An Historic Work: Mystery of Isaac Gomez
guished Jewish families in early
America, he was obviously a
man of uncommon culture and
breeding. At the time of his birth
1768, the Gomez clan had al-
ready been living in New York
for four generations. In the
1720s, they had probably been
the wealthiest and best-known
Jewish merchant-shippers on the
continent. The stone fortress-like
Indian trading post which they
built around 1720 in the Devil's
Dance Chamber country not far
from the Hudson River still
stands and is the oldest existing
building in North America erect-
ed and once occupied by Jews.
In 1820, Isaac Gomez Jr., a New
York Jew, published a 408-page
book called "Selections of a Father
for the Use of His Children: In
Prose and in Verse." Why had
Gomez gone to such trouble? Prob-
ably to help raise American cul-
tural standards. The very year his
book appeared, European literati
were suggesting acidly that Gomez'
fellow Americans had "done abso-
lutely nothing for the sciences, for
the arts, for literature." "Who."
said Sydney Smith in the Edin-
burgh Review, "reads an Amer-
ican book or goes to an American
play or looks at an American plc-
ture or statue?" Gomez sent a
copy of his "Selections" to ex:
President John Adams and receiv-
ed a glowing answer: "The book
has solid merit, and I wish it were
in the hands of every child who
can read it. To me it shall be a
manual on my table."
What sort of book was Gomez'
"Selections?" Typical of its time,
it was an anthology dealing with
almost every conceivable subject
— a one-volume encyclopedia of
knowledge containing everything
that an educated young person of
the early 1800s was expected to
know. There were prose and poe-
tical selections on all the arts and
sciences, on minerals, chemicals,
astronomy, and of course on litera-
ture. There was even a passage on
seduction. Classical antiquity —
Aristotle. Socrates, Plato, Epicte-
tus—received the place of honor,
but Shakespeare, Pope, and a good
many others also made brief ap-
pearances on Gomez' intellectual
stage, sonorously thundering their
declamations before retiring to the
Gomez himself, unlike his fore-
bears, was no successful business-
man. By the time he appeared on
the scene, his family, though still
aristocratic enough, no longer had
great wealth. Long after their
wealth faded away, however, the
Gomezes themselves were to re-
main enshrined in myth and le-
gend. During the Revolution, it is
said, one of them spoke to a mem-
ber of the Continental Congress
and volunteered to raise a com-
pany of soldiers. When it was
pointed out to him that he was too
old to fight, he answered stoutly
that he could stop a bullet as well
as a younger man. Is there any
truth to the tale? Gotthard Deut-
sch, the first professor of Jewish
history at the Hebrew Union Col-
lege, used to remind his students:
"The fact that a story may be
true is no reason why it is not
true!" In any case, we do know
that some of the older members
of the family, ardent patriots,
quit British-occupied New York for
Philadelphia, where they died and
still lie buried in the Spruce Street
Cemetery.
Isaac, Jr.. must have been well
educated. He wrote prose — and
poetry of a sort — and cultivated
the literary arts. Very fond of his
wife Abigail, the daughter of the
pre-Revolutionary Newport tycoon
Aaron Lopez, he coped out for her
in long hand an English transla-
tion of the daily prayers. When he
sent the manuscript to his "Ange-
lic Wife • " he added: "Did I pos-
sess the riches of Peru. my great-
est happiness would be to lay them
at your feet." Five years earlier,
Isaac had called on the Marquis de
wings.
Who was Isaac Gomez Jr.? A
scion of one of the most distin-
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in Detroit:
I. J. Goldstein
25839 Southwood
356-7555
Lafayette, who was then visiting
the United States. Gomez sent La-
fayette a copy of his "Selections,"
but he wanted to give the Marquis
something more. In 1824, when
Gomez was presented with al
grandson. he named the child in
honor of the distinguished French-
20—Friday, April 2S, 1969
TIE DETROIT
Seattle Residents Protest Arab Treatment of Jews
SEATTLE (JTA) — Twenty-two
It urged "that persons imprison-
Jewish organizations and congre- ed in those countries because they
gations and the Catholic Archdio- are Jews or members of ether
cese of Seattle joined in a com- minorities be released."
munity protest here against the
treatment of Jews and other min-
orities in the Arab states.
man. The child grew up as Gomez' The protest meeting was held
under the auspices of the Jewish
Lafayette Emanuel.
