The Hakham Joshua Hezekiah Decordova and a Rabbinic Counter Enlightenment from Colonial Jamaica

This is a digital offfprint for restricted use only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Reappraisals and New Studies of the Modern Jewish Experience

Essays in Honor of Robert M. Seltzer

Edited by

Brian M. Smollett and Christian Wiese


Contents

Acknowledgements ixList of Contributors x

Robert M. Seltzer: Scholar and Teacher 1Brian M. Smollett

Introduction: Jewish Identities in the Modern Period 5Christian Wiese

part 1

Jewish Life and Modern Questions in Russia and Eastern Europe

Language Acquisition as a Criterion of Modernization among East Central European Jews: The Case of Dov Ber Birkenthal of Bolechów 13

Gershon David Hundert

Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky and Shimon Dubnow: A Distant Regard and Appreciation 29

William Cutter

Saul Borovoi’s Survival: An Odessa Tale about a Jewish Historian in Soviet Times 46

Brian Horowitz

Defying Authority in the Pale: The Making of Soviet Jewish Rituals and the Emergence of Folk Legitimacy 62

Elissa Bemporad

vi Contents


part 2

Jewish Thought and Questions of Identity

Pride and Pedigree: The Development of the Myth of Sephardic Aristocratic Lineage 85

Jane S. Gerber

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova and a Rabbinic Counter-Enlightenment from Colonial Jamaica 104

Stanley Mirvis

Merchant Colonies: Resettlement in Italy, France, Holland, and England, 1550–1700 123

David Sorkin

From Combat to Convergence: The Relationship between Heinrich Graetz and Abraham Geiger 145

Michael A. Meyer

Kaplan and Personality 162Mel Scult

How Much Eastern Europe in American Jewish Thought? The Case of Jacob B. Agus 180

Zach Mann

Diaspora, Jewishness, and Diffference in Isaiah Berlin’s Thought 207Arie M. Dubnov

Martin Buber and the Impact of World War I on the Prague Zionists Shmuel H. Bergman, Robert Weltsch, and Hans Kohn 235

Christian Wiese

The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Vision in the Life and Thought of Hans Kohn 268

Brian M. Smollett

viiContents


part 3

Jewish Religion and Politics in America

How the Bible Expelled Religion from the American Schoolroom: The Causes and Consequences of Bible Wars in Nineteenth-Century American Schools 289

Stephan F. Brumberg

Lay and Rabbinic Conflict in Mid-Nineteenth Century American Jewry 304

Bruce L. Ruben

An International Solution for an International Problem: The JDC and the AJC in the 1930s 328

Naomi W. Cohen

Stephen S. Wise and Golda Meir: Zionism, Israel, and American Power in the Twentieth Century 356

Mark A. Raider

“We Must Build Anew”: Ideological Perspectives of the First Generation of Students to Attend Stephen S. Wise’s Jewish Institute of Religion 388

Shirley Idelson

A Judaism for Moderns: Reflections on Contemporary Challenges 412Sanford Ragins

Writings of Robert M. Seltzer 427Roberta S. Newman

Index 434

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004284661_009


Joshua Hezekiah Decordova and a Rabbinic Counter-Enlightenment from Colonial Jamaica

Stanley Mirvis

1 Introduction

The ḥakham Joshua Hezekiah Decordova served as the rabbinic head of the Jamaican Jewish community for over forty-two years, between 1755 and 1797.1 His career was marked not only by his travels through the western Sephardic diaspora—from Amsterdam to Curaçao to Jamaica—but also by his sermons and writings in numerous languages, including Portuguese, French, Hebrew, and English. He served a community of colonial, mostly Sephardic, Jews that by the late eighteenth century had been living fully integrated lives as tropi-cal merchants, planters, and shopkeepers. Like in their mother community of London and other European port cities, Jamaica’s Jews naturally integrated into the social life of the island with little intellectual dissonance. That inte-gration included not only a full participation in slave ownership and an active association with creole culture but also an engagement with the European Enlightenment. It was therefore toward the end of Decordova’s career in 1788 that he sought to formulate a printed response, from his rabbinic perspective, to the main themes of the Enlightenment. The result was a book that would later be widely circulated throughout North America among both Jews and non-Jews: Reason and Faith.

This chapter examines the career and writing of Decordova in order to understand the nature of Jewish engagement with the Enlightenment in the colonial Caribbean, far removed from the intellectual capitals of Europe. Reason and Faith has been misread as a second-rate apologia that simply par-roted earlier objections to the Enlightenment.2 Reason and Faith can also be

1 Joshua Hezekiah Decordova was buried in the Spanish Town Jewish cemetery. For his tombstone inscription see Richard D. Barnett and Philip Wright, eds., The Jews of Jamaica:

Tombstone Inscriptions, 1663–1880 (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1997), 95, no. 1086.2 Bertram W. Korn, “The Haham DeCordova of Jamaica,” American Jewish Archives 18 (1966):

141–154, here 141. Korn refers to Reason and Faith as “the fĳirst American volume of Jewish apologetics.” See also Isaac S. Emmanuel and Suzanne A. Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the

Netherlands Antilles, 2 vols., vol. 1 (Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1971), 241. Isaac and Suzanne Emmanuel write that Decordova was “more apologetic than philosophical.”

