The Hakham Joshua Hezekiah Decordova

Reappraisals and New Studies of
the Modern Jewish Experience

Essays in Honor of Robert M. Seltzer
Edited by
Brian M. Smollett and Christian Wiese
LEIDEN | BOSTON
This is a digital offfprint for restricted use only | 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV
Contents
Acknowledgementsix
List of Contributorsx
Robert M. Seltzer: Scholar and Teacher1
Brian M. Smollett
Introduction: Jewish Identities in the Modern Period5
Christian Wiese
part 1
Jewish Life and Modern Questions in Russia and Eastern
Europe
Language Acquisition as a Criterion of Modernization among East Central
European Jews: The Case of Dov Ber Birkenthal of Bolechw13
Gershon David Hundert
Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky and Shimon Dubnow: A Distant Regard and
Appreciation29
William Cutter
Saul Borovois Survival: An Odessa Tale about a Jewish Historian in
Soviet Times46
Brian Horowitz
Defying Authority in the Pale: The Making of Soviet Jewish Rituals and the
Emergence of Folk Legitimacy62
Elissa Bemporad
vi
Contents
part 2
Jewish Thought and Questions of Identity
Pride and Pedigree: The Development of the Myth of Sephardic
Aristocratic Lineage85
Jane S. Gerber
Joshua Hezekiah Decordova and a Rabbinic Counter-Enlightenment from
Colonial Jamaica104
Stanley Mirvis
Merchant Colonies: Resettlement in Italy, France, Holland, and England,
15501700123
David Sorkin
From Combat to Convergence: The Relationship between Heinrich Graetz
and Abraham Geiger145
Michael A. Meyer
Kaplan and Personality162
Mel Scult
How Much Eastern Europe in American Jewish Thought? The Case of Jacob
B. Agus180
Zach Mann
Diaspora, Jewishness, and Diffference in Isaiah Berlins Thought207
Arie M. Dubnov
Martin Buber and the Impact of World War I on the Prague Zionists Shmuel
H. Bergman, Robert Weltsch, and Hans Kohn235
Christian Wiese
The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Vision in the Life and Thought of
Hans Kohn268
Brian M. Smollett
vii
Contents
part 3
Jewish Religion and Politics in America
How the Bible Expelled Religion from the American Schoolroom:
The Causes and Consequences of Bible Wars in Nineteenth-Century
American Schools289
Stephan F. Brumberg
Lay and Rabbinic Conflict in Mid-Nineteenth Century American
Jewry304
Bruce L. Ruben
An International Solution for an International Problem: The JDC and the
AJC in the 1930s328
Naomi W. Cohen
Stephen S. Wise and Golda Meir: Zionism, Israel, and American Power in
the Twentieth Century356
Mark A. Raider
We Must Build Anew: Ideological Perspectives of the First Generation of
Students to Attend Stephen S. Wises Jewish Institute of Religion388
Shirley Idelson
A Judaism for Moderns: Reflections on Contemporary Challenges412
Sanford Ragins
Writings of Robert M. Seltzer427
Roberta S. Newman
Index434
Joshua Hezekiah Decordova and a Rabbinic

Counter-Enlightenment from Colonial Jamaica
Stanley Mirvis
Introduction
The akham Joshua Hezekiah Decordova served as the rabbinic head of the
Jamaican Jewish community for over forty-two years, between 1755 and 1797.1
His career was marked not only by his travels through the western Sephardic
diasporafrom Amsterdam to Curaao to Jamaicabut also by his sermons
and writings in numerous languages, including Portuguese, French, Hebrew,
and English. He served a community of colonial, mostly Sephardic, Jews that
by the late eighteenth century had been living fully integrated lives as tropical merchants, planters, and shopkeepers. Like in their mother community of
London and other European port cities, Jamaicas Jews naturally integrated
into the social life of the island with little intellectual dissonance. That integration included not only a full participation in slave ownership and an active
association with creole culture but also an engagement with the European
Enlightenment. It was therefore toward the end of Decordovas career in 1788
that he sought to formulate a printed response, from his rabbinic perspective,
to the main themes of the Enlightenment. The result was a book that would
later be widely circulated throughout North America among both Jews and
non-Jews: Reason and Faith.
This chapter examines the career and writing of Decordova in order to
understand the nature of Jewish engagement with the Enlightenment in the
colonial Caribbean, far removed from the intellectual capitals of Europe.
Reason and Faith has been misread as a second-rate apologia that simply parroted earlier objections to the Enlightenment.2 Reason and Faith can also be
1 Joshua Hezekiah Decordova was buried in the Spanish Town Jewish cemetery. For his
tombstone inscription see Richard D. Barnett and Philip Wright, eds., The Jews of Jamaica:
Tombstone Inscriptions, 16631880 (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1997), 95, no. 1086.
2 Bertram W. Korn, The Haham DeCordova of Jamaica, American Jewish Archives 18 (1966):
141154, here 141. Korn refers to Reason and Faith as the first American volume of Jewish
apologetics. See also Isaac S. Emmanuel and Suzanne A. Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the
Netherlands Antilles, 2 vols., vol. 1 (Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1971), 241. Isaac and
Suzanne Emmanuel write that Decordova was more apologetic than philosophical.
koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015|doi 10.1163/9789004284661_009
Joshua Hezekiah Decordova
105
seen as a singular work of rabbinic thought written for an informed audience,

but not for philosophers. Unlike other European rabbinic opponents during
the 1790s, Decordova rejected the Enlightenment through a full engagement
with it. He used the language of Enlightenment in order to reveal its folly. The
decidedly rabbinic nature of Reason and Faith becomes apparent by reading
the book as incorporating two separate but critically integrated themes: the
first using philosophical arguments to bolster the truth of divine providence
and revelation and the second exploring the Jewish past in order to reveal
proof of Gods presence in Jewish history, as a direct refutation of Voltaire. By
reading Decordovas view of the Jewish past as a part of his wider theology we
can better appreciate the real-world efffect of a book written by a rabbi for an
unequivocally rabbinic purpose to serve his specifically Jamaican community.
Amsterdam and Curaao
Joshua Hezekiah Decordova was born in Amsterdam to a family of Ottoman

