When I started writing Rebecca of Ivanhoe, I had no idea where Sir Walter Scott got the inspiration for the character of Rebecca, the beautiful and spirited Jewish healer who is rescued from a hideous death by the knight Ivanhoe in Scott’s 1819 novel. It wasn’t until after I finished my book, which takes up the story of Rebecca after she is saved and flees to Spain with her father, that I learned an intriguing tidbit. My sister, who went to Gratz Hebrew school in Philadelphia, told me that Scott had modeled Rebecca on the real-life Jewish educator and philanthropist, Rebecca Gratz, who founded Gratz College and a number of other charitable organizations in the early part of the 19th century. Rebecca Gratz, who was known to be a great beauty, lived at the same time as Sir Walter Scott. As the legend goes, Gratz had impressed the writer Washington Irving by helping to care for his sickly fiancé. In 1817, Irving visited Scott at his home in Abbotsford, Scotland, and apparently sang Gratz’s praises to the British writer. That story has never been verified, but it is true that Sir Walter Scott’s Rebecca was the first favorable depiction of a Jew in British literature, and Gratz’s own life exemplified the independent spirit that Ivanhoe’s Rebecca is known for.
Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Philadelphia in 1781, Rebecca Gratz never married (although there is a story that she was romantically linked to a Christian man at one point). Instead, she devoted her life to charitable pursuits, helping to establish the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances and the Philadelphia Orphan Asylum. She later opened a Hebrew Sunday School, which grew into Gratz College, still flourishing today.
In her youth, Rebecca Gratz was also part of a circle of writers, which included Washington Irving and the American author Catherine Sedgwick. While she herself never published anything, her involvement in such lofty literary circles is how she came into contact with Matilda Hoffman, Irving’s beloved fiancé, whom she helped care for before Hoffman’s untimely death.
Whether or not it is true that Rebecca Gratz was the inspiration for Sir Walter Scott’s tale of unrequited love and salvation in Ivanhoe, it certainly makes for an interesting story. As I hope my novel, Rebecca of Ivanhoe, does as well.
This blog is also posted on medium.com.
