10. The American Revolution

Philadelphia

The Masonic Grand Constitutions of 1762 declared that after Frederick II the Great’s death, his powers were to be vested in Supreme Councils of the Rite all over the world. It declared that there should be one such Supreme Council in each Empire, Kingdom or State in Europe, Africa and Asia, but two Supreme Councils in the continent of North America, and two similar Supreme Councils in the continent of South America. In 1761, the Council of Emperors of the East and the West had granted a patent to a French Jew named Stephen Morin, creating him “Grand Inspector for all parts of the New World,” and signed by officials of the Grand Lodge in Paris, under the authority of the Grand Master, the Count of Clermont (1709 – 1771), the great-grandson of Louis, Grand Condé, who with associates of Menasseh ben Israel, Isaac La Peyrère and Queen Christina. Morin was invested with the title of “Grand Elect Perfect and Sublime Master” was sent to America by the “Emperors” with a warrant from the Grand Lodge of Paris to carry the “Rite of Perfection” to America.[1] American Masons recruited to this rite provided the network that helped bring about the American Revolution, the second of the major modern political success of the occult secret societies.

Philadelphia would play an instrumental role in the American Revolution as a meeting place for the Founding Fathers of the United States, who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 at the Second Continental Congress, and the Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. Among the fifty-six American rebels who signed the Declaration of Independence, only six were not Masons. The signers were influenced by John Locke’s arguments concerning liberty and the social contract. At the time of his election in 1789, Washington was Grand Master of Alexandria Lodge no. 22 in Virginia.

As noted by Abba Eban, “Jews and Judaism played important roles in the success of the American Revolution and in the growth of religious freedom in the United States.”[2] Playing a leading role in these events was Mikveh Israel, the oldest Jewish congregations in Philadelphia, which was founded with contributions from Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse an American astronomer, inventor and member of the Royal Society of London.[3] Many of its members, along with sister synagogues of Shearith Israel in New York and Beth Elohim in Charleston, were important contributors to the cause of independence, and Freemasons responsible for the formation of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. At the time, the number of Jews living American in the colonies were estimated at less than 2,000 inhabitants.[4] However, because of their extraordinary wealth and international commercial networks, they were able to play a role in the coming political events that far outweighed their meager proportion relative to the overall population.

Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States, was established by the new community that arrived in New Amsterdam, what would later become New York, in 1654, the first organized Jewish migration to North America. By the middle of the 1640s, approximately 1,500 Jewish inhabitants lived in the areas of northeastern Brazil controlled by the Dutch. There they established two congregations. These included the congregation of Zur Israel in Recife, headed by the first American rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca (1605 – 1693), a Kabbalist rabbi who had been replaced in Amsterdam by Menasseh ben Israel. In 1638, as he had found it difficult to provide for his wife and family in Amsterdam, Menasseh decided to send his brother-in-law, Ephraim Soeiro to the Dutch colony’s capital of Recife, to engage in commerce there, including the purchase of African slaves.[5] By the early 1630s, the Dutch, through the power of the West Indies Company, had conquered substantial portions of northeastern Brazil from the Portuguese. Having conquered the sugar-producing regions of Brazil from the Portuguese, the Dutch West India Company had appointed Maurice, Prince of  Orange, in 1636 as governor and military commander of the Dutch colony of Pernambuco, Brazil. Maurice was the son of William the Silent and Anna of Saxony, eldest daughter of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse.

In 1654, a Portuguese expeditionary force recaptured Recife, forcing the Dutch to abandon Brazil. When the Dutch departed, the remaining Jewish population, approximately 650 in number, also left, some returning to Holland and others emigrating to the Dutch colony at New Amsterdam or to the English one in Barbados.[6] The first Jewish settler in New Amsterdam was Jacob Barsimson, who arrived in 1654, in the ship Pear Tree. He was followed in the same year by a party of 23 Sephardic Jews, refugees of families fleeing persecution by the Portuguese Inquisition after the conquest of Recife. According to account in Saul Levi Morteira and David Franco Mendes, they were then taken by Spanish pirates for a time, were robbed, and then blown off course and finally landed in New Amsterdam.[7] Some returned to Curaçao while others to Amsterdam, including two associates of Menasseh ben Israel, Isaac Aboab de Fonseca, and Moses de Aguilar, who both went on to become followers of Sabbatai Zevi.[8]

Having been driven from Brazil, a number of Jews and their Rabbi, Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, found their way to Jamaica which maintained regular trade with Newport. In 1658, a group of Jews settled in Newport due to the official religious tolerance of the colony as established by Roger Williams. They were fleeing the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal but had not been permitted to settle elsewhere. The Newport congregation is now referred to as Congregation Jeshuat Israel and is the second-oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. According to Samuel Oppenheim, “Jews may be said to have had the honor of being among the first, if not the first, to work the degrees of Masonry in this country, by bringing these with them on their arrival in Rhode Island in 1658.”[9]

