Background
Joseph Samuel Christian Frederick Frey was born on September 21, 1771, of Jewish parents at Mainstockheim in Lower Franconian Bavaria. His father, Samuel Levi, was a tutor; his mother kept a small shop. The boy was named Joseph Samuel.
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Joseph Frey
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Education
Joseph Samuel began early to study the Scriptures and the Talmud. At eighteen, Joseph Samuel became a tutor, at twenty-one a chazan (cantor), and not long after a schochat (butcher).
After making a failure as a helper to his mother, who had become a sutler in the train of the Prussian army, he set out on a walking tour. On the road, he fell in with a Christian who set him to pondering the New Testament.
Still ruminating over Christian doctrine, he worked for several years as a shoemaker’s apprentice, and at Neubrandenburg in Mecklenburg-Strelitz on May 8, 1798, he finally discarded his phylactery and was baptized as Joseph Samuel Christian Frederick Frey.
Subsequently, in Berlin, he exchanged Lutheranism for Moravianism, attended a missionary institute in Saxony, and went in 1801 to London, intending to proceed thence to Africa. Instead, he studied and taught in a missionary seminary at Gosport under the Rev. David Bogue and in 1801, entered the service of the London Missionary Society.
Career
When the London Missionary Society broke up, Frey betook himself to another, but similar, organization, the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews. As its agent, Frey was very successful as a money raiser but failed completely as a converter of Jews.
In May 1816, again out of employment, he decided to start over again in America. He arrived in New York with his family on September 15, was welcomed by ministers and laymen to whom he brought letters of introduction, preached his first sermon in America the next Sunday evening, and was soon in charge of a small congregation in New York City.
He was not ordained until April 15, 1818. On February 8, 1820, the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews was organized in New York and on April 14 was regularly incorporated. The object of this society was not only to convert Jews to Christianity but to settle them as farmers in special communities. Frey was its agent from 1822 to 1826 and again from 1836 to 1839.
His second term as agent for the Society was spent largely in England. In 44, he traveled through the South and the Southwest and finally settled in Pontiac, Michigan, where he died.
Achievements
Personality
Frey traveled up and down the country, preaching some three hundred sermons a year and telling the story of his life. Jews were still objects of curiosity in the United States, and wherever Frey went crowds flocked to gape at him and hear him preach.
As in England, he succeeded in creating much interest in the cause and in raising considerable sums of money, but he does not appear to have made a single convert. As in England, he was bitterly attacked by Jews and his character impugned.
Finally, he began to have doubts as to whether he had really been baptized a Christian. Concluding that a mere Lutheran sprinkling was no true baptism, he went to New York and was baptized by immersion August 28, 1827, by the Rev. Archibald Maclay.
His life had been laborious and unhappy.
At heart, he probably remained a Jew, his frequent changes of doctrine and abode being so many attempts to escape from his inner misery. He was a prolific writer.
Connections
In 1806, Joseph Samuel married Hannah Cohen, a converted Jewess.
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Born
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Died
June 5, 1850 (aged 78) -
Nationality
German