Daniel Levy Maduro Peixotto. Anniversary Discourse, Pronounced Before the Society for the Education of Orphan Children, and the Relief of Indigent Persons of the Jewish Persuasion.

(AMERICAN-JUDAICA)

J. Seymour

New York

1830

Singerman 500.

Speech given at an annual charity benefit dinner by Daniel Peixotto (1800-43), a pioneering Jewish doctor and philanthropist, in which he declared that preserving the Hebrew language was vitally necessary for the wholesome preservation of the Jewish faith. He proclaimed that dispensing knowledge to the ignorant was as important as giving money to the poor. Peixotto sought to establish a school for the proper education of teachers, who would then reach out to the youth of the community and teach them Hebrew. Peixotto believed that only by providing more and better access to education would the decline of Hebrew knowledge by Jews in America be reversed. See Patricia D. Klingenstein Library of the New-York Historical Society, An Annotated Bibliography of Printed American Judaica, no. 76.