Playing a leading role in the American Revolution was the Mikveh Israel synagogue, the oldest Jewish congregations in Philadelphia. Mikveh Israel was a sister congregation of Bevis Marks synagogue in London, and named after Mikveh Israel, Hebrew “Hope of Israel,” the title of Menasseh ben Israel’s book. Mikveh Israel was founded with contributions from Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse an American astronomer, inventor and member of the Royal Society of London.[10] Many of its members, along with sister synagogues of Shearith Israel in New York and Beth Elohim in Charleston, were important contributors to the cause of independence, and Freemasons responsible for the formation of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. At the time, the number of Jews living American in the colonies were estimated at less than 2,000 inhabitants.[11] However, because of their relative wealth and international commercial networks, they were able to play a role in the coming political events that far outweighed their numbers relative to the overall population.

According to James Arcuri, author of a biography titled For God and Country: A Spy and A Patriot, Haym Salomon gave his Fortune and his life for Liberty and The Cause, Haym Salomon (1740 – 1785), a Polish-born American Jewish businessman and member of Mikveh Israel who financed the American Revolution, was agent of the House of Rothschild, despite the fact that they were simultaneously supporting the British on the opposing side of the same conflict. There is a legend that during the design process of the Great Seal, President George Washington asked Haym Salomon what compensation he wanted in return for his important contribution. Washington apparently reported that “he wanted nothing for himself but that he wanted something for his people.” While there is no evidence, there is a theory that the thirteen stars representing the colonies on the seal were arranged in the shape of the Star of David in commemoration of Solomon’s contributions.[12]

Salomon joined the New York branch of the Sons of Liberty a secret society who were largely composed of Freemasons and who instigated the Boston Tea Party.[13] The Sons of Liberty planned their activities at the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston, known by historians as the “Headquarters of the Revolution.” The tavern was owned by the St. Andrews Lodge of Freemasons in 1766.[14] Masons used the first floor for their meeting rooms led by Grand Master Joseph Warren followed by John Hancock. The Freemason Paul Revere was sent from there to Lexington on his famous midnight ride midnight ride to alert the colonial militia in April 1775 to the approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, when he is remembered to have announced, “The British are coming!”

In 1781, he began working extensively with Robert Morris (1734 – 1806), the newly appointed Superintendent for Finance for the Thirteen Colonies. Salomon’s brokerage business became so big that he was the largest depositor in Robert Morris’ Bank of North America. From 1781 to 1784, Salomon served as the Superintendent of Finance of the United States, becoming known as the “Financier of the Revolution.” He made private loans to prominent statesmen such as James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, General Arthur St. Clair and James Monroe, from whom he would not take interest.[15] Salomon also personally supported various members of the Continental Congress during their stay in Philadelphia, including James Madison and James Wilson. In all, Salomon is thought to have contributed $650,000 (more than $9.4 billion in 2017 dollars) to the Revolutionary War effort.[16]

Shearith Israel

Was one of the trustees of the lot on Mill Street where the Shearith Israel synagogue was built was Jacob Franks (1688 – 1769), who was born in London, and arrived in New York in 1708 or 1709. He became a freeman of New York in 1711. A year later he married Abigail Bilhah Levy, daughter of Moses Levy, a wealthy merchant, formerly a Marrano born in Spain.[17] As merchant, Franks had acted as agent of the king of England and furnished supplies to the British troops in New York and the Northern colonies.[18] Franks established himself in a variety of trades, including “the slave trade, privateering, general commerce, and shipping,” and became quite wealthy.[19] Moses Levy and Jacob Franks were co-owners of the slave-ship Abigail, and together with Adolphe Philipse and John Van Cortlandt, two of New York’s other successful merchants of Dutch heritage, they co-owned the ship Charlotte with John Van Cortlandt.[20] Moses Levy became the pumas, or president, of Shearith Israel. Jacob Franks succeeded his father-in-law as parnas of Shearith Israel, a position he held when the synagogue was dedicated in 1730.

Franks and Levy built relationships with several merchants including Thomas Hyam, a Philadelphia merchant who was the Penn family’s agent.[21] On September 1752, on the Myrtilla, a ship owned by Levy and Franks, docked in the port of Philadelphia and delivered one of the most important and recognizable symbols of American freedom and liberty, the Liberty Bell. The General Assembly in Philadelphia had decided to build a State House, which is now Independence Hall. In 1751, a letter was written to Robert Charles, the Colonial Agent for Pennsylvania who was working in London to purchase a bell for the State House. The bell was ordered to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of William Penn’s 1701 Charter of Privileges, which speaks of religious freedoms, liberal stances on Native American Rights, and in the inclusion of citizens in enacting laws.

