Jews and the slave trade
Encyclopedia
Like their Christian and Muslim neighbors, Jews owned slaves and participated in the slave trade. In the middle ages, Jews were minimally involved in slave trade. During the 1490s, trade with the New World
began to open up. At the same time, the monarchies of Spain and Portugal expelled all of their Jewish subjects
. As a result, Jews began participating in all sorts of trade on the Atlantic, including the slave trade.
In 1991, the Nation of Islam
published the book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews
which alleged that Jews dominated the North Atlantic slave trade. Several scholarly works were subsequently published refuting that thesis. These scholars demonstrated that Jews did not dominate the slave trade in Medieval Europe, Africa, and/or the Americas
,
and that Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery. They possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean, and in no period did they play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades.
Slavery historian Jason H. Silverman described the part of Jews in slave trading in the southern United states as "minuscule", and wrote that the historical rise and fall of slavery in the United States would not have been affected at all had there been no Jews living in the south. Jews accounted for 1.25% of all Southern slave owners, and were not significantly different from other slave owners in their treatment of slaves.
Leaders of Christianity
, including Pope Gregory the Great (pope 590-604), objected to Jews owning Christian slaves, due to concerns about conversion to Judaism and the Talmud's requirement to circumcise slaves. The first prohibition of Jews owning Christian slaves was made by Constantine I
in the 4th century. The Third Council of Orléans in 538 repeated the prohibition for Gaul
. The prohibition was repeated by subsequent councils - Fourth Council of Orléans (541), Paris (633), Fourth Council of Toledo
(633), the Synod of Szabolcs (1092) extended the prohibition to Hungary, Ghent
(1112), Narbonne
(1227), Béziers
(1246). It was part of St. Benedict's rule that Christian slaves were not to serve Jews.
Despite the prohibition Jewish participation in slave trading during the Middle Ages existed to some extent. Jews were the chief traders in the segment of Christian slaves at some epochs and played a significant role in the slave trade in some regions. According to other sources, Medieval Christians greatly exaggerated the supposed Jewish control over trade and finance and also became obsessed with alleged Jewish plots to enslave, convert, or sell non-Jews. Most European Jews lived in poor communities on the margins of Christian society; they continued to suffer most of the legal disabilities associated with slavery. Jews participated in routes that had been created by Christians or Muslims but rarely created new trading routes.
During the Middle Ages
, Jews acted as slave-traders in Slavonia North Africa, Baltic States, Central and Eastern Europe, Spain and Portugal, and Mallorca The most significant Jewish involvement in the slave-trade was in Spain and Portugal in the 10th to 15th centuries.
Jewish participation in the slave trade was recorded starting in the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius
permitted Jews to introduce slaves from Gaul
into Italy, on the condition that they were non-Christian. In the 8th century, Charlemagne
(king 768-814) explicitly allowed the Jews to act as intermediaries in the slave trade. In the 10th century, Spanish Jews traded in Slavonian slaves, whom the Caliphs of Andalusia purchased to form their bodyguards. In Bohemia, Jews purchased these Slavonian slaves for exportation to Spain and the west of Europe. William the Conqueror brought Jewish slave-dealers with him from Rouen to England in 1066. At Marseilles in the 13th century, there were two Jewish slave-traders, as opposed to seven Christians.
Middle Ages historical records from the 9th century describes two routes by which Jewish slave-dealers carried slaves from West to East and from East to West.
According to Abraham ibn Yakub
, Byzantine
Jewish merchants bought Slavs from Prague
to be sold as slaves. Louis The Fair granted charters to Jews visiting his kingdom, permitting them to trade in slaves, provided the latter had not been baptized
. Agobard
claimed that the Jews did not abide to the agreement and kept Christians as slaves, citing the instance of a Christian refugee from Cordova
who declared that his co-religionists were frequently sold, as he had been, to the Moors
. Many of the Spanish Jews owed their fortune to the trade in Slavonian slaves brought from Andalusia. Similarly, the Jews of Verdun
, about the year 949, purchased slaves in their neighborhood and sold them in Spain.
and Suriname
, but also in Barbados
and Jamaica
. Especially in Suriname, Jews owned many large plantations. Many of the ethnic Jews in the New World, particularly in Brazil, were New Christian
s or Converso
s, some of which continued to practice Judaism, so the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish slave owners is a difficult distinction for scholars to make.
The Atlantic slave trade transferred African slaves from Africa to colonies in the New World. Much of the slave trade followed a triangular route
: slaves were transported from Africa to the Caribbean, sugar from there to North America or Europe, and manufactured goods from there to Africa.
Jewish participation in the Atlantic slave trade arose as the result of a confluence of two historical events: the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal, and the discovery of the New World.
After Spain and Portugal expelled many of their Jewish residents
in the 1490s, many Jews from Spain and Portugal migrated to the Americas and to Holland, among other destinations. They there formed an important "network of trading families" that enabled them to transfer assets and information that contributed to the emerging South Atlantic economy. Other Jews remained in Spain and Portugal, pretending to convert to Christianity, living as Conversos or New Christian
s.
The only places where Jews really came close to dominating a New World plantation system were the Dutch colonies of Curaçao
and Suriname
. But the Dutch territories were small, and their importance was short-lived. By the time the slave trade and European sugar-growing reached its peak in the 18th century, Jewish participation was dwarfed by the enterprise of British and French planters who did not allow Jews among their number. During the 19th century, Jews owned some cotton plantations in the southern United States but not in any meaningful numbers.
Jewish participation in the Atlantic slave trade increased through the 17th century because Spain and Portugal maintained a dominant role in the Atlantic trade. Jewish participation in the trade peaked in the early 18th century, but started to decline after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 when England obtained the right to sell slaves in Spanish colonies, and England and France started to compete with Spain and Portugal.
Jews and descendants of Jews converted to Christianity participated in the slave trade on both sides of the Atlantic, in Holland, Spain, and Portugal on the eastern side, and in Brazil, Caribbean, and North America on the west side. However other than a momentary involvement in Brazil and a more durable one in the Caribbean, Jewish participation was minimal.