Sephardic migrs who had arrived in Amsterdam during the 1640s. Joshuas
great grandfather, Moses Raphael ben Isaac Decordova, appears to have been
the first to make the journey to western Europe. Joshua came from a family of
printers and compositors, a trade that may have even been plied by his grandfather, Jacob ayim ben Moses Raphael Decordova, in Dutch Brazil during the
1640s and certainly in Amsterdam by mid century. Little is known about the
life or career of Joshuas father, Abraham ben Jacob Decordova, who may have
worked as a printer in the firm of his London-based brother.3
Decordova studied in the E ayim Yeshiva of Amsterdam during the early
1740s and presumably also as a school child. Among the leading rabbinic personalities associated with the academy at the time were R. David Israel Athias,
who served as Amsterdams leading akham for twenty-five years (17281753)
and R. Isaac ayim de Britto Abendana, one of the editors of the Pri E ayim
collections of responsa from that period.4 R. Abraham da Costa Abendana, for
whom Decordova delivered the keynote eulogy in the early winter of 1744, was
his immediate mentor in the yeshiva.5
During his early rabbinic career in Amsterdam, Decordova not only sustained a commitment to talmudic scholarship but also actively sought out the
literature and thought of the European Enlightenment. He is known to have
3 On Decordovas genealogy see Korn, The Haham DeCordova, 145147, n. 14.
4 Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, vol. 1, 182.
5 Ibid., 238.
106
Mirvis
become a protg to the famous Jewish philosophe and economist Isaac de

Pinto, the author of a defensive treatise in refutation of Voltaire, Apologie pour
la Nation Juive (1762), as well as a proponent of controversial, anti-Physiocratic
economic theories.6 Decordova was reported to have been a frequent visitor
to De Pintos library, where he read the classics in the original Greek and Latin
and conversed with the enlightened dead.7 According to Decordovas eighteenth-century biographer, de Pintos house was a
chief resort of the literati of the [Dutch] Republic, as well as all other
foreigners [...] of taste and genius [...]. In short, here it was that he
[Decordova] laid the foundation [...] of those literary and scientific
acquirements, which in his future life, rendered him so conspicuous.8
Indeed, Decordovas familiarity with Greco-Roman literature as well as current trends among modern philosophers is apparent throughout his Reason
and Faith. As will be discussed further below, much of Decordovas intellectual
focus in Reason and Faith seems to have been influenced directly by De Pinto,
either in person or through his writing, yet Decordovas work difffers significantly in character.
Decordova was appointed by the Amsterdam parnasim to serve in Curaao
as an assistant to the irascible akham Samuel Mendes de Sola and as teacher
for the advanced-level Talmud classes on the island. He arrived in Curaao
by November of 1748, apparently as a single man, though he appears to have
married his first wife shortly after his arrival.9 He was tasked with teaching
the Bible along with medieval commentaries, Talmud instruction for capable pupils, supervision of his students during synagogue services, offfering
6 On Decordovas relationship to De Pinto see the anonymous obituary, [Isaac Dias Fernandes],
Biography: Some Account of the Life of the late Revd. Chief Rabbi Joshua Hezekiah De
Cordova, of this Town, The Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany (October, 1797): 267
271, here 267. On De Pintos economic thought see Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment
and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism (1968; repr. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1990), 142153. See also Adam Sutclifffe, Can a Jew be a Philosopher? Isaac de Pinto,
Voltaire, and Jewish Participation in the European Enlightenment, Jewish Social Studies 6 / 3
(2000): 3151, esp. 4144.
7 [Fernandes], Biography, 268.
8 Ibid.
9 Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, vol. 1, 237, 238. For
more on Decordovas career in Curaao see Yosef Kaplan, The Curaao and Amsterdam
Jewish Communities in the 17th and 18th Centuries, American Jewish History 72 / 2 (1982):
193211, here 203 n. 18, 209210.
107
public discourses on the Talmud, and delivering eulogies and sermons. He was
remunerated comfortably and supplemented his salary with other mercantile
pursuits.10
Decordova arrived in Curaao amidst a number of independent though
intertwined internal Jewish conflicts that raged on the island during the 1740s.
These conflicts at times turned violent and exhausted the unclear channels
of communal authority among Jews in colonial Curaao.11 These already welldocumented conflicts, that had begun to boil over around Yom Kippur of 1745,
mostly centered on the right of the akham and the mahamad to issue bans
(erem), and a secessionist movement led by the politically influential Moses
Penso. Decordova entered the fray as an assistant rabbi at the height of these
tensions. In 1753 when a trifecta of calamities occurred on the island that
included a smallpox epidemic, loss of much of the commercial fleet due to a
storm, and drought, Decordova delivered a sermon on the second day of three
days of public fasting and repentance instituted by de Sola. Decordovas sermon reveals his true stripes as a rabbinic communal leader. He likened himself
to Jonah failing to lead his community to repentance; he chastised the unethical business practices of Jewish merchants on the island, and even offfered to
take a pay cut for the sake of Jewish poor relief. However, despite these sincere
attempts to reach his community, he failed to walk the party line by not calling
for, or at least publically condoning, the multitude of excommunications that
had been issued by his superior, de Sola. De Sola protested during Decordovas
sermon and called for his immediate dismissal following the conclusion of the
fast.12
Jamaica
Decordova appears to have been actively courted by the Jamaican mahamad at

