Nikelsburger, Jacob. Kol Ya’akov / Koul Jacob, in Defence of the Jewish Religion: Containing the Arguments of the Rev. C.F. Frey, One of the Committee of the London Society for the Conversion of the Jews, and Answers Thereto

(AMERICAN JUDAICA)

John Reid

New York

1816

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. English with a smattering of Hebrew. On title, signature of former owner, “Aaron Phillips.”

Rosenbach 183; Singerman 260; Roth, Magna Biblotheca Anglo-Judaica, pp. 264-5

Nikelsburger takes up the cudgels with an apostate Jew, Rev. Frey, so intent on converting his former coreligionists to Christianity that he is willing to take liberties with Scripture. As the author puts it in his opening letter to Frey: “In your eagerness to convert the Jews to your way of thinking, you make no scruples of converting and perverting the prophets, by turning their words to a meaning, which you conceive to be best adapted to your purpose; and, in doing this, you make them not only flatly contradict each other, but themselves also.” Aaron J. Phillips (1792-1847) of New York was a playwright, actor of comedy, and theater manager. See J.J. Rosenbloom, A Biographical Dictionary of Early American Jews(1960), p. 140