A History of Jewish Connecticut: Mensches, Migrants and Mitzvahs

By The History Press

During the Revolutionary War, Sephardic Jews fled British-occupied New York to become the first Jewish families in Connecticut. This long Jewish history is explored in a collection of essays by historians and community members across the state, from colonial times and the role Jews played in the Civil War to memories of summer nights at Lebanon's Grand Lake Lodge and Danbury's Lake Waubeeka. Join editor Betty N. Hoffman and company as they recount tales of Kid Kaplan, the "Meriden Buzz Saw," who became boxing's 1925 Featherweight Champion of the World; the Lender family, who "bagelized America"; and the graceful personal service of Marlow's Department Store in Manchester to reveal a fascinating and intimate portrait of Jewish Connecticut.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Nov 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9781614232445

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ESTABLISHING THE MODERN JEWISH COMMUNITY

CIVIL RIGHTS OF JEWS IN CONNECTICUT

Judge Henry S. Cohn

The status of Jews in Connecticut from the founding of the colony in 1636 to the early 1800s was decidedly mixed. As an example of this ambivalence, in November 1818, the Hartford Courant reprinted a news article from the Boston Recorder. In announcing a mission to the Holy Land, the author declared that [w]e alone of all the nations of the earth can stand up and say that we have never been engaged in persecuting the Jews. Among us the children of Israel have the same rights and privileges as those of us who are Gentiles. Yet a follow-up article, written by the director of the mission in December 1820, states: With respect to the Jews, it has not been in our power as yet to extend to them the hand of benevolence…[They] are fortifying themselves in their infidelity. Other Courant articles from this time tell of Jews who had seen the light and converted to Christianity.

The first point to be made in discussing relations between the Jews and Connecticut authorities is that there were hardly any Jews (one politician in a speech in 1818 said none at all) in Connecticut before 1818. Only David the Jew and Jacob the Jew, having received permission from the town meeting to reside in Hartford in the late 1600s, appear in the public record.

Both David and Jacob were sanctioned for violations of city ordinances while conducting their businesses. David was fined for approaching dwellings where the head of the family was absent. Jacob was tried and found guilty of dalliance with several women. His initial fine of ten pounds was eventually set aside, after a prominent New York Jew traveled to Hartford and spoke in his favor. Such restrictions on settlement and police regulation of their businesses hardly encouraged Jews to choose residence in Connecticut.

Also affecting both the number of Jews and their efforts to organize worship in Connecticut was the domination of the Protestant Congregationalists. Connecticut was founded by a separatist branch of the Puritans who arrived in Massachusetts in 1620. They had great devotion to the Old Testament. Thomas Hooker, their leader, spoke eloquently of laws being enacted by the free consent of the people.

But the Connecticut Puritans’ beliefs only extended to the members of their church. In 1662, the royal charter, obtained from Charles II and drafted in Connecticut, only gave religious and political rights to the Congregationalists (the successors to the Puritans). In 1708, the General Assembly granted limited toleration to Anglicans, Quakers and Baptists (the so-called dissenting churches). In 1727, as a concession to the English Crown, Anglicans were permitted to build their own churches and hold services separately.

In 1791, after the Revolution, two statutes were passed to excuse dissenting church members from the requirement that they regularly attend Congregational services, so long as they went to their own churches. Writing in his System of Laws (1795), Zephaniah Swift, a prominent legal scholar and later Connecticut’s chief justice, reasoned that the 1791 statutes also applied to Jews, Mehometans, and Bramins who may practice all the rites and ceremonies of their religion, without interruption or danger of incurring punishment.

The Constitutional Convention of 1818 was convened to disestablish Connecticut’s theocracy under the control of the Congregationalists. The delegates followed Judge Swift in adopting Article I, Section 3 of the 1818 constitution: The exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination, shall forever be free to all persons in this state. As delegate Treadwell declared: [A]ll sects of religion should be tolerated in the State. He had no objection to Section 3, but was willing there should be universal toleration. Papists, Mahommedans, Jews, or Hindoos, should be allowed to meet together and tolerated.

The delegates did change proposed Article I, Section 4, however. It originally read that [n]o preference shall be given to any religious sect, or mode of worship. Delegates Treadwell and Edwards successfully changed this wording, after a debate in which delegates Wolcott and Morse opposed the change, by substituting the word Christian for religious. The change was made to emphasize the preferred position of the Christian religion. Neither the 1818 constitution nor any statute of that date allowed for organized Jewish