a time when he would have been delighted to leave Curaao. In 1755 he sold his
10
11
12
Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, Bitter Conflicts
of 17441750, vol. 1, 181230.
On the unclear channels of communal authority in Curaao and their confusing role
during the 1740s communal conflicts see Jessica Roitman, A Flock of Wolves instead of
Sheep: The Dutch West India Company, Conflict Resolution, and the Jewish Community
of Curaao in the Eighteenth Century, in The Jews in the Caribbean, ed. Jane S. Gerber
(Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2013), 85105.
On the public fast see Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands
Antilles, vol. 1, 239240.
108
Mirvis
home and moved to Jamaica, where he seems to have remarried.13 Decordova

brought an unprecedented level of stability to Jewish life in Jamaica as the
chief rabbi of Jamaican Jews based at the Neve Shalom Synagogue in Spanish
Town. Among his lasting legacies to the Jamaican Jewish community were his
attempts to ensure the quality of kosher meat being imported into Jamaica
from New York, Jamaicas comparatively tiny neighbor to the north.14 Perhaps
more importantly, though harder to measure, Decordova ruled on questions
of Jewish law without the intervention of the London or Amsterdam rabbinic
establishment, giving Jamaica an unusual amount of religious autonomy from
its mother communities.15
Decordova lived an integrated life in the colonial tropics. Like most other
Jews in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, he was a slave owner and published
at least one advertisement in the Jamaican Royal Gazette for a runaway slave.16
Details of Decordovas life in Jamaica come to us from a biography published
immediately after his death in The Columbian Magazine or Monthly Miscellany
a monthly moral journal printed in Kingston. Though the obituary was published anonymously, the author has been identified as Isaac Dias Fernandes, a
Jewish resident of Jamaica.17 Though the biography borders on hostility toward
its subjectthe author clearly perpetuated some conflict with the akham
before his deathit serves as our only witness to Decordovas character and
temperament. The veracity of its content, therefore, must be measured against
the biographers clear hostilities.
13
14
15
16
17
Ibid., 239. I have been unable to find any information on Decordovas wife. See also
[Fernandes], Biography, 268.
Albert M. Hyamson, Items Relating to Congregation Shearith Israel, Publications of
the American Jewish Historical Society (pajhs) 27 (1920): 1175, here 1213. See also The
Earliest Extant Minute Book of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation Shearith Israel
in New York, 17281760, pajhs 20 (1913): 182, here 77.
Decordova is referred to as a dayan (judge) in the Hebrew epitaph on his tombstone;
Barnett and Wright, The Jews of Jamaica, 95, no. 1068.
Runaway from Jeossuah His. De Cordova, The Royal Gazette, December 15, 1792; and see
also Korn, The Haham DeCordova, 148 n. 20. For Jewish slave ownership in the colonial English Caribbean see Eli Faber, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record
Straight (New York: New York University Press, 1998), for Jamaica specifically see 5790;
Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2004); and see Stanley Mirvis, Sephardic Family Life in
the Eighteenth-Century British West Indies (PhD diss, The Graduate Center of the City
University of New York, 2013), 8591.
Korn, The Haham Decordova, 149 n. 23. Korn bases this identification on The First Fruits
of the West, no. 2 (1845).
109
Fernandes described Decordova as physically much below the middle size,

[and] inclined to corpulency; particularly as he advanced in years. His person
was however venerable; but his eyes, far from being lively and piercing, were
dull and void of animation.18 He was remembered for his uncommon degree
of temperance both in eating and drinking19 yet he seemed also to have frequently been in poor health, attributed to his too great an unremitted application to his studies; for few men ever led a more sedentary life.20 Fernandes is
most critical of Decordovas aptitude as preacher and, more importantly, as a
conversationalist, writing that he was:
celebrated for [his] general knowledge and brilliancy [...] [more] than
for his courtly manners, pleasing address, afffability and hospitality [...]
His conversation, on common topics from his not having mixed much
with the world, was rather dry, unentertaining, and [...] oftentimes bordered on puerility [...] his wit was oftener borrowed than genuine; and
his satire, if genuine, was certainly of a nature by no means delicate [...]
as to his eloquence [...] he was, to say the truth in this point much below
mediocrity [...] nor was his voice agreeable [...] his gestures awkward
and graceless [...] but his arguments and reasonings orthodox, forcible,
and learned.21
In addition to fulfilling his duties as the spiritual guide to the community, his
forty-two years in Jamaica were also his most prolifiche produced at least
three major works. Decordovas first composition from Jamaica was a Hebrew
poem that he described as an epic poem in imitation of Job.22 According to
Fernandes, this poem abounds with learning and illustration, were it published, I will venture to say it would acquire him more fame amongst the
learned [...] than the rest of his writings put together.23 While at the helm of
the Jamaican Jewish community, Decordova also composed a forty-two page
18
19
20
21
22
23