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seen as a singular work of rabbinic thought written for an informed audience, but not for philosophers. Unlike other European rabbinic opponents during the 1790s, Decordova rejected the Enlightenment through a full engagement with it. He used the language of Enlightenment in order to reveal its folly. The decidedly rabbinic nature of Reason and Faith becomes apparent by reading the book as incorporating two separate but critically integrated themes: the fĳirst using philosophical arguments to bolster the truth of divine providence and revelation and the second exploring the Jewish past in order to reveal proof of God’s presence in Jewish history, as a direct refutation of Voltaire. By reading Decordova’s view of the Jewish past as a part of his wider theology we can better appreciate the real-world efffect of a book written by a rabbi for an unequivocally rabbinic purpose to serve his specifĳically Jamaican community.

2 Amsterdam and Curaçao

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova was born in Amsterdam to a family of Ottoman Sephardic émigrés who had arrived in Amsterdam during the 1640s. Joshua’s great grandfather, Moses Raphael ben Isaac Decordova, appears to have been the fĳirst to make the journey to western Europe. Joshua came from a family of printers and compositors, a trade that may have even been plied by his grand-father, Jacob Ḥayim ben Moses Raphael Decordova, in Dutch Brazil during the 1640s and certainly in Amsterdam by mid century. Little is known about the life or career of Joshua’s father, Abraham ben Jacob Decordova, who may have worked as a printer in the fĳirm of his London-based brother.3

Decordova studied in the ‘Eẓ Ḥayim Yeshiva of Amsterdam during the early 1740s and presumably also as a school child. Among the leading rabbinic per-sonalities associated with the academy at the time were R. David Israel Athias, who served as Amsterdam’s leading ḥakham for twenty-fĳive years (1728–1753) and R. Isaac Ḥayim de Britto Abendana, one of the editors of the Pri ‘Eẓ Ḥayim collections of responsa from that period.4 R. Abraham da Costa Abendana, for whom Decordova delivered the keynote eulogy in the early winter of 1744, was his immediate mentor in the yeshiva.5

During his early rabbinic career in Amsterdam, Decordova not only sus-tained a commitment to talmudic scholarship but also actively sought out the literature and thought of the European Enlightenment. He is known to have

3 On Decordova’s genealogy see Korn, “The Haham DeCordova,” 145–147, n. 14.4 Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, vol. 1, 182.5 Ibid., 238.

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become a protégé to the famous Jewish philosophe and economist Isaac de Pinto, the author of a defensive treatise in refutation of Voltaire, Apologie pour

la Nation Juive (1762), as well as a proponent of controversial, anti-Physiocratic economic theories.6 Decordova was reported to have been a frequent visitor to De Pinto’s library, where he read the classics in the original Greek and Latin and conversed with “the enlightened dead.”7 According to Decordova’s eigh-teenth-century biographer, de Pinto’s house was a

chief resort of the literati of the [Dutch] Republic, as well as all other foreigners [. . .] of taste and genius [. . .]. In short, here it was that he [Decordova] laid the foundation [. . .] of those literary and scientifĳic acquirements, which in his future life, rendered him so conspicuous.8

Indeed, Decordova’s familiarity with Greco-Roman literature as well as cur-rent trends among modern philosophers is apparent throughout his Reason

and Faith. As will be discussed further below, much of Decordova’s intellectual focus in Reason and Faith seems to have been influenced directly by De Pinto, either in person or through his writing, yet Decordova’s work difffers signifĳi-cantly in character.

Decordova was appointed by the Amsterdam parnasim to serve in Curaçao as an assistant to the irascible ḥakham Samuel Mendes de Sola and as teacher for the advanced-level Talmud classes on the island. He arrived in Curaçao by November of 1748, apparently as a single man, though he appears to have married his fĳirst wife shortly after his arrival.9 He was tasked with teaching the Bible along with medieval commentaries, Talmud instruction for capa-ble pupils, supervision of his students during synagogue services, offfering

6 On Decordova’s relationship to De Pinto see the anonymous obituary, [Isaac Dias Fernandes], “Biography: Some Account of the Life of the late Revd. Chief Rabbi Joshua Hezekiah De Cordova, of this Town,” The Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany (October, 1797): 267–271, here 267. On De Pinto’s economic thought see Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment

and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism (1968; repr. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 142–153. See also Adam Sutclifffe, “Can a Jew be a Philosopher? Isaac de Pinto, Voltaire, and Jewish Participation in the European Enlightenment,” Jewish Social Studies 6 / 3 (2000): 31–51, esp. 41–44.

7 [Fernandes], “Biography,” 268.8 Ibid.9 Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, vol. 1, 237, 238. For

more on Decordova’s career in Curaçao see Yosef Kaplan, “The Curaçao and Amsterdam Jewish Communities in the 17th and 18th Centuries,” American Jewish History 72 / 2 (1982): 193–211, here 203 n. 18, 209–210.



public discourses on the Talmud, and delivering eulogies and sermons. He was remunerated comfortably and supplemented his salary with other mercantile pursuits.10

Decordova arrived in Curaçao amidst a number of independent though intertwined internal Jewish conflicts that raged on the island during the 1740s. These conflicts at times turned violent and exhausted the unclear channels of communal authority among Jews in colonial Curaçao.11 These already well-documented conflicts, that had begun to boil over around Yom Kippur of 1745, mostly centered on the right of the ḥakham and the mahamad to issue bans (ḥerem), and a secessionist movement led by the politically influential Moses Penso. Decordova entered the fray as an assistant rabbi at the height of these tensions. In 1753 when a trifecta of calamities occurred on the island that included a smallpox epidemic, loss of much of the commercial fleet due to a storm, and drought, Decordova delivered a sermon on the second day of three days of public fasting and repentance instituted by de Sola. Decordova’s ser-mon reveals his true stripes as a rabbinic communal leader. He likened himself to Jonah failing to lead his community to repentance; he chastised the unethi-cal business practices of Jewish merchants on the island, and even offfered to take a pay cut for the sake of Jewish poor relief. However, despite these sincere attempts to reach his community, he failed to walk the party line by not calling for, or at least publically condoning, the multitude of excommunications that had been issued by his superior, de Sola. De Sola protested during Decordova’s sermon and called for his immediate dismissal following the conclusion of the fast.12

3 Jamaica

Decordova appears to have been actively courted by the Jamaican mahamad at a time when he would have been delighted to leave Curaçao. In 1755 he sold his

10 Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, “Bitter Conflicts of 1744–1750,” vol. 1, 181–230.

