Rare copy of prayers for Rosh-Hashanah at Clements Library

EDITORS: Photo available oon request. ANN ARBOR—Among the select collection of American Judaica, printed and manuscript, at the University of Michigan’s Clements Library is “Prayers for Shabbath, Rosh-Hashanah, and Kippur,” published in 1766. This is considered the first substantial book of its kind printed in America and the first imprint to carry the Jewish calendar year. Isaac Pinto (1720-89), editor of the work, was a merchant, a teacher, and an interpreter who translated many of the prayers from their original Spanish. Pinto’s work was an attempt to explain Jewish traditions to those unfamiliar with them, and a means of providing prayers in English for those who could not read Hebrew.

The earliest known Jewish immigrants to present-day U.S. territory were a group of 18 persons who came to Dutch New Amsterdam from Brazil in 1654. By the middle of the 18th century there were also sizable Jewish communities in Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Savannah. The majority were of Spanish and Portuguese ancestry, hence Pinto’s translation “According to the Order of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews.”

Among the Clements Library’s collection is correspondence of the great Jewish merchants of the Revolutionary War period, letters of Rebecca Gratz, an 18-century deed for a synagogue in Philadelphia, and published works of Mordecai Noah and Isaac Lesser. The library also has a 1735 Hebrew grammar published by Judah Monis. A Jew by birth, Monis had converted to Christianity by the time he published his grammars. He argued the divinity of Christ on the basis of Hebrew scripture.

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