, and some Jews were among the leading slave traders in the colony. Some Jews from Brazil migrated to Rhode Island
in the American colonies, and played a significant but non dominant role in the 18th-century slave trade of that colony, but this sector accounted for only a very tiny portion of the total human exports from Africa.
, most notably in possessions of Holland, that were serviced by the Dutch West India Company
. The slave trade was one of the most important occupations of Jews living in Suriname and the Caribbean. The Jews of Suriname were the largest slave-holders in the region.
The only places where Jews came close to dominating the New World plantation systems were Curaçao and Suriname. Slave auctions in the Dutch colonies were postponed if they fell on a Jewish holiday. Jewish merchants in the Dutch colonies acted as middlemen, buying slaves from the Dutch West India Company, and reselling them to plantation owners. The majority of buyers at slave auctions in the Brazil and the Dutch colonies were Jews.
Jews played a "major role" in the slave trade in Barbados and Jamaica.
Jewish plantation owners in Suriname helped to suppress several slave revolts in the period 1690 to 1722.
The Jewish role in the American slave trade was minimal.
According to Bertram Korn
, there were Jewish owners of plantations, but altogether they constituted only a tiny proportion of the industry. In 1830 there
were only four Jews among the 11,000 Southerners who owned fifty or more slaves.
Of all shipping ports in Colonial America, Jewish merchants only played a significant part in the slave-trade of American Colonies only in Newport, Rhode Island.
A table of the commissions of brokers in Charleston, SC, shows that one Jewish brokerage accounted for 4% of the commissions. According to Bertram Korn, Jews accounted for 4 of the 44 slave-brokers in Charleston, three of 70 in Richmond, and 1 of 12 in Memphis.
of Newport in the late 1760s and early 1770s. According to historian Eli Faber, the ventures of Aaron Lopez in the slave trade were "infinitesimal" compared to other British slaving expeditions of the time.
emphasized the problems of determining whether or not slave-traders were Jewish. He concludes that New Christian
merchants managed to gain control of a sizeable share of all segments of the Portuguese Atlantic slave trade during the Iberian-dominated phase of the Atlantic system. Due to forcible conversions of Jews to Christianity many New Christians continued to practice Judaism in secret, meaning it is impossible for historians to determine what portion of these slave traders were Jewish, because to do so would require the historian to choose one of several definitions of "Jewish".
, in History of the Jews (published 1853-1875) was the first historian to document Jewish participation in the slave trade, although he limits his scope to Europe, and does not address the Atlantic slave trade.
In 1960, Arnold Wiznitzer, published Jews in colonial Brazil, in which he wrote that Jews "dominated the slave trade" in Brazil in the mid-17th century. Wiznitzer's statement was subsequently quoted in antisemitic literature, but sometimes taken out of context so it seemed to apply to the entire Atlantic slave trade.
In 1983, Marc Lee Raphael, professor of history, wrote Jews and Judaism in the United States: a documentary history which discussed Jews in the Atlantic slave trade and asserted that "Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated. This was no less true on the North American mainland, where during the eighteenth century Jews participated in the 'triangular trade' that brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies and there exchanged them for molasses, which in turn was taken to New England and converted into rum for sale in Africa." Later scholars would challenge Raphael's assessment of the extent of Jewish participation in the slave-trade.
Ralph A. Austen asserts that scholars, prior to 1991, were reluctant to publicize Jewish involvement in slavery because of fear of damaging the "shared liberal agenda" of Jews and Blacks. Austen uses the term "benign myth" to describe the notion that Jews have always fought against slavery of oppressed peoples, and states that scholars, before 1991, supported that myth by avoiding public discussion of evidence that Jews were involved in slavery. Austen points out that Jewish participation in the slave trade calls into question the image of Jews as victims in medieval-to-modern world history.
published the book The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews, which alleged that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade.
Volume 1 of the book claims that Jews played a major role in the Atlantic slave trade
, and profited from black slavery. The book was heavily criticized for being antisemitic, and for failing to provide an objective analysis of the role of Jews in the slave trade. Common criticisms were that the book used selective quotes, made "crude use of statistics", and was purposefully trying to exaggerate the role of Jews.
The Anti-Defamation League
criticized the Nation of Islam and the book. Henry Louis Gates Jr criticized the book's intention and scholarship.
Historian Ralph A. Austen, heavily criticized the book and said that although the book "seems fairly accurate" it is an antisemitic book, whose "distortions are produced almost entirely by selective citation rather than explicit falsehood.... more frequently there are innuendos imbedded in the accounts of Jewish involvement in the slave trade", and "[w]hile we should not ignore the anti-Semitism of The Secret Relationship..., we must recognize the legitimacy of the stated aim of examining fully and directly even the most uncomfortable elements in our [Black and Jewish] common past".
According to Elizabeth Potter, The Secret Relationship ignores facts that show that Jews behaved no differently from a moral point of view than anyone else in their era regarding slave trade.
Most post-1991 scholars that analysed the role of Jews in the overall Atlantic slave trade concluded that it was "minimal", and only identified certain regions (such as Brazil and the Caribbean) where the participation was "significant".
Wim Klooster wrote: "In no period did Jews play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades. They possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean. Even when Jews in a handful of places owned slaves in proportions slightly above their representation among a town's families, such cases do not come close to corroborating the assertions of The Secret Relationship."
David Brion Davis wrote that "Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery." Jacob R. Marcus wrote that Jewish participation in the American Colonies was "minimal" and inconsistent. Bertram Korn
wrote "all of the Jewish slavetraders in all of the Southern cities and towns combined did not buy and sell as many slaves as did the firm of Franklin and Armfield, the largest Negro traders in the South."
According to a review in The Journal of American History of Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight by Eli Faber and Jews and the American Slave Trade by Saul S. Friedman: "Faber acknowledges the few merchants of Jewish background locally prominent in slaving during the second half of the eighteenth century but otherwise confirms the small-to-minuscule size of colonial Jewish communities of any sort and shows them engaged in slaving and slave holding only to degrees indistinguishable from those of their English competitors."