Ibid., 269.
Ibid.
Ibid., 270.
For a description of the epic poem in Decordovas own words see Joshua Hezekiah
Decordova, Emet ve-emunah: Reason and Faith, or, Philosophical Absurdities, and the
Necessity of Revelation. Intended to Promote Faith Among Infidels, and The Unbounded
Exercise of Humanity Among All Religious Men (Philadelphia: Printed by F. Bailey, 1791),
158.
110
Mirvis
Hebrew polemic against heretics and Christians entitled afnat paanea,

written in Hebrew with a parallel French translation.24
Decordovas most enduring work, however, is his 1788 English treatise
Emet ve-emunah ( ) Reason and Faith, or, Philosophical Absurdities,
and the Necessity of Revelation Intended to Promote Faith Among Infidels, and
the Unbounded Exercise of Humanity Among All Religious Men, a defense of
revealed religion and divine providence against the perceived heresies of the
time. The subtitle reads in Hebrew characters daa mah she-tashiv le-apikorsim
(Know How to Refute Infidels). He wrote Reason and Faith in English, a language that he only learned upon arrival in Jamaica: a language which I am
confident you understand much better than I can write.25
Though originally published in Kingston, Reason and Faith enjoyed a wide
circulation throughout the Americas, and was reprinted in Philadelphia (1791)
and in Richmond (1804). The 1791 and 1804 editions were both printed by nonJews for Christian audiences.26 As indicated in the title, Decordovas discussion
of the universality of revelation in his closing chapters certainly contributed to
its wide appeal among Christians as well as Jewish readers.
Decordova published Reason and Faith in order to promote the happiness of
a youth.27 He apparently was concerned that a young member of his Jamaican
community who had begun to explore the ideas of the Enlightenment would
be perverted by [...] modern Philosophers, who destroy all principles of faith
and virtue.28 More than a singular work of religious counter-Enlightenment
produced by a lonely scholar, the book is a product of a vibrant intellectual culture among the Jewish community of eighteenth-century Jamaica. Thirty-four
subscribers from among the Jewish community of Jamaica (including one subscriber from Curaao) financed the book.29 Though these subscribers were certainly among the Jewish intellectual elite of the island, they actively promoted
the major philosophical currents of the time by supporting the printing and
circulation of Reason and Faith. Indeed, at least one of Decordovas Jamaican
Jewish congregants, inspired by his weekly sermons (from which much of
24
25
26
27
28
29
The name given to Joseph by Pharaoh in Genesis 41:45.

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova, Emet ve-emunah: Reason and Faith, or, Philosophical
Absurdities, and the Necessity of Revelation. Intended to Promote Faith Among Infidels,
and The Unbounded Exercise of Humanity Among All Religious Men (Kingston: Printed by
Strupar and Preston, at the cost, and for the use of the subscribers, 1788), iii.
On the subsequent non-Jewish printings of Reason and Faith see Korn, The Haham
DeCordova, 142.
Decordova, Reason and Faith (1788), iii.
Ibid.
For the list of subscribers see Decordova, Reason and Faith (1788), viiviii.
111
Reason and Faith was undoubtedly derived) engaged in his own foray into philosophical Biblicism in an editorial printed after the death of the akham in the
Columbian Magazine.30
Among his Jamaican subscribers were several outstanding Jewish personalities. Dr. Abraham Alvarenga was a physician who is known to have invited
prominent scientific and medical thinkers from Europe to deliver lectures
for the Jamaican scientific community in his Kingston home.31 Emanuel
Barukh Lousada was one of the most recognizable Jewish public figures in late
eighteenth-century Jamaica, who represented the legal interests of many of
Jamaicas Jews as an executor, including as an agent in the manumission of
slaves. Lousada is also known to have been a subscriber to the 1786 edition
of the Laws of Jamaica.32 Abraham Mendes Belisario, a recent arrival to
Jamaica from London in 1788, was the father of Jamaicas most renowned artist,
Isaac Mendes Belisario.33 Another subscriber, Alexander Lindo, was included
in a group referred to as the most considerable African factors residing in
this Island the same year as the first printing of Reason and Faith, and was
the owner of one of busiest slave trading depots in Jamaica: Lindos Wharf.34
Lindo later returned to London. Like Lindo, Lousada, and Belisario, most of
the subscribers appear to have had strong ties to London, suggesting that
Decordovas book of rabbinic philosophy may have had more appeal to the
European-raised (and in many cases European-returnee) Jewish population of
Jamaica than among the creole Jews, who by the 1780s made up a substantial
portion of the Jamaican Jewish population.
Defense of Revealed Religion
Reason and Faith reads more like a series of sermons than a sustained work
of philosophy. Decordova begins his short treatise by establishing what he
refers to as philosophical absurdities. Chief among them is that modern
30
31
32
33
34
The Very Ingenious Letter to the Chief Rabbi of the Jews in this Island, The Columbian
Magazine, January, 1798, 484489.
Monsieur La Roche, professor of anatomy will be speaking at Dr. Alvarengas, Postscript
to the Royal Gazette, July 21, 1792.
For more on the life of Emanuel Barukh Lousada see Stanley Mirvis, Sexuality and
Sentiment: Concubinage and the Sephardi Family in Late Eighteenth-Century Jamaica,
in The Jews in the Caribbean, 223240, here 236238, esp. n. 52.
Jackie Ranston, Jonkonnu and Jew: The Art of Isaac Mendes Belisario (17941849), in
Gerber, ed., The Jews in the Caribbean, 121129.
Faber, Jews, Slaves and the Slave Trade, 117.
112
Mirvis
philosophers base knowledge on perception alone. This determinative power

