The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

In 1852, Longfellow—a descendant of settlers who colonized New England in the 1600s—visited Newport with his family. Longfellow found the recently restored Jewish cemetery in town particularly moving: He could read and write Hebrew and was deeply interested in Jewish history and culture. “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport” directly stemmed from Longfellow’s visit and references several historically accurate details. Newport was the site of one of the earliest Jewish settlements in the United States. This first wave of Jewish immigrants ended up in Newport in the mid-17th century. Founded by Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, Rhode Island was the colony famous for permitting religious tolerance. Unsurprisingly, many Jewish people (often successful merchants) ended up in the seaside city of Newport. These first settlers were descendants of Sephardim from Southern Europe, and many came to America by way of the Caribbean and South America. In example, the burial ground commemorated by Longfellow was first acquired by Mordecai Campernell, who lived in Brazil. Campernell had connections with the small Jewish community in Barbados, and persuaded some of them of the “far greater possibilities” Newport offered.

In “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport” Longfellow displays a sensitivity which was a rarity at a time when anti-Semitism was acceptable. Doubtless, Longfellow’s progressive politics informed this sensitivity; he was an abolitionist with a keen sympathy for racial minorities, including Indigenous Americans. Further, Longfellow’s long visits to Europe exposed him to the anti-Semitism still prevalent in the continent and the “[g]hetto and Judenstrass” (Line 34) where Jewish communities were confined.

Interestingly, the poem was written at a time when the seeds of proto-Zionism were being sowed: Zionism is the ideology and political movement established in the late 19th century that championed the establishment of a Jewish nation. However, in its earliest forms, proto-Zionism focused more on achieving racial and religious equality for Jews rather than achieving a separate national identity. In his essay "How Came They Here?": Longfellow's "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport," Slavery, and Proto-Zionism,” 19th century literature expert Professor Joseph Phelan says that Longfellow may have been exposed to this early proto-Zionist strand, which explains some of the contradictions in “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport.” According to Phelan:

From the perspective of the present, the combination in Longfellow’s poem of sympathy for the Jews and apparent rejection of this idea of restoration might seem a strange one; but the pre-history of Zionism suggests that it was entirely possible for both Jews and non-Jews to support religious freedom and equality, and at the same time to reject as fanciful and even potentially divisive the idea of the revival of a separate Jewish nation.

Finally, some contemporary critics have debated the idea of Longfellow positioning the Jewish community of Newport as immigrants instead of settlers, when in fact the first Jews of European origin arrived in New England as early as the 17th century—just a few decades after the first Puritan Christian settlers fled religious persecution in England.