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January 29, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Whence?

“(T)he first thought which presents itself to our minds, when we cast our eyes upon these islands on the map of the great ocean, is, surprise to find isles so remote from the world, with whose history we are acquainted, peopled by our own species …”

“… it may be as well, therefore, to make a few remarks, under the guidance of such information as we possess, concerning the first inhabitants of the group, and upon the probable means of their transport from the land from which they seem to have proceeded.”

“Future historians of this little state will not be spared the perplexities which have obstructed the first steps of all who have endeavoured to trace the course of events by which small societies became mighty nations.”

“We may pass very lightly over certain speculations, which cannot be wholly overlooked, tending to show that the natives of this group, if not those of the rest of the Polynesian isles, are descended from the lost tribes of the Jews.”

“These conjectures are founded upon the observation of several customs among the islanders, which are the same or similar to those believed to have been peculiar to the Jewish people.”

“The more remarkable of them are: the offering of their first-fruits to their deities; circumcision, which was also here a religious ceremony, and performed by the priests …”

“… the strict seclusion of the women after the birth of a child, and during other periods of natural infirmity, with the ceremonies of purification, under pain even of death; and the possession of cities or places of refuge, similar in design to those of that people.”

“The circumstances that chiefly strike us, when we compare one people with another, with a view to ascertain what ‘propinquity and property of blood’ they possess, are their physical conformation generally, but more particularly the features of the face, and their colour …”

“… and, after this, their language, their religion, and their well-established customs. For such examination of those that are at distances too remote from us to admit of especial or frequent observation, we have usually, and certainly in our case, to rely upon the accounts of navigators, missionaries, travellers, and merchants.”

“Now we find almost the universal testimony of all who have visited the Pacific islands, that the inhabitants of the whole of the groups, as well as of New Zealand, resemble one another in several, or in all these particulars …”

“… and, moreover, that they all bear in their type and physical conformation a greater resemblance to the Malay race, than to any other of the ancient inhabitants of the globe.”

“But all difficulties in the way of establishing the theory of their having sprung from that race will disappear when we consider certain traditions among the natives, in conjunction with known facts concerning the intercourse between the inhabitants of distinct groups …”

“… and some other circumstances which I myself, in common with others, learned in the capacity of traveller during these inquiries in the Pacific.”

“There are traditions among the Sandwich islanders regarding the land from which their ancestors came, and of an intercourse formerly carried on between different groups, and it is commonly believed by them, that they came from Otaheite.”

“They believe also that their progenitors, at a very remote period, possessed canoes of much larger dimensions and greater capability of navigating the ocean than the frail craft since in use among them.”

“If, indeed, such canoes or vessels of any kind did ever exist, this fact alone is sufficient to settle the question of the intercourse formerly carried on between the islands, as well as that of the origin of the inhabitants.”

“Let us then see what external information we have to corroborate these traditions. We know, from history, that every country bordering on the sea has from the earliest ages abounded in maritime adventurers …”

“… and, if we are acquainted with many circumstances which indicate the restraints that were put upon foreign enterprise and lawful trading, we also know that no laws have ever been able to suppress the marauding propensities of a nautical people …”

“… or of the organization even of direct systems of piratical adventure. Now, although we should suppose that no very long voyages were ever performed by any of the ‘Sea Kings,’ or Northmen of the Pacific …”

“… we have evidence in abundance, of the vessels of the Chinese and the Japanese being picked up by European whalers, after having been blown off the coasts of China and Japan, some of them with whole families on board.”

“In 1832, a junk, after being tempest-tossed for eleven months, was cast on the shore even of Woahoo, with four men of her crew still surviving, and some of these vessels have been known to reach even the coast of America.”

“During the voyage, with which this volume commences, there were but few old sailors among the seamen and officers on board our ship; but these had been long sailing in whalers in the Pacific, and especially upon the coasts of China and Japan …”

“… and they related to me many instances known to them of junks being blown off those coasts, and picked up after they were incapable of returning, and of their crews having been carried back to their own country.”

“In one of these cases, one of our officers was himself a party to the rescue of a junk and her crew, long after her pilots had lost all hopes of reaching their own shore.”

“Now it is clear, that it would be quite enough for any single one of these vessels to reach any island, provided there were but one man and one woman surviving, to people at least the whole group to which that island belonged …”

“… though it is extremely unlikely, that from a single vessel, probably cast on the shore, others should proceed to undertake the long voyage which the great distance between the groups would involve.”

“Nevertheless, if we even reject altogether the idea of intercourse between the groups generally, we have the same probability left, of the peopling of all the groups, one by one, by the same accident …”

“… which would equally account for the common Malay origin of their inhabitants, and also for such variation as we discover in their natural traits, customs, and language, by the variation of the character of the different nations of Malay origin, from which they might have come.” (All here is from Hill.)

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Hawaiian Islands from Hill-1856
Hawaiian Islands from Hill-1856

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Hawaii, Jewish, Malay

September 24, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Shaloha

“What dignity in its appearance! How lordly in its bearing!”

“When full grown it rises about twenty feet from the ground without branches. Then for about ten feet more it throws forth beautiful and finely curved branches in all directions, and on the very top stands forth a straight stalk pointing upward.”

“That tree (royal palm) preaches a sermon to all mankind; those branches, spreading on all sides, manifest the people on this earth, settled in every clime …”

“… the stalk, projecting from the midst of these branches, and shooting upwards, is Israel, the connecting link between earth and heaven. Israel’s mission is to link the people of this earth to their Father in Heaven.”

