Moses Elias Levy (July 10, 1782 – September 7, 1854; Arabic: موسى إلياس ليفي) was a Moroccan-born American businessman, planter, and social and religious reformer.
Born into an elite Sephardic Jewish family in Morocco, Levy migrated to Gibraltar as a child and later established himself as a merchant-shipper in the Caribbean with extensive business dealings in England, Europe, and the Americas.
[5] Moses Levy was the son of Eliahu Ha-Levi ibn Yuli, who served as an undersecretary to Sultan Mohammed ben Abdullah, and his wife, Rachel, who was from Tangiers, one of three wives in a plural marriage.
After a rare, formal divorce granted by the Danish king (1818) Levy abandoned a flourishing business in favor of a life devoted to what he called the "sacred cause" of reform.
His initial celebrity can be largely attributed to the enthusiastic backing of influential Christians—particularly the editors of the evangelical newspaper The World as well as the leadership of the Philo-Judaean Society.
In contrast Levy sought tangible relief for his fellow Jews, most of whom dwelt in the East End slums, but steadfastly rejected the tactics of conversion.
His prominent Philo-Judaean supporters included the radical evangelical and former Tory MP Henry Drummond; the decorative glass manufacturer Apsley Pellatt; and the Anglican clergyman Hugh McNeile (also M'Neile).
Levy's first major address before the organization, held at Freemasons' Hall in May 1827, stressed the commonality of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, condemned antisemitism, and challenged Christians to end "the persecution of contempt."
Millennialist zeal contributed to Levy's notoriety and some viewed his actions as "extraordinary signs of the times" and proof that "something most singular is approaching" (ibid., 9 January 1828).
Previously any public notice among Anglo-Jewry was purposely avoided and debates with gentiles were considered anathema—a passive strategy that emerged after centuries of Old World oppression.
The London Literary Chronicle recommended his anti-slavery pamphlet "to the serious attention of the legislature and the public" (cited in The World, 20 August 1828); The World devoted a lengthy column to the treatise, in which the author's 'great benevolence of soul, and deep and enlightened piety' (ibid., 9 July 1828) were particularly stressed; and a new anti-slavery society, organized at Salvador House, Bishopsgate, London, took up Levy's far-ranging abolitionist creed.
But other elements of his reform agenda could be safely broached, and from his residence in St. Augustine, Florida, he led the first campaign for free education in public schools in the territory.
However, the onset of the Second Seminole War (1835) and the resultant devastation put an end to his reform career—as well as his communal farming settlement, Pilgrimage—and, in combination with legal challenges to his extensive land holdings, caused great economic hardship.