11 On the unclear channels of communal authority in Curaçao and their confusing role during the 1740s communal conflicts see Jessica Roitman, “‘A Flock of Wolves instead of Sheep’: The Dutch West India Company, Conflict Resolution, and the Jewish Community of Curaçao in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Jews in the Caribbean, ed. Jane S. Gerber (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2013), 85–105.

12 On the public fast see Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands

Antilles, vol. 1, 239–240.

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home and moved to Jamaica, where he seems to have remarried.13 Decordova brought an unprecedented level of stability to Jewish life in Jamaica as the “chief rabbi” of Jamaican Jews based at the Neve Shalom Synagogue in Spanish Town. Among his lasting legacies to the Jamaican Jewish community were his attempts to ensure the quality of kosher meat being imported into Jamaica from New York, Jamaica’s comparatively tiny neighbor to the north.14 Perhaps more importantly, though harder to measure, Decordova ruled on questions of Jewish law without the intervention of the London or Amsterdam rabbinic establishment, giving Jamaica an unusual amount of religious autonomy from its mother communities.15

Decordova lived an integrated life in the colonial tropics. Like most other Jews in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, he was a slave owner and published at least one advertisement in the Jamaican Royal Gazette for a runaway slave.16 Details of Decordova’s life in Jamaica come to us from a biography published immediately after his death in The Columbian Magazine or Monthly Miscellany —a monthly moral journal printed in Kingston. Though the obituary was pub-lished anonymously, the author has been identifĳied as Isaac Dias Fernandes, a Jewish resident of Jamaica.17 Though the biography borders on hostility toward its subject—the author clearly perpetuated some conflict with the ḥakham before his death—it serves as our only witness to Decordova’s character and temperament. The veracity of its content, therefore, must be measured against the biographer’s clear hostilities.

13 Ibid., 239. I have been unable to fĳind any information on Decordova’s wife. See also [Fernandes], “Biography,” 268.

14 Albert M. Hyamson, “Items Relating to Congregation Shearith Israel,” Publications of

the American Jewish Historical Society (pajhs) 27 (1920): 1–175, here 12–13. See also “The Earliest Extant Minute Book of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, 1728–1760,” pajhs 20 (1913): 1–82, here 77.

15 Decordova is referred to as a dayan (judge) in the Hebrew epitaph on his tombstone; Barnett and Wright, The Jews of Jamaica, 95, no. 1068.

16 “Runaway from Jeossuah His. De Cordova,” The Royal Gazette, December 15, 1792; and see also Korn, “The Haham DeCordova,” 148 n. 20. For Jewish slave ownership in the colo-nial English Caribbean see Eli Faber, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record

Straight (New York: New York University Press, 1998), for Jamaica specifĳically see 57–90; Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and see Stanley Mirvis, “Sephardic Family Life in the Eighteenth-Century British West Indies” (PhD diss, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2013), 85–91.

17 Korn, “The Haham Decordova,” 149 n. 23. Korn bases this identifĳication on The First Fruits

of the West, no. 2 (1845).



Fernandes described Decordova as physically “much below the middle size, [and] inclined to corpulency; particularly as he advanced in years. His person was however venerable; but his eyes, far from being lively and piercing, were dull and void of animation.”18 He was remembered for his “uncommon degree of temperance both in eating and drinking”19 yet he seemed also to have fre-quently been in poor health, attributed to his “too great an unremitted applica-tion to his studies; for few men ever led a more sedentary life.”20 Fernandes is most critical of Decordova’s aptitude as preacher and, more importantly, as a conversationalist, writing that he was:

celebrated for [his] general knowledge and brilliancy [. . .] [more] than for his courtly manners, pleasing address, afffability and hospitality [. . .] His conversation, on common topics from his not having mixed much with the world, was rather dry, unentertaining, and [. . .] oftentimes bor-dered on puerility [. . .] his wit was oftener borrowed than genuine; and his satire, if genuine, was certainly of a nature by no means delicate [. . .] as to his eloquence [. . .] he was, to say the truth in this point much below mediocrity [. . .] nor was his voice agreeable [. . .] his gestures awkward and graceless [. . .] but his arguments and reasonings orthodox, forcible, and learned.21

In addition to fulfĳilling his duties as the spiritual guide to the community, his forty-two years in Jamaica were also his most prolifĳic—he produced at least three major works. Decordova’s fĳirst composition from Jamaica was a Hebrew poem that he described as “an epic poem in imitation of Job.”22 According to Fernandes, this poem “abounds with learning and illustration, were it pub-lished, I will venture to say it would acquire him more fame amongst the learned [. . .] than the rest of his writings put together.”23 While at the helm of the Jamaican Jewish community, Decordova also composed a forty-two page

18 [Fernandes], “Biography,” 270.19 Ibid., 269.20 Ibid.21 Ibid., 270.22 For a description of the epic poem in Decordova’s own words see Joshua Hezekiah

Decordova, ’Emet ve-’emunah: Reason and Faith, or, Philosophical Absurdities, and the

Necessity of Revelation. Intended to Promote Faith Among Infĳidels, and The Unbounded

Exercise of Humanity Among All Religious Men (Philadelphia: Printed by F. Bailey, 1791), 158.

