Preparations have been underway for some time now in Charleston, South Carolina, where the Scottish Rite was founded on May 31, 1801, for the 200th anniversary celebration in the year 2001. There were eleven gentlemen of Charleston who founded the Supreme Council. Four of these founders were Jewish and are buried in the Jewish Cemetery on Coming Street in Charleston. The four Jewish founders are Israel De Lieben, First S.G.I.G.; Emanuel De La Motta, First Grand Treasurer General; Abraham Alexander, Sr., First Grand Secretary General; and Moses Clava Levy, Treasurer General.
A committee was formed at the Charleston Scottish Rite to place markers on the graves of the founders, if located. A large granite plaque (r.) was installed on the wall of the Jewish Cemetery in Charleston to indicate that the four Jewish founders were buried in this cemetery. It is a historic burial ground going back to colonial days and the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in the South. The history of Jews in Charleston is long and honorable. Jewish pioneers began to settle in the city not long after the founding of the colony of Carolina. At first they worshipped in each other’s homes until they became numerous enough to organize a congregation. In 1749, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (Holy Congregation House of God) was founded more that a quarter of a century before the American Revolution began.
Fifteen years passed before the colonial Jewish community of Charleston acquired a communal cemetery. In 1764, Isaac Da Costa, a merchant, conveyed in trust to the congregation a plot he had originally bought ten years earlier for a private cemetery. This cemetery comprises about an acre of land and was originally some distance outside the city limits. Jewish cemeteries customarily are not in the vicinity of synagogues. The growth of the city has engulfed the cemetery which now lies in the midst of a tenement district.
Today some 600 tombstones are to be found there. Others have been lost, and the inscriptions on many of the older stones are illegible. This is why a plaque was installed by the Supreme Council with all four names on it since one of the four graves has an illegible tombstone. In accordance with colonial custom, most of the older tombstones are flat stone slabs. Some lie close to the ground, and others are on raised brick foundations. There are also some tall and impressive monuments. While most of the inscriptions are in English, many include Hebrew and quote from the Bible. Most of the tombs date from the latter part of the 18th and 19th centuries, up to and including the Civil War.
The chief fascination of this old cemetery is its rich historic legacy. Here lie the remains of many of the notable Jews of a community which, during the period after the Revolution to about 1820, grew to be "the largest, the most cultured and the wealthiest Jewish community in America." The Cemetery We Rededicate by Thomas J. Tobias (1964), from which much of this article was taken, states that founder Abraham Alexander served as minister of Beth Elohim from 1785 to 1805. Also, the line "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition," from a World War II ballad, is exemplified by Abraham Alexander, Sr. (d.1816). He was a London-born Jew, learned in Hebrew, who served for 20 years as volunteer lay minister of Beth Elohim. When the Revolution came, he left his trade as a scrivener (scribe) and his congregational duties to fight as a cavalryman, serving as a lieutenant of dragoons in Sumter’s Brigade and in Col. Hill’s regiment.
For detailed biographies of the four Jewish founders of the Supreme Council, the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, S.J., U.S.A., see the 1959 book The Eleven Gentlemen of Charleston by Ray Baker Harris, then the Librarian and an Honorary Member of the Supreme Council, 33°, as well as a Past Grand Master of Masons in the District of Columbia.
The members of the Charleston Scottish Rite Bodies are anxiously awaiting the 200th anniversary and will strive to provide an outstanding program which all visitors will remember with pleasure for a long time to come.