While not unprecedented, the marriage of Isaac Mendes Seixas, aSephardi, and Rachel Levy, an Ashkenazi,in 1740 marked a symbolically significant union of traditions, and astep in the long process toward the erasure of certain distinctionsin favor of an American Judaism. Seixas was born into a conversofamily who had fled Portugal for London in 1725, after his father wasaccused of crypto-Jewish practices. Five years later Seixas left forNew York and eleven years after his arrival married Rachel Levy,daughter of wealthy New York merchant MosesRaphael Levy. Among their six surviving children were Gershom,who was to become one of the leading figures in early American Jewishlife, and their youngest, Grace, whose life would be marked by apassionate engagement with Judaism and literature.

Whenthe Revolution erupted, she and her family, like many supporters ofthe patriot cause, left New York for Philadelphia. There she met andmarried Simon Nathan. They returned toNew York after the war, and she gave birth to her only child, Seixas.
Profoundly interested in literature, Grace left us a largecorpus of letters and an unpublished collection of poetry. Engagedwith contemporary developments in arts and letters, she wrote to herniece, “I have read the whole of Lord Byron’s work very latelyindeed and I recommend them to you.” She imbued her family withthis love of literature, an influence that can perhaps be tracedthrough the generations to her descendent Emma Lazarus whose poem the“New Colossus” sits inscribed in bronze at the base of the Statueof Liberty.

Gracealso cultivated a relationship with Judaism. In a letter she wrote toher son at the end of her life she said, “I die in the full faithof my Religion. Need I exhort you to the full cultivation of yourendearing children and give them a just idea of their religious andmoral principles, these being the corner stones of all good.”