Isaac died in 1783, and his wife Reyna moved the family to Boston to live with her brother Moses Michael Hays.

[4] Touro fell in love with his cousin but was forbidden marriage by her father, who sent him on a trading voyage to the Mediterranean in hopes of ending the romance.

He sold soap, candles, codfish, and other exports of New England, eventually becoming a prominent merchant and ship owner, particularly after the Louisiana Purchase propelled the growth of the region and its commerce.

He was physically incapacitated from fighting, so he volunteered to carry ammunition to the batteries in the Battle of New Orleans, in which he was struck on the thigh by a 12-pound shot which tore off a large mass of the flesh.

He contributed $40,000—an immense sum at the time—to the Jewish cemetery at Newport, and bought the Old Stone Mill there, at that time thought to have been built by Norsemen, giving it to the city.

In New Orleans, he used his business profits to buy and endow a cemetery, and to build a synagogue, an almshouse and an infirmary for sailors suffering from yellow fever, as well as a Unitarian church for a minister named Theodore Clapp whom he greatly admired.

[8] He was a major contributor to many Christian charities in New Orleans, as well as to such varied causes as the American Revolutionary War monument at Bunker Hill, and the relief of victims of a large fire in Mobile, Alabama.

[9] One profile of Touro particularly praised his willingness to give both to Jewish and non-Jewish religious causes: "An admirable trait evinced, was the unsectarian distribution of charity, while the donor ever continued a strict adherent to the principles of his faith.