Levy and Franks had business connections throughout the Atlantic world, and their partnership further entwined families that were already closely associated through marriage alliances that supported their commerce. The Mikveh Israel Cemetery was originally a private burial ground for the family of Moses’ son Nathan Levy (1704 – 1753), who came from a large and prominent Jewish family in England, and was the founder of the Jewish community of Philadelphia. Born in New York City, Levy moved to Philadelphia at a young age where he would engage in business with his nephew David Franks (1720 – 1794), under the firm name of Levy & Franks, the first Jewish business-house in Philadelphia. Moses’s daughter Abigail’s younger sister, Rachel, married Isaac Mendes Seixas (1709 - 1781), a former Marrano who had come to New York from Lisbon by way of Barbados.

David Franks’ sister Phila (Bilhah) married a Gentile, Major-General Oliver De Lancey (1718 – 1785), whose mother was Anne van Cortlandt (1676 – 1724), third child of Gertrude Schuyler (b. 1654) and Stephanus van Cortlandt (1643 – 1700), the Chief Justice of the Province of New York. The Schuyler family ancestry and ties were factors in several major American families, including the Livingston family, the Oyster Bay branch of the Roosevelt family, the Bayard family, the Bush family and the Kean family, among others. De Lancey was a merchant and Loyalist politician and soldier during the American Revolutionary War. De Lancey was a member of the provincial executive council from 1760 until the American Revolutionary War. In 1768, he allied himself with Isaac Sears and the Sons of Liberty.

Franks, along with his wife Margaret Evans (1720 – 1780) of one of Philadelphia’s Christian families, was socially prominent in the city. Franks had been a practicing Christian for several years before his marriage. During the conflict, Franks was conspicuous for his loyalty to the British cause, being the English agent in charge of the prisoners. Franks’ daughter, also named Abigail, married Andrew Hamilton (c.1676 – 1741), attorney-general of Pennsylvania in 1768, and nephew of Governor James Hamilton (1710 – 1783), son of the well-known American lawyer Andrew Hamilton, (c.1676 – 1741), who was close with the Penn family. Franks’ other daughter, Rebecca, married Sir Henry Johnson (1748 – 1835), then a lieutenant-colonel and later a general in the British Army, and took part in the “Mischianza,” the famous fête given in honor of General Howe, the commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, during the British occupancy of Philadelphia.

Michael Gratz (1740 – 1811) was Parnas of Mikveh Israel from 1784 to 1785. Michael arrived from Germany in 1758, following his older brother, Bernard, who was previously apprenticed to David Franks. Together they set up a coastal shipping service between New Orleans and Quebec. The French & Indian Wars interfered with shipping, and drove the brothers to western frontier trade in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Kentucky. They, along with David Franks, Mathias Bush and others, signed the Non-Importation Resolutions of 1765 to protest the Stamp Act. Later, the Gratz brothers supplied the Continental Army. During the British occupation of Philadelphia, the firm relocated to Lancaster, home of the father-in-law of Michael Gratz, Joseph Simon.

 

King David Lodge

Morin, who had been involved in high-degree Masonry in Bordeaux, returned to the West Indies in 1762 or 1763, to Saint-Domingue, where he spread the high degrees throughout the West Indies and North America. Morin, acting under the authority of Frederick II of Prussia, appointed Henry Andrew Francken (1720 – 1795) as Deputy Grand Inspector General (DGIG), who was most important in assisting Morin in spreading the degrees in the New World.[22] Francken traveled to New York in 1767 where he granted a Patent for the formation of a Lodge of Perfection at Albany, which was called “Ineffable Lodge of Perfection.”[23] While in New York, Francken also communicated the degrees to Jewish businessman Moses Michael Hays (1739 – 1805), the leading figure among the Jews in connection with early Masonry in the United States.[24] The Hays family was one of the most important Jewish families in New York with connections to other wealthy Jewish families across the colonies through marriage. Hays was a prominent member of Shearith Israel, where he served as Second Parnas and as a Trustee.[25] In 1769, Hays organized King David’s Lodge of Freemasons in New York, the nation’s oldest Jewish Masonic lodge.[26] However, the next year, he and his family moved to Newport, and used the same warrant to transfer King David Lodge.[27]

For their first meeting, Moses Mendes Seixas and David Lopez served as the Senior and Junior Wardens.[28] The early Jewish community of Newport flourished before the American Revolution, and included such families as Rivera, Lopez, Hart, Seixas, Levy, Pollock, deToro (Touro), Gomez and Hays. Seixas, who organize the Bank of Rhode Island in 1796, helped Hays found the King David Lodge in Newport, and was Grand Master of the Masonic Order of Rhode Island.[29] Seixas became the president of the historic Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest synagogue building still standing in the United States. The Touro Synagogue was built from 1759 to 1763 for the Jeshuat Israel congregation in Newport under the leadership of Hays’ brother-in-law, Hazzan Isaac Touro (1738 – 1783), whose family came to America from Amsterdam via the West Indies, though originally from Spain where family name was “de Toro.” Touro Synagogue was designed by Peter Harrison (1716 – 1775), a colonial American architect credited with bringing the Palladian architectural movement to the colonies.

