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DESCRIPTION] Touro Talks intro displaying photos of students and faculty across the university, fading into the Touro University logo.

[TEXT] Who was Judah Touro, December 14, 2021, Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish speaks to the camera from a library setting. A Touro University logo is on the bottom right of the screen.

[ALAN KADISH] Welcome, everyone. It's a pleasure to have you all here. And it's an even greater pleasure to have the individual, I think, who can rightly be described as the preeminent historian of American Jewish history. Jonathan D. Sarna is the university professor and Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis, where he directs the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies.

He also serves as the chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. Author or editor of hundreds of articles and more than 30 books on American Jewish history and life. His American Judaism, A History in 2004 won the Everett Jewish Book of the Year Award from the Jewish Book Council. His most recent books are Coming to Terms with America, published in 2021, and Lincoln and the Jews, A History, published in 2015. Welcome, Professor Sarna.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Jonathan D. Sarna joins.

[JONATHAN SARNA] Thank you. It's really a pleasure to be with you.

[ALAN KADISH] Thanks a lot. So Nahum Twersky mentioned that this is Touro's 50th anniversary, so we're very excited about that. Touro began in 1971 with a class of 35 undergraduate students and today has 19,000 students in four countries, five states, although the majority of our students are in the New York Metropolitan area. So we thought that the 50th anniversary, which really the celebration is really just beginning now, would be a great time to talk about, who was Judah Touro?

Perhaps I'll say a little bit more about this later, but as you hear about Judah Touro and his life, I think you'll get a sense of why my predecessor, Dr. Lander, [HEBREW], chose Judah Touro and his family as sort of a role model for what he hoped to build at Touro and why he chose that name.

So Professor Sarna, perhaps you could start by talking a little bit about the American Jewish community in the late 18th century and early 19th century, when Judah Touro, his father, and his brother lived. And then we can use that as a backdrop to begin talking about the Touro family in general and Judah Touro more specifically.

[JONATHAN SARNA] Sure, I'd be delighted to do that. Before I do, I'll point out how appropriate it is that the college, as you described it, is named for Touro. After all, he also came from poverty, had nothing. And by the time he passed away, he left a half a million dollars, which is really the equivalent of about 12 million or more in his will. So it's, in a sense, an appropriate parallel, rags to riches, as we celebrate Touro's 50th anniversary.

Now, Judah Touro was born in 1775, really just on the eve of the American Revolution. He is from an illustrious family. His father was the Hazzan in Newport, Hazzan meaning that he was the leader of the synagogue in Newport. Today that synagogue is called the Touro Synagogue. Of course, in his day, it had its original name, Jeshuat Israel.

It's worth remembering at the time of the American Revolution, there's somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 Jews in the whole United States. Jews tended to live in port cities from south to north-- Savannah, Charleston, Philadelphia, and New York, and Newport.

The Jews of Newport, many of them Sephardic-- Touro himself is from an Italian Jewish background. The Jews of Newport were largely merchants. And the most famous of them was Aaron Lopez.

Astonishingly, there were Jews in Newport like Aaron Lopez who themselves had escaped from the Iberian Peninsula having lived, in Lopez's case, for over 200 years as a secret Jew, a converso, a crypto Jew, and then escape to America, to the new world.

As soon as he arrives in Newport, he changes his name. No longer is he Duarte. He's now Aaron. And that's the background that the Touros know.

Of course, the American Revolution, not only did it largely destroy the community of Newport, but Hazzan Touro backed the wrong side from our perspective. He supported the British. He knew they'd been good to the Jews. Also, Newport's economy was really dependent on the trade on the Atlantic. That's why after the revolution, Newport's Jewish community and general community declined. So he supported England.

He has to leave Newport as a [INAUDIBLE]. For a time, he's in New York. But once the United States becomes independent, he has to leave. He goes to the Caribbean. It really finishes him. And he passes away after about a year.

