A new book by a history professor is making waves for its claim that American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton likely had a Jewish upbringing.
The book, The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton by Andrew Porwancher, details evidence that Hamilton – the Founding Father who was essential to the ratification of the Constitution and who was the subject of a recent popular musical – had a Jewish childhood in the Caribbean.
Porwancher told Bloomberg News that his research led him to believe that Hamilton’s mother, Rachel Faucette, converted to Judaism so she could marry a Jewish businessman named Johan Levine.
“Although she bears Alexander out of wedlock to a non-Jew, in all probability she chooses to raise him in her adopted faith of Judaism,” Porwancher said.
The University of Oklahoma historian spent years combing through archives in the US and the Caribbean to discover evidence about Hamilton’s possible Jewish background.
One of his key discoveries was that Hamilton was given a Jewish education while growing up on the island of Nevis, where he was born. At the time, a quarter of its population was Jewish.
“There was a Jewish school that Hamilton later told his children that he attended, where we know he began at least rudimentary study of the Torah because he recalls how his teacher would put him on a table so it would be eye level, and he would recite to her the Ten Commandments in Hebrew,” said Porwancher.
Being raised Jewish would go a long way to explaining why Hamilton always displayed an empathy for the Jewish people and worked hard to ensure religious liberty during the founding of the United States, so that Jews would be free to practice their religion, the book documents, according to Insidehook.
It notes that Hamilton had a close friendship with Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas of Congregation Shearith Israel, New York City’s first Sephardi synagogue.
“We find in Hamilton a closer relationship with the American Jewish community than we find in any other founder,” he said.