According to Seymour Drescher
, Jews participated in the Atlantic slave trade
, particularly in Brazil
and Suriname
, however in no period did Jews play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades. He said that Jews rarely established new slave-trading routes, but rather worked in conjunction with a Christian partner, on trade routes that had been established by Christians and endorsed by Christian leaders of nations. In 1995 the American Historical Association
(AHA) issued a statement, together with Drescher, condemning "any statement alleging that Jews played a disproportionate role in the Atlantic slave trade".
Allegations that Jews had a major contribution to Atlantic slave trade were denied by David Brion Davis, who argued that Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery. These charges were widely refuted by other scholars, as well.
While acknowledging Jewish participation in slavery, scholars reject allegations that Jews dominated the slave trade in Medieval Europe, Africa, and/or the Americas
.
According to a review in The Journal of American History of Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight by Eli Faber and Jews and the American Slave Trade by Saul S. Friedman:
Jewish slave ownership practices in the southern United States were governed by regional practices, rather than Judaic law. Many southern Jews held the view that blacks were subhuman and were suited to slavery, which was the predominant view held by many of their non-Jewish southern neighbors.
Jews conformed to the prevailing patterns of slave ownership in the South, and were not significantly different from other slave owners in their treatment of slaves. Rich Jews in the south generally preferred employing white servants rather than owning slaves. Jewish slave owners included Aaron Lopez
, Francis Salvador
, Judah Touro
, and Haym Salomon.
Jewish slave owners were found mostly in business or domestic settings, rather than plantations, so most of the slave ownership was in an urban context - running a business or as domestic servants.
Jewish slave owners freed their black slaves at about the same rate as non-Jewish slave owners. Jewish slave owners sometimes bequeathed slaves to their children in their wills.
A significant number of Jews gave their energies to the antislavery movement. Many Jews of the 19th century, such as Adolphe Crémieux
, participated in the moral outcry against slavery. In 1849, Crémieux announced the abolition of slavery throughout the French possessions.
In England there were Jewish members of the abolition groups. Granville Sharp
and Wilberforce
, in his "A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade," employed Jewish teachings as arguments against slavery. Rabbi G. Gottheil of Manchester, and Dr. L. Philippson of Bonn and Magdeburg, forcibly combated the view announced by Southern sympathizers, that Judaism supports slavery. Rabbi M. Mielziner's anti-slavery work "Die Verhältnisse der Sklaverei bei den Alten Hebräern," published in 1859, was translated and published in the United States.
Similarly, in Germany, Berthold Auerbach
in his fictional work "Das Landhausam Rhein" aroused public opinion against slavery and the slave trade, and Heinrich Heine
also spoke against slavery.
Immigrant Jews were among abolitionist John Brown
’s band of antislavery fighters in Kansas: Theodore Wiener, from Poland; Jacob Benjamin, from Bohemia; and August Bondi
(1833-1907), from Vienna.
The Jewish woman Ernestine Rose
was called “queen of the platforms” in the 19th century because of her speeches in favor of abolition. Her lectures were met with controversy. When she was in the South to speak out against slavery, one slaveholder told her he would have "tarred and feathered her if she had been a man". When, in 1855, she was invited to deliver an anti-slavery lecture in Bangor, Maine
, a local newspaper called her "a female Atheist... a thousand times below a prostitute." When Rose responded to the slur in a letter to the competing paper, she sparked off a town feud that created such publicity that, by the time she arrived, everyone in town was eager to hear her. Her most ill-received lecture was likely in Charleston, West Virginia
, where her lecture on the evils of slavery was met with such vehement opposition and outrage that she was forced to exercise considerable influence to even get out of the city safely.
In the civil-war era
, prominent Jewish religious leaders in the United States engaged in public debates about slavery. Generally, rabbis from the Southern states
supported slavery, and those from the North
opposed slavery. The most notable debate was between rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall
, who defended slavery as it was practiced in the South because slavery was endorsed by the Bible, and rabbi David Einhorn who opposed its current form. However, there were not many Jews in the South, and Jews accounted for only 1.25% of all Southern slave owners. In 1861, Raphall published his views in a treatise called "The Bible View of Slavery". He wrote, "I am no friend to slavery in the abstract, and still less friendly to the practical working of slavery, But I stand here as a teacher in Israel; not to place before you my own feelings and opinions, but to propound to you the word of G-d, the Bible view of slavery." Raphall, and other pro-slavery rabbis such as Isaac Leeser
and J. M. Michelbacher (both of Virginia), used the Tanakh
(Jewish Bible) to support their argument. Abolitionist rabbis, including Einhorn and Michael Heilprin
, concerned that Raphall's position would be seen as the official policy of American Judaism, vigorously refuted his arguments, and argued that slavery – as practiced in the South – was immoral and not endorsed by Judaism.
Nathan Meyer Rothschild was known for his role in the abolition of the slave trade through his part-financing of the £20 million British government buyout of the plantation industry's slaves. In 2009 it was claimed that as part of banking dealings with a slave owner, Rothschild used slaves as collateral. The Rothschild bank denied the claims and said that Nathan Mayer Rothschild had been a prominent civil liberties campaigner with many like-minded associates and “against this background, these allegations appear inconsistent and misrepresent the ethos of the man and his business”.
suggests that the historic struggle against prejudice faced by Jews led to a natural sympathy for any people confronting discrimination. Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress
, stated the following when he spoke from the podium at the Lincoln Memorial during the famous March on Washington
on August 28, 1963: "As Jews we bring to this great demonstration, in which thousands of us proudly participate, a twofold experience—one of the spirit and one of our history... From our Jewish historic experience of three and a half thousand years we say: Our ancient history began with slavery and the yearning for freedom. During the Middle Ages my people lived for a thousand years in the ghettos of Europe... It is for these reasons that it is not merely sympathy and compassion for the black people of America that motivates us. It is, above all and beyond all such sympathies and emotions, a sense of complete identification and solidarity born of our own painful historic experience."
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
began to open up. At the same time, the monarchies of Spain and Portugal expelled all of their Jewish subjects
Alhambra decree
The Alhambra Decree was an edict issued on 31 March 1492 by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain ordering the expulsion of Jews from the Kingdom of Spain and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year.The edict was formally revoked on 16 December 1968, following the Second...
