Benjamin Dias Fernandes. A Series of Letters on the Evidences of Christianity (As they First Appeared in the Occident). With a preface by Isaac Leeser.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

n.p.

Philadelphia

1854

FIRST EDITION in book form

Singerman 1322

Benjamin Dias Fernandes’s Letters first appeared in Solomon Henry Jackson’s monthly paper “The Jew” - some thirty years before Isaac Leeser serialized the entire work in his Occident beginning in 1843. Lesser writes in the Preface here: “One of the most attractive features of “The Jew” were the papers which appeared therein under the name of “Dea’s Letters” of which seventeen had been printed when the work stopped.” Leeser recounts his research undertaken in order to discover the identity of the author of these letters: “Much to my gratification I received a letter from the late lamented Grace Aguilar informing me that the author’s name was Benjamin Dias, her maternal great-grandfather, a merchant of Portuguese origin, who came from Jamaica to England, where he spent the latter part of his life and where in fact these important Letters were written.” See L. J. Sussman, Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism (1995) pp. 140-2 and p. 280 note 38.