Levy was likely born in
Vilna, then part of the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, relocating to
Amsterdam, possibly as a result of the
Khmelnytsky pogroms. Levy's wife was named Miriam. In 1655,
Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of the colony, was ordered to attack
New Sweden, the
Swedish colony on the
Delaware River, and accordingly issued orders for the enlistment of all adults. Several Jews, among them Asser Levy, appear to have been ready to serve, but the governor and council passed an ordinance "that Jews can not be permitted to serve as soldiers, but shall instead pay a monthly contribution for the exemption." Levy and his comrades at once refused to pay, and on November 5, 1655, petitioned for leave to stand guard like other burghers (townsmen) or to be relieved from the tax. The petition was rejected with the comment that if the petitioners were not satisfied with the law they might go elsewhere. Levy successfully appealed to
Holland, and was subsequently permitted to do guard duty like other citizens. Levy appears also as a prominent trader in
Fort Orange, present day
Albany. He was also one of the first licensed butchers in the colony. In 1657, the burgher right was made essential for certain trading privileges, and within two days of a notice to that effect Asser Levy appeared in court requesting to be admitted as a burgher. The officials expressed their surprise at such a request. The record reads: "The Jew claims that such ought not to be refused him as he keeps watch and ward like other burghers, showing a burgher's certificate from the city of Amsterdam that the Jew is a burgher there." The application was denied, but Levy at once brought the matter before Stuyvesant and the council, which ordered that Jews should be admitted as burghers on April 21, 1657. Two archived documents from Amsterdam reveal his presence in the city in April 1660, seeking payment of a debt owed to him, and on May 24, 1660, he announced he was going to Germany. Levy was the first Jew to own a house in
North America. As early as 1661, he purchased real estate in Fort Orange; he was also the earliest Jewish owner of real estate in
New York City, his transactions there commencing in June 1662 with the purchase of land on South William Street. Within ten years of his arrival Levy had become a man of consequence, and when, in 1664, the wealthiest inhabitants were summoned to lend the city money for fortifications against the English, he was the only Jew among them: he lent the city 100 florins. It is as a litigant, however, that Levy figures most prominently in the Dutch records, his name often appearing for days in succession. He invariably argued his own case and was almost invariably successful. Only on two or three occasions did he figure as a defendant. As a litigant he is named also in the records of
Gravesend, Brooklyn in 1674. Levy's trading relations extended to
New England, and he frequently appeared as an attorney for merchants in Holland. In 1671 he lent the money for building the first
Lutheran church in New York. About 1678 he built a slaughterhouse in the east end of what is now
Wall Street, where he appears to have been the owner of a tavern. The confidence his Christian fellow citizens had in his honesty appears frequently from the court records. Property in litigation was put into his custody; he is named as executor in the wills of Christian merchants, and figures as both administrator and trustee in colonial records. His influence was not confined to New York; in the colonial records of
Connecticut he appears as intervening to obtain the remission of a fine imposed upon a Jew there. The court remitted the fine with the comment that it did so "as a token of its respect to the said Mr. Asser Levy." He left a considerable estate, over which there was a long legal contest. ==Memorials==