An African-American apologizes for misattributed perceptions of white racism against blacks perpetrated by Jews 

A race of merchants and traders, like the ancient Phoenicians who preceded them in their occupation of Canaan and their establishment of trade throughout the Mediterranean, the Jews traveled far and wide in search of wealth and exotic riches. Long before the first white man set foot in sub-Saharan Africa, Jews living in Sena, Yemen, are known to have come to Ethiopia as early as 500 BC in search of gold, intermarrying with African women, and becoming the ancestors of the Lemba tribe, whose descendants continued to practice Judaism and went on to build Great Zimbabwe, a medieval stone fortress whose construction began as early as the 11th century.

The Ethiopian Bible is one of the few written texts, outside of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which includes the Book of Enoch, an ancient Hebrew text that relates how a group of angels disobeyed the prohibition against intermarrying with mortal women, and how they spawned a race of cannibalistic giants who wrecked havoc on earth devouring both man and beast, which ultimately had to be destroyed in the time of Noah by the flood. The book of Enoch also reveals that the fallen angel who was singled out for punishment for his part in this disaster was named Azazel, who was imprisoned under the earth to remain there until the Day of Judgement when he would finally be destroyed along with death and the grave, a legend which seems to be the origin of the Christian belief in the devil.

The first century Roman historian Tacitus also held a similarly unfavorable opinion of them, saying: “The practices of the Jews are malevolent and despicable, and have entrenched themselves by their very degeneracy. Deviants of the most depraved kind who had no use for the religion of their predecessors, they took to collecting dues and contributions in order to swell the Jewish treasury; and other reasons for their increasing wealth may be found in their unrelenting loyalty and eager nepotism towards fellow Jews. But all the rest of the world they hold in contempt with the hatred reserved for enemies. They will not feed or intermarry with gentiles. Despite being overtly lustful as a race, the Jews shun carnal dealings with women foreign to their tribe. Among their own kind however, nothing is forbidden. They have adopted the practice of circumcision to show that they are different from others. Those seeking to convert to Judaism adopt the same practices, and the very first lesson they are taught is to despise the gods, shed all feelings of patriotism, and consider parents, children and brothers as readily expendable. However, the Jews make certain that their population increases.”

Long before Christianity was introduced to Europe by the religion’s Jewish founders, Jews from Israel had already established themselves in parts of what was the ancient Roman Empire, as merchants, money-lenders, traders, actors, and entertainers; often traveling from village to village plying their trade and accumulating wealth. With the adoption of Christianity as the official state religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD, the Jews who had migrated to Europe emerged as the principle source of financing, as the Christian Church strictly forbid Christians from charging interest on loans; but the Jews were exempt from this prohibition and were allowed to freely engage in usury, accumulating vast fortunes through the interest they charged on the money they lent.

In many cases even the crowned heads of European royalty found themselves deeply indebted to the Jews due to their borrowing money to finance their frequent wars and the lavish courtly lifestyle. This led to the Jews sometimes acquiring high ranking positions of political power and influence in the courts of European government, but it also led to the Jews being repeatedly banished from nearly every country in Europe by rulers who found themselves too deeply in debt to their Jewish financiers.

Following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, and from Portugal in 1497, many Sephardic Jews living in those countries sought to avoid expulsion under the pretext of ostensibly converting to Catholicism and becoming known as “conversos” or “marranos”, while others emigrated to the Dutch Republic. There they called themselves gente del linaje (“People of the (Jewish) lineage”), or homens da nação, (“Men of the (Jewish-Portuguese) Nation”). The Netherlands gained independence from Spain in 1648 as a result of the Eighty Years War, during which time a considerable number of Marrano merchants settled in London and formed there a secret congregation, at the head of which was Antonio Fernandez Carvajal. They conducted a large business with the Levant, East and West Indies, Canary Islands, and Brazil, and above all with the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal. The Dutch West India Company, a corporation invested in by a number of wealthy Jewish shareholders, sent 200 Jews to colonize Brazil in 1642. By the mid-1640s, approximately fifteen hundred Jewish inhabitants resided in the areas of northeastern Brazil controlled by the Dutch, where they established two congregations and employed the first rabbi in the Americas.