23 [Fernandes], “Biography,” 271.

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Hebrew polemic against “heretics and Christians” entitled Ẓafnat pa‘aneaḥ, written in Hebrew with a parallel French translation.24

Decordova’s most enduring work, however, is his 1788 English treatise ’Emet ve-’emunah (אמת ואמונה) Reason and Faith, or, Philosophical Absurdities,

and the Necessity of Revelation Intended to Promote Faith Among Infĳidels, and

the Unbounded Exercise of Humanity Among All Religious Men, a defense of revealed religion and divine providence against the perceived heresies of the time. The subtitle reads in Hebrew characters da‘a mah she-tashiv le-’apikorsim (Know How to Refute Infĳidels). He wrote Reason and Faith in English, a lan-guage that he only learned upon arrival in Jamaica: “a language which I am confĳident you understand much better than I can write.”25

Though originally published in Kingston, Reason and Faith enjoyed a wide circulation throughout the Americas, and was reprinted in Philadelphia (1791) and in Richmond (1804). The 1791 and 1804 editions were both printed by non-Jews for Christian audiences.26 As indicated in the title, Decordova’s discussion of the universality of revelation in his closing chapters certainly contributed to its wide appeal among Christians as well as Jewish readers.

Decordova published Reason and Faith in order to promote “the happiness of a youth.”27 He apparently was concerned that a young member of his Jamaican community who had begun to explore the ideas of the Enlightenment would be “perverted by [. . .] modern Philosophers, who destroy all principles of faith and virtue.”28 More than a singular work of religious counter-Enlightenment produced by a lonely scholar, the book is a product of a vibrant intellectual cul-ture among the Jewish community of eighteenth-century Jamaica. Thirty-four subscribers from among the Jewish community of Jamaica (including one sub-scriber from Curaçao) fĳinanced the book.29 Though these subscribers were cer-tainly among the Jewish intellectual elite of the island, they actively promoted the major philosophical currents of the time by supporting the printing and circulation of Reason and Faith. Indeed, at least one of Decordova’s Jamaican Jewish congregants, inspired by his weekly sermons (from which much of

24 The name given to Joseph by Pharaoh in Genesis 41:45.25 Joshua Hezekiah Decordova, ’Emet ve-’emunah: Reason and Faith, or, Philosophical

Absurdities, and the Necessity of Revelation. Intended to Promote Faith Among Infĳidels,

and The Unbounded Exercise of Humanity Among All Religious Men (Kingston: Printed by Strupar and Preston, at the cost, and for the use of the subscribers, 1788), iii.

26 On the subsequent non-Jewish printings of Reason and Faith see Korn, “The Haham DeCordova,” 142.

27 Decordova, Reason and Faith (1788), iii.28 Ibid.29 For the list of subscribers see Decordova, Reason and Faith (1788), vii–viii.



Reason and Faith was undoubtedly derived) engaged in his own foray into phil-osophical Biblicism in an editorial printed after the death of the ḥakham in the Columbian Magazine.30

Among his Jamaican subscribers were several outstanding Jewish person-alities. Dr. Abraham Alvarenga was a physician who is known to have invited prominent scientifĳic and medical thinkers from Europe to deliver lectures for the Jamaican scientifĳic community in his Kingston home.31 Emanuel Barukh Lousada was one of the most recognizable Jewish public fĳigures in late eighteenth-century Jamaica, who represented the legal interests of many of Jamaica’s Jews as an executor, including as an agent in the manumission of slaves. Lousada is also known to have been a subscriber to the 1786 edition of the Laws of Jamaica.32 Abraham Mendes Belisario, a recent arrival to Jamaica from London in 1788, was the father of Jamaica’s most renowned artist, Isaac Mendes Belisario.33 Another subscriber, Alexander Lindo, was included in a group referred to as “the most considerable African factors residing in this Island” the same year as the fĳirst printing of Reason and Faith, and was the owner of one of busiest slave trading depots in Jamaica: “Lindo’s Wharf.”34 Lindo later returned to London. Like Lindo, Lousada, and Belisario, most of the subscribers appear to have had strong ties to London, suggesting that Decordova’s book of rabbinic philosophy may have had more appeal to the European-raised (and in many cases European-returnee) Jewish population of Jamaica than among the creole Jews, who by the 1780s made up a substantial portion of the Jamaican Jewish population.

4 Defense of Revealed Religion

Reason and Faith reads more like a series of sermons than a sustained work of philosophy. Decordova begins his short treatise by establishing what he refers to as philosophical “absurdities.” Chief among them is that modern

30 “The Very Ingenious Letter to the Chief Rabbi of the Jews in this Island,” The Columbian

Magazine, January, 1798, 484–489.31 “Monsieur La Roche, professor of anatomy will be speaking at Dr. Alvarenga’s,” Postscript

to the Royal Gazette, July 21, 1792.32 For more on the life of Emanuel Barukh Lousada see Stanley Mirvis, “Sexuality and

Sentiment: Concubinage and the Sephardi Family in Late Eighteenth-Century Jamaica,” in The Jews in the Caribbean, 223–240, here 236–238, esp. n. 52.

33 Jackie Ranston, “Jonkonnu and Jew: The Art of Isaac Mendes Belisario (1794–1849),” in Gerber, ed., The Jews in the Caribbean, 121–129.

