USA: Charleston, SC, Congregation Maintains Historic Jewish Cemetery One Stone (and One Wall) at a Time

 Charleston, South Carolina. KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014

  Charleston, South Carolina. KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014

USA: Charleston, SC, Congregation Maintains Historic Jewish Cemetery One Stone (and One Wall) at a Time

by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) In early November I had the pleasure of spending a few days in Charleston, South Carolina, one of the most beautiful cities in America and a place with one of the oldest and richest Jewish histories.  Besides visiting the beautiful Greek Revival Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE) synagogue (1841), about which I have often written and lectured, I had my first visit to the congregation's old cemetery on Coming Street - one of the oldest Jewish sites in the New World, and one that deserves to be among the most celebrated. 

The cemetery, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is the repository of the human remains of Charleston's early Jewish community, but it is much more than that. The gravestones and monuments tell the history of what was once America's largest and most prosperous Jewish settlement. I was fortunate to learn more of this history and the particulars of the cemetery from Anita Moise Rosenberg, President of the KKBE Board and congregant and cemetery historian Randi Serrins.

Jews have lived in Charleston since at least 1695, twenty-five years after the founding of the colony. KKBE was organized in 1749 and the congregation built its first impressive synagogue in 1791.  The Coming Street Cemetery originated as the De Costa Family plot in 1754 became a community cemetery in 1764. It is the second oldest Jewish cemetery in North America. The oldest identifiable grave is that of Moses D. Cohen, the first religious leader of Beth Elohim, who died in 1762.  A second section dates from 1841, and was developed by KKBE members who seceded  over the installation of an organ in the synagogue and formed Orthodox Congregation Shearith Israel. After the Civil War, the two congregations reunited and the brick dividing wall was removed.

Charleston, South Carolina. KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery. The Lopez Family section. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 

 2014

The last section added to the cemetery is the former Lopez family plot  established in 1843 when Shearith Israel refused burial to David Lopez Jr.'s first wife Catherine who had not converted to Judaism when she married Lopez in 1832, though she ran a Jewish house and raised her five children as Jews. When she died, Lopez acquired a lot immediately adjacent to the Jewish cemetery for the ornate Gothic style tomb beneath which she and her youngest son  were buried. A wrought iron fence and gate with the words, “David Lopez,” separated the Lopez plot from Shearith Israel’s burial ground. In all, 21 members of the Lopez family were buried in thirteen graves in this plot. The conservation of the Catherine and Charles Lopez tomb is now a priority for the congregation. Besides its artistic merit, the history of this tomb and its occupant tell us much about the mores and taboos of early antebellum Charleston Jewry - an important time when Charleston's preoccupations both mirrored and influenced Jewish communal behavior nationwide.  You can read more about this impressive monument here.

David Lopez, Jr. was one of America's first known Jewish builders. He was born in Charleston in 1809 and made his fortune in construction. He became a leader of the community and was responsible for the building (but not design) of KKBE. He also built Institute Hall where South Carolina signed the Ordinance of Secession, a prelude to the Civil War.  According to Randi Serrins Lopez also built the Queen Street tenements at 153-155 Queen Street, Mt. Zion AME Church, a four-story department store that later became the Academy of Music, the Moorish style former Farmer’s and Exchange Bank (more recently Saracen Restaurant), and the Courtenay Building. During the Civil War his factory made torpedo boats to fight the Union blockade of Charleston.  

Ernest O. Shealy documented that early in his career Charleston architect Edward C. Jones worked for David Lopez, and Serrins speculates that perhaps Jones and his associate Francis D. Lee - who together re-designed the Unitarian Church on Archdale Street in an English Gothic style in 1852 - were the architects.

 Charleston, South Carolina. KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery. Catherine and Charles Lopez tomb in Lopez family section. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014

Charleston, SC. Unitarian Church, Archdale St.  Edward C. Jones

and Francis D. Lee, architects, 1852. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2014)

In total, the cemetery has over 500 graves;though many are not marked. Upright "tablet" gravestones are the most common, though there are also many box tombs covered with inscribed monolithic slabs, and there are also an assortment of more sculptural monuments in the style of the 19th-centyr with columns and obelisks.

