The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton by Andrew Porwancher

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton by Andrew Porwancher Stanley Mirvis Andrew Porwancher, The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton (Princeton Univ. Press, 2021). Pp. 272; 19 b/w photos. $27.95 cloth. I regularly speak in public about colonial American Jewish communities. It has become almost an inevitability that someone asks me the question: "is it true that Hamilton was Jewish?" My initial reaction, admittedly elitist, was to be dismissive. Would someone be asking me this question if not for the popularity of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton musical (which, in full disclosure, I have not seen)? I was aware that Hamilton was born and raised in the West Indies, and of a tradition that he had attended a Jewish school. But that was the full extent of my knowledge on the matter. Armed only with this sliver of information, I became increasingly puzzled by the question. How does one make the leap from Hamilton possibly having attended a Jewish school in Nevis—whatever that might have been—to becoming Jewish? My instinctual conclusion was that such a logic distortion could only be rooted in antisemitism. That is, as America's founding banker and first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton must have been a Jew. After all, nobody was trying to claim Jefferson, Madison, or Adams as Jewish. With this assumption I began to warn those asking the question about the potentially antisemitic overtones of what they were asking. After reading Andrew Porwancher's exciting new book The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, I now realize that there is much more to this question than I had previously assumed. I was astonished by how differently Porwancher approached the issue of Hamilton's Jewishness. Whereas for me, it was puzzling, even troubling, how much Jewishness people assigned to Hamilton, for Porwancher, the anti-Jewish bias rested in the extent to which previous Hamilton scholars had overlooked his Jewishness. Porwancher believes that generations of historians have been reluctant, even unwilling, to admit that there was a "Jewish"—so to speak—Founding Father. Porwancher has successfully made the case that there is much more substance to Hamilton's Jewishness than simplistic legends about his attendance at a Jewish school or antisemitic assumptions about Jewish predilections for finance. He makes an almost Freudian argument that Hamilton's exposure to Jews and Judaism in the Caribbean and especially his mother's likely affiliation with the Judaism of her first husband, was foundational in shaping the rest of his career. It was particularly informative for Hamilton's consistently favorable disposition toward Jews in debates over religious tolerance. Porwancher convincingly demonstrates that Hamilton was the strongest advocate for Jewish civil liberties and the most legitimately philosemitic of the Founding Fathers. The true value of the book, I believe, rests not in Porwancher's claim of Hamilton's own sense of Jewishness, the subject of the first two chapters, but rather in expertly situating Hamilton in the debates over religious tolerance. Hamilton is generally overlooked, compared to other Founding Fathers, in the historical discourse about the origins and ideologies of religious tolerance in America. For Porwancher, Hamilton's posture toward Jews is a powerful barometer of his dedication to true religious tolerance in the Early Republic. He demonstrates that, unlike every other Founding Father—except Washington—Hamilton was the only [End Page 578] one who didn't express some ambivalence about or even outright hostility toward Jews. Not only was Hamilton free of anti-Jewish stereotyping and bigotry, but he also maintained lifelong friendships and partnerships with Jews who were a crucial part of his New York law practice both before and after his government service. The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton is an excellent Jewish communal history of the Early Republic, especially in New York City. Given their demographic paucity, Jews are often a footnote in studies of the early American experience. Jewish Studies, alternatively, sometimes treats Jews in isolation. Through the Hamiltonian lens, Porwancher has struck a good balance. He offers valuable profiles of well-known figures such as Haym Salomon and Gershom Mendes Seixas as well as lesser-known figures such as Isaac Moses and Moses Myers. His terrific discussion of state-constitutional...