34 Faber, Jews, Slaves and the Slave Trade, 117.

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philosophers base knowledge on perception alone. This determinative power of human perception has led modern philosophers to deny God’s provi-dence, scofff at revelation, and hold civic virtue as the only binding law.35 For Decordova, though he holds some philosophers in high esteem, “modern phi-losophers” are generally synonymous with atheists, deists, and unbelievers.36

He begins by defĳining “belief,” as the knowledge of anything that lies beyond the limits of human perception, such as the knowledge of God’s existence—a higher form or knowledge than even that acquired through reason.37 Humans need not, however, rely on belief alone to ascertain the truth of God’s exis-tence. If the example of the philosophes is to be followed in their reliance on reason alone, then certainly it is more reasonable to believe in a majority opin-ion that holds to the truth of revelation, than in the opinions of a handful of modern philosophers.38 Herein lies the main thrust of Decordova’s philosophi-cal content in Reason and Faith: modern philosophers defend the “absurdity” that only what is seen can be believed, yet pure reason alone would lead any rational person to the truth of God’s existence, revelation, and providence. Since modern philosophers, like the idolaters of antiquity, believe in only what can be seen, they are led in error to atheism.39 Decordova here uses the lan-guage of the Enlightenment to undermine it.

Decordova attempts to dismantle the major eighteenth-century philoso-phies one by one. He turns his attention fĳirst to rejecting the “absurdity” of materialism. Relying on the more ecclesiastically sanctioned view of Descartes, Decordova asserts that since reason alone leads men irrefutably to knowledge of their own existence, mind must stand apart from the body.40 God endows human beings with an innate knowledge of themselves; it is this knowledge that serves as perpetual proof of both God’s revelation and God’s providence.

In chapter 5, Decordova muses on the presence of evil in the universe. Relying on Leibniz, whom Decordova greatly admired, he argues that modern philosophers are seduced by the “absurdity” of atheism when they detect the presence of disorder in the universe. Decordova suggests that God’s goodness is beyond human perception and the world inhabited by humans is the best

35 Decordova, Reason and Faith (1791), 9–13.36 Ibid., 14. In this category he includes Spinoza, Collins, Tindal, Bolingbroke, Hume, and

Voltaire.37 Ibid., 16.38 Ibid., 18–19.39 Ibid., 25–27.40 Ibid., 21–24.



of all possible worlds.41 Otherwise, God is either evil or indiffferent—two pos-sibilities that are unreasonable.

After discussing some of the key elements of Enlightenment discourse, such as the nature of will and matter, he goes on to reject belief in determinism. Just because God’s omnipotence empowers him to perceive events before they occur, the outcomes of those events are not predetermined. First, Decordova makes the argument, cast as an agreement with Newton, that God does not exist in linear time, as do humans. But, more importantly, foreseeing an event does not determine the motive of its participants. Even with foresight, will is the only power to determine motive.42 In chapters 15 through 18, Decordova explores the nature of the immortal soul and its human distinctiveness from other animals. While animals possess a soul by virtue of their thought and their experience of pain and pleasure, the human soul alone is immortal, since humans alone possess the God-endowed quality of reason.43

Decordova defends the truth of revelation and assesses its relationship to the laws of nature in chapters 19 through 24. He begins by stating that rev-elation is the most ridiculed of all faith-based principles among the modern philosophers:

There is nothing which the atheists, deists, free-thinkers, or, let it be mod-ern philosophers (which is the honorable appellation they take, to the dishonor of philosophy)—there is nothing [. . .] against which they have exerted more force, and combated with more strength, than against rev-elation. This has become, among them the object of the utmost ridicule.44

Decordova begins his defense by stating that if God endows reason—a prin-ciple well established in his earlier discourses—then is it not also reasonable to suggest that God could endow man with a higher knowledge? According to Decordova, reason and revelation are two sides of the same coin. Why then do men require perpetual revelation when their reason is enough to ascer-tain the immutable laws of nature? Decordova “proves” that natural law is not enough to sustain ethical life. He concludes that self-preservation and the law of nature in general can only be sustained as a binding law when men owe their allegiances to a First Cause.

41 Ibid., 28–36.42 Ibid., 61–63.43 Ibid., 77–78.44 Ibid., 86.

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Decordova concludes his defense of revelation in support of universal reli-gion. Though the Mosaic law is binding to Jews alone, universal revelations had occurred in the times of both Adam and Noah that apply to all of their descendants. Here, he not only takes up a major trope of the early Religious Enlightenment in general but also echoes some of the more specifĳic discus-sions already presented by his mentor De Pinto in his Apologie.

Decordova’s philosophical discussion in Reason and Faith is neither origi-nal nor particularly well conceived. His biographer, Fernandes, unsurprisingly, portrayed Reason and Faith as a recycled discourse from a second-rate philoso-pher: “the intention was no doubt laudable; but I apprehend it will hardly bear the test of a critical or philosophical examination, I mean in point of argu-ment; and as to the style, it is in many parts wretchedly defective.”45 However, what makes Reason and Faith unique is its rabbinic author and his Caribbean context. His philosophy is incidental to his larger mission to serve as a model of faith for his congregation. Decordova is not a maskil, but like his contemporary European maskilim Decordova attempts to harmonize fĳidelity to pure reason and faith in the existence of God and his continual interaction with human afffairs. But, unlike the early maskilim, who were focused largely on educational reform, his discussion had a decidedly rabbinic purpose.