In June, 1776, Hays subscribed to a statement affirming his allegiance to the newly independent thirteen American colonies. The next month, July 12, 1776, Hays was summoned to appear before a committee of the Rhode Island General Assembly to sign an additional test of loyalty to the revolutionary regime, an oath requested only of those suspected of hostility to the new American government. Five days later, he sent the General Assembly a letter justifying his stand:

 

We, the subscribers, do solemnly and sincerely declare that we believe the war resistance and opposition in which the United American Colonies are now engaged against the fleets and armies of Great Britain is on the part of said colonies just and necessary and that we will not directly nor indirectly afford assistance of any sort or kind whatsoever to the said fleet and armies during the continuance of the present war, but that we will heartily assist in the defense of the United Colonies.[30]

 

On August 17, 1790, the day that President George Washington visited Newport, Moses Seixas, wrote to Washington, expressing the support of the Congregation for Washington’s administration and good wishes for him: “to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance—but generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language, equal parts of the great governmental Machine.” Washington’s famous reply borrowed Moses’ exact words: “…happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”[31]

Mikveh Israel

During the War of Independence, Jews from New York, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, Lancaster and Easton fled to Philadelphia seeking refuge from the British. Among them was Moses’s younger brother, Gershom Mendes Seixas (1745 – 1816), Hazzan (Minister) of Shearith Israel, who also found his way to Philadelphia in 1780. Seixas became known for his civic activities as well as his defense of religious liberty, participating in George Washington’s inauguration as President and helping found King’s College, the precursor of New York City’s great Columbia University.[32]  Gershom Seixas also helped establish Mikveh Israel, which built its first synagogue in 1782 at Third and Cherry Streets. On the completion of its construction, Seixas invited the governor of Pennsylvania to attend the dedication, during which he invoked the blessing of Almighty God on “the Members of these States in Congress assembled and on his Excellency George Washington, Commander-General of these Colonies.”[33] Gershom Mendes’s brother, Benjamin Seixas (1748 – 1817), who possessed the Masonic degree of Prince of Jerusalem, was Treasurer of Mikveh Israel in 1782, one of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange in 1792, and served early in the Revolutionary War.[34]

Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris (1734 – 1806), the newly appointed Superintendent for Finance for the Thirteen Colonies, contributed to its building fund.[35] Morris was an English-born merchant and a Founding Father of the United States. Morris served as a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, the Second Continental Congress, and the United States Senate, and he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. Morris was considered, though a civilian, second in power only to George Washington.

Mikveh Israel was founded with the financial support of Ephraim Hart (1747 – 1825), who was registered as an elector of Shearith Israel. By 1792, Hart had become one of the most successful merchants in Philadelphia, and helped to organize the Board of Stock-Brokers, now known as the New York Stock Exchange.[36] Ephraim’s son, Joel Hart (1784 – 1842), was well known in masonic circles in New York city.[37] In 1817, Joel would be appointed by President Madison United States consul at Leith, Scotland. The daughter of Jacob Hart (1746 – 1822), who served as parnas of Shearith Israel, married Haym Moses Salomon, son of Haym Salomon.[38]

Isaac Franks (1759 – 1822), was the son of a nephew of Jacob Franks, and whose sister married Haym Salomon, is said to have been an aide-de-camp to General Washington. Franks, on December 5, 1786, received the Masonic degree of Secret Master, and on February 21, 1788, was elected Steward.[39] In 1793, during the yellow fever epidemic that ravaged Philadelphia, Franks rented his house to Washington for use as a substitute for the White House. Washington met there with his cabinet until the epidemic passed and he returned to Philadelphia. Franks hosted the Washington and his wife again in 1794 while they were on vacation.[40]

Jonas Phillips (1736 – 1803), also a Mason and founder and President of Mikveh Israel, was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War and an American merchant in New York City and Philadelphia. On July 28, 1776, Phillips wrote in Yiddish to a relative and business correspondent, Gumpel Samson of the Netherlands, discussing the conflict and included an appendix of items he wanted to import for sale in America. Thrilled with the Revolution, Phillips enclosed a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Phillips’ use of Yiddish prevented most British from being able to read the letter who thought the letter was in code.[41]

Another Freemason associated with Mikveh Israel was Simon Nathan (1746 – 1822), a brother-in-law of Benjamin Seixas. Nathan was born in England, went to the colonies in 1773 by way of Havana. During the American Revolution, he helped ship supplies to the colonists from Jamaica where he was residing. After leaving the island, he proceeded to New Orleans and from there went to Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1779. He loaned large sums of money to the Virginia state government for which he was thanked by then governor, Thomas Jefferson. When these loans were not repaid he suffered great financial loss, and was involved in protracted litigation with Virginia for many years. In 1780, he met and married Grace Mendes Seixas, the daughter of Isaac Mendes Seixas. Nathan became a Freemason the following year, a trustee of the Mikveh Israel in 1782, and president in 1782 and 1783. He moved to New York, where he served as president of Shearith Israel in 1785, 1786, 1794, and 1796.[42]

After Gershom Mendes Seixas was recalled to Shearith Israel, Mikveh Israel elected the Rev. Jacob Raphael Cohen (1738 – 1811) in his stead. Cohen had served as Hazzan of the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in Montreal and in a similar capacity in New York during the British occupation. In celebration of Pennsylvania's ratification of the United States Constitution on July 4, 1788, Cohen walked arm-in-arm with two ministers, one of whom was Reverend William White (1748 –1836) of Christ Church, bishop of Pennsylvania. White’s younger sister Mary was married to Robert Morris.