. As a result, Jews began participating in all sorts of trade on the Atlantic, including the slave trade.
In 1991, the Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
published the book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews
The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews
The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews is a book published in 1991 by the Nation of Islam. The book alleges that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade....
which alleged that Jews dominated the North Atlantic slave trade. Several scholarly works were subsequently published refuting that thesis. These scholars demonstrated that Jews did not dominate the slave trade in Medieval Europe, Africa, and/or the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
,
and that Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery. They possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean, and in no period did they play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades.
Slavery historian Jason H. Silverman described the part of Jews in slave trading in the southern United states as "minuscule", and wrote that the historical rise and fall of slavery in the United States would not have been affected at all had there been no Jews living in the south. Jews accounted for 1.25% of all Southern slave owners, and were not significantly different from other slave owners in their treatment of slaves.
Middle Ages
In the middle ages Jews were minimally involved in slave trade.Leaders of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, including Pope Gregory the Great (pope 590-604), objected to Jews owning Christian slaves, due to concerns about conversion to Judaism and the Talmud's requirement to circumcise slaves. The first prohibition of Jews owning Christian slaves was made by Constantine I
Constantine I
Constantine the Great , also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all...
in the 4th century. The Third Council of Orléans in 538 repeated the prohibition for Gaul
Gaul
Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...
. The prohibition was repeated by subsequent councils - Fourth Council of Orléans (541), Paris (633), Fourth Council of Toledo
Fourth Council of Toledo
The Fourth Council of Toledo occurred in 633. It was held at the church of Saint Leocadia in Toledo.Probably under the presidency of the noted Isidore of Seville, the council regulated many matters of discipline, decreed uniformity of liturgy throughout the Visigothic kingdom and took stringent...
(633), the Synod of Szabolcs (1092) extended the prohibition to Hungary, Ghent
Ghent
Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...
(1112), Narbonne
Narbonne
Narbonne is a commune in southern France in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. It lies from Paris in the Aude department, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Once a prosperous port, it is now located about from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea...
(1227), Béziers
Béziers
Béziers is a town in Languedoc in southern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the Hérault department. Béziers hosts the famous Feria de Béziers, centred around bullfighting, every August. A million visitors are attracted to the five-day event...
(1246). It was part of St. Benedict's rule that Christian slaves were not to serve Jews.
Despite the prohibition Jewish participation in slave trading during the Middle Ages existed to some extent. Jews were the chief traders in the segment of Christian slaves at some epochs and played a significant role in the slave trade in some regions. According to other sources, Medieval Christians greatly exaggerated the supposed Jewish control over trade and finance and also became obsessed with alleged Jewish plots to enslave, convert, or sell non-Jews. Most European Jews lived in poor communities on the margins of Christian society; they continued to suffer most of the legal disabilities associated with slavery. Jews participated in routes that had been created by Christians or Muslims but rarely created new trading routes.
During the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, Jews acted as slave-traders in Slavonia North Africa, Baltic States, Central and Eastern Europe, Spain and Portugal, and Mallorca The most significant Jewish involvement in the slave-trade was in Spain and Portugal in the 10th to 15th centuries.
Jewish participation in the slave trade was recorded starting in the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius
Pope Gelasius I
Pope Saint Gelasius I was pope from 492 until his death in 496. He was the third and last bishop of Rome of African origin in the Catholic Church. Gelasius was a prolific writer whose style placed him on the cusp between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages...
permitted Jews to introduce slaves from Gaul
Gaul
Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...
into Italy, on the condition that they were non-Christian. In the 8th century, Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...
(king 768-814) explicitly allowed the Jews to act as intermediaries in the slave trade. In the 10th century, Spanish Jews traded in Slavonian slaves, whom the Caliphs of Andalusia purchased to form their bodyguards. In Bohemia, Jews purchased these Slavonian slaves for exportation to Spain and the west of Europe. William the Conqueror brought Jewish slave-dealers with him from Rouen to England in 1066. At Marseilles in the 13th century, there were two Jewish slave-traders, as opposed to seven Christians.
Middle Ages historical records from the 9th century describes two routes by which Jewish slave-dealers carried slaves from West to East and from East to West.
According to Abraham ibn Yakub
Abraham ben Jacob
Abraham ben Jacob, better known under his Arabic name of Ibrâhîm ibn Ya`qûb was a 10th century Hispano-Arabic, plausibly Sephardi Jewish, traveller, probably a merchant, whose brief may have included diplomacy and espionage...
, Byzantine
Byzantine
Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...
Jewish merchants bought Slavs from Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
to be sold as slaves. Louis The Fair granted charters to Jews visiting his kingdom, permitting them to trade in slaves, provided the latter had not been baptized
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
. Agobard
Agobard
Agobard of Lyon was a Spanish-born priest and archbishop of Lyon, during the Carolingian Renaissance. The author of multiple treatises, ranging in subject matter from the iconoclast controversy to Spanish Adoptionism to critiques of the Carolingian royal family, Agobard is best known for his...
claimed that the Jews did not abide to the agreement and kept Christians as slaves, citing the instance of a Christian refugee from Cordova
Cordova
-Places:*Cordova, Alabama, USA*Cordova, Alaska, USA*Cordova, Cebu, Philippines*Cordova, Illinois, USA*Cordova, Maryland, USA*Cordova, Nebraska, USA*Cordova, New Mexico, USA*Cordova, South Carolina, USA*Cordova, Tennessee, USA*Córdoba, Argentina...
who declared that his co-religionists were frequently sold, as he had been, to the Moors
Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...
. Many of the Spanish Jews owed their fortune to the trade in Slavonian slaves brought from Andalusia. Similarly, the Jews of Verdun
Verdun
Verdun is a city in the Meuse department in Lorraine in north-eastern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department.Verdun is the biggest city in Meuse, although the capital of the department is the slightly smaller city of Bar-le-Duc.- History :...
, about the year 949, purchased slaves in their neighborhood and sold them in Spain.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Jews participated in the European colonization of the Americas, and they owned slaves in Latin America and the Caribbean, most notably in BrazilBrazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
and Suriname
Suriname
Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...
