<<Monis, Judah.>> Gravestone rubbing. From Monis’s tombstone located in Howard Street Cemetery, Northborough, Mass.

Judah Monis (1683-1764), author of the first Hebrew textbook published in North America (“A Grammar of the Hebrew Tongue,” Boston, 1735), was the first Jew to receive a college degree in America. Born in Italy to a family of former Portuguese conversos and educated at Jewish academies in Italy and Holland, Monis emigrated to New York around 1715, where he established a small store and taught Hebrew to both Christians and Jews. By 1720 he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of Harvard College. At that time, all Harvard undergraduates were required to study Hebrew. The assumption being that no Christian gentleman could be considered truly educated unless he could read the Bible in its original language. Monis was approved by the college as instructor of the Hebrew language - Harvard’s first - but not as a Jew, since Harvard required all its faculty to be professing Christians. One month before assuming his post at Harvard, Monis converted to Christianity - a conversion that attracted widespread notoriety. Local Christian clergy expressed concern that Harvard’s requirement that all its faculty members be of the Christian faith had in turn pushed Monis to an insincere conversion. Monis’s life presents a particular case of how a Jew was viewed in Colonial America’s public life. He came to Cambridge, which had no Jewish institutions, to teach Hebrew to Christian students. Having chosen to leave a mature Jewish community in New York City he entered Harvard as a Christian. But the Christian community looked on him with skepticism. Both the Cambridge First Church as well as Harvard College records refer to Monis as “the converted Jew,” “the converted rabbi;” and “the Christianized Jew.” Inscription. RESURGAM. Here lies buried the remains of RABBI. JUDAH MONIS, MA, late HEBREW. instructer at HARVARD College in. Cambridge in which office he continued 40. years. He was by Birth and Religion a Jew but. embrac'd the Christian faith & was publickly. baptiz'd at Cambridge, AD 1722 and. departed this life April 25, 1764 Aged. 81 years 2 months and 21 days. A native branch of Jacob see! Which, once from off its olive brok,. Regrafted, from the living tree. Of the reviving sap partook. Rom.XI.17-24. From teeming Zion's fertil womb, Isai.LXVI.8. As dewy drops in early morn Psal.CX.3. Or rising bodies from the tomb, John V.28 29. At once be Isr'els nation born Isai LXVI.8. <<See>> https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11940136/judah-monis. For recent news of Monis, see: https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-slavery-and-judaism-slaveholder-judah-monis-hebrew-professor-founders-11651172214. https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/history-ideas/2022/05/harvards-jewish-slaveholder/.