And then his widow, Reyna Hays-- that's a very significant New World family, the Hayses. Reyna Hays comes back as a widow to Boston. And she lives with her brother, who-- his name is Moses. Michael Hays is one of the most important early Jews of Boston.

Fascinatingly, there's no real Jewish community, no synagogue in Boston. But we do have accounts of Moses Michael Hays being very scrupulous about his observance. And that's the home in which Judah Touro and his brother, whose name was Abraham, who's a little younger, they grew up.

And then Judah Touro, in his 20s, goes down to New Orleans, where he is going to try and make his fortune. His timing was excellent. He goes to New Orleans, surprisingly before the Louisiana Purchase. But within a few years, it becomes part of the United States. That's very good for business.

And Judah Touro, he's a commission merchant, and later he has a boat and in business. But unlike a lot of people in New Orleans who went up and down and would invest in things and rich for a minute and then lose it all, Judah Touro was a big believer in slow and steady growth, a bit like Touro College-- slow, steady growth and doesn't take big chances.

And he becomes really fabulously wealthy. He never--

[ALAN KADISH] Let me ask you one quick question before we talk about the riches part of the story. Do we know anything about his education?

[JONATHAN SARNA] The sense is that he didn't have much education. He would have loved the fact that he has a college named for him. Many people comment on how he wasn't well educated, and we have his will. He doesn't leave any books among his possessions.

Apparently, they were the poor cousins, literally, in the Hays family. And he never had the education that he would have liked, obviously. And we need to remember what education meant in those days, because you learned a lot simply from your parents, mimetically. But reading, writing, 'rithmetic, as they say, that he only had kind of elementary, rudimentary training.

He destroys all of his papers and letters, so there's much that we don't know, but there's no evidence that he was deeply into books or that he was writing works of great learning. This wasn't his way. What he did have, clearly, was a wonderful head for business and an ability to work extremely hard, single mindedly. And that served him very well.

[ALAN KADISH] So we're up to the point where he goes to New Orleans. He becomes a merchant and becomes wealthy. So I interrupted you. Please. Please, continue.

[JONATHAN SARNA] Yeah, well, I mean, as I say, he grows wealthy slowly. He invests in real estate. And that's a wonderful investment as New Orleans grows. And indeed, we actually have pictures of New Orleans. And you can see these many storage buildings, many lots that Judah Touro owned in wonderful areas, including much of the port.

I should say that a turning point in his life occurs in the War of 1812. People will remember it's called the War of 1812 because it lasted until 1815. And the last battle of the War of 1812, even after peace had been negotiated but they didn't know that, was the big Battle of New Orleans.

And in the Battle of New Orleans, Judah Touro is very seriously wounded. And his life is saved by a non-Jew named Rezin Shepherd.

And that seems to be a turning point in the sense that he turns inward. He becomes much more eccentric and reclusive but continues, of course, to build his fortune. Now, as Judah Touro ages--

[ALAN KADISH] So let me interrupt you. Let me interrupt you for one second. So tell us a little bit, how large was the New Orleans Jewish community? Was there a synagogue? Did he start a synagogue?

[JONATHAN SARNA] Oh, good. So it's not a huge community. And when we think of New Orleans, it's full of-- the Jews who are there, many of them are deeply assimilated.

There is a-- often called a rabbi, although he was not ordained really, Marks, who engages in all sorts of antics that are known at the time. And people say this is a rabbi. Most of the community was not Sabbath observant.

There is a synagogue, Shangarai Chasset, with an unusual spelling, which reflects the guttural 'Ayin' N-G that was pronounced by Jews there. He, Judah Touro, was not a big contributor to that synagogue, nor was he deeply philanthropic for most of his life.

But as he moves toward the end of his life, things change. We see him give a major donation to the finish the Bunker Hill monument in Boston. He had relatives in Boston. He remained close to Boston. And his birthday was the original battle of Bunker Hill. And he knew it.

And so he gives the money to build the Bunker Hill-- to finish the Bunker Hill monument. And it is memorialized in a poem attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, the father, the poet, who was so impressed that a Jew and a Christian together build and complete the Bunker Hill monument.