of human perception has led modern philosophers to deny Gods providence, scofff at revelation, and hold civic virtue as the only binding law.35 For
Decordova, though he holds some philosophers in high esteem, modern philosophers are generally synonymous with atheists, deists, and unbelievers.36
He begins by defining belief, as the knowledge of anything that lies beyond
the limits of human perception, such as the knowledge of Gods existencea
higher form or knowledge than even that acquired through reason.37 Humans
need not, however, rely on belief alone to ascertain the truth of Gods existence. If the example of the philosophes is to be followed in their reliance on
reason alone, then certainly it is more reasonable to believe in a majority opinion that holds to the truth of revelation, than in the opinions of a handful of
modern philosophers.38 Herein lies the main thrust of Decordovas philosophical content in Reason and Faith: modern philosophers defend the absurdity
that only what is seen can be believed, yet pure reason alone would lead any
rational person to the truth of Gods existence, revelation, and providence.
Since modern philosophers, like the idolaters of antiquity, believe in only what
can be seen, they are led in error to atheism.39 Decordova here uses the language of the Enlightenment to undermine it.
Decordova attempts to dismantle the major eighteenth-century philosophies one by one. He turns his attention first to rejecting the absurdity of
materialism. Relying on the more ecclesiastically sanctioned view of Descartes,
Decordova asserts that since reason alone leads men irrefutably to knowledge
of their own existence, mind must stand apart from the body.40 God endows
human beings with an innate knowledge of themselves; it is this knowledge
that serves as perpetual proof of both Gods revelation and Gods providence.
In chapter 5, Decordova muses on the presence of evil in the universe.
Relying on Leibniz, whom Decordova greatly admired, he argues that modern
philosophers are seduced by the absurdity of atheism when they detect the
presence of disorder in the universe. Decordova suggests that Gods goodness
is beyond human perception and the world inhabited by humans is the best
35
36
37
38
39
40
Decordova, Reason and Faith (1791), 913.

Ibid., 14. In this category he includes Spinoza, Collins, Tindal, Bolingbroke, Hume, and
Voltaire.
Ibid., 16.
Ibid., 1819.
Ibid., 2527.
Ibid., 2124.
113
of all possible worlds.41 Otherwise, God is either evil or indiffferenttwo possibilities that are unreasonable.
After discussing some of the key elements of Enlightenment discourse, such
as the nature of will and matter, he goes on to reject belief in determinism.
Just because Gods omnipotence empowers him to perceive events before they
occur, the outcomes of those events are not predetermined. First, Decordova
makes the argument, cast as an agreement with Newton, that God does not
exist in linear time, as do humans. But, more importantly, foreseeing an event
does not determine the motive of its participants. Even with foresight, will is
the only power to determine motive.42 In chapters 15 through 18, Decordova
explores the nature of the immortal soul and its human distinctiveness from
other animals. While animals possess a soul by virtue of their thought and
their experience of pain and pleasure, the human soul alone is immortal, since
humans alone possess the God-endowed quality of reason.43
Decordova defends the truth of revelation and assesses its relationship to
the laws of nature in chapters 19 through 24. He begins by stating that revelation is the most ridiculed of all faith-based principles among the modern
philosophers:
There is nothing which the atheists, deists, free-thinkers, or, let it be modern philosophers (which is the honorable appellation they take, to the
dishonor of philosophy)there is nothing [...] against which they have
exerted more force, and combated with more strength, than against revelation. This has become, among them the object of the utmost ridicule.44
Decordova begins his defense by stating that if God endows reasona principle well established in his earlier discoursesthen is it not also reasonable
to suggest that God could endow man with a higher knowledge? According to
Decordova, reason and revelation are two sides of the same coin. Why then
do men require perpetual revelation when their reason is enough to ascertain the immutable laws of nature? Decordova proves that natural law is not
enough to sustain ethical life. He concludes that self-preservation and the law
of nature in general can only be sustained as a binding law when men owe
their allegiances to a First Cause.
41
42
43
44
Ibid., 2836.
Ibid., 6163.
Ibid., 7778.
Ibid., 86.
114
Mirvis
Decordova concludes his defense of revelation in support of universal religion. Though the Mosaic law is binding to Jews alone, universal revelations
had occurred in the times of both Adam and Noah that apply to all of their
descendants. Here, he not only takes up a major trope of the early Religious
Enlightenment in general but also echoes some of the more specific discussions already presented by his mentor De Pinto in his Apologie.
Decordovas philosophical discussion in Reason and Faith is neither original nor particularly well conceived. His biographer, Fernandes, unsurprisingly,
portrayed Reason and Faith as a recycled discourse from a second-rate philosopher: the intention was no doubt laudable; but I apprehend it will hardly bear
the test of a critical or philosophical examination, I mean in point of argument; and as to the style, it is in many parts wretchedly defective.45 However,
what makes Reason and Faith unique is its rabbinic author and his Caribbean
context. His philosophy is incidental to his larger mission to serve as a model of
faith for his congregation. Decordova is not a maskil, but like his contemporary
European maskilim Decordova attempts to harmonize fidelity to pure reason
and faith in the existence of God and his continual interaction with human
afffairs. But, unlike the early maskilim, who were focused largely on educational
reform, his discussion had a decidedly rabbinic purpose.
Decordovas View of Jewish History
Over 30 percent of Reason and Faith is devoted to exploring the Jewish past.
While the first part of the treatise engages the thought of a wide variety of
both ancient and modern philosophers, the last twelve chapters, dealing more
with Jewish history, engage with Voltaire alone. Decordova appears here to
have taken his cues from his former mentor, De Pinto, in offfering a defense
against Voltaires characterization of the Jewish past as backwards, superstitious, and detrimental to human progress.46 Unlike De Pinto, whose 1762
treatise is entirely apologetic, Decordova viewed the Jewish past through a
decidedly theological lens. Going far beyond the scope of De Pintos earlier discourse, Decordova not only offfers evidence to support the benefit of the Jews
to human history but also arrives at a position of Jewish cultural supremacy.
Though it may seem that Decordovas historical response to Voltaire is somewhat appended to the treatise as a whole, it nevertheless serves an important function in summation of his earlier discussions on the nature of Gods
45
46