The Coming Street cemetery is a military cemetery with the graves of ten congregants who fought in the American Revolution, six soldiers of the War of 1812, two soldiers in the Seminole Wars in Florida, 21 Civil War participants, of whom eight died in the Confederate cause.  The cemetery also is the resting place of six of the KKBE's rabbis, 18 past congregation presidents and four of the eleven founders of the Supreme Council of Scottish Rite Masonry in 1801.

Charleston, South Carolina. KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery..Box tomb of colonial merchant Moses Cohen (1700-1762), the oldest identifiable grave in the cemetery. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2014)

The congregation has been restoring the cemetery for many years.  Study of the gravestones is aided by the compilation of inscriptions published by Rabbi Barnett A. Elzas in 1903. Local historian Solomon Breibart also contributed much to the knowledge of the cemetery's history.  He was buried there in 2009 and his grave in the near the cemetery entrance.

The centuries have taken their toll. Gravestones have been damaged by erosion, earthquakes, adjoining development, tree roots, pollution and vandalism.  Many inscriptions are hard to read.  Some stones are broken, others pushed over by tree root pressure.  Fixing all this is a difficult and expensive process and the work proceeds little by little, stone by stone.  Still, the overall condition of the cemetery is better than that of many of the old Sephardi cemeteries in Caribbean which share family members. Significantly, the cemetery borders remain intact, unlike so many ravaged cemeteries in Europe. 

 Charleston, South Carolina. KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery. Reinforced cemetery boundary wall still in need of restoration. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014  

In 2013 the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) donated $10,000.00 to KKBE for the restoration project. The DAR grant has been used for wall restoration and repair of the Revolutionary-era graves.  The original boundary walls constructed by 18th-century craftsmen are severely compromised with significant through-wall cracks which now present an urgent danger to the very graves they have protected for centuries.  See more pictures of the Coming Street Cemetery Restoration Project 

Charleston, South Carolina. KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery.. Box tomb of Revolutionary War Captain Abraham Mendes Seixas (1750-1799), restored with DAR grant. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2014)

 

Charleston, South Carolina. KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery. Gravestone of Confederate soldier Marx E. Cohen, Jr. (1839-1865), killed at the Battle of Bentonville, North Carolina.

I was especially eager to see the grave of Penina Moïse (1797-1880), an early published American woman poet, whose 1833 poetry volume Fancy’s Sketch Book, was the first published by a Jewish American woman.  She was a leading voice in the new language of Reform Judaism in the first half of the 19th century.  A half century before Emma Lazarus, Moïse gave American Judaism a new voice in a new language, and to link the heroics of ancient Jewish history to new American opportunities. Moïse's hymns were written for KKBE but were sung across the country for more than a century.  She is also remembered as a founder with Sally Lopez (David Lopez's sister), of the Beth Elohim Sunday School in 1845, one of the first in the country.

 Charleston, South Carolina. KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery. Grave of poet and teacher Penina Moïse. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014

 
This year I was pleased to present and sing (with piano accompaniment by Syracuse University music history professor Amanda Winkler) Moïse 's hymn "Feast of Lights: Great Arbiter of Human Fate," at my annual Hanukkah party. The hymn in the tone of the lyric and the steadfastness of the musical arrangement by Edward Samuel recalls, not unexpectedly,  Protestant hymns sung at the time (and still today).

Penina Moïse. "Feast of Lights." Photo from Ashton, Hannukkah in America: A History (NY: NYU Press, 2013).

 Charleston, South Carolina. KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery. Obelisk grave monument. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014

Charleston, South Carolina. KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery. Column grave monument. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014

 Charleston, South Carolina. KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014

Today, KKBE congregation burials take place in KKBE’s Huguenin Avenue Cemetery, established in 1887. 