5 Decordova’s View of Jewish History

Over 30 percent of Reason and Faith is devoted to exploring the Jewish past. While the fĳirst part of the treatise engages the thought of a wide variety of both ancient and modern philosophers, the last twelve chapters, dealing more with Jewish history, engage with Voltaire alone. Decordova appears here to have taken his cues from his former mentor, De Pinto, in offfering a defense against Voltaire’s characterization of the Jewish past as backwards, super-stitious, and detrimental to human progress.46 Unlike De Pinto, whose 1762 treatise is entirely apologetic, Decordova viewed the Jewish past through a decidedly theological lens. Going far beyond the scope of De Pinto’s earlier dis-course, Decordova not only offfers evidence to support the benefĳit of the Jews to human history but also arrives at a position of Jewish cultural supremacy. Though it may seem that Decordova’s historical response to Voltaire is some-what appended to the treatise as a whole, it nevertheless serves an impor-tant function in summation of his earlier discussions on the nature of God’s

45 [Fernandes], “Biography,” 171.46 Sutclifffe, “Can a Jew be a Philosopher?,” 31–39.



interaction with humanity. After establishing the irrefutable truth that revela-tion is universal, he is forced to answer the question: what then makes the Jews, and their revelation, unique?

Decordova begins with the assertion that of all ancient laws the Jewish law codes alone remain in his own time: “Let us ask the philosophers [i.e. Voltaire], if they can tell, where the great conquerors of the world are at present? They are all extinguished or confounded: Only the Jews remain.”47 Decordova sees this historical “truth” as nothing short of a miracle. Decordova has the continu-ity of Jewish tradition stand as evidence of their continued special relation-ship to God that serves as proof of God’s providence. Though he recognizes the importance of the talmudic sages in preserving Jewish law, ultimately the perseverance of Jewish law and ritual is credited to God alone.48

For Decordova, Jewish law is a morally superior law to that of other nations past or present. In drawing upon Greco-Roman legend he points to the vices of their deities. If man’s purpose on earth is to emulate the gods, then the Romans indeed succeeded in allowing their children to be murdered or sacrifĳiced, and in practicing various forms of bestiality, sodomy, and adultery.49 How can it be that Voltaire accused the Jews of being savage and superstitious when the Romans themselves divined the future from reading entrails? These practices “are detested, with so much reason, by the laws of Moses! [. . .] [the Jewish] nation [. . .] alone was free of those abominations, and which, by the com-mandment of God, devoted to destruction those who were guilty of them.”50

Decordova expands his indictment of non-Jewish barbarity to include con-temporary nations as well and does not limit himself to the West. He cites eyewitness accounts stating that the kings of Morocco daily murder upwards of a hundred people at their table, when the chief of the “Coromantees” dies his servants are decapitated, widows in India submit themselves to voluntary burning at the death of their husbands, the Persians permit incest of all forms. The absence of these abhorrent practices among the Jews stands as evidence of God’s direct hand in the Jewish historical experience:

Now, if the Jews had had such laws, Voltaire and his followers had suf-fĳicient right to call them barbarous, and to believe the impossibility of such laws being inspired by God. But, when we fĳind, at a time which the whole world practised such abominations [. . .] a nation which had

47 Decordova, Reason and Faith (1791), 108.48 Ibid., 109–110.49 Ibid., 113.50 Ibid. Emphasis mine.

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laws forbidding them [. . .] and which endeavoured to bring them to the worship of the true God, we must believe that such laws could only be inspired by him.51

Decordova goes on to compare Mosaic law to two ancient Greek systems: the laws of Solon (Athens) and of Lycurgus (Sparta). Even Solon himself, most cel-ebrated among the ancient lawgivers, and held as a model of civilization by both the ancient and modern philosophers, offfered animal sacrifĳices to Apollo, thus not only sanctioning but actively encouraging idolatry. As Decordova sees it, Mosaic law is simply more humanitarian than Solon’s, particularly in break-ing down inequalities of wealth through the cancelation of debts during the seventh year—God owns the land that he leases to mankind. Knowledge of the true landlord kept men from unethical behavior. Unlike Solon’s law, Mosaic law contains a support system for social justice and social welfare. After going through a number of specifĳic examples where Mosaic law outshines Solon’s in its humanitarianism and rationality, he concludes by writing: “I believe, what has been said is sufffĳicient to convince the reader, that the laws of Moses are more rational than those of Solon. [. . .] The superiority of Moses, as a lawgiver, will appear conspicuous, when compared with Solon.”52

Likewise, Decordova devotes a chapter to demonstrating the moral and rational superiority of Mosaic law to the Spartan laws of Lycurgus. In sharp con-trast to Mosaic law—“whose spirit was peace, humanity, love, and tenderness to their offfspring”—Spartan laws were devoted to the pursuit of war above all else.53 Decordova’s discussion of Spartan law serves as a transparently veiled ad hominem attack on Voltaire’s moral character. He suggests that Voltaire would have been delighted if Lycurgus’s law, which encouraged the practices of sexually explicit dancing and public nudity, would have been adopted by the Swiss during his residence in Geneva.54 According to Decordova, Voltaire would have sacrifĳiced his reason to embrace the Spartan law for the sake of sexual perversion. Certainly, then, according to Decordova, the essence of Voltaire’s criticism of the Jews must lie in his distaste for the modesty of Jewish women. Decordova’s further dismisses Voltaire’s appraisal of the Jews as being misinformed by Voltaire’s own distemper, suggesting that Voltaire’s anti-Jewish hostilities were derived from losing money to Jews.55

51 Ibid., 115.52 Ibid., 124. Emphases mine.53 Ibid., 127.54 Ibid., 131.55 Ibid., 135.



The twenty-ninth chapter of Reason and Faith, entitled “Of the Early Civilization of the Jews” presents Decordova’s fullest treatment of biblical liter-ature and law. Here, Decordova relies heavily on midrashic and other rabbinic sources—material that the non-rabbinic De Pinto nearly completely ignored in his own refutation of Voltaire. Decordova opens his discussion of biblical Jewish history and civilization with a direct attack on Voltaire:

Mr. Voltaire, as he fully resolved to make the Jews barbarians and their laws barbarous, was obliged to invent, that the Jews were cannibals, a bestial people, and a nation which ordered human sacrifĳices; when all that he can fĳind in the law, is only, that God devoted to destruction the nations who were guilty of those abominations.56

Here, again, Decordova attempts to convince the reader that the application of reason alone and a truthful telling of history are sufffĳicient to disabuse the lies of Voltaire. If the Jews are depicted by Voltaire as barbarous for their per-ceived practice of human sacrifĳice, how much more so the non-Jewish nations that perpetrated the Crusades, the Sicilian Vespers, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and, above all else, the Spanish Inquisition.57 In attempting to deflate the claim that Jews performed human sacrifĳice, for instance, Decordova relies on a midrashic tradition to explain away Jephtah’s sacrifĳice of his daughter as the act of a rogue madman.

Not only did the Jews stand apart as an oasis of civilization in the ancient world, he goes further to suggest that they in fact were the progenitors of Western civilization. Echoing a common motif among premodern and early modern Jewish thinkers Decordova here promotes a sense of Jewish cultural supremacy in asserting that all that is associated with the successes of Western civilization are in fact gifts from the Jews. The Tabernacle is the fĳirst example of true craftsmanship and artistic achievement before the great temples and aqueducts of the Romans. The Bible was a literary masterpiece before even the great Greek dramas. The two Songs of Moses, the Song of Deborah, along with the Psalms, are models of poetic achievement; the story of Joseph is fĳilled with dramatic pathos as are the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah:

[. . .] any man, who is not voluntarily blind, must be convinced, that, not only the fĳive books of Moses, but the whole Bible, was the production of a

56 Ibid., 137.57 Ibid., 138. Decordova’s examples.

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civilized and wise nation. Did not the Grecians learn even their alphabet from the Hebrews?58

The Jewish contribution to Western civilization continued to be felt even in Decordova’s own time and place: “Was not the English, one of the most civi-lized nations at present in the world, chiefly civilized by the Bible? Is not, even now, the Bible used in all their schools, to instruct their children?”59 Decordova closes this discussion by citing what he believed to be a general agreement from David Hume on this point, thus enlisting a modern philosopher to help make his point.60

The thirtieth chapter reviews the Jewish “chain of tradition” (shalshelet ha-

kabbalah). Relying on rabbinic precedents, he traces the continuum of Jewish tradition from Moses through the Second Temple period and later. A chain of transmission so powerful that even Jews in isolation—such as those in Cochin before the arrival of the Dutch—still held to Jewish customs and practices.61 Perhaps rooted in his own sense of self and personal history, and similar to De Pinto’s earlier approach, he devotes special attention to the strength of the Sephardic tradition.62 He refers to Ezra, the Maccabees, Josephus, the “author of the Mishnah” (Judah ha-Nasi), the Amoraim, Karaites, and Maimonides. He marshals these fĳigures and their deeds to reveal that the preservation of the Jewish people and their religion in the face of persecution is nothing short of miraculous and an irrefutable proof of God’s providence:63

The prediction of Moses of the conservation of the Jews, their captivity, their sufffering, their dispersion, their contemptible situation among the nations, and their preservation, is so clear; [. . .] that philosophers must be voluntarily blind not to see it [. . .]. But, the philosophers have exerted their greatest strength against miracles, and their possibility.64

Decordova concludes his discussion of God’s role in Jewish history by exposing the universality of revelation. Though God’s role in specifĳically Jewish history

58 Ibid., 146.59 Ibid., 147.60 Ibid.61 Ibid., 148–149. Decordova’s example.62 See footnote in Decordova, Reason and Faith (1791), 149.63 Ibid., 152.64 Ibid., 150–151.



serves as proof of his providence, his goodness, and providential interaction with humanity should lead us to also:

[. . .] destroy natural antipathies and human prejudices, and to believe that all men, who, with sincerity, travel towards God and salvation, will

arrive at the same point, though they should take diffferent roads that God is neither Briton, Frank, Hebrew, Turk, or Indian; that he has created all men, and is willing to save them all.65

He cites several biblical and rabbinic proof texts to support this position of universal morality and universal revelation.

If God’s love and his revelation are universal, why then should one continue to hold to a specifĳic religion? Here, again, he bolsters a view of Jewish cultural supremacy that seemingly undermines his early discussion of universal reli-gion. All that is good and godly among the Christians and the Muslims derives from the unique relationship of God to the Jews. Christianity, derived from Judaism, spread the knowledge of God among idolaters. The Christian martyrs died for their belief in the unity of God. The “true philosophers” (identifĳied by Decordova as Newton, Clarke, and Locke) all championed the unity of God. He devotes a whole paragraph to praise his contemporary ecclesiastical coun-terpart Theophilus Lindsey and his Unitarian movement, quoting Lindsey’s rejection of the trinity verbatim.66 Here again, Decordova’s own relationship to a Sephardic past comes to the fore when he suggests that the Spanish and Portuguese alone “remain, to this day, the most addicted to the adoration of their images” yet, even still, they too played an important role in spreading the true nature of God to the indigenous inhabitants of the West Indies.67

Decordova is not a historian, a philosopher, or a chronicler. He had little interest in history as such, but rather only as an organic part of his larger the-ology, found in the fĳirst part of Reason and Faith. He thus is able to combine a discussion of the Jewish past with a discussion of the Jewish future without dissonance. He adopts a Maimonidean position that future reward is a spiri-tual reward, bringing his initial discussion of spiritual pain and pleasure in the fĳirst part of the treatise full circle. However, facing the same conundrum as Maimonides, he also holds the resurrection of the dead—a seemingly physical reward—as a central tenet of his larger theology. He even brings in Locke to suggest that it is more reasonable that God would reanimate life rather than

