Book on First Jewish Families in the Us
'Mordecai': A Jewish Family History
Book Recounts Family unit'south Struggles to Digest, Retain Identity
Patriarch Jacob Mordecai is seen in an 1826 portrait by John Wesley Jarvis. Courtesy Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Loma hide explanation
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Courtesy Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Colina
Mordecai: An Early American Family unit, by Emily Bingham hide explanation
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Author Emily Bingham Molly Bingham hibernate caption
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Molly Bingham
The Mordecais were among the first Jewish families to settle in the South after the Revolutionary State of war. A new book tells the story of how they struggled to digest into American society while retaining their identity as Jews, a story that still resonates in today's America, author Emily Bingham says.
Mordecai: An Early American Family traces the history of an ordinary Jewish family through early American history, from the Revolutionary War through the Civil State of war. In the nation'south early days, Bingham tells NPR's Bob Edwards, existence a Jew "was a new proposition.
"It was non the European story that nosotros're familiar of pogroms and shtetls and ghettos with the kind of prejudice and anti-Semitism that was and so rife at that place," Bingham says. "It was a place where... the page was open."
The family unit found its identify through its passions: education, difficult work and the constant want to improve their lives, she says.
Jacob Mordecai, the patriarch, came South only didn't practice very well in concern. Merely he was "able to utilize his intellectual gifts to opening a boarding school for girls in early 19th century N Carolina" at a time when the idea of female education was just outset to have agree.
Bingham was able to larn much nigh the Mordecais through letters they wrote each other as they spread out beyond the country.
When Jacob's start wife, Judith, died in 1796, he wrote a letter of the alphabet -- Bingham describes it equally a covenant -- to his children that forged a bond among them. Judith's decease left the family "in a terrible position because she played such an enormous role in cultivating who this family was and how they would survive in the backwoods of N Carolina."
Jacob wrote that Judith had "wanted them to e'er improve themselves, always pay tribute to God in some way every day, to stick together... in thick and thin," Bingham says. For the next several decades, the family strove to fulfill that dream.
Beneath is an extract from Mordecai: An Early American Family unit. The passage describes the letter Jacob wrote after Judith'south death:
Volume Extract
That summer, Jacob composed for the six children a long alphabetic character delineating Judy'southward life and describing her death. The letter amounted to a covenant, setting forth the precepts that would go along Judy's influence alive among them. The manuscript pointed a way out of the confusion they faced in light of their loss, simply as well as Jews and equally newcomers to the S and every bit Americans in a free society. The alphabetic character became for the Mordecais a road map to virtue.
The document constituted the legacy of Jacob and Judy's union, for in 1796 in that location was little to evidence in the way of worldly appurtenances or success. However, in his portrait of Judy'south life Jacob consecrated the founding of a family that was unlike, chosen, and not simply considering they were Jews. Religious duties received just passing acknowledgment in Jacob's letter to his and Judy's children. The spirit of the covenant was emancipated, and reverently so. What Jacob consecrated in this document was the family unit's commitment to aim for the highest levels of intellectual tillage, family unit solidarity, and dedication to useful work. The implication was that these qualities would raise the Mordecais above others, nourishing their spirits and encouraging them to earn respect and recognition-not then much as Jewish Americans but as Americans who happened to exist Jewish.
The covenant required that Jacob utilise reason when governing the children and never lose his self-control. He was to be "their all-time friend to whom they may with conviction unbosom themselves." Theirs was to be a loving family, sensitive to feelings, yet as well a rational family unit that valued education, ideas, and books, and a liberal family that tolerated people of all faiths, embracing "virtue in whatever garb it" might appear.
The demands on the children were wide, most elastic, but stringent nonetheless. They were to "fulfill [their] duties in life." They were to better themselves and the world effectually them yet remain modest at all times. They must keep faith by giving celebrity and cheers to God in some way every day, although this need never interfere with their work or play. Finally, the Mordecais must "foster and protect each other."
From Mordecai: An Early American Family, published by Colina and Wang, Copyright ©2003 Emily Bingham
Source: https://www.npr.org/2003/05/21/1269820/mordecai-a-jewish-family-history
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