Sutclifffe, Can a Jew be a Philosopher?, 3139.
115
interaction with humanity. After establishing the irrefutable truth that revelation is universal, he is forced to answer the question: what then makes the
Jews, and their revelation, unique?
Decordova begins with the assertion that of all ancient laws the Jewish law
codes alone remain in his own time: Let us ask the philosophers [i.e. Voltaire],
if they can tell, where the great conquerors of the world are at present? They
are all extinguished or confounded: Only the Jews remain.47 Decordova sees
this historical truth as nothing short of a miracle. Decordova has the continuity of Jewish tradition stand as evidence of their continued special relationship to God that serves as proof of Gods providence. Though he recognizes
the importance of the talmudic sages in preserving Jewish law, ultimately the
perseverance of Jewish law and ritual is credited to God alone.48
For Decordova, Jewish law is a morally superior law to that of other nations
past or present. In drawing upon Greco-Roman legend he points to the vices of
their deities. If mans purpose on earth is to emulate the gods, then the Romans
indeed succeeded in allowing their children to be murdered or sacrificed, and
in practicing various forms of bestiality, sodomy, and adultery.49 How can it
be that Voltaire accused the Jews of being savage and superstitious when the
Romans themselves divined the future from reading entrails? These practices
are detested, with so much reason, by the laws of Moses! [...] [the Jewish]
nation [...] alone was free of those abominations, and which, by the commandment of God, devoted to destruction those who were guilty of them.50
Decordova expands his indictment of non-Jewish barbarity to include contemporary nations as well and does not limit himself to the West. He cites
eyewitness accounts stating that the kings of Morocco daily murder upwards
of a hundred people at their table, when the chief of the Coromantees dies
his servants are decapitated, widows in India submit themselves to voluntary
burning at the death of their husbands, the Persians permit incest of all forms.
The absence of these abhorrent practices among the Jews stands as evidence
of Gods direct hand in the Jewish historical experience:
Now, if the Jews had had such laws, Voltaire and his followers had sufficient right to call them barbarous, and to believe the impossibility of
such laws being inspired by God. But, when we find, at a time which
the whole world practised such abominations [...] a nation which had
47
48
49
50
Decordova, Reason and Faith (1791), 108.

Ibid., 109110.
Ibid., 113.
Ibid. Emphasis mine.
116
Mirvis
laws forbidding them [...] and which endeavoured to bring them to the
worship of the true God, we must believe that such laws could only be
inspired by him.51
Decordova goes on to compare Mosaic law to two ancient Greek systems: the
laws of Solon (Athens) and of Lycurgus (Sparta). Even Solon himself, most celebrated among the ancient lawgivers, and held as a model of civilization by
both the ancient and modern philosophers, offfered animal sacrifices to Apollo,
thus not only sanctioning but actively encouraging idolatry. As Decordova sees
it, Mosaic law is simply more humanitarian than Solons, particularly in breaking down inequalities of wealth through the cancelation of debts during the
seventh yearGod owns the land that he leases to mankind. Knowledge of
the true landlord kept men from unethical behavior. Unlike Solons law, Mosaic
law contains a support system for social justice and social welfare. After going
through a number of specific examples where Mosaic law outshines Solons in
its humanitarianism and rationality, he concludes by writing: I believe, what
has been said is suffficient to convince the reader, that the laws of Moses are
more rational than those of Solon. [...] The superiority of Moses, as a lawgiver,
will appear conspicuous, when compared with Solon.52
Likewise, Decordova devotes a chapter to demonstrating the moral and
rational superiority of Mosaic law to the Spartan laws of Lycurgus. In sharp contrast to Mosaic lawwhose spirit was peace, humanity, love, and tenderness
to their offfspringSpartan laws were devoted to the pursuit of war above all
else.53 Decordovas discussion of Spartan law serves as a transparently veiled
ad hominem attack on Voltaires moral character. He suggests that Voltaire
would have been delighted if Lycurguss law, which encouraged the practices
of sexually explicit dancing and public nudity, would have been adopted by
the Swiss during his residence in Geneva.54 According to Decordova, Voltaire
would have sacrificed his reason to embrace the Spartan law for the sake of
sexual perversion. Certainly, then, according to Decordova, the essence of
Voltaires criticism of the Jews must lie in his distaste for the modesty of Jewish
women. Decordovas further dismisses Voltaires appraisal of the Jews as being
misinformed by Voltaires own distemper, suggesting that Voltaires anti-Jewish
hostilities were derived from losing money to Jews.55
51
52
53
54
55
Ibid., 115.
Ibid., 124. Emphases mine.
Ibid., 127.
Ibid., 131.
Ibid., 135.
117
The twenty-ninth chapter of Reason and Faith, entitled Of the Early

