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Exactly 365 years ago, on 24 January 1656, a physician and farmer from Portugal, Jacob Lumbrozo, landed in #Maryland, becoming the first documented #Jewish resident of the state. He only lived in the New World for about a decade, but it was quite interesting <THREAD>
Jacob Lumbrozo, the first documented Jew in Maryland, was a successful doctor and businessman in America, given a commission to trade with the Native Indians in 1665, not long before he died, and had trade relations to England and the Netherlands. He did run into trouble, though.
In 1658, Jacob Lumbrozo, the first documented Jew in Maryland, was charged under the state Toleration Act, passed in 1649, three months after King Charles I was executed, for blasphemy, i.e. denying the divinity of Christ.
Seems ironic, a Jew persecuted with a "Toleration Act"; it had been passed to grant religious liberty to *all Christians*, Maryland being basically the Catholic state of British North America, founded by the Calvert family, the hereditary Baron Baltimore https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1353566783127617537
Anyway, Jacob Lumbrozo, the first documented Jew in Maryland, standing accused of blasphemy (and necromancy and sorcery) in 1658 tried to explain that he had not meant to be blasphemous but Judaism had a fairly foundational stance on whether or not Jesus Christ was God.
Ultimately, Lumbrozo was saved by the death of the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell on 3 September 1658, and the accession to power of his son, Richard, who issued a general amnesty. https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1353567518628208640
Lumbrozo got into one other legal tangle in the 1660s, when he offered to be a witness in a defamation case—one lady had called another a “whore” and said she could prove it—but Lumbrozo had demanded sex from the woman as payment for his testimony.
It turned out the woman (and her husband) were employees of Lumbrozo’s, and intended to file a case for attempted rape so they could be released from his service. Lumbrozo counter-sued for defamation—then dropped the case, an implicit admission of guilt. https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1353567782965833728
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