“It is a powerful sermon that this royal palm teaches. May the moral not be lost on us.” (Rabbi Rudolph Coffee, in the Islands in 1902)

Shaloha is a conjunction of Shalom and Aloha – (the former is Hebrew, the latter Hawaiian) they each can mean peace, completeness, prosperity and welfare and can be used idiomatically to mean both hello and goodbye.

The conjunctive word is used by many of the Jewish faith in Hawaiʻi, and the word serves as the basis for the website of Temple Emanu-El (a synagogue community and a center of Jewish life in Hawaiʻi.)

Recorded history notes that the 1798 diary entries of Enbenezer Townsend are indicated as the first references to Jews in Hawaiʻi. Townsend, the principal owner of the ‘Neptune’ was at the time one of the most extensive ship owners in New Haven. They were on a sealing voyage under the command of Daniel Greene and were in Hawaiʻi from August 12, 1798, to August 31, 1798.

“At about sunrise, the king, whose name is Amaiamai-ah (Kamehameha) came on board in quite handsome style in a double canoe, paddled by about five and twenty men. … While we lay there I proposed learning him the compass, which I had some reason to regret, for he kept me at it continually until he learned it.”

“One of his wives (Kaʻahumanu) came on board with him; she was a large woman, with a great deal of the cloth of the country around her … He also brought a Jew cook with him, and if he remains here I think it will be difficult to trace his descendants, for he is nearly as dark as they are.” (Diary of Ebenezer Townsend, Jr, August 19, 1798)

It is believed that Jewish traders from England and Germany first came to Hawaiʻi in the 1840s. Jews from throughout the world were attracted to California and in most cases they tried it there before they came to the Islands. (Glanz)

The first Jewish mercantile establishment was a San Francisco firm, which opened a branch in Honolulu. As with many other Jewish families of merchants in California, it was a large family which could well afford to staff the branch of the firm in the islands with a partner, while other family members remained in San Francisco. Subsequently other Jewish firms in California did the same thing.

AS Grinbaum is to be regarded as the first founder of a firm of this kind; he arrived in Honolulu in 1856, where he remained for about seven years. At the end of this time, after having acquired a small fortune through carrying on a general merchandise business, he returned to the United States, and later to Europe.

Grinbaum’s success led him to induce one of his nephews to settle in the Islands. Encouraged by the financial success of Grinbaum, another German Jew, Hirsch Rayman, went to engage there in business in the early 1860s. He was also successful and after a sojourn of five years, he returned to Posen. (Coffee)

The firm of M. Phillips and Company was founded in 1867 by Michael Phillips of San Francisco, who owned an importing and jobbing firm there. The Honolulu branch of the firm was headed by Phillips’ brother-in-law, Mark Green. The Phillips Company was mainly active in the export of sugar, rice and coffee. (Glanz)

Another firm founded in the 1860s was that of the Hyman Brothers. There were five brothers, one of whom was Henry W Hyman, who engaged in a mercantile business with his brothers as “Hyman Bros., Importers of General Merchandise and Commission Merchants,” filling orders to the sale of Consignments of Rice, Sugar, Coffee and other Island Produce.”

The Grinbaum, Hyman and Phillips firms were the outstanding Jewish-owned companies prior to the annexation of the islands by the US in 1898. (Glanz)

The Odd Fellows had been established in the Sandwich Islands in 1846, and Jewish names can be seen in their membership rosters. The report of a picnic held on April 25, 1885 in Waikiki, by the Excelsior Lodge, noted among others, the presence of the “following brethren with their lady guests:” L. Adler, I. S. Ginsbergh and M. Louisson.

There was at least one Jew who played a prominent role in the political history of the islands; Paul Rudolph Neumann, lawyer and diplomat, was one of the Jewish leaders in Hawaiʻi. He served as Attorney General under King Kalākaua (1883–1886) and Queen Liliʻuokalani (1892,) became a member of the House of Nobles, and later became Liliʻuokalani’s personal attorney.

About 1901, the Hebrew Benevolent Association was formed, the purpose of which was to acquire a cemetery. It numbers forty members, and represents the male population of Honolulu, with the exception of about ten men, who have refused to affiliate.

Immediately subsequent to annexation, the islands began to do a very large mercantile business, and the Jewish community was enlarged. But, by 1902, business was at a standstill and lots of folks returned to the mainland – with just about 100-staying; they are engaged chiefly in mercantile pursuits. (Coffee)

“This community of one hundred, which is found in a city whose population numbers forty-five thousand people, represents more wealth, as far as I am able to judge, than any other Jewish community with ten times the number of people in this country.” (Coffee)

In the years before World War I, the growing importance of the islands as a military base brought Jewish members of the American armed force in numbers which created an entirely new picture for the Jewish community there. (Glanz)

To care for Jews in the military stationed in the Islands, the National Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) established the Aloha Center in 1923. The community began to flourish and the Honolulu Jewish Community was established in 1938.

Today, there are at least 9 congregations serving the Jews of the Hawaiian Islands. According to The American Jewish Year Book (2012,) there are approximately 7,000 Jews residing in the state of Hawaii. (NJOP)

Lasting legacies of early Jewish presence in the Islands are gifts from Elias Abraham Rosenberg (Rabbi ‘Rosey,’ Holy Moses) to King Kalākaua: a Sefer Torah (Pentateuch) and Pointer; they were brought to Hawaiʻi in 1886 by Rosenberg, who came here from San Francisco.

“The king received the Torah scroll and yad … over the years that followed, the scroll and yad gradually made their way to Temple Emanu-El, where they remain to this day, safely ensconced in a glass cabinet.” (Canadian Jewish Chronicle, August 4, 2011) Rosenberg left the Islands June 7, 1887 and returned to San Francisco; he died a month later.

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Filed Under: General, Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings Tagged With: Hawaii, Jewish

Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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