White was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania as well as a member of the American Philosophical Society (APS), originally founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, James Alexander and others. The APS was an offshoot of an earlier club, the Junto, also known as the Leather Apron Club, established by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1727, and inspired by Benjamin Furly’s Lantern society. Another offshoot of Junto was the Library Company founded in 1731 also by Franklin. The Library Company of Philadelphia operated out of Library Hall, directly across Fifth Street from Philosophical Hall, the meeting place of the APS. David Franks became a member of the Library Company in 1754.[43] Also a member of the APS was Illuminatus Joseph von Sonnenfels.[44]

 

Scottish Rite Freemasonry

Although Moses Michael Hays had introduced the Scottish Rite to America in 1768, it is the Sublime Lodge of Perfection in Philadelphia that, through its membership, is given credit for popularizing it throughout the States.[45] Hays’ appointment by Morin’s emissary Francken was made with the view of establishing the Scottish Rite in America, and power was given to him to appoint others with similar authority. After the Revolution, Hays moved to Boston where he became involved in brokerage and insurance and owned a shipping office and counting house with his son Judah. Here he became the first Jewish benefactor of Harvard College. He is credited as being one of the founders of the Massachusetts Fire and Marine Insurance Co., which grew to become the Bank of Boston. Hays was accepted into the Massachusetts Lodge in Boston in November 1782. Hays was then elected Master with Paul Revere, a friend of Thomas Paine, as his deputy, a position which he served in for three years, and then became the “Most Worshipful Grand Master” from 1788 to 1793.[46]

At the first official meeting of the Rite of Perfection, recorded on October 23, 1782, of the eleven men listed as present, over half of them were Jewish, including the two top officials, Isaac da Costa (1721 – 1783) and Solomon Bush (1753 – 1795).[47] In 1781, Hays appointed Bush as Deputy Inspector-General for Pennsylvania and Barnard M. Spitzer as Deputy Inspector-General for Georgia.[48] Solomon Bush joined the Pennsylvania Militia in 1776 and the following year he was appointed Deputy Adjutant General of the Militia of the State of Pennsylvania. Solomon was made a Grand Master and is recorded as being “in the Chair” at almost every meeting of the Sublime Lodge of Perfection from 1782 to 1788.[49] Bush became instrumental in 1788 in bringing about fraternal relations between the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge and the two rival Grand Lodges of England, Ancients and Moderns.[50]

Along with Haym Salomon, Bush was a member of Philadelphia’s Masonic Lodge No. 2.[51] Numerous other members of Mikveh Israel had also members of Masonic Lodge No. 2 in Philadelphia. They included: Isaac Da Costa, Simon Nathan, Samuel Myers, Barnard M. Spitzer, Moses Cohen, Myer M. Cohen, Benjamin Nones, Isaiah Bush, Solomon Etting, Joseph M. Myers, Solomon M. Cohen, Solomon M. Myers, Michael Gratz and Isaac Franks.  Spitzer was among four of eight Jewish Masons from Mikveh Israel that Hays appointed Deputy Inspectors General, and who later played important in the establishment of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in South Carolina, and which included Isaac Da Costa Sr. for South Carolina; Abraham Forst for Virginia and Joseph M. Myers for Maryland.[52] Forst was the son-in-law of Rabbi Jacob R. Cohen, minister of Mikveh Israel from 1784-1811, and was connected with it in a ritual capacity.[53]

After the end of the American Revolutionary War, many of these Jews moved back from Philadelphia to their original communities, such as Charleston, helping to spread Scottish Rite Masonry. Among those returning to Charleston was Isaac Da Costa, the Grand Warden, Grand Inspector General for the West Indies and North America of the Sublime Lodge of Perfection in Philadelphia. Da Costa was born in London, scion of an illustrious Spanish-Portuguese family, who played an important part in the Anglo-Jewish community during the early days after the Resettlement under Cromwell.[54] He received religious training from Isaac Nieto (1702 – 1774), who succeeded his father Rabbi David Nieto (1654 – 1728) as haham of the Bevis Marks synagogue of London, which was dominated by Jewish Freemasons who were early member of the Premier Grand Lodge of London.[55]

