Most everyone knows that twelve U.S. presidents enslaved human beings and that eight did so while holding the nation’s highest office. Thomas Jefferson owned the most, with 600+ Africans, followed closely by George Washington, who enslaved 350+ human beings. Washington, DC, the nation’s capital, was once known as the “Congo of America” and was a major regional marketplace of slave trafficking.
It is the slave-owning of the other presidents—the Jewish ones—that has been very successfully camouflaged and hidden from historical view. But given the growing consciousness of Jewish domination of every meaningful facet of American society, it is important that we look with new eyes at the historical role of the Jewish Presidents in slavery and the slave trade.
Long before Washington became the seat of the U.S government or New York became the face of Empire, Charleston, South Carolina, was the center of colonial American activity. It had a natural deep port, making it a major hub for transatlantic trade. Cotton overtook sugar as the world’s most in-demand commodity, and traders from all over the world—especially Jewish traders—found Charleston to be their most lucrative destination.
Previously, Jews had made Newport, Rhode Island, a truly Jewish enterprise zone, and that is where the notorious Jewish slave trader Aaron Lopez based his operations. But Newport would soon pale in comparison to the riches available in the slavery-entrenched port city of Charleston. Jews arrived there from the sugar colonies of the Caribbean and South America, and when Christian leaders banned slavery in neighboring Georgia, Jews fled from there into South Carolina. In his history of the Jews of that city, This Happy Land author Dr. James W. Hagy writes (p. 184): “the city of Charleston lived from the commerce derived from large plantations where African slaves performed the back-breaking labor….The prosperity of the community induced many to settle there, including the Jews.”
Our JEWISH Presidents
Nothing represents the Jewish role in Charleston society better than the acts and behaviors of Charleston’s top Jewish leaders—the PRESIDENTS of the synagogue, the “spiritual heart of Jewish Charleston.” The Jewish communal structure was formed not around poor immigrants seeking religious liberty (as they insist) but around profit-thirsty merchants who saw slavery as their ticket to unprecedented wealth founded on a plethora of plantation goods funneled through the city and out to international markets. In 1792, they built the satanic center of their operations they called Beth Elohim synagogue, or the “House of God.” It burnt down in 1838, and the grotesque monstrosity that replaced it was built by slave laborers under orders of synagogue official David Lopez. It was described as “the largest and most impressive synagogue in the United States.”
From the synagogue’s own website we have a list of their past presidents. And just as with the 12 U.S. presidents, the first Jewish presidents have connections with slavery. Let us start with the slave-trading builder of the synagogue David Lopez, Jr. His father, David Lopez, Sr., was a synagogue president (term: 1800-1814) and a well-known slave dealer. The record shows that in the first decade of the 1800s he was selling African families on credit as “house servants,” “cooks,” and “wenches.” In one sale Synagogue President Lopez sold “twenty excellent African slaves”; in another he sold eight; in 1807 he sold 32 “prime” Black human beings. His son followed his example, forcing his Africans to build the Jewish house of worship, whose members then promptly passed a house rule that Blacks would not be allowed membership.
Synagogue President Joseph Tobias (term: 1750-1764) was a ship owner who enslaved six Blacks—two men and four women. President Tobias was likely a cruel “master” as indicated by the fact that in 1758 seven Blacks he enslaved all ran away from him. Two years later he sold “several negroes.” Tobias was no Jewish outcast. Before the synagogue was built, Tobias’s home acted as the Jews’ first synagogue.
The synagogue’s co-founder was Isaac Da Costa, described as “probably the most outstanding Jew of Charleston before the Revolution.” He acquired thousands of acres of plantation land, working hundreds of African slaves for Jewish profit in an area so vast it was called the Jews’ Lands. In 1760 he brought to South Carolina 200 African people as slaves; in 1763 he brought 160 more.
According to the 1810 U.S. Census, Synagogue President Israel Joseph (term: 1765-1790) forcibly enslaved eleven Black human beings.
Synagogue President Moses C. Levy (term: 1791-1795) sold a plantation and 32 Black human beings on the same day in 1804.
Synagogue President Jacob Cohen (term: 1796-1800) often advertised the sale of cooks and washers and field hands and wenches “warranted sober, honest, no runaways.” In 1788 he sold “three elegant horses and a negro boy.” In 1796, he sold 15 “negros,” including “a Temptress [and] several washer women…” In 1807, he sold an “entire gang of about sixty negroes…2 mules and 1 horse.” All throughout the history of Charleston the family name COHEN is as much attached to the slave trade as is cotton.
Synagogue President Nathan Hart (term: 1815-1841) was described as “a sincere observer of the faith of his forefathers.” Yet his job in the Charleston government was to punish Blacks who sought to free themselves—Africans they called “runaways.” In October 1827, Charleston’s top Jewish leader sold five slaves to Sophie Monsanto (Jewish), and he was listed in the census of 1830 as “owning” fifteen Blacks.
Synagogue President Daniel Hart advertised to sell or exchange “a Negro fellow” for a “Negro boy.”
Synagogue President Abraham Ottolengui (term: 1842-1850) owned six female slaves. By 1840, he enslaved 32 Africans of which 18 were males and 14 were females. He rented slaves for $6-$10 per month, and he sold “a Negro wench” alongside “household furniture.”
Synagogue President Joshua Lazarus (term: 1851-1856) was a prominent merchant, shipper, real estate owner, and bank president. And he enslaved 21 Africans, according to the U.S. Census.
Synagogue President Moses Cohen (M.C.) Mordecai (term: 1857-1861) was a slave trader and shipper, Confederate, and owner of 14 slaves. He was a bank director and co-founder of a newspaper. He would advertise to his fellow slave traders that his ships had plenty of space “reserved for Slaves.”
The fact is Charleston’s SYNAGOGUE PRESIDENTS and the majority of America’s Jewish elites were dedicated to the endless enslavement of Black people. And this behavior can be easily found in every major center of Jewish settlement—Richmond, New Orleans, Newport, Philadelphia, New York and everywhere else. No longer can it be said that Jewish slave traders were marginal members of a rejected underclass. The top leadership of Charleston’s Jewish institutions—every last one of them—owned slaves and made their livings from Black slavery. Yet, the city’s slaveholding Rabbi Gustavus Poznanski referred to it in a way that is unique in the annals of this forever wandering people: “This [Charleston] synagogue is our temple, this city our Jerusalem, this happy land our Palestine…”
For more on this topic see the Nation of Islam book series The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews. Download the free guide by clicking here.
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