Hatzalath Nephashoth VeKidush Hashem.

(ISRAEL, LAND OF).

c.

Constantinople

1763

Printed text with personalized manuscript entries. Personally addressed to Hananel de Milhaud of Avignon. Endorsed signatures of Constantinople’s Chief Rabbis: Abraham ben Judah Meyuhas and Solomon Alfandari.

Appeal to French Jewry on Behalf of the Jews of Hebron. In 1763, two of the sages of Hebron, R. Haim Rahamim Bajayo and R. Yitzhak Ze’evi were dispatched to France to raise funds on behalf of their heavily indebted community. They carried with them this appeal for aid that was issued on their behalf by the “Pekidim” (Committee on behalf of) Hebron, based in Constantinople. The appeal relates the desperate financial situation of the Jews of Hebron who had been forced to borrow from Turkish bankers the amount of twenty-five thousand pesos, at an exorbitant rate of interest. Fortunately, the Jewish community of Constantinople negotiated more generous terms, whereby the loan would not come due for a few years. Now the two Hebron emissaries took their problems to France, specifically, a member of the prominent Avignon-based family of Milhaud.