The 'patriot rabbi' of Columbia University who ensured Jews were welcome

In his recent visit to the Columbia University campus, Mike Johnson, speaker of the US House of Representatives, before lambasting the antisemitic Hamas-supporting mobs, paid tribute to the university’s noble heritage. Johnson cited two of Columbia’s alumni greats – Alexander Hamilton, first US secretary of the Treasury and first chairman of the university Board of Trustees; and John Jay, first chief justice of the Supreme Court. 

Possibly to assuage the pain and intimidation suffered by Columbia’s Jewish students, Johnson added to his list Rev. Gershom Mendes Seixas (1745-1816). Though not himself an alumnus, Seixas also holds a list of historic firsts relating both to Columbia and the emerging American Jewish community.

Seixas was among the incorporators of Columbia and served for 30 years as a regent of the institution. He was the only Jew and probably the sole non-Episcopalian to hold these prominent positions. In the Jewish sphere, Seixas compiled his own list of firsts.

For example, he was the first American-born hazan (cantor) of the first synagogue in North America, Shearith Israel. (As there were no rabbis in the small American Jewish community, the cantor served as the synagogue’s main religious functionary.)

Seixas was taught by some of his cantorial predecessors. Seixas began his synagogue career in 1768 when he was only 23. At the time, New York City had a population of 25,000, which included 250 Jews. Although Shearith Israel, New York’s only synagogue, was founded by Sephardi Jews, the membership was becoming increasingly Ashkenazi due to new immigration patterns. Nonetheless, the synagogue during Seixas’s tenure continued following the Sephardi ritual, but the rare sermon and announcements were delivered mainly in English rather than Spanish or Portuguese.

Most of his predecessors held their posts for relatively short periods, unlike Seixas, who served for 40 years. The Sephardi congregation in London helped its New York compatriot find candidates for a cantor. A typical request from New York to London read as follows:

“A young man of good morals and strictly religious, with the advantage of an agreeable voice and capacity for teaching of Hebrew and translating it into English, as well as Spanish.”

Seixas in his political outlook and actions differed fundamentally from that of today’s mob occupying Columbia’s campus. According to David and Tamar De Sola Pool’s An Old Faith in the New World. A Portrait of Shearith Israel 1664-1964, Seixas’s sermons “reflect the exhilaration of spirit that belonged to the era of the American Revolution, and the fervent patriotism which created a free nation. He believed that because he was a Jew, a greater measure of gratitude should be his for the proclamation and the realization of the self-evident truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, and that to secure these rights governments are instituted among man…

“In celebrating Thanksgiving Day with the other inhabitants of this city, he said, ‘I conceive we are more called upon to return thanks to benign Goodness in placing us in such a country where we are free to act, according to the dictates of our conscience, and where no exception is taken from following principles of our religion.’”

In fact, when Seixas’s patriotism was put to the test, the cantor fled New York City and his beloved congregation, fearing the imminent British capture during the Revolutionary War. Seixas absconded with several Torah scrolls, also leaving some important Loyalists behind. In Philadelphia, where in 1780 Seixas became hazan of Congregation Mikveh Israel, he praised George Washington’s leadership. This action might explain why the general invited Seixas to be one of 14 speakers at his inauguration.

A final example of Seixas’s patriotism was his prompt response to president Washington’s request for Thanksgiving Day (November 26, 1789) discourses. Seixas’s discourse drew such favorable recognition that an advertisement in The New York Daily Gazette on December 23, 1789, selling copies of the sermon, noted that it was “the first of its kind ever preached in English [and] is highly deserving the attention of every pious reader whether Jew or Christian, as it breathes nothing but pure morality and devotion.”

As a result of such devotion to this new country, Seixas was admiringly called the “Patriot Rabbi of the Revolution.”

Despite Seixas’s love of his native land, he was strongly committed to the age-old prophecy of the restoration of Zion. He would be aghast at today’s Columbia protesters’ opposition to Jewish sovereignty in their God-given home. According to the De Sola Pool account, Seixas prayed for the people of Israel that God should “restore us to our own land wherein we may dwell in peace and happiness according to the words of our sacred Prophets... Let us beseech Him to fulfill His divine promise of restoring us to our land, as declared in the prophecy and that His sanctuary may again be built where we may perform our daily obligations.”

Hazan Seixas, in addition to his love for the people of Israel and in the promise of America, was the foremost interfaith citizen among the nation’s Jews, frequently invited to be a guest preacher in various churches. Unlike the authoritarian mob that had taken over Columbia’s campus, the mild-mannered Seixas was open to all ranges of views, though they might be different from his. 

Organizationally, not only was he involved in the development of Columbia, but he was a member of the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York and served as a trustee of the Humane Society. 

Attesting to his prominence were obituary notices for “the venerable Pastor of the Hebrew congregation” (New York Evening Post, July 2, 1816).

“The demise of this Israelite indeed, has made a great breach in the primitive church... his life was consecrated to learning, piety and benevolence... he was an oracle of consultation to all sects and denominations. No Minister ever lived more respected, nor died more universally lamented... He closed a long life in full confidence of the abounding mercy of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Columbian Centinel, August 17, 1816).

Seixas came to the fore in an era when the American Jew quietly and steadily increased his rights and privileges – “ecclesiastical medievalism,” as the historians put it, was giving way to a more pluralistic society. At a time when the great universities of Europe refused to admit Jews, the Charter of King’s College (now Columbia University) with which Seixas was associated made it clear that Jews were welcome. Though King’s College was an avowedly Christian institution, the charter granted it by the monarchy enjoined the trustees not “to exclude any person of any religious denomination whatsoever from equal liberty and advantage of education... on account of his particular tenets in matters of religion.”

It is our role as the ideological heirs of Seixas to protect the inspirational heritage of this “Patriot Rabbi,” ensuring freedom of thought rather than antisemitic mob rule on the American campus. 