Among the most important positions in the American political establishment is that of Justice on the United States Supreme Court. Since the Court’s founding in 1789, only 7 of the 110 judges have been Jewish, and none was chosen before the 20th century.1
The genealogy of the late Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo is almost unknown; only after several decades of research have I been able to make the connections between his family and their relationship with Portuguese Jewry.
Cardozo was born in New York on May 24, 1870, to Judge Albert Jacob Cardozo, vice-president and trustee of Congregation Shearith Israel (the first Jewish congregation in the U.S.), and Rebecca Washington Nathan, aunt of the poet Emma Lazarus (1849–87), author of the poem “The New Colossus” displayed at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Cardozo’s patrician Jewish-American family belonged to that group called the “Grandees” by Stephen Birmingham.2
Less well known, however, is the fact that the Cardozos also were members of an important Portuguese New Christian family that lived under Inquisitional terror for more than two centuries. The family’s pedigree represents this history of persecution and the struggle to escape through the few options available. This family’s history goes from forced conversion and confrontation with the Holy Office of Inquisition to a quiet and difficult escape to a country tolerant to Jews.
Earliest Documented Ancestor
Cardozo’s earliest documented ancestor is a controversial figure in Sephardic history, Rabbi Abraham Senior (1412–93), a native and av bet din (rabbinical judge) of Segovia, Queen Isabel’s minister of finance and the last chief rabbi of Castile. For unknown reasons, perhaps to maintain his position or because he was already an old man, Senior did not accompany the Jews expelled from the country in 1492, which included his partner, Don Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508). Instead, Senior converted to Catholicism and was baptized with his family in 1492 at the monastery of Guadalupe. His godparents were the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel. Senior and a son-in-law adopted the first name Fernando and the surname Coronel. The family maintained its positions at the Court for many years. A century and a half after the conversion, a descendant, Soror Maria de Agreda (1602–65), served as an advisor to King Philip IV (1605–65), and in Brazil, another descendant, the Countess of Barral (1816–91) was a confidant of Don Pedro II (1825–91).
Not all the descendants of Rabbi Abraham Senior, also known as Fernán Pérez Coronel, truly embraced Catholicism. Some were denounced as New Christian judaizers (secret Jews) and, punished by the Inquisition, lost their possessions and even were deported to Brazil. Other descendants fled to lands more tolerant to Jews, such as Duarte Saraiva (born 1572), who escaped to Holland, where he adopted the name David Senior Coronel and subsequently went to Brazil, where he was considered the richest man in Dutch Brazil. Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel (1604–57) dedicated his book, Conciliador, to Coronel. Coronel descendants are scattered around the world, some in Israel, others in the state of Ceará in the interior of Brazil.
Benjamin Nathan Cardozo descended from Rabbi Abraham Senior on his paternal side. Benjamin’s paternal great-great-great-grandmother was the daughter of a Portuguese physician who fled the Inquisition; Eugénia Teresa da Veiga took the name Esther Nunez in the United States.
Ribeiro Clan
According to family information, Dr. Diogo Nunes Ribeiro was the physician of Lisbon’s Inquisitor General, but he belonged to a family of judaizers based in the Beira region of Portugal, noteworthy for the large number of physicians it produced. Another member of the clan was Dr. Antonio Nunes Ribeiro Sanches (1699–1783), a Portuguese physician and writer who lived in France but who went to Russia as a military doctor and became known as “the first Jewish intellectual in Russia.”
Another important member of this family was Dr. José Henriques Ferreira (1740–92), founder (in 1772) of the first Brazilian scientific institution, the Academia Fluviense, Médica, Farmacêutica e Botânica (Society of Natural History). Denounced to the Inquisition as a judaizer, sentenced to prison, and excommunicated in 1704, Ferreira and his family fled to London where several refugee members of his family lived. With few resources, Ferreira decided to immigrate with his family in 1733 to the colony of Georgia. There, using the name Samuel Nunez, he saved the colony from disaster fighting the yellow fever raging in the area.
The Nunez family founded the third Jewish congregation in the United States, Mikva Israel, and managed to enter local life successfully, thriving financially as well as intellectually. Among their notable descendants are Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785–1851), regarded as the most influential American Jew of the 19th century, and Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy (1792–1862), who refused an invitation from Don Pedro I (1798–1834), Imperator of Brazil, to join the Brazilian navy. Levy is known for having banned flogging in the United States Navy and later for having purchased and saved from destruction President Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello.
Cardozo’s Maternal Ancestors
Rebecca Washington Nathan, mother of Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, also descended from Jewish families from Portugal and elsewhere. One ancestor was Benjamin Levy, born in Schwelm, Germany, and later a resident in Amsterdam; London; and Recife, Brazil. Known as el viejo asquazy (the old Ashkenazi), Levy was hazan (cantor), shohet (butcher), bodek (meat inspector), and a founder of the Recife Jewish community during the Dutch period (1630–54). Benjamin was the father of Rachel Levy and Asser Levy, who is regarded as the first Jewish American citizen. He is also Benjamin Nathan Cardozo’s great-great-great-grandparent.
Another of Rebecca’s notable ancestors was “Abraham” Mendez Seixas (1810–67) who was related to Portugal’s two major New Christian clans, the Nunes Ribeiros and the Campos. The given name Mendez Seixax used in Portugal, his birthplace, is unknown. Abraham, finding himself in the same situation as other New Christian judaizers, bedeviled by the Inquisition and realizing that he would be arrested, secretly escaped aboard an English ship that went to Barbados. From there, Mendez Seixas relocated to the United States, where he became the great patriarch of the American Jewish elite.
Conclusion
Benjamin Nathan Cardozo died of a heart attack on July 9, 1938, and is buried at Beth Olam Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. He was unmarried and left no children, but wrote many books and legal decisions that are still read. He was described by his successor in the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965), as “modest, discreet and sensitive.”
Bibliography
- da Silva Rolão, Manuel Estevam Martinho. Famílias da Beira Baixa: Raízes e Ramos. 3 vols., 2007.
- Stern, Malcolm H. First American Jewish Families: 600 Genealogies—1654–1988. Baltimore: Ottenheimer, 1991.
- Valadares, Paulo. A presença oculta. Genealogia, identidade e cultura cristã-nova brasileira nos séculos XIX e XX (The hidden presence. Genealogy, identity and new Brazilian-Christian culture in the 19th and 20th centuries). Fortaleza, Fundação Ana Lima, 2007.
- Notes
- The first (1916) was Louis Brandeis, followed by Felix Frankfurter, Benjamin Cardozo, Arthur Goldberg, Abraham Fortas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Steven Breyer.
- Stephen Birmingham, The Grandees. (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).
- Paulo Valadares, historian, coauthor (with Faiguenboim and Campagnano) of Dicionário Sefardi de Sobrenomes (Dictionary of Sephardic Surnames), awarded the Association of Jewish Libraries Reference Award Jewish (2003). Valaderes is a descendant of these New Christian families.