More information on KKBE’s history and the Coming Street Cemetery is available on www.kkbe.org.  If you are interested in a tour of the Coming Street Cemetery, please contact the KKBE office, 843-723-1090 or email shalom@kkbe.org.

USA: Charleston's Holocaust Memorial in Shadow of Calhoun Monument

Charleston, South Carolina. Marion Square. Holocaust Monument. Jonathan Levi, architect, 1999.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Charleston, South Carolina. Marion Square. Holocaust Monument. Jonathan Levi, architect, 1999.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Charleston, South Carolina. Marion Square. Holocaust Monument. Jonathan Levi, architect, 1999. The Calhoun Monument towers in the background. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

USA: Charleston's Holocaust Memorial in Shadow of Calhoun Monument
by Samuel D. Gruber

A few months ago I wrote a post about a certain genre of Holocaust Memorials that I called "Things left Behind."  To the several memorials I discussed then I could have added the large Holocaust Monument  in Charleston, South Carolina, completed in 1999, where the central element is a lonely discarded tallit, the Jewish prayer shawl used by men in the synagogue and also in which for some it was customary to be wrapped for burial. Cast in bronze, the tallit lies on the floor of a rectangular space that can been seen as a synagogue, a prison, or even perhaps a gas chamber. Left behind, the tallit indicates prayer and life cut short, but also the rites of proper burial denied.

This one recognizable ritual object is set in the midst of a symbolic architecture which itself is inserted into an urban memorial field - Marion Square - rich and deceptive in the layers of history it chooses to reveal and hide. Designed by Jonathan Levi, the Holocaust Memorial was commissioned by the Charleston Jewish Federation. You can see more photos, drawings and models on the architect's website here.

Charleston, South Carolina. Marion Square. Holocaust Monument. Jonathan Levi, architect, 1999.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

I've made several visits to Charleston in recent years and in traveling around the historic city I've been attentive to markers and memorials that recognize and commemorate the Jewish history of the city, including the historic Jewish cemetery and the Francis Salvador marker. I've also been attentive to those markers, such as that at a former Brown Fellowship cemetery, that acknowledge - even in a small way - that for centuries Charleston was a majority African-American city where black slaves and then black citizens outnumbered whites. It can truly be said that slaves built Charleston - their sweat and toil, blood and struggles are mixed in the very bricks and mortar of the streets, churches, houses, and public buildings. Sadly, there are still too few markers commemorating and celebrating African-American history in the city (though the number is growing).  And none of these are in the three main ceremonial and commemorative spaces in the city - White Point Gardens, Washington Park, and Marion Square. These public parks have several monuments, however, that celebrate in some way the confederacy and slavery, and none is more prominent than the enormous Calhoun Monument that dominates Marion Square. Calhoun, a great defender of slavery, stands atop a tall monument fully visible from historic black churches in the area, including Mother Emanuel Church - where the terrible shootings took place in 2015. 

The Calhoun monument also towers over Charleston's and South Carolina's official Holocaust Memorial Monument. While the city's Jewish community was able to erect a memorial to the >injustices of Nazi Germany, no monument in the square explicitly mentions slavery or any of South Carolina's long history of crimes against African-Americans. A push to erect a monument in the square to Denmark Vesey, who threatened white rule, was rejected by the two private organizations, the Washington Light Infantry and the Sumter Guards which own the square and have final approval on all monuments even though the square is maintained by taxpayer dollars. Despite intensive lobbying, both organizations refused a Vesey statue. The armory (later the Citadel)which overlooks part the square was built in response to the failed Vesey slave rebellion. Nonetheless, memorials to the South's own rebellion against the United States, in which South Carolina was a leader, are legion.