Amazingly enough, Gomez in-
cluded in his book not even one
quotation from the English Bible
or from Jewish literature. The
only reference to Jews in his
"Selections" is an excerpt from
Gregorio Leti's "Life of Pope
Sixtus V" which shows that the
original Shylock had been a
Christian. not a Jew, and that
the Jew had been the victim.
Why did Gomez exclude Jewish
material? Certainly he could
have cited the Bible. His rela-
tive, the publisher and booksel-
ler Benjamin Gomez, could have
supplied him with a number of
English works containing ethical
and moral chapters of Jewish
content. Was Isaac an "assimila-
tionist?" By no means. A mem-
ber of New York's Spanish and
Portuguese congregation, he was
a truly pious Orthodox Jew, very
much concerned about the die-
tary laws and observant in every
sense of the term. Had he fear-
ed that the inclusion of Jewish
material would prejudice the
book's sale? The matter remains
a mystery.
A copy of Isaac Gomez' book is
to be seen in Cincinnati. in the
Dalsheimer Rare Book Wing of
the Hebrew Union College Library.
and considerable material on his '
remarkable family may be foUnd
in the American Jewish Archives.,
Dr. Jacob R. Marcus is the direc-I
for of the Archives. which is locat-
ed on the Cincinnati campus of the
Hebrew Union College-Jewish In-
stitute of Religion.
Bormann's Existence
Given Credence by
Writer's Disclosure
OSLO — The diary of Hitler de-
puty Martin Bormann was found
recently in Moscow. according to a
Russian novelist interviewed here.
He said further that Bormann
could have escaped Berlin with-
out difficulty on May 2. 1945.
Author Lev Bezymensky said
Bormann's diary for early 1945
was found among documents cap-
tured by the Russians. Asked about
Bormann's alleged survival in
South America, Bezymensky said:
"He had every possibility of get-
ting through the Soviet ring
around Berlin on the evening of
May 2. We did not know his face."
300 Survivors to Say
Yarzeit at Bergen-Belsen
NEW YORK (JTA) — The 25th
anniversary of the liberation of the
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
will be marked in June next year
with a pilgrimage of more than
300 survivors to the unmarked
graves of the martyred dead of
the Holocaust.
The plan was announced by Jo-
seph Rosensaft, president of the
worldwide Federation of Bergen-
Belsen associations, at a celebra-
tion here by survivors of the 24th
anniversary. He said the survivors
would return to Germany, some
for the first time since liberation,
"to say a Yarzeit for our dead
brethren" as part of the campaign
to make sure the world did not
forget the Six Million. Rabbi
Joachim Prinz, speaking at the
meeting, denounced the "conspir-
acy of science" he said seemed to
be developing over the Holocaust.
Rabbi to Tackle 'Portnoy'
Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine will re-
view "Portnoy's Complaint" by
Phillip Roth 8:30 p.m. Monday for
the spring literary series of Birm-
ingham Temple at Birmingham
Unitarian Church. For further in-
formation, call Joyce Bacher, 626-
8009, or Priscilla Molnar, 626-2097.
JEWISH NEWS
and Council of Greater
Seattle. A resolution, copies of
which were sent to President Rich-
ard M. Nixon and United Nations
Secretary-General U Thant, called
on the United States and "all other
civilized nations to express in the
strongest possible terms their ab-
horrence of the practices of the
governments of Iraq, Syria and
the United Arab Republic in sys-
Federation
tematically depriving their Jewish
citizens and, in some cases, other
minorities, of fundamental human
rights such as freedom of their
persons and property."
Brandeis to Give Awards
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WALTHAM — Brandeis Univer-
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during the 13th annual presentation 19630
banquet at the Plaza in New York Woodward
City May 5.
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