Emma Mordecai

Emma Mordecai (October 6, 1812 – April 8, 1906) was an American educator, diarist, slave owner, outspoken supporter of the Confederacy and the values of the Old South, and active member of the Jewish community in 19th-century Richmond, Virginia. While some members of her family had converted to Christianity, amidst a climate of antisemitism in the Civil War-era South, Mordecai remained an observant Jew her entire life. She devoted most of her life to educational and religious causes, founding the Jewish Sunday school at Congregation Beth Shalome of Richmond.

Life Emma Mordecai was born in 1812, one of thirteen siblings of the Mordecai family. Her father was Jacob Mordecai and her paternal grandfather was Moses Mordecai. Her mother was Rebecca Myers Mordecai, the second wife of Jacob, and the younger sister of Jacob's deceased first wife Judith. Mordecai's grandfather, Moses, was an Ashkenazi German Jew who married Esther (Elizabeth Hester Whitlock), an English-born convert to Judaism. Moses immigrated from Germany to London and later from London to Philadelphia. Having believed that her slaves reciprocated the love she was sure she had bestowed upon them, Mordecai was distraught that they would want to leave. While staying with her sister-in-law Rose, she expressed exasperation in her diary that a slave named Mary "took out of her bed, and never came back."

In her personal diary, she wrote prayers for the victory of the Confederacy and her own safety, documenting each day of her life.

Mordecai died at age 93 in Brevard, North Carolina, on 8 April 1906, surrounded by family. She is buried at the Hebrew Cemetery in Richmond.