65 Ibid., 160. Emphasis Decordova’s.66 Ibid., 167.67 Ibid.

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animate it. Though it is absent from Scripture, reason alone mandates a future state beyond the physical world. This belief in immortality of the soul, accord-ing to Decordova, like all other honorable principles of the Western tradition, is a gift from the Jews. Belief in the immortality of the soul is universal, as it is a consequence of belief in God more than a direct revelation from God. After mining biblical sources for the faintest allusion to this essential principle, he holds that the biblical account lacks a discussion of an afterlife because God tasked Moses to lead the Israelites through example rather than instill fear in eternal punishment.68

Though the nature of a future state was unknown even to Moses, belief in its existence is the only sustainable way for order to be maintained in this world. Happiness, that universal human goal so prized among eighteenth-century thinkers, is derived from belief in ultimate reward and punishment:

The hope of a future state, is the greatest comfort a good man can have in this miserable and wretched life: it is that, which will help him to bear, with resignation, his misfortunes, his losses, his sickness—even death will appear trifling to him, when he is assured that it is only the means of translating him the enjoyments of a better, a glorious, and eternal life.69

In his concluding chapter Decordova continues his commitment to universal religion and expresses a hope that through knowledge of God, his goodness, his providence, and the timelessness of the rewards, all men will share equally in the eventual messianic deliverance.

Reader, you are at liberty—You may, or you may not, choose, but, remem-ber the certainty of this, that if you are the unbeliever, you can never expect to enjoy a life to come, and you run a great risk of destroying your-self in the present; but, if you are a believer, you can never destroy your-self in the present, and you have the greatest probability of enjoyment in the future.70

Decordova’s view of history is one bound up in a sense of Jewish supremacy. He is caught between a dual tendency to make a claim that the Jews are the true progenitors of Western civilization as it is known and cherished among the modern philosophers, and his commitment to the eighteenth-century

68 Ibid., 173.69 Ibid., 177.70 Ibid., 179.



principle of universal religion, universal morality, and shared human experi-ence. For Decordova the preservation of Jews and Judaism stands as proof of God’s providence but not necessarily of the Jews’ choseness.

6 Conclusion

Reason and Faith is among the only rabbinic treatments of the Enlightenment. Decordova appears similar to his European contemporaries, the maskilim, and even Mendelssohn himself (though there is no reason to think he read the works of the Berlin maskilim) in his engagement with the thought of modern philosophers, his privileging of human reason, and belief in the universality of revelation. In that sense, Decordova stands at the margins, both geographically and intellectually, of what has been categorized as the Religious Enlightenment.71 Yet, at the same time, despite his legitimization of the Religious Enlightenment, he perhaps resembles more his rabbinic coun-terpart in Prague, Ezekiel Landau, in his concern for the deleterious efffects of “modern philosophy,” which for Decordova meant the French Enlightenment. Decordova thus belongs to a broader trend among European rabbinic person-alities during the 1790s who sought to offfset the damage to Jewish faith from the Enlightenment and from the maskilim.72 Though, unlike other rabbinic opponents of the Enlightenment, he never fully rejected its fundamental fĳidel-ity to reason. Indeed, pure reason, according to Decordova, leads inevitably to knowledge of God. Decordova undoubtedly found this to be a safe position with ample rabbinic precedents.

Decordova displayed a thorough knowledge of the Enlightenment in order to refute it. In a sense, his counter-Enlightenment was in itself a strain of Enlightenment thinking, as the rejection of modernity is in itself a unique form of modernity.73 As such, Decordova ultimately blurs the boundaries between Religious Enlightenment, Haskalah, and Counter-Enlightenment. Though beyond the scope of this limited treatment, Decordova’s Reason and

71 On the Religious Enlightenment see David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment:

Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 2008).

72 On the rabbinic Counter-Enlightenment of the 1790s see Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish

Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 342–151.73 On this type of Counter-Enlightenment see Darrin McMahon, Enemies of the

Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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Faith certainly also raises new and important questions about the nature of Enlightenment in the colonial Americas.

Like the author himself, the readers of Reason and Faith were not intended to be philosophers, but rather a popular audience of synagogue-, and later, churchgoers struggling to keep their faith while flirting with the idea of the Enlightenment. Decordova served a community that was already steeped in the trends of the Enlightenment on a popular level, as is demonstrated by pro-fĳiling his subscribers, and already widely acculturated to the social norms of life in the colonial tropics.74 He therefore could not have expected to promote his rejection of Enlightenment among Jamaican Jews without offfering some concessions to it. He challenged the “popular Enlightenment” of his congre-gants by producing what was in efffect a work of “popular Enlightenment.” Reason and Faith integrated both philosophy and Jewish history in a distinctly rabbinic attempt to promote the truth of divine revelation and providence for a specifĳically Jamaican Jewish audience.

74 On non-intellectual acculturation in the eighteenth-century English speaking world see the classic work of Todd Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 1714–1830: Tradition and

Change in a Liberal Society (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979; repr. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999). See also the recent work of Shmuel Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). For Feiner’s nuanced approach to Decordova’s Reason and Faith see p. 192. Feiner is the only historian to mention Reason and Faith with-out referring to it as apologia. He describes Reason and Faith as an “anti-deist theological book that was remarkable in its time.”

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The Hakham Joshua Hezekiah Decordova and a Rabbinic Counter Enlightenment from Colonial Jamaica

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