A Woman of Valor

Abstract

Before they were wed even a year, Sarah and Joshua made their way back across the Atlantic, this time settling in New York. Sarah was pregnant with the first of ten children, and the couple quickly settled into family life on the tip of Manhattan in the streets surrounding the Mill Street synagogue. Having married into the synagogue’s wealthiest family, Sarah found herself at the center of New York Jewish life. Knowing people in New York mattered. She had lived in four cities in four countries before she reached the age of twenty, and New York was hardly the most racially progressive place she had resided. Her children’s births raised question of acceptance, and the young family strategically bound their children to the larger community and Sarah’s in-laws through names, godparents, and circumcision rituals.