Was Alexander Hamilton Jewish? A Cambridge-Educated Historian Is Making the Case.

[Recursion]

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/218475/was-alexander-hamilton-jewish-a-cambridge-educated-historian-is-making-the-case

Interesting. I'm not sold quite yet, but very interesting.

Long before he—or most people—were familiar with the name Lin-Manuel Miranda, a young Cambridge-educated scholar decided to focus his research on the persistent, but long-discredited, rumor that Founding Father, and now Broadway smash, Alexander Hamilton was Jewish. He signed with the Harvard University Press to write a book on the topic, “The Jewish Founding Father: Alexander Hamilton’s Hidden Life,” and last night, for the first time, Dr. Andrew Porwancher, a professor of legal history at the University of Oklahoma, publicly revealed the basis for his conclusion that our nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury was a Jew.

Engaging in a conversation with Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik, under the auspices of YU’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, Dr. Porwancher claimed that an examination of registries in St. Croix and Nevis, where Hamilton spent the first seventeen years of his life, proves that many of the “inconvenient facts” about Alexander Hamilton, such as his attendance at a Jewish primary school, are explained by the fact that he was, indeed, Jewish.

Porwancher’s proof for that assertion is multi-pronged. First, he claims that Hamilton’s mother, Rachel Faucitt, converted to Judaism in 1745 when she married Johann Michael Levine. Levine (most historians spell it “Lavien”) is not assumed to be Jewish by Hamilton scholars on the grounds that Danish records from St. Croix do not identify him as such. The Cambridge-educated Ph.D, who mastered the Danish language to be able to read the original documents in St. Croix, noted that none of St. Croix’s Jews were necessarily identified in these records as Jews, citing the 1752 “matrikler,” or land register, featuring two Jews, Moses Aboab, and Isaac Melhado, without any reference to their religious identity.

Additionally, Porwancher’s research reveals that it was not until 1798 that a decree was issued by the King of Denmark authorizing the first Jewish-Christian marriage in the absence of a conversion. This would mean that in 1745, when Hamilton’s mother married Levine on the Danish island of St. Croix, Danish law would have required her conversion to Judaism before the wedding.

[FarCenter]

1. Part African ancestry seems more plausible

His mother may have converted to Judaism when she married, but was she still Jewish when she had Alexander out of wedlock by his Scottish father?

[leftynyc]

2. Under Jewish law

She would have remained Jewish until she died unless she converted. Which would mean any children she had after converting to Judaism would also be Jewish.

[FarCenter]

3. Hamilton was a practicing Presbyterian as a youth.

So whatever Jewish religious influence there might have been from his mother or early school did not persist in Hamilton's life.

[leftynyc]

4. That has zero to

do with Jewish law.

[MineralMan]

5. Personally, I cannot imagine how this is relevant to anything.

Maybe some people think it is, but I can't understand why.

[melm00se]

6. It's proof that the USA, since it's inception,

has been a ZOG

: :

[MineralMan]

7. There have always been Jewish people in this country.

My question is: Why would that matter to anyone? Why is someone's religious heritage of any importance, especially when you can learn about what that person actually did?

For me, it's a matter of complete indifference whether Alexander Hamilton was Jewish or anything else. He was a founding father, who contributed to the birth of this nation.

[melm00se]

8. i agree

Whether (or not) Hamilton was Jewish has no bearing to me or you or to most people.

It will matter to someone who is already predisposed to believe that there is some deeper Jewish conspiracy afoot in the world.

[MineralMan]

10. By Jove, I think you've got it.

So, whether or not Hamilton was Jewish, he did what he did, wrote what he wrote, and is who he is. I never noticed anything in any of that that seemed particularly "Jewish," whatever that might mean.

Being Jewish or anything else is not one of my criteria for judging anyone. I can't imagine why it would be. I don't care what religious beliefs someone has, unless they affect me in a negative way. I don't care what the ancestry of a person is, because I don't care about anyone's ancestry particularly.

So, I'm puzzle when someone wants to discuss whether some historical character was Jewish or had any other irrelevant characteristic. I want to know what the person did or wrote or said.

But I see I'm not getting any answer from the OP, so I'll just have to wonder, I suppose.

[LanternWaste]

12. Accuracy of the historical record is by definition, relevant.

Accuracy of the historical record is by definition, relevant.

[MineralMan]

13. Why? Why is being Jewish significant?

How would history be different if Hamilton were Jewish?

Each of the founding fathers had particular attributes, ancestry and ethnicity. I've not heard any questions about any of them on those grounds. Who cares? Why would it matter? How would Hamilton being Jewish affect what he did, wrote or said?

Things that are irrelevant are irrelevant. And, when it comes to the founding of the United States, whether or not Alexander Hamilton was Jewish is totally irrelevant. Had it been of interest at the time, we would find some reference to it. We do not, so clearly it was irrelevant at that time, too.

Did Thomas Jefferson, for example, refer to Hamilton as "that Jew" in conversation with others? I think not. Did George Washington make him Secretary of the Treasury because "you know, Jews are good with money and stuff?" I think not.

This kind of speculation is ugly at best. I'm calling it out because its ugly. I think we should stop looking for that sort of thing in our founders. It's unseemly.

[Aristus]

9. Yeah, I get it: Jewish...good with money...yada, yada, yada...

[Iggo]

14. Das ist ein bingo.

[MineralMan]

11. Were two of my high school girlfriends Jewish?

Their last names were Felsenthal and Zimmerman. I was asked about whether they were Jewish by a number of people when I was dating them. Oddly enough, all of those people were adults in the church I attended at that time. "So, is your girlfriend's family Jewish or what?" the questions would go.

Adults. I didn't understood at the time why the question was asked in the first place. I tried asking why the person asking asked that question, but never got an answer from any of them. I finally figured it out, of course. They thought it was somehow a bad thing for me to be dating a Jewish girl. They wouldn't come out and say that, but that was the unspoken part of the question. They disapproved of Christian high school boys dating Jewish girls, even girls who might be Jewish, apparently.

Once I figured that out, I answered their question by asking them, "Was Jesus Jewish? How about Matthew and Mark?"

As it happened, neither of those girlfriends were Jewish in the first place. However, all of those who asked that question were anti Semitic bigots. That much I figured out. It was one more thing that led me to abandon Christianity and religion of any kind altogether at age 19.