The founding vater: is this proof Hamilton was Jewish?
HE’S THE American “Founding Father” celebrated as the subject of a smash-hit rap musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Now fresh evidence has emerged to suggest that Alexander Hamilton was secretly Jewish.
The theory came to light some years ago but should be taken increasingly seriously by historians, according to Andrew Porwancher, author of new book The Jewish World Of Alexander Hamilton. The Harvard fellow believes it likely Hamilton’s mother converted to Judaism, handing on her faith to her son through the matriarchal lineage.
Hamilton was born in 1757 on the Caribbean island of Nevis. He was not baptised. His mother, Rachel Levine, enrolled him at a Jewish school.
Previously scholars dismissed the significance of these facts or claims her husband Johan – who she left for Alexander’s father – was Jewish.
There are no records of Johan being Jewish in archives from his birthplace, the Danish Caribbean island of St Croix, leading scholars to assume he was Christian. But research now shows no official record on St Croix either for other people definitely known to be Jewish.
Further evidence for Johan being Jewish are his profession – of merchant – and the description Hamilton’s grandson gave him of a “rich Danish Jew”.
Rachel bore Johan a son, Peter, who was not baptised, just as Alexander was not after he was born out of wedlock
to Rachel and Scottish colonist James Hamilton.
Scholars had suggested Alexander was barred from baptism and a Christian school because his parents were not married. Yet Porwancher has found other illegitimate children were baptised on Nevis, where a full quarter of the non-slave population was Jewish.
Porwancher asserts that the “balance of evidence” is that Rachel, born to a Christian French Huguenot family, converted to Judaism and so Alexander was Jewish too.
Acting both as a lawyer and as a politician, Hamilton was for his era uniquely supportive of America’s Jewish community. He was killed in 1804 in a duel with vice-president Alexander Burr.