Jacob Mordechai Netter. Selavim min HaYam.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

Zamarski & Dittmarsch

Vienna

1860

Friedberg, Shin 1386.

Contains the First Original Hebrew Poetry Composed in America. See A.R. Malachi, Reishit HaShirah Ha’Ivrit Be’America, in: The American Hebrew Year Book (1935) p. 296. This eclectic work is an account of the author’s travels as he circumnavigated the globe from east to west, and the intellectual musings and poems he composed in California and elsewhere. The title is drawn from the Book of Numbers (11:31) and may be translated as “Seabirds,” inspired as it was by the authors oceanic travels (“Yam” - sea, is also the acronym of his name, Ya’akov Mordechai). The author, an emissary from Eretz Israel by way of Vienna, describes on the very first page here, his 74-day journey across the Pacific Ocean, embarking from China, to “that new world, the golden state of California.” Netter visited California a year prior to his more famous contemporary, the traveler Benjamin II, earning Netter the distinction of being the first to describe California and its Jewish life to world Jewry. Staying in San Francisco for Passover, Netter delivered a Shabbat HaGadol sermon, which he transcribes here. Netter also includes specimens of his poetry, written in California, as well as in Bombay and Hong Kong. After traveling across the United States, delivering a Shabbat Shuva sermon in Utica, NY, along the way, Netter undertook a 40-day trip across the Atlantic and reached Vienna, where his travels had begun several years prior.