Confirmation Service [Torath Emeth]. Catechism for Instrucation in the Mosaic Religion. Congregation [Beth Yisrael], Dunedin. May 23rd, 5646.

(NEW ZEALAND).

Fregusson & Mitchell

Dunedin

1886

English with use of Hebrew text. Initial blank inscribed: “First confirmation service after my return from England (signature indecipherable)”.

Jews first arrived in distant New Zealand in the 1830s. The Jewish population consisted of fewer than thirty families when in 1840 New Zealand became a British Colony. Thereafter, some dozen Jewish storekeepers and traders founded the Auckland Jewish community in northern New Zealand. In the 1860s, as gold was discovered in the Otago Region of South Island, the Jewish population spread to Dunedin. In 1861, 326 Jews lived in New Zealand, by 1867, that number nearly quadrupled to 1,262 comprising just 0.6% of the total population. Jews played a prominent role in the development of the country, quite out of proportion to their tiny numbers. An exceptionally rare little pamphlet from a most remote Jewish community.