And then we see that Judah Touro, as he ages, moves into his 70s, he becomes more and more observant. A Sephardic synagogue, reflecting the tradition of his father, is built largely with his money, and it's named for him, [HEBREW].

It's actually a very interesting name because the original name of the Touro Synagogue, before Jeshuat Israel, was [HEBREW]. Whether they knew that is not clear. But in any case, he not only builds that synagogue in seven days, I guess, knowing that he was not long before he'd be seeing his maker, he starts regularly attending it.

He brings a rabbi. And actually, one of the very few documents we have from Touro, he writes that he makes clear that he doesn't work and indeed doesn't write on the Jewish Sabbath, all reflecting his status. I guess today we'd say he became a [HEBREW], a born-again Jew, returned to Judaism as he got older.

Rabbis can still tell stories today of people who rediscover their faith in old age. And that's what happens to Judah Touro.

[ALAN KADISH] So let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question about the name of the synagogue, [HEBREW]. So do you want to translate that and tell us what you think-- where that came from and what it means?

[JONATHAN SARNA] All of these names of early America-- of course, Yehuda was a play on the name Judah. But early American synagogues, whether it's Shearith Israel or Mikveh Israel or Jeshuat Israel and even [HEBREW], they all have messianic names.

When you go back to the biblical text, you see that they chose a name that drew from the hope that the Messiah was coming. And the reason for that is that Menasseh Ben Israel, one of the great Jewish leaders in Europe at the time, the great Sephardic rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel, put forth in a book called Mikveh, The Hope of Israel, that the reason the Messiah hadn't come was that Jews are supposed to spread to all four corners of the world, and they hadn't done that before because it was this corner of the New World they didn't know about.

But now that Jews are beginning to spread to the New World, certainly the Messiah is near. And there's little doubt that in Newport, messianic speculation was rife.

Once, there was a tremendous thunderstorm. Most people go inside in a thunderstorm. The Jews opened the window and cried out for the Messiah, reflecting an old tradition that Jews, when the Messiah comes, will be taken upon clouds back to the land of Israel. And they were expecting that the Messiah would come soon.

[ALAN KADISH] So this was a sort of worldwide-- I mean, first of all, I think it tells us that predictions about the future are always tough, particularly when it comes to the Messiah, because Menasseh Ben Israel was a great scholar.

[JONATHAN SARNA] Oh, a great scholar. Look, Jews had been expelled from Spain. The only way you could explain that and continue to be a deep believer was that these are the birth pangs of the Messiah. And that gave meaning to the expulsion. And many Sephardic Jews, not just in the New World, really engaged in messianic speculation. That, of course, helps us to understand why you would have a false Messiah, like Sabbatai Zevi.

[ALAN KADISH] Sure.

[JONATHAN SARNA] People were indeed expecting the Messiah, and so they fell prey to a false--

[ALAN KADISH] So you think the American Jewish community was just part of this worldwide movement that believed they were in messianic times? There was nothing they saw about America that somehow they thought was special?

It's a fascinating question. We do know that around the American Revolution, people like Gershom Seixas, who kind of distantly related to Judah Touro, believed that the Messiah was going to come. He did various mathematical calculations and believed that the revolution, which, of course, were difficult times, that this too was part of the birth pangs of the Messiah, that Messiah would come quickly. That, too, didn't end up too well.

[JONATHAN SARNA] By the way, it wasn't unique to Jews. There were also Christians who had their own traditions suggesting that the Messiah was coming. And we see a lot of that leading up to a huge messianic year for Jews and Christians in 1840, when many people around the world, through biblical calculations, believed the Messiah was coming.

Some of them sold their property and even climbed up on the roof because they knew the day. But as you say, prophecy is very difficult, especially about the future. And it didn't turn out as they had hoped.