, but also in Barbados
Barbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...
and Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
. Especially in Suriname, Jews owned many large plantations. Many of the ethnic Jews in the New World, particularly in Brazil, were New Christian
New Christian
New Christian was a term used to refer to Iberian Jews and Muslims who converted to Roman Catholicism, and their known baptized descendants. The term was introduced by the Old Christians of Iberia who wanted to distinguish themselves from the conversos...
s or Converso
Converso
A converso and its feminine form conversa was a Jew or Muslim—or a descendant of Jews or Muslims—who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries. Mass conversions once took place under significant government pressure...
s, some of which continued to practice Judaism, so the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish slave owners is a difficult distinction for scholars to make.
Mediterranean slave trade
In the 17th century, Jews were treated more tolerantly by the Muslim states of North Africa than by Christian Britain and Spain, and consequently many lived in or had close business contacts with Barbary. The Jews of Algiers allegedly were frequent purchasers of Christian slaves brought in by the Barbary corsairs. Meanwhile, Jewish brokers in Livorno (Leghorn), Italy were instrumental in arranging the ransom of Christian slaves from Algiers to their home countries and freedom. Although one slave accused Livorno's Jewish brokers of holding the ransom money until the captives died, this allegation is uncorroborated, and other reports indicate Jews as being very active in assisting the release of English Christian captives. In 1637, an exceptionally poor year for ransoming captives, the few slaves freed were ransomed largely by Jewish factors in Algiers working with Henry Draper.Atlantic slave trade
Triangular trade
Triangular trade, or triangle trade, is a historical term indicating among three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come...
: slaves were transported from Africa to the Caribbean, sugar from there to North America or Europe, and manufactured goods from there to Africa.
Jewish participation in the Atlantic slave trade arose as the result of a confluence of two historical events: the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal, and the discovery of the New World.
After Spain and Portugal expelled many of their Jewish residents
Alhambra decree
The Alhambra Decree was an edict issued on 31 March 1492 by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain ordering the expulsion of Jews from the Kingdom of Spain and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year.The edict was formally revoked on 16 December 1968, following the Second...
in the 1490s, many Jews from Spain and Portugal migrated to the Americas and to Holland, among other destinations. They there formed an important "network of trading families" that enabled them to transfer assets and information that contributed to the emerging South Atlantic economy. Other Jews remained in Spain and Portugal, pretending to convert to Christianity, living as Conversos or New Christian
New Christian
New Christian was a term used to refer to Iberian Jews and Muslims who converted to Roman Catholicism, and their known baptized descendants. The term was introduced by the Old Christians of Iberia who wanted to distinguish themselves from the conversos...
s.
The only places where Jews really came close to dominating a New World plantation system were the Dutch colonies of Curaçao
Curaçao
Curaçao is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. The Country of Curaçao , which includes the main island plus the small, uninhabited island of Klein Curaçao , is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands...
and Suriname
Suriname
Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...
. But the Dutch territories were small, and their importance was short-lived. By the time the slave trade and European sugar-growing reached its peak in the 18th century, Jewish participation was dwarfed by the enterprise of British and French planters who did not allow Jews among their number. During the 19th century, Jews owned some cotton plantations in the southern United States but not in any meaningful numbers.
Jewish participation in the Atlantic slave trade increased through the 17th century because Spain and Portugal maintained a dominant role in the Atlantic trade. Jewish participation in the trade peaked in the early 18th century, but started to decline after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 when England obtained the right to sell slaves in Spanish colonies, and England and France started to compete with Spain and Portugal.
Jews and descendants of Jews converted to Christianity participated in the slave trade on both sides of the Atlantic, in Holland, Spain, and Portugal on the eastern side, and in Brazil, Caribbean, and North America on the west side. However other than a momentary involvement in Brazil and a more durable one in the Caribbean, Jewish participation was minimal.
Brazil
The role of Jewish converts to Christianity (New Christians) and of Jewish traders was momentarily significant in Brazil and the Christian inhabitants of Brazil were envious because the Jews owned some of the best plantations in the river valley of PernambucoPernambuco
Pernambuco is a state of Brazil, located in the Northeast region of the country. To the north are the states of Paraíba and Ceará, to the west is Piauí, to the south are Alagoas and Bahia, and to the east is the Atlantic Ocean. There are about of beaches, some of the most beautiful in the...
, and some Jews were among the leading slave traders in the colony. Some Jews from Brazil migrated to Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
in the American colonies, and played a significant but non dominant role in the 18th-century slave trade of that colony, but this sector accounted for only a very tiny portion of the total human exports from Africa.
Caribbean and Suriname
The New World location where the Jews played the largest role in the slave-trade was in the Caribbean and SurinameSuriname
Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...
, most notably in possessions of Holland, that were serviced by the Dutch West India Company
Dutch West India Company
Dutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx...
. The slave trade was one of the most important occupations of Jews living in Suriname and the Caribbean. The Jews of Suriname were the largest slave-holders in the region.
The only places where Jews came close to dominating the New World plantation systems were Curaçao and Suriname. Slave auctions in the Dutch colonies were postponed if they fell on a Jewish holiday. Jewish merchants in the Dutch colonies acted as middlemen, buying slaves from the Dutch West India Company, and reselling them to plantation owners. The majority of buyers at slave auctions in the Brazil and the Dutch colonies were Jews.
Jews played a "major role" in the slave trade in Barbados and Jamaica.
Jewish plantation owners in Suriname helped to suppress several slave revolts in the period 1690 to 1722.
Curaçao
In Curaçao, Jews were involved in trade slave, although at a far lesser extent compared to the Protestants of the island. Jews imported fewer than 1,000 slaves to Curaçao between 1686 and 1710. After that time slave trade diminished. Between 1630 and 1770, Jewish merchants settled or handled a "considerable portion" of the eighty-five thousand slaves who landed in Curaçao, about one-sixth of the total Dutch slave trade.North American colonies
According to Bertram Korn
Bertram Korn
Bertram Wallace Korn, , was an historian and rabbi. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University and the University of Cincinnati, and received an M.H.L. degree from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati , also receiving a D.H.L...
