, 1817–1883, Wellington New Zealand. Levy arrived from London with his brother Benjamin in 1840. He helped to found the Jewish synagogue in Wellington, taught Hebrew to Wellington's Jewish children for many years, but was himself married to his sister's Christian shipmate, and their children were raised Christian. Anglo-Jewish traders were among the early immigrants from the 1830s onwards. Returning briefly to England in 1837, Polack wrote two popular books about his 1831–37 travels in New Zealand. In addition to being entertaining travel guides to new tastes (hearts of palm, for example), sights and sounds (Māori tattoos, exotic birds), etc., his books were a rallying cry for commercial development, specifically for
flax production which he believed was possible on a lucrative scale. In 1838, in testimony to a
House of Lords inquiry into the state of the islands of New Zealand, Polack warned that unorganised European settlement would destroy Māori culture, and advocated planned colonisation. among whose financial backers was the wealthy Anglo-Jewish
Goldsmid family anticipated (wrongly, as it turned out, at least in the next few decades) that land would increase in value, and encouraged a flood of subsidised
mostly English and Scottish emigrants. Abraham Hort, Jr, related by family and business ties to the
Mocatta & Goldsmid bank, arrived in
Wellington on the
barque Oriental on 31 January 1840 accompanied by two brothers he employed as cabinet makers,
Solomon and Benjamin Levy. These were the first recognisably Jewish names in this early wave of post-Treaty settlement. Hort's business and civic leadership was quickly recognised in the new colony. Within months of his arrival he was elected one of the two constables for
Wellington's fledgling police force. Hort was a promoter of early Wellington civic affairs, Jewish and non-Jewish.
David Nathan was an important Auckland businessman and benefactor, who is perhaps best known for establishing the firm L.D. Nathan and Company. He left Sydney for the Bay of Islands on the
Achilles on 21 February 1840.
Nathaniel William Levin was another early immigrant, who became a notable merchant in Wellington and a politician. He arrived in Wellington on 30 May 1841 on the
Arachne.
Economic and religious factors in early Anglo-Jewish emigration Hort's father, Abraham Hort Senior saw New Zealand as a possible haven for impoverished
English Jews and a potential refuge for oppressed Jews of eastern Europe and elsewhere. The
Jews' Hospital (Neveh zedak), which was largely funded by the Goldsmid family, sponsored two Jewish women to emigrate in 1841 on the
barque Birman: Elizabeth Levy, (sister of the Levy brothers), and Esther Solomon, who was being sent to marry one of the brothers. Bills allowing Jews more civil rights in England had been introduced and repeatedly voted down, and Jews in the 19th century continued to be portrayed with racist stereotypes. Among the promises of emigration for Jews was that the lack of manpower would level the ethnic playing field
Early Jewish ceremonies , 1 June 1842. The first Jewish ceremony in New Zealand was the marriage of businessman
David Nathan to Rosetta Aarons, the widow of Captain Michael Aarons, on 31 October 1841. Their daughter, Sarah Nathan, born 10 January 1843, was the first known Jewish birth in New Zealand. The second ceremony, the marriage of Esther Solomon and Benjamin Levy was on 1 June 1842 in
Wellington, according to the ketubah contract in Hebrew, witnessed by Alfred Hort (another of Abraham Hort Senior's sons) and another early Jewish emigrant
Nathaniel William Levin. Levin, for whom the town of
Levin was later named, soon married Hort Senior's daughter, Jessy, further connecting the small group of early Wellington Jews. In early 1843, Abraham Hort, Sr. arrived in Wellington, where he organised and promoted the Jewish community, with the approval of London's Chief Rabbi. Hort brought with him David Isaacs, also an alumnus of the
Jews' Hospital. Isaacs served as
Mohel (to perform
circumcisions), shochet (kosher butcher) and
chazan (Cantor/lay leader for services). The first religious service was performed soon after, on 7 January 1843. A few months later, the new community celebrated the birth of Benjamin's and Esther's first child, Henry Emanuel Levy, which Hort documented in a series of letters sent to
The Jewish Chronicle (the premier London Jewish newspaper of the time). Acting on behalf of the community, Hort requested a plot of land for a synagogue and a plot of land for
Jewish burials, offering himself as one of the trustees. The request was originally denied, the government responding that it didn't have the authority. The death of the Levy's second son, aged 8 months in 1845 was, Hort wrote to the Chronicle, "our first Jewish corpse" and the "first Jewish burial" in the new Jewish cemetery. Throughout the early 1840s, Hort's letters to the London
Jewish Chronicle and the
Voice of Jacob reveal the difficulty of maintaining a Jewish community that could barely muster a
minyan, owing to the demands of making a living, and complaining how few Jewish shopkeepers respected the sabbath by closing their doors, let alone celebrating Jewish holidays properly. A Māori massacre, the threat of forced militia service for all, and the extreme difficulty of making a living, took their toll on the small community. Isolation rapidly gave way to intermarriage. Solomon Levy quickly married Jane Harvey, the 14-year-old Christian shipmate of Esther Solomon and Elizabeth Levy. Although only one of his eight surviving children chose Judaism as a religion, Levy helped found the first Wellington synagogue and taught Hebrew to Jewish children for many years. ==Mid-1800s gold rushes==