I can't prove that they called it [HEBREW] for that reason. It may simply have been in tribute to Judah Touro. But it is very striking that so many New World synagogues bear messianic names. The most popular of all the names was indeed Mikveh Israel, and that was the name of Menasseh Ben Israel's book, Mikveh Israel, The Hope of Israel. And what was that hope? That hope really was the coming of the Messiah and the restoration of Jews to the land of Israel.

[ALAN KADISH] Well, maybe it was just a long gestational period.

[JONATHAN SARNA] I hope. From your mouth to God's ears.

[ALAN KADISH] So let's get back to-- you talked about Judah Touro, as he got older, became closer to both Judaism and became a philanthropist supporting the Jewish community. So how large was the community at that time? Do we know? Was it several dozen families? A few hundred? How large?

[JONATHAN SARNA] It's not huge. By the time of his death-- I would need to look it up-- but the Jewish community in Louisiana is growing. At the time of his death, it's over a hundred.

Of course, New Orleans is full of intermarried Jews. And it also is an interesting place later because after France loses Alsace to Germany, there were many people, including many Jews, who left. They couldn't bear not to be under the French Jews of Metz, for example.

And of course, New Orleans, which was still very French, was an inviting place. And if you go to the Jewish cemetery in New Orleans-- unfortunately, it was damaged in Hurricane Katrina, but I was there before then. And one of the very striking features that you do not find elsewhere is all sorts of Jewish tombstones where all they have on them is the name of the city, like Metz, where they had come from, as if they wanted you to remember for eternity that they were good Jews from Metz and so forth.

And so the population grows as we move toward Judah Touro's last years. And the whole phenomenon of Alsatian Jews in that part of the United States has just begun to be studied.

[ALAN KADISH] You raise a fascinating question, a fascinating issue, which is that even at the time, it's very clear that Jewish identity was complex. So these Jews from Alsace obviously were proud Jews, but yet they associated themselves with a European town which they had to leave.

So this issue in the United States of how to incorporate our Jewish identity and the identity of us around us-- and of course, they really had three different identities, right? They had their European identity-- as did many more recent immigrants, they had their European identity, they had their Jewish identity, and then they were trying to figure out how to incorporate--

[JONATHAN SARNA] All of it. And I mean, the fascinating thing, of course, for a scholar of American Jewry is that, in many ways, New Orleans is sui generis. I mean, in Louisiana, in the United States, partly because of the French influence-- and I mean, even today, it's divided into what they call parishes, a reminder that it's very Catholic.

And of course, it had been under France. For a long time, Jews were not allowed to live-- prior to it becoming part of the United States, prior to the Louisiana Purchase, at least on the books, Jews were not supposed to live there. If you read the Code Noir, it doesn't admit Jews. And there were people like, a very famous name, the Monsantos, who that company still exists.

The Monsantos seemed to have lived as crypto covert Jews under the French.

[ALAN KADISH] So tell us a little bit about the Code Noir. You referred to that obliquely. So what was the Code Noir?

[JONATHAN SARNA] Under the French, these were the rules that governed the community. And when you read that those laws, you realize that they included rules that limited severely the ability of Jews to live there.

After all, it was a Catholic place. And of course, for a time, it's also under Spain. And certainly, Jews couldn't live there, because all Jews had been expelled from a Spanish territory. So it had a kind of interesting history.

On the other hand, because New Orleans has a very considerable Black population, many of them slaves, but also what were called free women of color, Jews were accepted as part of the white population.

And by the Civil War, we see Jews who are, like Judah Benjamin, senators in Louisiana. And you had governor and lieutenant governor. And each one of them had married a non-Jew, but people knew that they were partly Jewish, and they were accepted in the community.

So it's a kind of unique place. We don't know that much about the interactions with Judah Touro. We know the most, and there is a wonderful letter, now part of the Arnie Kaplan collection at the University of Pennsylvania, and I think it can actually be seen online because that collection has very recently been digitized-- by a man named Gershom Kursheedt.