, there were Jewish owners of plantations, but altogether they constituted only a tiny proportion of the industry. In 1830 there
were only four Jews among the 11,000 Southerners who owned fifty or more slaves.
Of all shipping ports in Colonial America, Jewish merchants only played a significant part in the slave-trade of American Colonies only in Newport, Rhode Island.
A table of the commissions of brokers in Charleston, SC, shows that one Jewish brokerage accounted for 4% of the commissions. According to Bertram Korn, Jews accounted for 4 of the 44 slave-brokers in Charleston, three of 70 in Richmond, and 1 of 12 in Memphis.
Notable Slave Traders
The most dominant Jewish slave traders on the American continent included Isaac Da Costa of Charleston in the 1750s, David Franks of Philadelphia in the 1760s, and Aaron LopezAaron Lopez
Aaron Lopez , born Duarte Lopez, was a Jewish merchant and philanthropist. He became the wealthiest person in Newport, Rhode Island, in British America. In 1761 and 1762, Lopez unsuccessfully sued the Colony of Rhode Island for citizenship....
of Newport in the late 1760s and early 1770s. According to historian Eli Faber, the ventures of Aaron Lopez in the slave trade were "infinitesimal" compared to other British slaving expeditions of the time.
Assessing the extent of Jewish involvement in the Atlantic slave trade
Historian Seymour DrescherSeymour Drescher
Seymour Drescher is an American historian and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, known for his studies on Alexis de Tocqueville and Slavery....
emphasized the problems of determining whether or not slave-traders were Jewish. He concludes that New Christian
New Christian
New Christian was a term used to refer to Iberian Jews and Muslims who converted to Roman Catholicism, and their known baptized descendants. The term was introduced by the Old Christians of Iberia who wanted to distinguish themselves from the conversos...
merchants managed to gain control of a sizeable share of all segments of the Portuguese Atlantic slave trade during the Iberian-dominated phase of the Atlantic system. Due to forcible conversions of Jews to Christianity many New Christians continued to practice Judaism in secret, meaning it is impossible for historians to determine what portion of these slave traders were Jewish, because to do so would require the historian to choose one of several definitions of "Jewish".
Early assessments
Historian Heinrich GraetzHeinrich Graetz
Heinrich Graetz was amongst the first historians to write a comprehensive history of the Jewish people from a Jewish perspective....
, in History of the Jews (published 1853-1875) was the first historian to document Jewish participation in the slave trade, although he limits his scope to Europe, and does not address the Atlantic slave trade.
In 1960, Arnold Wiznitzer, published Jews in colonial Brazil, in which he wrote that Jews "dominated the slave trade" in Brazil in the mid-17th century. Wiznitzer's statement was subsequently quoted in antisemitic literature, but sometimes taken out of context so it seemed to apply to the entire Atlantic slave trade.
In 1983, Marc Lee Raphael, professor of history, wrote Jews and Judaism in the United States: a documentary history which discussed Jews in the Atlantic slave trade and asserted that "Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated. This was no less true on the North American mainland, where during the eighteenth century Jews participated in the 'triangular trade' that brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies and there exchanged them for molasses, which in turn was taken to New England and converted into rum for sale in Africa." Later scholars would challenge Raphael's assessment of the extent of Jewish participation in the slave-trade.
Ralph A. Austen asserts that scholars, prior to 1991, were reluctant to publicize Jewish involvement in slavery because of fear of damaging the "shared liberal agenda" of Jews and Blacks. Austen uses the term "benign myth" to describe the notion that Jews have always fought against slavery of oppressed peoples, and states that scholars, before 1991, supported that myth by avoiding public discussion of evidence that Jews were involved in slavery. Austen points out that Jewish participation in the slave trade calls into question the image of Jews as victims in medieval-to-modern world history.
The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews
In 1991, the Nation of IslamNation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
published the book The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews, which alleged that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade.
Volume 1 of the book claims that Jews played a major role in the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
, and profited from black slavery. The book was heavily criticized for being antisemitic, and for failing to provide an objective analysis of the role of Jews in the slave trade. Common criticisms were that the book used selective quotes, made "crude use of statistics", and was purposefully trying to exaggerate the role of Jews.
The Anti-Defamation League
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League is an international non-governmental organization based in the United States. Describing itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency", the ADL states that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects...
criticized the Nation of Islam and the book. Henry Louis Gates Jr criticized the book's intention and scholarship.
Historian Ralph A. Austen, heavily criticized the book and said that although the book "seems fairly accurate" it is an antisemitic book, whose "distortions are produced almost entirely by selective citation rather than explicit falsehood.... more frequently there are innuendos imbedded in the accounts of Jewish involvement in the slave trade", and "[w]hile we should not ignore the anti-Semitism of The Secret Relationship..., we must recognize the legitimacy of the stated aim of examining fully and directly even the most uncomfortable elements in our [Black and Jewish] common past".
According to Elizabeth Potter, The Secret Relationship ignores facts that show that Jews behaved no differently from a moral point of view than anyone else in their era regarding slave trade.
Later assessments
The publication of The Secret Relationship spurred detailed research into the participation of Jews in the Atlantic slave trade, resulting in the publication of the following works, most of which were published specifically to refute the thesis of The Secret Relationship:- 1992 - Harold Brackman, Jew on the brain: A public refutation of the Nation of Islam's The Secret relationship between Blacks and Jews
- 1992 - David Brion DavisDavid Brion DavisDavid Brion Davis is an American historian and authority on slavery and abolition in the Western world. He is the Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and founder and Director Emeritus of Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. He is a...
, "Jews in the Slave Trade", in Culturefront (Fall 1 992) pp 42–45. - 1993 - Seymour DrescherSeymour DrescherSeymour Drescher is an American historian and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, known for his studies on Alexis de Tocqueville and Slavery....
, "The Role of Jews in the Atlantic Slave Trade", Immigrants and Minorities, 12 (1993), pp 113–125. - 1993 - Marc Caplan, Jew-Hatred As History: An Analysis of the Nation of Islam's "The Secret Relationship" (published by the Anti Defamation League)
- 1998 - Eli Faber, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight, New York University Press.
