February 28 • 2019 35
jn
A
preponderance of research
indicates that Hamilton was a
Jew,
” says Andrew Porwancher,
a legal historian and associate professor
at the University of Oklahoma who is
writing The Jewish Life of Alexander
Hamilton, a working title under con-
tract with the Harvard University Press
to be published as early as January 2020.
Porwancher, who earned a Ph.D.
at Cambridge and a fellowship at
Yeshiva University in New York,
points to evidence that Hamilton’
s
mother, Rachel Faucett, a French
Huguenot, converted to Judaism
when she married Danish merchant
Johann Michael Lavien (a variant of
Levine) on the island of St. Croix in
1745. At the time, marriage was pro-
hibited between Christians and Jews.
She soon left him and began living
with James Hamilton, bearing him two
illegitimate sons. Alexander, the young-
est, was born in 1755, before Lavien
divorced her.
While some biographers question
Lavien’
s Jewish heritage, “his name
appears in a variety of spellings consis-
tent with the way Jews were permitted
to spell their surnames in the 18th-cen-
tury Caribbean,
” Porwancher says. “
And
Hamilton’
s own grandson referred to
Lavien as a ‘
rich Danish Jew.
’
”
Porwancher asserts Rachel was
legally still Jewish after her separation
from Lavien because “according to the
Talmud, if a gentile woman converts to
Judaism and goes back to her gentile
ways, she is still considered Jewish in
the eyes of Jewish law.
”
When Hamilton was a young boy
on Nevis, his mother enrolled him in a
Jewish school, where he studied Torah
from a Jewess by learning the Ten
Commandants in the original Hebrew,
Porwancher says.
Some skeptics maintain Hamilton
went to a Jewish school because he was
illegitimate and thus not allowed in a
Christian school, but, says Porwancher,
“there’
s a talmudic prohibition against
Jews teaching non-Jews the Torah.
”
Porwancher, raised in a Conservative
Jewish home, began investigating
Hamilton’
s religious affiliations in 2014,
and traveled abroad for his research
to Nevis, St. Croix, London and
Copenhagen. “I explored sources in a
wide array of languages and reviewed
thousands of documents from the
Danish West Indies.
”
What particularly struck Porwancher
was that after Hamilton arrived in New
York City, he became an outspoken sup-
porter of the Jews.
“Hamilton became an advocate in
court for nearly every leading Jewish
citizen in New York City,
” he notes.
“In one case, he had a couple of Jewish
witnesses, and the opposing counsel
attacked them purely on the basis of
their religion.
“Hamilton issued a scathing denun-
ciation of anti-Semitism in his closing
remarks before the highest court in the
state of New York. It was a legal perfor-
mance that his admirers considered to
be one of the most powerful and force-
ful of his entire illustrious legal career.
”
As an alumnus of what is now
Columbia University, Hamilton helped
institute the principle that non-Chris-
tians would be eligible for the col-
lege presidency. He was behind the
appointment of Gershom Seixas, the
first Jew appointed to the board of an
American college.
“He also found Jewish merchants to
be key partners in his plan to invigo-
rate the American financial system and
make the U.S. a major center of global
finance,” Porwancher says.
By the time Hamilton came to
America, he identified himself as a
Christian. “I suspect he abandons his
Jewish identity because Jews had sec-
ond-class religious status,” Porwancher
says.
“But, in nearly every realm of his
adult professional life, we can see
echoes from his exposure to Judaism
in childhood. One thing is for sure:
Hamilton had closer ties with the
Jewish community than any other
Founding Father.” ■
— Alice Burdick Schweiger
Hamilton
and the Jews
With the success
of Hamilton comes
speculation the Founding
Father may have been
Jewish.
Alexander Hamilton portrait
by John Trumbull
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