And Gershom Kursheedt, who was actually the grandson of the greatest Jewish religious leader of the Revolutionary era, whose name was Gershom Seixas-- so Gershom Kursheedt was named for him. Gershom Kursheedt, who was also very friendly with the great traditional Jewish leader of Philadelphia, Isaac Leeser, he is the intermediary who tries to persuade Judah Touro to create a will that will strengthen Jewish life and strengthen Jewish education, in particular.

And indeed, Touro certainly didn't know all of these institutions. We know that list of institutions was heavily the work of Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia. And Kursheedt says, he's a hard man to deal with, and he's somewhat peculiar, and he's indecisive, and I don't want to push him too far because who knows where it will go? But it would have been a good fundraiser for Touro-- Gershom Kursheedt because, in the end, he succeeded.

[ALAN KADISH] So why don't you tell us a little bit more about these people. So you have Gershom Kursheedt and Leeser. So tell us a little bit more about them.

[JONATHAN SARNA] Sure. Isaac Leeser is the most important traditional Jewish religious leader, really, until his death in the 1860s. Isaac Leeser, who, like Judah Touro, never marries, he is single mindedly devoted to Jewish education and the strengthening of Jewish life.

He starts out at Mikveh Israel, the Sephardic congregation in Philadelphia, though Leeser himself is an Ashkenazi Jew. He was a pupil of Rabbi Sutro. And Leeser is most famous for The Occident, which today you can see online.

This is the first significant Jewish publication, a monthly for a time, a weekly in the United States. And Leeser understands this new invention, the printing press, can really bring Jewish life to all sorts of places where Jews don't have rabbis and teachers. And in many cases, you might only have one or two Jews. And they can study and preserve an attachment to Judaism through this Occident. And we know that Judah Touro received The Occident.

In addition, Isaac Leeser published prayer books. It's really actually a magnificent set of prayer books, very high-quality printing, much better than later East European early prayer books in terms of their quality of printing. And Isaac Leeser also produces, for the very first time anywhere, a Jewish translation of the Bible, the Leeser Bible, which before the Jewish Publication Society translation, everybody used Isaac Leeser's translation.

And that meant that Jews didn't have to read the Tanakh, read the Bible through Christian eyes of the King James Bible. They could read a Bible of their own, interpreted against the background of Jewish tradition and in the order that the Jews number the books.

And Isaac Leeser was a tremendously significant figure, also deeply devoted to Jewish education. The Hebrew Education Society was one of Isaac Leeser's many institutions.

And at the very end of his life, Isaac Leeser found a rabbinical college. It doesn't go very far. It ordains a few people. But unfortunately, he died, and everybody has sort of forgotten it.

But in any case, Isaac Leeser understands that this is a way to strengthen Jewish life by getting Judah Touro to really give money to these Jewish institutions so that they can strengthen their educational commitments, strengthen their religious commitments.

And Judah Touro, when he dies in 1854, leaves the most generous will to that time in America, Jews and u It's in every newspaper. Indeed, it was even in The New York Times, I think on the front page.

And I think the sense was to really help persuade Americans to be generous. He didn't have a wife and children. He gives all of his money to different institutions. Some of them are general institutions. So for example, there is a hospital in New Orleans known as the Touro Infirmary. I think to this day-- next to a hospital-- which, for many years, was enormously important in giving health care to the poor.

And that was really funded by Touro. He gives money in my neck of the woods to Massachusetts General Hospital, where his brother also had given money and where his portrait hung. He gives Jewishly a lot of money not only to institutions but also to preserve his father's place of worship, what we know as the Touro synagogue.

His brother, who also gave a philanthropic will-- his brother Abraham died almost 30 years earlier and had done a philanthropic will and preserved the Touro Synagogue. He gives more money to preserve it. Little known is that the Touro Synagogue is the first piece of historic preservation in the whole history of the United States. And even though there weren't many Jews in Newport, thanks to this fund, the synagogue is preserved, and we have it and many visited to this day. And the cemetery is likewise preserved.

And indeed, Judah Touro makes provisions for the cemetery and asks to be buried with his own relatives in Newport. And we know that his body is transferred to Newport. He died in winter, so it took some time before they could do that. But it is buried, and anybody who goes to Newport can see the grave of Judah Touro.