Da Costa, who is the earliest recorded Jewish Mason in South Carolina, arrived in Charleston in 1747, where he established himself as a merchant, shipping-agent, and slave-trader, who built a sizeable fortune bringing hundreds of slaves from Africa.[56] In 1749, he helped found Congregation Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, one of the oldest Jewish congregations in the United States, serving as ḥazzan. The driving force behind the founding of Beth Elohim was Moses Cohen (1709 – 1762), who was also Sublime Lodge of Perfection in Philadelphia and a member of Mikveh Israel. By 1753, Da Costa’s name appears in the records of King Solomon’s Lodge No. 1, the oldest constituted Masonic lodge in South Carolina.[57] An ardent partisan of the patriot cause, Da Costa was banished and his property seized by the British when Charleston fell in 1780. Da Costa returned to Charleston in 1782 where he organized his own Sublime Grand Lodge of Perfection.[58]

When first Supreme Council ever established under the new constitution of 1786 was organized in 1801, at Charleston, South Carolina, Isaac DaCosta, Hays was listed as an honorary member of the Sublime Grand Lodge of Perfection, and holder of the thirty-second degree.[59] In Charleston resided “the most cultured and wealthiest Jewish community in America.”[60] 1820, Charleston had a Jewish population numbering about 800. New York’s Jewish community by comparison was the second largest, numbering approximately 550. Philadelphia was third, with about 450 Jews. When the Marquis Lafayette made his famous visit to the United States. to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the American Revolution, a Frenchman in his party commented on the prominence of Charleston’s Jews and remarked that in no other place in the country were the Jews a significant element.[61]

Under the authority he had received through Spitzer, Hyman Isaac Long, a Jewish physician from Jamaica, who settled in New York City, went to Charleston in 1796 to appoint eight French men who arrived as refugees from Haitian revolution of 1804. Long was the son of Isaac Long, a Dutch writer, one of the foremost members of the Moravian Church, and closely connected with Count Zinzendorf.[62] In 1796, in Charleston, Long issued a patent to Alexandre Francois Auguste de Grasse (1765 – 1845), the son of Admiral François Joseph Paul de Grasse, of the Society of the Cincinnati, making him and his father-in-law Jean-Baptiste Marie de La Hogue and six other French refugees from Saint-Domingue, each Deputy Grand Inspector General (DGIG).[63]

The Rite of Perfection changed its name and appearance in 1801, when Dr. Frederick Dalcho and Colonel John Mitchell, who was nominated Deputy Grand Inspector by Francken, arrived in Charleston with a document dated to 1786 granting the bearer the right to establish new chapters of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, allegedly under the authority of Frederick the Great.[64] In 1801, six years after his return from Europe, according to Domenico Margiotta, a former high-ranking Freemason, Long brought with him the Baphomet idol of the Templars and what he claimed was the skull of their Grand Master Jacques de Molay which they had purportedly manage to purchase from his executioner before fleeing to Scotland.[65]

The bodies already established in Charleston accepted the new regime and adopted the new degrees, and in 1801 a convention was held and preliminary steps inaugurated to form a Supreme Council of the 33rd and Last Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, after which the Charleston lodge in became the Mother Council of the World.[66] The Founding Fathers of the Scottish Rite who attended became known as “The Eleven Gentlemen of Charleston.” Five of the eleven founders were congregants of Beth Elohim: Isaac Da Costa, Israel DeLieben, Abraham Alexander Sr., Emanuel De La Motta and Moses Clava Levy.[67] The others included John Mitchell, James Moultrie, Frederick Dalcho, Alexandre Francois Auguste de Grasse, Jean-Baptiste Marie de La Hogue, Thomas Bartholomew Bowen, and Isaac Auld. The Supreme Council, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, USA, in Charleston—commonly known as the Mother Supreme Council of the World—was the first Supreme Council of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. It claims that all other Supreme Councils and Subordinate Bodies of the Scottish Rite are derived from it.[68]

De Grasse continued his development work with Masons in France and across Europe. In 1804, de Grasse formed a second Grand Lodge to counter the Grand Orient, called the Supreme Council of France, which marked the beginning of the international spread of the Scottish Rite. The Scottish Rite adopted the double-headed eagle, or Reichsalder, symbol of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors, which was the personal emblem of Frederick the Great, who was the First Sovereign Grand Commander and who conferred upon the Rite the right to use in 1786. It was introduced in France in the early 1760s as the emblem of the Kadosh degree.[69] The double-headed eagle represented the dual realms of the Council of Emperors of the East and West.[70] The Knights of the East, according to Masonic tradition, represented the “Freemasons” who remained in the East after the building of the First Temple, while the Knights of the East and West represented those who traveled West and disseminated the “Order” over Europe, but who returned during the Crusades and reunited with their ancient Brethren. In obvious allusion to the Templars, they were said to have organized the Order in the year 1118 upon the return of the Holy Land.[71] Albert Pike cited several of alchemical works featuring the double-headed eagle as evidence for the true meaning and significance of the symbol, which he equated with the alchemical Stone of the Philosophers.[72]


[1] Rebold Emmanuel. Histoire des Trois Grandes Loges (Collignon, 1864). p. 49.

