Hagadah shel Pesach. Service for the Two First Nights of Passover. According to the Custom of the Spanish, Portuguese, and German Jews. Translated by David Levi.

(HAGADAH).

D. Levi

London

1794

Hebrew and English on facing pages. With occasional instructions and translation into Ladino and Yiddish. The Grace Lyons copy. From the library of Rabbi Dr. David de Sola Pool.

Yudlov 371; Yaari 254.

A scarce copy of the first separate printing of the Levi Hagadah. Precursor of the first American Hagadah. David Levi of London (1742-1801) produced a six-volume English translation of the Hebrew prayers, which served as the foundation for later editions published both in England and in America. Due to the accuracy of Levi’s translation of the Passover Hagadah in particular, it was reproduced almost verbatim in the first Hagadah that was printed in the United States (New York, 1837). Thus this 1794 Hagadah is the basis from which the first American Hagadah came to be derived. The previous owner, Grace Lyons, was the wife of the Minister of New York’s Shearith Israel, Jacques Judah Lyons. See David and Tamar de Sola Pool, An Old Faith In The New World, Portrait of Shearith Israel (1955) p. 179.