Two Autograph Letters Signed (’Chaim’) and written to Jacob Cohen, President in Yiddish.

(AMERICAN-JUDAICA).

19th August 1791 & 29th August

Richmond, VA.

1791

Five pages and two pages (including address).

These letters are written in Western Yiddish, with liberal usage of what might be termed ‘Judeo-English.’ Words such as “interested / according / respectable / statement” and many more, abound, transliterated verbatim in the Central European Jewish cursive of the time. Synagogal matters are discussed, such as the procurement of a Megillah scroll and a Shofar. Jacob I. Cohen (1744-1823) was the Richmond and then Philadelphia-based progenitor of a prominent American Jewish family of Baltimore. Arriving in Pennsylvania from Bavaria in 1773, he served a stint in the revolutionary army, and afterwards settled in Richmond where he was a founder of Congregation Beth Shalome. See Rosenbloom, A Biographical Dictionary of Early American Jews, p. 24. These 18th-century letters, written in Yiddish, are an important historical source for early American Jewish history.