Pilgrims to the Past: Lydia Marie Childe and Walt Whitman Visit the Crosby Street Synagogue

• In Event: Materializing and Performing Jewishness in 19th Century America

Abstract

When Shearith Israel Congregation moved into its third home in Manhattan in 1834, New Yorkers were already accustomed to the idea that actual Jews lived in their midst. Nevertheless, Jewish identity was shrouded in mystery, and the religious practices of Jews, in particular, were a source of fascination, wonder, and some foreboding. At a time when the Second Great Awakening had placed the Hebrew Bible at the center of public culture, many New Yorkers were eager to learn how much their Jewish neighbors resembled the Israelites of the Bible. Curiosity about Jews was further amplified by the rise of well-publicized missionary efforts aimed at Jews. In this prestation, I explore journalistic writings by abolitionist Lydia Marie Childe and poet Walt Whitman, both of whom visited the Crosby Street Synagogue in the early 1840s and published lengthy articles about their experiences in the newspapers they edited (the NATIONAL ANTI-SLAVERY STANDARD and NEW YORK AURORA). These writings reveal how two politically progressive writers hoped to make Jewishness legible to their Christian readers. The key rhetorical strategy they use involves linking present-day Jews to their alleged biblical precedents; a resonant image in both articles is that of Jews as “remnants” of a once-mighty nation. Hence, in these quasi-ethnographic texts, the Jews of Crosby Street are positioned simultaneously in two spatio-temporal frames (modern-day New York City and the ancient Near East), coding Child and Whitman as “pilgrims to the past.” While these writings express some misgivings about Judaism, I argue that their overall effect is to generate sympathy towards the Jews of Crosby Street. As such, these journalistic pieces participate in an emerging antebellum public culture that will prove largely hospitable to Jewish immigrants arriving from Central Europe. More generally, they also shed light on the roles played by the Penny Press in situating marginal social identities, such as Jewishness, within the broader currents of American society.

Author

• Julian Levinson, University of Michigan