By the late Middle Ages Jews in Europe had set up trade guilds, which functioned as cartels to control and regulate the practice different trades in a particular city. These guilds were similar to unions in that they existed to direct business to those who belonged to them, while directing business away from those who were not members. This allowed the Jews to organize themselves and work together to undermine their competition – gentile business owners. When moving to a new city, Jews would seek out the guild representing their particular profession (whether it was silver or gold smithing, wine and spirits, the garment industry, stationers and printers, or whatever trade that they made their living at), and the other Jews in the guild would decide whether or not they would allow them to join the guild. If they determined that the person seeking to join the guild was a Jew, then they were welcomed as members by their fellow Jews. If they were gentiles however, they were usually blackballed and kept out of the guild unless the Jews had a reason for wanting them to join their guild – i.e. if they had connections that would be useful to the Jews.

By the early 1600s, there had been several attempts to establish a permanent British colony in North America for the purpose of securing material riches from the New World. The first of these, the Roanoke colony, chartered by Sir Walter Raleigh in what is now North Carolina in 1584, failed, as had the Popham colony which was established in New England in what is now Maine in 1607 by the Plymouth Company, while the Jamestown Colony, also established in 1607 by the London Company in Virginia survived. Because of the failure of the Popham colony in New England, which had been abandoned by 1608, the shares of the Plymouth Company held by its stockholders had plummeted in value. This situation did not go unnoticed by a certain group of financial opportunists who called themselves the Company of Merchant Adventurers, which by that time had become heavily infiltrated by Jewish speculators operating a trade cartel which covered much of Europe and extended overseas.

It was to the Company of Merchant Adventurers that the group of religious dissenters known as the Pilgrims went looking for financial backing, indenturing themselves to them as colonial laborers in return for the Merchant Adventurers covering the cost of their chartered passage to the New World, where the Pilgrims hoped to settle on a tract of land that they had obtained a charter for in Virginia from the London Company. Having at their disposal a group of earnest and willing laborers who had indentured themselves as colonists, the Company of Merchant Adventurers saw the opportunity to buy up stock in the failed Plymouth Company of New England at a bargain, and then develop a colony in New England by using the Pilgrims as the colony’s laborers, which meant that the Pilgrims ended up being settled not in their intended destination on the warm and fertile shores of Virginia, but hundreds of miles to the north on the cold and stony shores of Massachusetts. Thus New England was established by means of the unscrupulous conniving and deception of ruthless, manipulative, Jewish financial speculators.

In 1621 a Jew by the name of Elias Legarde arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, aboard the ship Abigail, having been brought over from France by Anthonie Bonall to assist in the wine-making industry begun by some of the early colonists of Virginia. In 1649 a Sephardic Jew named Solomon Franco arrived in Massachusetts from the Netherlands as an agent for Immanuel Perada, a Jewish merchant based in Holland. Franco had been sent to Boston to deliver supplies ordered by Edward Gibbons, a major general in the Massachusetts militia. When Franco attempted to collect payment from Gibbons for delivering the ordered goods, Gibbons refused saying that he had already paid Franco’s employer, Immanuel Perada, for both the merchandise and the cost of shipping. The Massachusetts General Court ruled on May 6, 1649 that Franco was to be expelled from the colony, granting him “six shillings per week out of the Treasury for ten weeks, for sustenance, till he can get his passage to Holland.”

Apart from their involvement in the Company of Merchant Adventurers, Jews owned controlling stock in the Dutch West India Company, which sent 200 Jews to colonize Brazil in 1642. By 1646, approximately fifteen hundred Jewish inhabitants resided in the areas of northeastern Brazil controlled by the Dutch, where they established two congregations and employed the first rabbi in the Americas. Among the members of the governing body of the Dutch West India Company were a number of wealthy Sephardic Jewish merchants who had become shareholders in the venture, having contributed more than thirty-six thousand guilders to the colony’s initial capital . By 1658 these included: Abram Isaac Perera, Andres Cristoffel Nunes, Abrara Isaac Bueno, Bento Osorio, Joseph d’Acosta, Louys Rodrigues de Sousa, and Ferdinando Dias de Britto. By April 1658 they were joined by their fellow Jews: Francisco Vaz de Crasto, Francisco lopo Henriques, Balth’r Alvares Naugera, Josepho de los Bios, Ruij Gommes Frontiera, Aron Chamis Vaz, Dionis Jennis, Diego Vaz de Sousa. The foregoing names are indicated as Jewish by a different style of writing than the other names in the lists, the 1656 list having the word “Jooden” or “Joode” opposite the names of Perera, Nunnes, Bueno and Osorio, and a later list in 1671 mentioning some of the other names as those of Jews. For March 1671 the following names occur under the heading of “Hebreen,” or “Hebrews”: Abraham Isaac Perera, Simon Louis Rodrigues de Souza, Aaron Chamiz Vaz, Jacob de Pinto, Jeronimo Nunes da Costa, Jacomo Fernando Ozorio, and Abraham Cohen.