[2] Eban. My People, p. 27.

[3] William Pencak. “Jews and Anti-Semitism in Early Pennsylvania” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 126, No. 3 (Jul., 2002), pp. 365-408.

[4] Menasseh ben Israel. Hope of Israel, 142–43, section 24; cited in Natalie Zemon Davis. “Regaining Jerusalem: Eschatology and Slavery in Jewish Colonization in Seventeeth-Century Suriname.” The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 3,1 (January 2016).

[5] Natalie Zemon Davis. “Regaining Jerusalem: Eschatology and Slavery in Jewish Colonization in Seventeeth-Century Suriname.” The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 3,1 (January 2016), p. 15.

[6] Eli Faber. Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight (New York University, 1998), p. 16.

[7] “The Number of Jews in Dutch Brazil.” Jewish Social Studies, 16 (1954), p. 107‑114.

[8] Gil Stern Zohar. “Jewish pirates of the Caribbean.” Jerusalem Post (April 9, 2016); Meyer Kayserling. “AGUILAR (AGUYLAR), MOSES RAPHAELDE.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[9] Samuel Oppenheim. “The Jews and Masonry in the United States Before 1810.” American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Vol 19 (1910).

[10] William Pencak. “Jews and Anti-Semitism in Early Pennsylvania” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 126, No. 3 (Jul., 2002), pp. 365-408.

[11] Menasseh ben Israel. Hope of Israel, pp. 142–43, section 24; cited in Natalie Zemon Davis. “Regaining Jerusalem: Eschatology and Slavery in Jewish Colonization in Seventeeth-Century Suriname.” The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 3,1 (January 2016).

[12] “The Stars on the American Flag and the Great Seal.” GreatSeal.com [Retrieved 13 February 2013].

[13] “Knights of the Golden Circle.” Encyclopaedia Britannica (November 03, 2017); “Today in Masonic History: The Sons of Liberty.” Masonry Today (accessed December 28, 2017).

[14] Samuel Adams Drake. Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs (Boston: W. A. Butterfield, 1917).

[15] Cyrus Adler & Herbert Friedenwald. “Salomon, Haym.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[16] Olivia B. Waxman. “George Washington and the Real History Behind a Yom Kippur Legend.” Time (September 29, 2017).

[17] Charles Reznikoff. “A Gallery of Jewish Colonial WorthiesSome Loyalists, Some Patriots: II.” Commentary (January 1955). Retrieved from https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/charles-reznikoff/a-gallery-of-jewish-colonial-worthiessome-loyalists-some-patriots-ii/

[18] Charles Reznikoff. “A Gallery of Jewish Colonial WorthiesSome Loyalists, Some Patriots: II.” Commentary (January 1955). Retrieved from https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/charles-reznikoff/a-gallery-of-jewish-colonial-worthiessome-loyalists-some-patriots-ii/

[19] “Guide to the Papers of the Franks Family 1711–1821, [1965–1968].” American Jewish Historical Society (2003).

[20] Toni Pitock. “Commerce and Connection: Jewish Merchants, Philadelphia, and the Atlantic World, 1736-1822.” PhD dissertation. University of Delaware (Spring 2016).

[21] David Franks to Naphtali Franks, March 14, 1743, in Gelles, Letters of Abigaill Levy Franks, 119, 119n. p. 58.

[22] Samuel Oppenheim. “The Jews and Masonry in the United States Before 1810.” American Jewish Historical Society, No. 19 (1910), p. 7.

[23] William L. Fox. Lodge of the Double-Headed Eagle: Two centuries of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in America's Southern Jurisdiction (University of Arkansas Press, 1997).

[24] Zimmerman. “Men of Honour and Honesty,” p. 47.

[25] Julius F. Sachse. Ancient Documents relating to the A. and A. Scottish Rite in the Archives of the Free and Accepted Masons of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: The New Era Printing Company, 1915), p. 19.

[26] Sachse. Ancient Documents, p. 21.

[27] William Pencak. Jews & Gentiles in Early America, 1654-1800 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2005), p. 92.

[28] “From the East Cometh Light,” in Henry W. Rugg, History of Freemasonry in Rhode Island (Providence: E.L. Freedman & Son, State Printers, 1895), p. 44.

[29] “Rhode Island, United States.” Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved from https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/rhode-island-jewish-history

[30] 1776, June, Session of Assembly, M. M. Hayes; cited in “Jews and the American  Revolution.” American Jewish Archives, Vol XXVII, No. 2 (November, 1975).

[31] Dan Pine. “Descendant of rabbi born in 1745 to relive inauguration of George Washington.” The Jewish News (April 18, 2014).

[32] Cyrus Adler, L. Hühner, Frederick T. Haneman. “Seixas.”  Jewish Encyclopedia.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Samuel Oppenheim. “The Jews and Masonry in the United States Before 1810.” American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Vol 19 (1910).