- 1999 - Saul S. Friedman, Jews and the American Slave Trade, Transaction.
Most post-1991 scholars that analysed the role of Jews in the overall Atlantic slave trade concluded that it was "minimal", and only identified certain regions (such as Brazil and the Caribbean) where the participation was "significant".
Wim Klooster wrote: "In no period did Jews play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades. They possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean. Even when Jews in a handful of places owned slaves in proportions slightly above their representation among a town's families, such cases do not come close to corroborating the assertions of The Secret Relationship."
David Brion Davis wrote that "Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery." Jacob R. Marcus wrote that Jewish participation in the American Colonies was "minimal" and inconsistent. Bertram Korn
Bertram Korn
Bertram Wallace Korn, , was an historian and rabbi. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University and the University of Cincinnati, and received an M.H.L. degree from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati , also receiving a D.H.L...
wrote "all of the Jewish slavetraders in all of the Southern cities and towns combined did not buy and sell as many slaves as did the firm of Franklin and Armfield, the largest Negro traders in the South."
According to a review in The Journal of American History of Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight by Eli Faber and Jews and the American Slave Trade by Saul S. Friedman: "Faber acknowledges the few merchants of Jewish background locally prominent in slaving during the second half of the eighteenth century but otherwise confirms the small-to-minuscule size of colonial Jewish communities of any sort and shows them engaged in slaving and slave holding only to degrees indistinguishable from those of their English competitors."
According to Seymour Drescher
Seymour Drescher
Seymour Drescher is an American historian and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, known for his studies on Alexis de Tocqueville and Slavery....
, Jews participated in the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
, particularly in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
and Suriname
Suriname
Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...
, however in no period did Jews play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades. He said that Jews rarely established new slave-trading routes, but rather worked in conjunction with a Christian partner, on trade routes that had been established by Christians and endorsed by Christian leaders of nations. In 1995 the American Historical Association
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association is the oldest and largest society of historians and professors of history in the United States. Founded in 1884, the association promotes historical studies, the teaching of history, and the preservation of and access to historical materials...
(AHA) issued a statement, together with Drescher, condemning "any statement alleging that Jews played a disproportionate role in the Atlantic slave trade".
Allegations that Jews had a major contribution to Atlantic slave trade were denied by David Brion Davis, who argued that Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery. These charges were widely refuted by other scholars, as well.
While acknowledging Jewish participation in slavery, scholars reject allegations that Jews dominated the slave trade in Medieval Europe, Africa, and/or the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
.
According to a review in The Journal of American History of Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight by Eli Faber and Jews and the American Slave Trade by Saul S. Friedman:
Eli Faber takes a quantitative approach to Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade in Britain's Atlantic empire, starting with the arrival of Sephardic Jews in the London resettlement of the 1650s, calculating their participation in the trading companies of the late seventeenth century, and then using a solid range of standard quantitative sources (Naval Office shipping lists, censuses, tax records, and so on) to assess the prominence in slaving and slave owning of merchants and planters identifiable as Jewish in Barbados, Jamaica, New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston, and all other smaller English colonial ports. He follows this strategy in the Caribbean through the 1820s; his North American coverage effectively terminates in 1775. Faber acknowledges the few merchants of Jewish background locally prominent in slaving during the second half of the eighteenth century but otherwise confirms the small-to-minuscule size of colonial Jewish communities of any sort and shows them engaged in slaving and slave holding only to degrees indistinguishable from those of their English competitors.
Jewish slave ownership in the southern United States
Slavery historian Jason H. Silverman describes the part of Jews in slave trading in the southern United states as "minuscule", and wrote that the historical rise and fall of slavery in the United States would not have been affected at all had there been no Jews living in the south. Jews accounted for only 1.25% of all Southern slave owners.Jewish slave ownership practices in the southern United States were governed by regional practices, rather than Judaic law. Many southern Jews held the view that blacks were subhuman and were suited to slavery, which was the predominant view held by many of their non-Jewish southern neighbors.
Jews conformed to the prevailing patterns of slave ownership in the South, and were not significantly different from other slave owners in their treatment of slaves. Rich Jews in the south generally preferred employing white servants rather than owning slaves. Jewish slave owners included Aaron Lopez
Aaron Lopez
Aaron Lopez , born Duarte Lopez, was a Jewish merchant and philanthropist. He became the wealthiest person in Newport, Rhode Island, in British America. In 1761 and 1762, Lopez unsuccessfully sued the Colony of Rhode Island for citizenship....
, Francis Salvador
Francis Salvador
Francis Salvador was the first American Jew to be killed in the American Revolution, fighting on the South Carolina frontier...
, Judah Touro
Judah Touro
Judah Touro was an American businessman and philanthropist.-Early life and career:...
, and Haym Salomon.
Jewish slave owners were found mostly in business or domestic settings, rather than plantations, so most of the slave ownership was in an urban context - running a business or as domestic servants.
Jewish slave owners freed their black slaves at about the same rate as non-Jewish slave owners. Jewish slave owners sometimes bequeathed slaves to their children in their wills.
Abolition debate
Adolphe Crémieux
Adolphe Crémieux was a French-Jewish lawyer and statesman, and a staunch defender of the human rights of the Jews of France. - Biography :...
, participated in the moral outcry against slavery. In 1849, Crémieux announced the abolition of slavery throughout the French possessions.
In England there were Jewish members of the abolition groups. Granville Sharp
Granville Sharp
Granville Sharp was one of the first English campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade. He also involved himself in trying to correct other social injustices. Sharp formulated the plan to settle blacks in Sierra Leone, and founded the St. George's Bay Company, a forerunner of the Sierra...
and Wilberforce
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire...
, in his "A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade," employed Jewish teachings as arguments against slavery. Rabbi G. Gottheil of Manchester, and Dr. L. Philippson of Bonn and Magdeburg, forcibly combated the view announced by Southern sympathizers, that Judaism supports slavery. Rabbi M. Mielziner's anti-slavery work "Die Verhältnisse der Sklaverei bei den Alten Hebräern," published in 1859, was translated and published in the United States.