When their colony in Recife, Brazil, fell to the Portuguese, the Jews fled from the Portuguese Inquisition in Brazil and headed for the Dutch West India Company’s colony of New Amsterdam in what is now New York, in 1655. The Dutch governor of New Amsterdam wrote to the board of Directors asking for permission to expel the Jews from the New Amsterdam colony because of their unscrupulous trade practices which were hurting gentile-owned businesses in the colony, and the directors of the Dutch West India Company told Stuyvesant that there was nothing they could do, that the Jews were to be allowed to stay there because the Dutch West India Company was controlled by Jewish stock-holders.

Having been prevented by ordinances issued by Governor Stuyvesant from engaging in the domestic economy, the Jews quickly discovered that the territory inhabited by the Indians would be a fertile field. There were no laws preventing the Jews from trading with the Indians. In 1656 a Sephardic Jew named Jacob Lumbrozo arrived in Maryland and established himself as a plantation-owner, merchant, Indian-trader, and a medical doctor. By 1661 Asser Levy, a Dutch Jew who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654, established a trading post in Albany, New York, where he engaged in commerce with the Indians and other colonists .

the 1650s, Menasseh Ben Israel, a rabbi and leader of the Jewish community residing in the Netherlands, approached Oliver Cromwell with the proposition that in exchange for covering Cromwell’s debts incurred over the English Civil War, that the Jews should at be readmitted to England. Cromwell agreed, and although he could not compel a council called for the purpose in December 1655 to consent formally to readmission, he made it clear that the ban on Jews would no longer be enforced. In the years 1655-56 the controversy over the readmission of Jews was fought out in a pamphlet war. The issue divided religious radicals and more conservative elements within society. The Puritan William Prynne was vehemently opposed to permitting Jews to return, while the Quaker Margaret Fell was no less passionately in favor of their readmission. In 1657 the Edict of Expulsion was repealed and Jews were readmitted to England. By 1690 about 400 Jews had settled in England. As early as 1658 some of the Jews who had gone to England began migrating to the North American colonies, settling in Newport, Rhode Island; Boston, New York and Philadelphia, as well as Richmond, Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina.

In 1658, fifteen Jewish families arrived in Rhode Island from Holland, bringing with them the first three degrees of Freemasonry. A congregation was organized in Newport that same year under the name “Jeshuat Israel.” In 1684 the General Assembly of Rhode Island, in reply to a petition of the Jews, affirmed the right of the latter to settle in the colony, declaring that “they may expect as good protection here as any stranger being not of our nation residing among us in his Majesty’s Colony ought to have, being obedient to his Majesty’s laws.”

Freemasonry, a type of secret society founded on the esoteric principles of Kabbalistic Judaism, evolved out of the system of trade-guilds that had existed in Europe for centuries. While there were actual guilds for real stone-cutters and masons, Freemasonry had little to do with actual stone-cutting or mason-work. Instead, the Jews who organized the fraternity known as Freemasonry adopted the symbolism of stone-masons as a subtle hint at their true purpose – rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem, in other words Zionism. The Jews who organized the Masonic Order were adherents of esoteric doctrine known as of tikkun olam (“rebuilding the world”) who sought to take control over society and recapture Israel where they hope to eventually rebuild their Temple as King Solomon had originally built it, and rule the world as “God’s chosen people” – an aristocracy of Jews ruling over gentile peasant serfs.

By the time of the American Revolution, over 30 Jewish families could be found in Newport, Rhode Island, alone, among the families such as Lopez, Levy, Rivera, Seixas, de Toro (Touro), Gomez and Hays. In the New World, Jews continued to engage in traditional occupations as merchants and money lenders, manufacturers and sellers of alcoholic beverages, as well as importing and selling African slaves to the colonial plantations, allowing them to amass vast fortunes and become prominent members of society who wielded considerable influence over politicians and legislators.

