Prayers for Shabbath, Rosh-Hashanah and Kippur…According to the Order of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Translated by Isaac Pinto.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

John Holt

New York

1766

The Moses Gaster-Dropsie College Copy (with Gaster signature on title and library stamp on errata leaf)

Singerman 40; Rosenbach 47 (illustrated)

The First Complete Jewish Prayer-Book Printed in the New World. One of The Singular Most Important Printed Books of Jewish Americana. Pinto (1720-91) was a merchant who moved from the British West Indies to New York in 1751, where he became a member of The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Congregation Shearith Israel. He is recalled by Ezra Stiles, the accomplished Hebraist and President of Yale, as “a learned Jew from New York.” A fervent patriot, Pinto was a signatory to resolutions favoring the Nonimportation Agreement, and was vocal in support of the Revolution. Indeed the publication of this prayer-book in colonial New York with its meager community of a few hundred Jews, rather than in metropolitan London which boasted a flourishing community of some ten thousand, perhaps echoed an increasing expression of non-dependence and resentment of overseas domination. The prayer-book was a declaration to the Elders in London that their brethren in the “British Dominions in America” though small in number, were independent in will and possessed the means to satisfy their own religious requirements. See G.A. Kohut, AJHS Publications, Vol. III pp.118-22; A.J. Karp, Beginnings: Early American-Judaica (1975) pp.1-10. Another copy of this celebrated prayer-book was sold by Sotheby’s New York, Important Judaica, 18th December, 1986, Lot 10.