[35] Hannah Lee. “An Odyssey From Amsterdam to Philadelphia.” Philadelphia Jewish Voice (October 12, 2011).

[36] Cyrus Adler, A.S.W. Rosenbach, Frederick T. Haneman & Clarence I. de Sola. “Hart.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[37] Ibid.

[38] “Early American Jews.” Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Visitor Center. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20090106145312/http://www.loeb-tourovisitorscenter.org/jll_jews.shtml

[39] Samuel Oppenheim. “The Jews and Masonry in the United States Before 1810.” American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Vol 19 (1910).

[40] “Early American Jews.” Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Visitor Center. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20090106145312/http://www.loeb-tourovisitorscenter.org/jll_jews.shtml

[41] Jacob Marcus. “Jews and the American Revolution A Bicentennial Documentary.” American Jewish Archives, 27, 2 (1975), p. 111.

[42] D. de S. Pool. Portraits Etched in Stone (1952).

[43] William Pencak. “Jews and Anti-Semitism in Early Pennsylvania” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 126, No. 3 (July, 2002).

[44] Melanson. Perfectibilists.

[45] Sachse. Ancient Documents, p. 29.

[46] Ibid., p. 22.

[47] “Minute Book for the Lodge of Grand Elect Perfect & Sublime Masons in the City of Philadelphia,” in Sachse, Ancient Documents, p. 41.

[48] Charles T. McClenachan. The Book Of The Ancient And Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (Masonica, 2020), p. 20.

[49] “Minute Book for the Lodge of Grand Elect Perfect & Sublime Masons in the City of Philadelphia,” pp. 41-161.

[50] Oppenheim. “The Jews and Masonry in the United States Before 1810.”

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Barnett A. Elzas. The Jews of South Carolina (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott Company), p. 35.

[55] B.A. Elzas. The Jews of South Carolina (1905), index; C. Reznikoff and U.Z. Engelman. The Jews of Charleston (1950), passim; J.R. Marcus. Early American Jewry (1953), index; J.R. Rosenbloom. A Biographical Dictionary of Early American Jews (1960), pp. 28–29; Aubrey Newman. “Jews in English Freemasonry.” Transcript of a lecture delivered by Professor Aubrey Newman, Emeritus Professor of History at Leicester University, England, to the Israel Branch of the Jewish Historical Society of England in Jerusalem, Israel, on 14 April 2015.

[56] Henry L. Feingold. Zion in America: The Jewish Experience from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Twayne Publishing, Inc., 1974), p. 42.

[57] Barnett A. Elzas. The Jews of South Carolina (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott Company), p. 36.

[58] Sara A. Zimmerman. “‘Men of Honour and Honesty’: Connections Between Jews and Freemasons in Early America” (March 19, 2014) CUREJ: College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal, University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/curej/186.

[59] Samuel Oppenheim. “The Jews and Masonry in the United States Before 1810.” American Jewish Historical Society, No. 19 (1910).

[60] Historia Judaica, vol. 13 (October, 1951), p. 160.

[61] Jeffery Kaplan. “The Chosen People in the Holy City: Three and a quarter centuries of Jewish life in Charleston.” Charleston Mercury (January 8, 2020).

[62] Edith Queenborough. Occult Theocracy (Jazzybee Verlag, 2012).

[63] A.C.F.Jackson. Rose Croix: A History of the Ancient and Accepted Rite for England and Wales (rev. ed. 1987) (London: Lewis Masonic Publishers, 1980), pp. 66-68.

[64] Mark Stavish. Freemasonry: Rituals, Symbols & History of the Secret Society (Llewellyn Worldwide, 2007), p. 126.

[65] Margiotta. Adriano Lemmi; cited in Queenborough. Occult Theocracy.

[66] Hagger. The Secret Founding of America.

[67] “The Story of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim of Charleston, SC.” Retrieved from https://images.shulcloud.com/1974/uploads/Documents/The-Story-of-KKBE

[68] “Scottish Rite History” WebCite Scottish Rite California. Retrieved from https://www.webcitation.org/6EUOU3dHW?url=http://www.scottishritecalifornia.org/scottish_rite_history.htm

[69] Pierre Mollier (2004), “The Double-Headed Eagle: Iconographic Sources of the Masonic Symbol” (PDF), The Chain of Union (Special issue No.3): 5–15, archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-09-16, retrieved 2011-10-30

[70] “Double-headed Eagle (Eagle of Lagash).” Symbol Dictionary. Retrieved from http://symboldictionary.net/?p=2443

[71] Albert C. Mackey. “Knight of the East and West.” Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences; see also Baron de Tschoudy. L’Étoile Flamboyante, I. 20 (1766), pp. 24-9.

[72] Bro. Gregory H. Peters 32°. “Solve et Coagula: Alchemical Symbolism of the Double-Headed Eagle.” Pietre Stones Review of Freemasonry. Retrieved from http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/double-headed-eagle.html

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