Among the early American Jewish merchants to establish an ongoing trade with the Indians was Hayman Levy of New York. Prior to the Revolutionary War, Levy began trading glass beads, textiles, earrings, armbands and other goods imported from Holland, which were exchanged with the Indians for fur pelts which Levy obtained as an agent for Phyn, Ellice & Co. of Schenectady, Montreal and London. Hayman Levy was soon joined by a couple of Jewish associates, Nicholas Lowe and Joseph Simon, and together they set up a distillery in Newport, Rhode Island, producing rum and whiskey which they sold to other colonists and traded with the Indians. Within a short time there were 22 distilleries in Newport, all of them owned by Jews.

Joseph Simon, a Jewish colonist, was one of the most prominent Indian traders and merchants and one of the largest landholders in America during the last quarter of the 18th century. His enterprises extended not only over Pennsylvania, but to Ohio, Illinois and to the Mississippi river. Another colonial era Jew by the name of Levy Andrew Levy, a resident of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, “with two female slaves and one house,” was Joseph Simon’s business partner, and Simon’s sons-in-law, Levi Phillips, along with Solomon M. Cohen, Michael Gratz, and Solomon Etting, were also associated with him at various periods. In partnership with William Henry, Simon supplied the Continental army with rifles, ammunition, drums, blankets, and provisions. The name Levy Andrew Levy appears on the receipt for a number of infected used blankets and handkerchiefs from the smallpox hospital that were given to the Indians by the British in 1763, leading to a deadly outbreak of smallpox that devastated members of the Indian tribe.

A list of twenty-two residents of Lancaster to whom various Indian tribes in Illinois conveyed a tract of land comprising the southern half of the present state of Illinois, includes the following names of Jews: Moses, Jacob, and David Franks, Barnard and Michael Gratz, Moses Franks, Jr., Joseph Simon, and Levy Andrew Levy.

In 1733 a group of 40 Jews arrived aboard the second boat carrying passengers to the English colony of Georgia where they intended to establish a silk manufacturing industry. Among them was a Dr. Nunis who became the colony’s first practicing physician. The following year, a Jew by the name of Philip (Uri) Minis became the first colonist born in Georgia on July 11, 1734. Three years later in 1737, Abraham de Lyon, a Portuguese Jew, arrived in the colony of Georgia with the intention of establishing a wine-making industry.

The majority of the Jews who arrived in Georgia in 1733 were Sephardim, most of them having fled from Portugal to England before departing for the New World. In 1741, during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, the Sephardim, fearing Spanish invasion, fled to Charleston, South Carolina, and New York, leaving only the Sheftall and the Minis families, both Ashkenazim, in Georgia.

The charter of the Carolina Colony, drawn up by John Locke in 1669, granted liberty of conscience to all settlers, expressly mentioning “Jews, heathens, and dissenters.” Simon Valentine along with four other Jews applied for citizenship in the English Colony of South Carolina in 1697. He later became the first Jewish landowner in the colony, entitling him to the right to vote. Other Jews soon followed and by 1703 a protest arose among the other colonists against the “Jew strangers” being allowed to vote in the election for members of the Assembly.

In 1748 some prominent London Jews set on foot a scheme for the acquisition of a tract of 200,000 acres of land in South Carolina. Nothing came of this, however, though on November 27, 1755, Joseph Salvador purchased 100,000 acres of land near Fort Ninety-six for £2,000. Twenty years later Salvador sold 60,000 acres of land for £3,000 to thirteen London Sephardic Jews. This land was known as the “Jews’ Lands.” Another of the Salvadors (Francis Salvador, the nephew of Joseph) purchased extensive tracts of land in the same vicinity in 1773 and became the first Jew elected to public office in North America. He was also the first Jew killed during the Revolutionary War.

By 1800 there were about 2,000 Jews in South Carolina (overwhelmingly Sephardic and settled in Charleston), which was more than in any other U.S. state at that time, and more than any other town, city, or place in North America. Charleston remained the unofficial capital of North American Jewry until about 1830, when the increasing number of Ashkenazi German Jews emigrating to America largely settled in New Orleans, Richmond, Savannah, Baltimore, and the north-east (particularly in Philadelphia and New York City), eventually surpassing the mostly Sephardic Jewish community in Charleston.

Samson Levy, a Jewish merchant living in Philadelphia, led a boycott in November, 1765, against the importation of goods from England to the colonies by signing a resolution along with six other Philadelphia Jewish merchants in protest against the tax known as the Stamp Act.