Civilization of the Jews presents Decordovas fullest treatment of biblical literature and law. Here, Decordova relies heavily on midrashic and other rabbinic
sourcesmaterial that the non-rabbinic De Pinto nearly completely ignored
in his own refutation of Voltaire. Decordova opens his discussion of biblical
Jewish history and civilization with a direct attack on Voltaire:
Mr. Voltaire, as he fully resolved to make the Jews barbarians and their
laws barbarous, was obliged to invent, that the Jews were cannibals, a
bestial people, and a nation which ordered human sacrifices; when all
that he can find in the law, is only, that God devoted to destruction the
nations who were guilty of those abominations.56
Here, again, Decordova attempts to convince the reader that the application
of reason alone and a truthful telling of history are suffficient to disabuse the
lies of Voltaire. If the Jews are depicted by Voltaire as barbarous for their perceived practice of human sacrifice, how much more so the non-Jewish nations
that perpetrated the Crusades, the Sicilian Vespers, the St. Bartholomews Day
Massacre, and, above all else, the Spanish Inquisition.57 In attempting to deflate
the claim that Jews performed human sacrifice, for instance, Decordova relies
on a midrashic tradition to explain away Jephtahs sacrifice of his daughter as
the act of a rogue madman.
Not only did the Jews stand apart as an oasis of civilization in the ancient
world, he goes further to suggest that they in fact were the progenitors of
Western civilization. Echoing a common motif among premodern and early
modern Jewish thinkers Decordova here promotes a sense of Jewish cultural
supremacy in asserting that all that is associated with the successes of Western
civilization are in fact gifts from the Jews. The Tabernacle is the first example
of true craftsmanship and artistic achievement before the great temples and
aqueducts of the Romans. The Bible was a literary masterpiece before even the
great Greek dramas. The two Songs of Moses, the Song of Deborah, along with
the Psalms, are models of poetic achievement; the story of Joseph is filled with
dramatic pathos as are the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah:
[...] any man, who is not voluntarily blind, must be convinced, that, not
only the five books of Moses, but the whole Bible, was the production of a
56
57
Ibid., 137.
Ibid., 138. Decordovas examples.
118
Mirvis
civilized and wise nation. Did not the Grecians learn even their alphabet
from the Hebrews?58
The Jewish contribution to Western civilization continued to be felt even in
Decordovas own time and place: Was not the English, one of the most civilized nations at present in the world, chiefly civilized by the Bible? Is not, even
now, the Bible used in all their schools, to instruct their children?59 Decordova
closes this discussion by citing what he believed to be a general agreement
from David Hume on this point, thus enlisting a modern philosopher to help
make his point.60
The thirtieth chapter reviews the Jewish chain of tradition (shalshelet hakabbalah). Relying on rabbinic precedents, he traces the continuum of Jewish
tradition from Moses through the Second Temple period and later. A chain of
transmission so powerful that even Jews in isolationsuch as those in Cochin
before the arrival of the Dutchstill held to Jewish customs and practices.61
Perhaps rooted in his own sense of self and personal history, and similar to
De Pintos earlier approach, he devotes special attention to the strength of the
Sephardic tradition.62 He refers to Ezra, the Maccabees, Josephus, the author
of the Mishnah (Judah ha-Nasi), the Amoraim, Karaites, and Maimonides. He
marshals these figures and their deeds to reveal that the preservation of the
Jewish people and their religion in the face of persecution is nothing short of
miraculous and an irrefutable proof of Gods providence:63
The prediction of Moses of the conservation of the Jews, their captivity,
their sufffering, their dispersion, their contemptible situation among the
nations, and their preservation, is so clear; [...] that philosophers must
be voluntarily blind not to see it [...]. But, the philosophers have exerted
their greatest strength against miracles, and their possibility.64
Decordova concludes his discussion of Gods role in Jewish history by exposing
the universality of revelation. Though Gods role in specifically Jewish history
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
Ibid., 146.
Ibid., 147.
Ibid.
Ibid., 148149. Decordovas example.
See footnote in Decordova, Reason and Faith (1791), 149.
Ibid., 152.
Ibid., 150151.
119
serves as proof of his providence, his goodness, and providential interaction

with humanity should lead us to also:
[...] destroy natural antipathies and human prejudices, and to believe
that all men, who, with sincerity, travel towards God and salvation, will
arrive at the same point, though they should take diffferent roads that God
is neither Briton, Frank, Hebrew, Turk, or Indian; that he has created all
men, and is willing to save them all.65
He cites several biblical and rabbinic proof texts to support this position of
universal morality and universal revelation.
If Gods love and his revelation are universal, why then should one continue
to hold to a specific religion? Here, again, he bolsters a view of Jewish cultural
supremacy that seemingly undermines his early discussion of universal religion. All that is good and godly among the Christians and the Muslims derives
from the unique relationship of God to the Jews. Christianity, derived from
Judaism, spread the knowledge of God among idolaters. The Christian martyrs
died for their belief in the unity of God. The true philosophers (identified by
Decordova as Newton, Clarke, and Locke) all championed the unity of God.
He devotes a whole paragraph to praise his contemporary ecclesiastical counterpart Theophilus Lindsey and his Unitarian movement, quoting Lindseys
rejection of the trinity verbatim.66 Here again, Decordovas own relationship
to a Sephardic past comes to the fore when he suggests that the Spanish and
Portuguese alone remain, to this day, the most addicted to the adoration of
their images yet, even still, they too played an important role in spreading the
true nature of God to the indigenous inhabitants of the West Indies.67
Decordova is not a historian, a philosopher, or a chronicler. He had little
interest in history as such, but rather only as an organic part of his larger theology, found in the first part of Reason and Faith. He thus is able to combine
a discussion of the Jewish past with a discussion of the Jewish future without
dissonance. He adopts a Maimonidean position that future reward is a spiritual reward, bringing his initial discussion of spiritual pain and pleasure in the
first part of the treatise full circle. However, facing the same conundrum as
Maimonides, he also holds the resurrection of the deada seemingly physical
rewardas a central tenet of his larger theology. He even brings in Locke to
suggest that it is more reasonable that God would reanimate life rather than
65
66
67
Ibid., 160. Emphasis Decordovas.