Similarly, in Germany, Berthold Auerbach
Berthold Auerbach
Berthold Auerbach was a German-Jewish poet and author. He was the founder of the German “tendency novel,” in which fiction is used as a means of influencing public opinion on social, political, moral, and religious questions.-Biography:Moses Baruch Auerbach was born in Nordstetten in the Kingdom...
in his fictional work "Das Landhausam Rhein" aroused public opinion against slavery and the slave trade, and Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
also spoke against slavery.
Immigrant Jews were among abolitionist John Brown
John Brown (abolitionist)
John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...
’s band of antislavery fighters in Kansas: Theodore Wiener, from Poland; Jacob Benjamin, from Bohemia; and August Bondi
August Bondi
August Bondi was involved in what he called the Border War, but is now usually called Bleeding Kansas, and latter the American Civil War. In Kansas he fought with abolitionist John Brown....
(1833-1907), from Vienna.
The Jewish woman Ernestine Rose
Ernestine Rose
Ernestine Louise Rose was an atheist feminist, Individualist Feminist, and abolitionist. She was one of the major intellectual forces behind the women's rights movement in nineteenth-century America....
was called “queen of the platforms” in the 19th century because of her speeches in favor of abolition. Her lectures were met with controversy. When she was in the South to speak out against slavery, one slaveholder told her he would have "tarred and feathered her if she had been a man". When, in 1855, she was invited to deliver an anti-slavery lecture in Bangor, Maine
Bangor, Maine
Bangor is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine...
, a local newspaper called her "a female Atheist... a thousand times below a prostitute." When Rose responded to the slur in a letter to the competing paper, she sparked off a town feud that created such publicity that, by the time she arrived, everyone in town was eager to hear her. Her most ill-received lecture was likely in Charleston, West Virginia
Charleston, West Virginia
Charleston is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located at the confluence of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers in Kanawha County. As of the 2010 census, it has a population of 51,400, and its metropolitan area 304,214. It is the county seat of Kanawha County.Early...
, where her lecture on the evils of slavery was met with such vehement opposition and outrage that she was forced to exercise considerable influence to even get out of the city safely.
In the civil-war era
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, prominent Jewish religious leaders in the United States engaged in public debates about slavery. Generally, rabbis from the Southern states
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
supported slavery, and those from the North
Union (American Civil War)
During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...
opposed slavery. The most notable debate was between rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall
Morris Jacob Raphall
Morris Jacob Raphall was a rabbi and author born at Stockholm, Sweden. At the age of nine he was taken by his father, who was banker to the King of Sweden, to Copenhagen, where he was educated at the Hebrew grammar-school...
, who defended slavery as it was practiced in the South because slavery was endorsed by the Bible, and rabbi David Einhorn who opposed its current form. However, there were not many Jews in the South, and Jews accounted for only 1.25% of all Southern slave owners. In 1861, Raphall published his views in a treatise called "The Bible View of Slavery". He wrote, "I am no friend to slavery in the abstract, and still less friendly to the practical working of slavery, But I stand here as a teacher in Israel; not to place before you my own feelings and opinions, but to propound to you the word of G-d, the Bible view of slavery." Raphall, and other pro-slavery rabbis such as Isaac Leeser
Isaac Leeser
Isaac Leeser was an American, Ashkenazi Jewish lay minister of religion, author, translator, editor, and publisher; pioneer of the Jewish pulpit in the United States, and founder of the Jewish press of America. He produced the first Jewish translation of the Bible into English to be published in...
and J. M. Michelbacher (both of Virginia), used the Tanakh
Tanakh
The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...
(Jewish Bible) to support their argument. Abolitionist rabbis, including Einhorn and Michael Heilprin
Michael Heilprin
Michael Heilprin was a Polish-American Jewish biblical scholar, critic, and writer, born at Piotrków, Russian Poland, to Jewish parents. His family was distinguished by its knowledge of Hebrew lore as far back as the sixteenth century. Michael Heilprin was a scholar who was familiar with more than...
, concerned that Raphall's position would be seen as the official policy of American Judaism, vigorously refuted his arguments, and argued that slavery – as practiced in the South – was immoral and not endorsed by Judaism.
Nathan Meyer Rothschild was known for his role in the abolition of the slave trade through his part-financing of the £20 million British government buyout of the plantation industry's slaves. In 2009 it was claimed that as part of banking dealings with a slave owner, Rothschild used slaves as collateral. The Rothschild bank denied the claims and said that Nathan Mayer Rothschild had been a prominent civil liberties campaigner with many like-minded associates and “against this background, these allegations appear inconsistent and misrepresent the ethos of the man and his business”.
Modern times
In the modern era, Jews and African-Americans have often cooperated in the Civil Rights movement, motivated partially by the common background of slavery, particularly the story of the Jewish enslavement in Egypt, as told in the Biblical story of the Book of Exodus, which many blacks identified with. Seymour SiegelSeymour Siegel
Seymour Siegel , often referred to as "an architect of Conservative Jewish theology," was an American Conservative rabbi, a Professor of Ethics and Theology at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America , the 1983-1984 Executive Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council," and an...
suggests that the historic struggle against prejudice faced by Jews led to a natural sympathy for any people confronting discrimination. Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress
American Jewish Congress
The American Jewish Congress describes itself as an association of Jewish Americans organized to defend Jewish interests at home and abroad through public policy advocacy, using diplomacy, legislation, and the courts....
, stated the following when he spoke from the podium at the Lincoln Memorial during the famous March on Washington
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was the largest political rally for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr...
on August 28, 1963: "As Jews we bring to this great demonstration, in which thousands of us proudly participate, a twofold experience—one of the spirit and one of our history... From our Jewish historic experience of three and a half thousand years we say: Our ancient history began with slavery and the yearning for freedom. During the Middle Ages my people lived for a thousand years in the ghettos of Europe... It is for these reasons that it is not merely sympathy and compassion for the black people of America that motivates us. It is, above all and beyond all such sympathies and emotions, a sense of complete identification and solidarity born of our own painful historic experience."