Rebecca Gratz. Two documents relating to Rebecca Gratz’s Sunday School, and her Hebrew Female Benevolent Society.

(AMERICAN-JUDAICA).

Philadelphia.

v.d

* First document is a handwritten quarterly rent invoice for $12.50 delivered to Rebecca Gratz on behalf of the Phoenix Hose Company. Gratz had rented the space above the company, a paid fire department, for the use of her Hebrew Sunday School Society, a pioneering Jewish education initiative in America. The bill also notes that the payment was received on the same day. May 7, 1845. * Second document is a handwritten statement with the heading Hebrew Female Benevolent Society, which itemizes the Sunday School's rent obligation to the Phoenix Hose Company, $50 per annum, for the years 1844, 1845, and 1849. A handwritten note on the bottom states that Hyman Gratz, Rebecca’s brother, had paid the bill of $204.17 for rents. April 9, 1849.

On Rebecca Gratz’s Sunday School, see: Joseph R. Rosenbloom, Rebecca Gratz and the Jewish Sunday School Movement in Philadelphia in: PAJHS Vol. 48, no. 2 (1958) pp. 71-77; and Joshua Bloch, Rosa Mordecai’s Recollections of the First Hebrew Sunday School in: PAJHS Vol. 42, no. 4 (1953) pp. 397-406, a moving personal account by a former student of the school.