The Rabbis Who Honored the “Lost Colony”

By Talia Brenner

“The Lost Colony,” North Carolina’s famous outdoor drama about the 1587 Roanoke colony, opened on Roanoke Island in 1937 and quickly became a yearly tradition. Today, it is a core part of heritage tourism on the Outer Banks.

Recent audiences may not know about the show’s religious roots. In its early years, The Lost Colony was an explicitly Christian production. Its producers advertised it as a religious drama and called it a “Patriotic Oberammergau,” in reference to the German passion play. For the first several decades, an actor playing a minister would open each performance with a scripted prayer. Even outside of the performance, Christian observance was part of the “lost colony” experience. Records from the Outer Banks History Center show that every Sunday morning during the show’s run, tourists and locals could return to the Waterside Theatre for religious services. Though the default was alternatively Episcopal or Methodist, the play’s producers hosted “guest ministers” from different denominations. Usually they were Protestant, but most summers included a Catholic mass. Moravian and Quaker ministers visited on occasion, and African American denominations were represented on the season’s one designated “Colored Day.” And on one Sunday each summer, the play’s producers brought in a rabbi.

They did not have a rabbi every year. In 1947, when Rabbi Louis Wolsey of Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia cancelled his visit due to a surgery, the general manager of the production made a few attempts to find a replacement, before concluding that “we will have to fall back on a Protestant minister.” But in most years, the invited rabbi would deliver a sermon at one Sunday morning service in exchange for travel expenses for himself and a guest, a stay at a beachfront hotel, a modest honorarium, and of course, free tickets to The Lost Colony.

In early years, the producers invited rabbis outside of North Carolina, largely from neighboring states in the mid-Atlantic and upper South. Why they discounted North Carolina rabbis is not exactly clear, but it may have been their desire to source “outstanding Clergymen,” big names who typically served larger Jewish communities outside of the state. Yet by the 1950s, The Lost Colony’s producers were contacting North Carolina rabbis with invitations to speak. It’s possible that the production’s continued financial struggles led producers to limit travel reimbursements. Or perhaps the increased visibility of Jews in North Carolina made them aware of the rabbis serving North Carolina communities. In 1952, E. J. “Mutt” Evans, early into his term as Durham’s first Jewish mayor, provided a list of home state rabbis who in his estimation would “make the best talks.”

Aware of their minority status, guest rabbis took seriously the opportunity to positively represent their communities and maintain cordial relationships with the production. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the services themselves. The arrangement required guest rabbis to present a Jewish service within an obviously Christian framework. Held on Sunday morning, the “religious services” would feature the rabbi as a “guest minister.” His section of the service would follow an Episcopal or Methodist portion led by a “host minister,” which usually included Christian hymns. Even the program for the special service was decorated with crosses. Moreover, the musicians for the service were members of the Lost Colony choir, who during the year attended the Westminster Choir School in New Jersey. Although they were skilled choristers, they likely had no experience with Jewish liturgical music. The school was founded in 1926 for the purpose of training church music directors, and though by the 1950s it had broadened its mission, it retained its Chrstian ethos. According to the Westminster Choir School Bulletin in the Paul Green Papers, Westminster students had to demonstrate their “Christian character, personality and ability for leadership” in order to graduate.

In response, rabbis acted strategically. In 1952, Rabbi Jerome Tolochko of Temple Israel in Kinston, requested that the choir prepare “The God of Abraham Praise,” in addition to the patriotic “O Beautiful for Spacious Skies,” which he specified appear in the Methodist Hymnal. As it appeared in the version of the Methodist Hymnal in use at the time, “The God of Abraham Praise,” was a Christianized version of the Yigdal prayer. For Ashkenazi Jews, Yigdal is part of the weekday morning liturgy—which includes services held on Sunday mornings. And it would be familiar for the choir.

A few years later, Rabbi F. I. Rypins of Temple Emanuel in Greensboro used the same strategy, requesting “The God of Abraham Praise.” Rypins also brought his colleague Cantor Joseph Portnoy as his guest—Rypins told the show’s producers that his wife could not travel because of poor health. Portnoy likely provided a fuller Jewish musical repertoire to the service, as well as a Jewish clergy presence beyond one visiting rabbi.

Rabbis’ sermons, as with those of other “guest ministers,” extrapolated on the play’s historical content. Since there do not seem to be surviving copies of the sermons, it is not clear if rabbis mentioned Joachim Gans, the only known Jewish participant in the Roanoke settlements. Gans took part in the 1585 expedition, two years before the famous failed attempt to establish a permanent colony. In the play itself, the only colonists mentioned from 1585 are the expedition’s leaders, and only in the context of explaining how their extreme violence antagonized the people of Ossomocomuck.

If rabbis did discuss Gans, they likely emphasized his being early to North America, thus signifying the role of Jews in U.S. society. In the world of The Lost Colony, primacy gave legitimacy for settlers—all while ignoring Native people’s actual primacy. That idea was central in the entire “lost colony” promotion. The fact that the Roanoke voyages happened before Jamestown in Virginia and Plymouth in Massachusetts supposedly made North Carolina the birthplace of the United States—a title which the state’s boosters were eager to seize. Yet if the first colonists were somehow the truest Americans, then 20th-century Jews had little to claim. They weren’t descended from Joachim Gans, or for the most part, from any other early colonist. Their American ancestors were more recent. Roanoke heritage was a tenuous deal at best.

So North Carolina Jews had an uneasy relationship with the “lost colony” celebrations. As white Americans, they could be included in the heritage of Roanoke far more than the segregated African American participants and excluded Native nations. The story of rabbis who spoke at the Waterside Theatre shows the extent to which Jews were welcome. At the same time, their hold was fragile, their position marginal. But rabbis opened their Methodist Hymnals, and deemed that it was worth it.