Charleston, South Carolina. Marion Square. Holocaust Monument. Jonathan Levi, architect, 1999.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

In 2015 architect Levi said the memorial was originally designed in three parts; the sanctuary, a place of reflection meant to “transcend even the terrible events of the mid-twentieth century;” the place of assembly; and then the place of remembrance. These three divisions recall the purposes of a synagogue - a house of gathering, a house of prayer and and study. The north side is a rectangular, sunken lawn framed by graded steps, intended as a place of contemplation and a meeting ground for the annual Yom Ha Shoah (National Day of Holocaust Remembrance) ceremonies. The west side faces Calhoun Street and features a concrete and bronze inscription wall detailing the Holocaust history and now also lists names of survivors living in South Carolina. The center of the memorial, or sanctuary,is formed by a two-story high screen of mill-finish stainless steel. If the metal screen doesn't replicate any known synagogue, it does remind me of the metal bimah in Prague's Altneushul. 

Charleston, South Carolina. Marion Square. Holocaust Monument. Jonathan Levi, architect, 1999.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Charleston, South Carolina. Marion Square. Holocaust Monument. Jonathan Levi, architect, 1999.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Prague, Czech Republic. Altneushul. Looking up from bimah. Photo from Arno Parik et al Prague Synagogues (Prague: Prague Jewish Mus., 2000).

On the pavement within the four sided 25 feet wide, 60 feet long, and 17 feet high metal screen lies a 12-foot bronze tallit. This reads as a quasi-sacred space - separate from the viewer, who must decide his/her own physical, emotional, and moral distance from the crimes and the victims' suffering. The abandoned tallit calls to mind all those synagogues of Europe whose congregations were dispersed and murdered.
 
While the original design was meant to generalize by presenting broad symbols and big ideas. In 2015, h shortly before I visited the site, it was refurbished, and specific names of 24 camps and survivors were included.
 
Texts of the plaques are transcribed on the invaluable Waymarking website and I include them here: The Plaque for the monument reads as follows: 

From 1933 until 1945, the National Socialist (Nazi) regime in Germany implemented a racial theory declaring the “German Aryan Race” superior. The Nazis used this perverse Theory and their military and industrial might to dominate Europe and to separate, imprison and ultimately destroy millions of human beings. Those who the Nazis deemed undesirable and sought to eliminate included political dissidents, homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled, Roma (Gypsies) and Jehovah’s witnesses. But their chief victims were six million Jews.

What began as racial laws to strip Jews of their livelihood, their property and their civil rights accelerated into a campaign to systematically slaughter millions of men, women and children. By 1942, the machinery of mass murder was in full operation. Jews and other victims from all over Europe were sent to some 9000 concentration and labor camps throughout Europe, and to the killing centers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Majdanek, Treblinka, Belzec and Chelmno located in Poland.

The denial of Human Rights with advanced technology and a pitiless will to dominate, caused the death of innocent millions and the annihilation of most of the Jews of Europe.

 

Charleston, South Carolina. Marion Square. Holocaust Monument. Jonathan Levi, architect, 1999.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Charleston, South Carolina. Marion Square. Holocaust Monument. Jonathan Levi, architect, 1999.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

In 2015 additional plaques were added listing the names of Shoah survivors who settled in South Carolina.

USA: Monuments to Francis Salvador, (Jewish) Hero of the American Revolution

USA: Monuments to Francis Salvador, (Jewish) Hero of the American Revolution
by Samuel D. Gruber



(ISJM) One of the thoughts that crossed my mind last Friday night as I listened to my rabbi speak about the meaning of July 4th, was the "Jewish contribution," or better, "the contribution of Jews" to the struggle. This allowed me to pull from memory some work I did when I was Research Director of the US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad.

Seven years ago, on July 4 (2002), the Commission published a report I wrote, Preliminary Survey of Sites Associated with the Lives and Deeds of Foreign-born Heroes of the American Revolution. At the time the Commission was deep in the organization of countrywide surveys of Jewish and other minority cultural sites in Central and Eastern Europe, doing a lot of very important work on a tiny budget. But someone on Capitol Hill saw the name of the Commission and thought that The Revolutionary War was an essential part of American heritage abroad, too (even if it wasn't what the legislative creators of the Commission had in mind), and asked that a list overseas sites associated with Foreign-born Heroes of the American Revolution be compiled. Though unexpected, this turned out to be an interesting task.

