the congregation acquired the old Sheffield House, facing the Mall...
...I did not know what it was all about...
...The Newport Synagogue was no longer an empty historical shrine...
...This dowager took back with her from the Newport cemetery a handful of earth, which was eventually to be added to her own grave in Savannah...
...Breaking the locks with chisel and hammer, an invasion party of some 30 Jews and their Irish lawyer forcibly entered the Newport Synagogue...
...The Newport Synagogue was opened for services "during the warm season whilst the requisite number of the Children of Israel remained to form a Congregation...
...Moses Guedalia as successor to the deceased Baruch...
...The synagogue was used in this way for the next several decades...
...Each staked a claim for use of the Touro Funds...
...The Council, now unhappily caught in a thicket, bowed to Shearith Israel...
...The structure was moved to a plot of land on Touro Street, opposite the synagogue, and reconstructed for use as a school and community center...
...Under these circumstances, the Newport Synagogue was bound to suffer serious rebirth pangs...
...On one occasion, the synagogue was opened for a member of the Hart family, a woman over 80, who traveled the long distance from Savannah to sit once more in the pew she had occupied in her childhood...
...I went down to the police station...
...All the fire alarm bells rang and all the church bells rang...
...Thanks to Attorney John Burke's vigorous protest to the police, the 30 arrested Jews of Newport were immediately released...
...how unhappy the portions must be of those Children and Parents who are thro necessity, educated in a place where they must remain almost totally uninstructed in our most Holy and Divine Law...
...They committed themselves to conducting their services according to the ritual and customs of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, as observed at New York's Shearith Israel...
...SIT-IN AT THE SHUL The story of the Touro Synagogue revolt ARTHUR CHIEL This year, marking George Washington's 250th birthday, the United States Postal Service is releasing a commemorative postage stamp linking America's first president with America's oldest existing synagogue structure...
Vol. 7 • July 1982 • No. 7
