Board of Delegates of American Israelites. Circular on behalf of the “Appalling Destitution of the Morocco Refugees.”

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

December 13th

New York,

1859

Single printed page, blue paper.

Singerman 1563 (just two copies recorded).

An appeal to American Jews to aid some 3000 Jewish refugees who had been rescued by the English from the Kabyles, a Berber ethnic group, who had committed atrocities against the Jews of Tangier in 1844, and threatened this community once again. The refugees were brought by British ship to Gibraltar. The circular anticipates up to 15,000 more destitute Jewish refugees. The Board of Delegates of American Israelites, an early attempt by leading Jewish Americans to form an umbrella organization of Jewish leadership, appeals to “the characteristic liberality of American Israelites” to generously give so that their co-religionists “may not HUNGER and PERISH.”