And there is a very handsome kind of obelisk in the graveyard memorializing him. It is the tallest one. So he was a role model. And I'm sure that's why they wanted to name Touro College for him-- a kind of role model of generosity, of money and philanthropy to Jew and Christian alike.

And indeed, it's really only after Judah Touro passes away that we see so many things named for him. And there's even a movement. It didn't go anywhere to build a statue to him in New Orleans, and a whole dispute about whether you can build a statue to a Jew. But the very fact that they thought about it. And in what country in the world would there have been a discussion of building a statue to a Jew?

But in the United States in the 1850s-- and it's worth remembering that the idea was to place it quite close to Henry Clay, one of the greatest statesmen of that era.

So in any case, Judah Touro becomes one of the best known and most respected Jews known to Jew and non-Jew for his philanthropy and for the many things that his money was able to accomplish, not just in the United States.

It's long forgotten, but he gave the money to build those houses that are in Jerusalem outside of the wall of the old city as part of the windmill, known in Hebrew as Mishkenot Sha'ananim.

If you go and look carefully, you can see that there is a street named for Judah Touro, misspelled both in English and Hebrew. But he funded those houses. And indeed, much effort was made because it wasn't so easy to get the money to Jerusalem. Moses Montefiore oversaw much of the spending.

But this was, again, I think, an indication that American Jews still believed in the restoration and wanted to create a place where poor Jews-- today, rich Jews stay at Mishkenot. Originally, it was for poor Jews, for poor Jews who would be housed and supported.

And Judah Touro-- and then your next question-- but Judah Touro always remembered the poor. He knew what it was like to be poor and a refugee. And you can really see in his philanthropy how that memory and that trauma continued to shape his life until the very end.

[ALAN KADISH] So you alluded to how Judah Touro was picked to be the name of the Touro College and University system. And I think in the history you've provided, you embodied a lot of it. And let me just tell you a little bit more about the founder and how I think a lot of the points you made are absolutely right about how Judah Touro became important to Dr. Lander.

So Dr. Lander was a fascinating and extraordinarily talented guy. He was a sociologist, was a member of the precursor of the first New York City Civil Rights Commission, was a congregational rabbi and an academic administrator, all in an amazing career. He was actually the rabbi of a synagogue in Baltimore when he was 23 years old. So he was an amazing prodigy.

And in starting Touro, he really started it with a dual mission. One was to preserve the Jewish heritage. And the amazing philanthropy that you talked about that Judah Touro begins, which was revolutionary, so to speak, in its time, about close to half of the money he gave away was to preserve the Jewish heritage, in synagogues and schools. And that was really one of the things that Dr. Lander hoped for in starting the Touro College and University system.

But the other piece was, particularly with his work as a sociologist and his work with the poor, he wanted to be sure that Touro also had a mission to help the underserved. And today we do that in health care with 8,000 health care students in the School of Social Work, in our law school. And a lot of those things which-- the kinds of things which Judah Touro gave to in the general community, not in the Jewish community-- you talked about hospitals. Actually, it was also one of the founding gifts that helped Mount Sinai Hospital in New York begin.

[JONATHAN SARNA] Known as Jews hospital, yeah.

[ALAN KADISH] At that time. But he gave money to hospitals and, as you mentioned, to memorials to the American Revolutionary War, perhaps doing a bit of [INAUDIBLE] for his father as well. And in that spirit of preserving the Jewish heritage, but also recognizing our more universal responsibility, was what Dr. Lander hoped to create when he started Touro.

And for the past 12 years, I've been lucky enough to try to help continue his work. But right now, we still consider that those basic missions the essential part of what Touro does in a lot of our schools and a lot of our areas. And that's why we're still proud to carry the name.

And I think that today, when philanthropy to universities, and to public institutions has become more ingrained in American culture, perhaps it doesn't seem as dramatic. But as you pointed out, at the time, there really wasn't an American tradition of doing this. And that's why his gifts-- you mentioned $12 million. There are other kinds of calculations which are a much higher number.