No such list existed, but since there was no extra funding and not much time for the work, it was very-much desk chair research - there was certainly no time or money to visit sites. We had to define some essential terms (such as "hero"), and after compiling some longs lists, we settled on a selection of individuals who contributed to the Revolution, and also collectively represented something of the diverse nation America became.

One of the people on the list was Francis Salvador (born in England, 1747), of whom at the time I had never heard. Unlike Lafayette and Kosciusko, who were heroes in their own countries as well in America, we found no markers or monuments to Salvador in the country of birth, and few in the country he adopted - except two in his home state of South Carolina. In belated celebration of July 4th (2009), I post these here (since 2002, I've made it a point when traveling to visit all the sites I can that honor the foreign-born heroes of '76).

Salvador came from a prominent Sephardi Jewish family in England. He was already a fourth generation English-Jew. His great-grandfather Joseph was the first Jewish Director of the East India Company. Francis Salvador came to America as a young man to improve his fortunes, but he became caught up in the revolutionary fervor of the time, becoming the only Jew in the colonies to serve in a revolutionary congress, and then having the dubious (but now "heroic") status of being the first Jew to be killed in the War of Independence.

As I wrote in the Commission report "Francis Salvador was an early casualty of the Revolution – slain in August 1776 in an Indian attack fomented by the British. Born in London in 1747, he moved to South Carolina where he was actively involved in the independence movement. Within a year of his arrival, at the age of 27, Salvador was elected to the General Assembly of South Carolina. In 1774, Salvador was elected as a delegate to South Carolina's revolutionary Provincial Congress, which assembled in Charleston in January 1775 to frame a bill of rights that set forth grievances against the British government. Salvador played important roles in both the first and second Provincial Congress, gaining appointments on several select commissions. One such commission was established to preserve the peace in the interior parts of South Carolina, where the English Superintendent of Indian Affairs was busily negotiating treaties with the Cherokees to induce the tribe to attack the colonists."

There is one historical marker commemorating Salvador set in Washington Park in Charleston. One has to make an effort to find it, where it is set among many memorials of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

Charleston, South Carolina. Francis Salvador Commemorative marker.
Photos: Samuel D. Gruber 2003.

The inscription on the plaque reads:

Commemorating
Francis Salvador
1747 – 1776
First Jew in South Carolina to hold public office
And
To Die for American Independence

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He came to Charles Town from his native London in 1773 to develop extensive family landholdings in the frontier district of ninety six. As a deputy to the provincial congresses of South Carolina, 1775 and 1776, he served with distinction in the creation of this state and nation, participating as a volunteer in an expedition against Indians and Tories, he was killed from ambush near the Keowee river, August 1, 1776.

Born an aristocrat, he became a democrat, an Englishman, he cast his lot with America.
True to his ancient faith, he gave his life for new hopes of human liberty and understanding.

Erected at the time of the Bicentennial celebration of the Jewish community of Charleston.

Approved by the historical commission of Charleston SC

A second marker commemorating Salvador was erected in 1960 in Greenwood, South Carolina, by members of the Jewish Community. That roadside marker can be seen here.

The inscription reads:

Francis Salvador, 1747-1776.

This young English Jew settled near Coronaca in 1774, representing Ninety Six District in the provincial congresses of 1775-1776, and died in defense of his adopted home on Aug. 1, 1776. He was the first South Carolinian of his faith to hold an elective public office and the first to die for American independence.

The marker is at the intersection of Christian Road (Old South Carolina Route 72) and Laurens Highway (U.S. 221), on the right when traveling south on Christian Road. For a map and more detail see the Waymarking website.

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