Charleston Jews Celebrate 200th Anniversary of Their Community; Program to Last All Week

Americans of all faiths will join the Jewish population here this week-end in celebrating the 200th anniversary of organized Jewish life in Charleston. The week-long celebration will start on Sunday and will continue through November 26.

The celebration will be highlighted by a banquet with Rear Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, a leading member of the American Jewish Committee, as the main speaker. Special religious services will be conducted by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver. For these services the congregations of Charleston’s four synagogues–Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, B’rith Sholom, Beth Israel, and Emann-El–will gather in Beth Elohim, in recognition of the fact that this synagogue, the oldest in Charleston and the second oldest in the United States, is celebrating the 200th anniversary of its founding.

While the earliest mention of Jews in Charleston is in a letter by Governor Archdale dated 1695–in which he wrote of a Spanish-speaking Jew who acted as his interpreter in dealing with a group of Spanish-speaking Indians from Florida–Jewish pioneers actually settled there soon after the founding of the colony in 1670.

Aside from their community religious life, the history of the Jewish community of Charleston is the history of Charleston and of the United States. Joseph Levy, who fought as a lieutenant in the Cherokee War of 1760, was probably the first Jewish officer in America. Francis Salvador, who came from England to Charleston before the Revolution, was a Deputy to the Provincial Congress of South Carolina in 1775, and as such one of the first Jews to hold elective office in the Western world. A plaque to the memory of this Revolutionary hero, the first Jew to die in defense of the United States, will be dedicated on Monday, Nov. 20, under the cooperating auspices of the Charleston Historic Commission, City Council and other patriotic organizations.

The Confederacy, too, had its Jewish notables from Charleston, such as Judah P. Benjamin, who served as Secretary of State; Dr. David C. Deleon, its first Surgeon-General, and A.C. Mayers, first Quarter-master General. An integral part of Charleston history, Charlestonian Jews played prominent roles in all phases of its development. The indigo industry, Charleston’s greatest before the Revolution, was introduced by a Jewish merchant, Moses Lindon, who came from London, to settle in the New World. Isaac DaCosta was a member of Charleston’s King Solomon Masonic Lodge in 1753; among the nine Charleston founders of the Supreme Council of Scottish Rite Masonry in 1801, four were Jews.