[JONATHAN SARNA] Much higher because the buying power was much higher.

[ALAN KADISH] At that time. But regardless, it was revolutionary in its own way. And that's what made him special and I think why we're proud to have his name. So let me just try to paraphrase a couple of the questions from the chat.

Sure. So one was-- and before saying that, when you think about his background as an autodidact, as coming from a family where the father was lost, having been in the Caribbean, it also evokes a little bit of the history of another American immigrant from the Caribbean, who has become a little bit popular these days.

And as an outsider, and Judah Touro, despite integrating very well, was still Jewish at a time when there were-- it's a little bit of the Alexander Hamilton story, isn't it?

So speaking of which, one of the panelists asked the obvious question, which, in 2021, as has been asked about a lot of people whose names have been memorialized, is what was his attitude toward slavery and slaves? And was he involved in the slave trade? And how did that look?

[JONATHAN SARNA] As far as we know, and as I say, the papers were destroyed, but we do have records, which is unusual in New Orleans, of his opposing and freeing slaves.

And if one digs, one will certainly find material in New Orleans that would reflect the racial character of the community, where white people were on top. And then you had various gradations of color, more than in some other cities. And that's reflected.

But it is interesting that unlike others who were deeply involved, it's not clear to me that he was involved. And my sense indeed is that he was so sympathetic to some slaves that he arranged for them to be freed.

[ALAN KADISH] As best we know, he at one point owned one slave whom he subsequently freed as well, as you mentioned, being involved in. And so while he wasn't perhaps an anti-slavery activist, he certainly was not involved in the slave trade and seemed to be--

[JONATHAN SARNA] Not involved. He did have, like so many in Louisiana-- he was kept warm, we now know, by a free woman of color. And they had a child named Narcissa. And the descendants actually survive to this day of that liaison. But what's interesting is that he sends Narcissa to Boston to be overseen by his cousin, Catherine, I think, Hays.

And she gets an education, and they become scions of what is today a quite significant African American family that does remember that it descends and is very proud that it descends from Judah Touro. They are not themselves Jewish, but they are proud of their Jewish ties and indeed have been involved with the Touro synagogue there.

So it's complicated. New Orleans was a complicated place. But it's not like some people that one would be horrified. And since Judah didn't have a plantation, he lived, according to all the reports-- you had this wealthy man; he lived very frugally. And so he didn't have slaves. Sort of like Warren Buffett, he believed in frugality. That poverty of his youth seems to have shaped every element of his life.

[ALAN KADISH] So there's a very interesting comment from one of our attendees, Penny Schwartz, who said that there's a new picture book for children called Judah Touro Didn't Want to Be Famous by Audrey Ades, and it's a book I hadn't heard of but looking forward to--

[JONATHAN SARNA] It's true he didn't want to be-- I don't know either the book or the author, but every piece of that from the title is correct. He didn't want to be famous. There is one gift that he almost took away because he wanted it to be anonymous. And of course his name leaked out, and he was unhappy. In that sense, he reflected the sense of the highest level of charity.

And it's really only after his death that he becomes so very famous and lauded, not just in the United States but around the world as a kind of model of philanthropy. So I have to look up this children's book. But the title is right, and the message is a good one.

[ALAN KADISH] Great. All right, well, listen, it's been a fascinating discussion. It's always great to talk with you.

[JONATHAN SARNA] You're welcome. I'm sorry we didn't get to some of the other questions. If people want, they can write to me. I'll see if I can help. But there's a lot we don't know about Judah Touro. So students and scholars at Touro, there's plenty of material still to try and study.

[ALAN KADISH] There's also someone in the chat who wanted us to repeat the name of the book. Judah Touro Didn't Want to Be Famous, that's the name of the book. And I have not read it either. I'm looking forward to reading it.

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[TEXT] Touro Talks, Touro University, touro.edu/tourotalks

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