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- 80 ACRES OF FUN! 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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. 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