Ibid., 167.
Ibid.
120
Mirvis
animate it. Though it is absent from Scripture, reason alone mandates a future
state beyond the physical world. This belief in immortality of the soul, according to Decordova, like all other honorable principles of the Western tradition,
is a gift from the Jews. Belief in the immortality of the soul is universal, as it is
a consequence of belief in God more than a direct revelation from God. After
mining biblical sources for the faintest allusion to this essential principle, he
holds that the biblical account lacks a discussion of an afterlife because God
tasked Moses to lead the Israelites through example rather than instill fear in
eternal punishment.68
Though the nature of a future state was unknown even to Moses, belief in its
existence is the only sustainable way for order to be maintained in this world.
Happiness, that universal human goal so prized among eighteenth-century
thinkers, is derived from belief in ultimate reward and punishment:
The hope of a future state, is the greatest comfort a good man can have in
this miserable and wretched life: it is that, which will help him to bear,
with resignation, his misfortunes, his losses, his sicknesseven death
will appear trifling to him, when he is assured that it is only the means of
translating him the enjoyments of a better, a glorious, and eternal life.69
In his concluding chapter Decordova continues his commitment to universal
religion and expresses a hope that through knowledge of God, his goodness,
his providence, and the timelessness of the rewards, all men will share equally
in the eventual messianic deliverance.
Reader, you are at libertyYou may, or you may not, choose, but, remember the certainty of this, that if you are the unbeliever, you can never
expect to enjoy a life to come, and you run a great risk of destroying yourself in the present; but, if you are a believer, you can never destroy yourself in the present, and you have the greatest probability of enjoyment in
the future.70
Decordovas view of history is one bound up in a sense of Jewish supremacy.
He is caught between a dual tendency to make a claim that the Jews are the
true progenitors of Western civilization as it is known and cherished among
the modern philosophers, and his commitment to the eighteenth-century
68
69
70
Ibid., 173.
Ibid., 177.
Ibid., 179.
121
principle of universal religion, universal morality, and shared human experience. For Decordova the preservation of Jews and Judaism stands as proof of
Gods providence but not necessarily of the Jews choseness.
Conclusion
Reason and Faith is among the only rabbinic treatments of the Enlightenment.
Decordova appears similar to his European contemporaries, the maskilim,
and even Mendelssohn himself (though there is no reason to think he read
the works of the Berlin maskilim) in his engagement with the thought of
modern philosophers, his privileging of human reason, and belief in the
universality of revelation. In that sense, Decordova stands at the margins,
both geographically and intellectually, of what has been categorized as the
Religious Enlightenment.71 Yet, at the same time, despite his legitimization of
the Religious Enlightenment, he perhaps resembles more his rabbinic counterpart in Prague, Ezekiel Landau, in his concern for the deleterious efffects of
modern philosophy, which for Decordova meant the French Enlightenment.
Decordova thus belongs to a broader trend among European rabbinic personalities during the 1790s who sought to offfset the damage to Jewish faith from
the Enlightenment and from the maskilim.72 Though, unlike other rabbinic
opponents of the Enlightenment, he never fully rejected its fundamental fidelity to reason. Indeed, pure reason, according to Decordova, leads inevitably
to knowledge of God. Decordova undoubtedly found this to be a safe position
with ample rabbinic precedents.
Decordova displayed a thorough knowledge of the Enlightenment in order
to refute it. In a sense, his counter-Enlightenment was in itself a strain of
Enlightenment thinking, as the rejection of modernity is in itself a unique
form of modernity.73 As such, Decordova ultimately blurs the boundaries
between Religious Enlightenment, Haskalah, and Counter-Enlightenment.
Though beyond the scope of this limited treatment, Decordovas Reason and
71
72
73
On the Religious Enlightenment see David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment:

Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton, nj: Princeton University
Press, 2008).
On the rabbinic Counter-Enlightenment of the 1790s see Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish
Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 342151.
On this type of Counter-Enlightenment see Darrin McMahon, Enemies of the
Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (New
York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
122
Mirvis
Faith certainly also raises new and important questions about the nature of
Enlightenment in the colonial Americas.
Like the author himself, the readers of Reason and Faith were not intended
to be philosophers, but rather a popular audience of synagogue-, and later,
churchgoers struggling to keep their faith while flirting with the idea of the
Enlightenment. Decordova served a community that was already steeped in
the trends of the Enlightenment on a popular level, as is demonstrated by profiling his subscribers, and already widely acculturated to the social norms of
life in the colonial tropics.74 He therefore could not have expected to promote
his rejection of Enlightenment among Jamaican Jews without offfering some
concessions to it. He challenged the popular Enlightenment of his congregants by producing what was in efffect a work of popular Enlightenment.
Reason and Faith integrated both philosophy and Jewish history in a distinctly
rabbinic attempt to promote the truth of divine revelation and providence for
a specifically Jamaican Jewish audience.
74
On non-intellectual acculturation in the eighteenth-century English speaking world see

the classic work of Todd Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 17141830: Tradition and
Change in a Liberal Society (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979;
repr. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999). See also the recent work of Shmuel
Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). For Feiners nuanced approach to Decordovas
Reason and Faith see p. 192. Feiner is the only historian to mention Reason and Faith without referring to it as apologia. He describes Reason and Faith as an anti-deist theological
book that was remarkable in its time.

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Reappraisals and New Studies of

the Modern Jewish Experience

Brian M. Smollett and Christian Wiese

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova and a Rabbinic

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015|doi 10.1163/9789004284661_009

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova

seen as a singular work of rabbinic thought written for an informed audience,

Amsterdam and Curaao

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova was born in Amsterdam to a family of Ottoman

become a protg to the famous Jewish philosophe and economist Isaac de

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova

Decordova appears to have been actively courted by the Jamaican mahamad at

home and moved to Jamaica, where he seems to have remarried.13 Decordova

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova

Fernandes described Decordova as physically much below the middle size,

[Fernandes], Biography, 270.

Hebrew polemic against heretics and Christians entitled afnat paanea,

The name given to Joseph by Pharaoh in Genesis 41:45.

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova

Defense of Revealed Religion

philosophers base knowledge on perception alone. This determinative power

Decordova, Reason and Faith (1791), 913.

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova

Decordovas View of Jewish History

[Fernandes], Biography, 171.

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova

Decordova, Reason and Faith (1791), 108.

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova

The twenty-ninth chapter of Reason and Faith, entitled Of the Early

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova

serves as proof of his providence, his goodness, and providential interaction

Ibid., 160. Emphasis Decordovas.

Joshua Hezekiah Decordova

On the Religious Enlightenment see David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment:

On non-intellectual acculturation in the eighteenth-century English speaking world see

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