(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

<<The first volume of Jewish apologetics to be published in the United States>> the first edition of which was published on the island of Jamaica in 1788. The work was composed to defend the integrity of revealed religion against the atheistic assertions of such rationalist philosophers as Spinoza, David Hume and Voltaire. It postulates that the Jews were the only ancient people to have been preserved by way of their traditional laws, while the systems of all other ancient systems long ago collapsed. Its author, Haham Joshua Hezekiah DeCordova was born in Amsterdam in 1720. He moved to Curacao in 1749 where he taught Judaism and delivered sermons in the local synagogue. In 1755 he was appointed the Haham of the Jewish community in Kingston, Jamaica, serving there until his death in 1797. The DeCordova’s were a family involved in the printing trade dating back to the mid-17th century, the descendants of which spread out across the Caribbean Basin, as well as to Texas, New York and London. See Bertram W. Korn, The Haham DeCordova of Jamaica in: American Jewish Archives (November 1966) pp. 141-54.