A Sermon Preached at the Synagogue in Newport ... by Haijm Isaac Karigal, Newport, Rhode Island: S. Southwick, 1773

19 pages (8  1/4  x 4¾ in.; 210 x 120 mm), though pages variously trimmed. Headpiece of printer's ornaments. Lightly browned; some dampstains; f 3r, library number stamp, f. 19v, pen trials; library ex libris; marbled papers. Three quarter polished calf, gold tooled at border and spine; titles gilt; paper library stamp.

ex-Hamilton College Library

first jewish sermon preached and printed in america

Hayyim Isaac Karigal was born in Hebron in the Land of Israel in 1729. In 1754, he was sent as an emissary to the Jewish communities in the Near East. In 1757, he visited parts of Europe, and returned to Italy during 1759 and 1760. Karigal arrived in the New World in 1762, and conducted a very successful fund-raising campaign on the island of Curaçao, at that time home to the largest Jewish community in the Americas. In 1772-1773 he visited Philadelphia, New York and Newport. It was in Newport that Karigal made the acquaintance of Ezra Stiles, who would later rise to the presidency of Yale University. Stiles, greatly impressed by Karigal's scholarship and personality, sought his company and maintained a correspondence with him for several years. Stiles was among the invited dignitaries who were present in the Newport synagogue during the Shavu'ot festival in 1773, when Karigal delivered a sermon on the topic of the "Salvation of Israel" in a mixture of Spanish and Hebrew that captivated his listeners, notwithstanding the inability of many of them to comprehend the strange foreign tongue spoken by the exotically garbed preacher. The sermon was translated into English and published, against Karigal's wishes, by Abraham Lopez, a Newport merchant, formerly a Marrano, who had openly returned to Judaism six years earlier.

Literature: Singerman 45; Rosenbach 58; Hammett, A Contribution to the Bibliography and Literature of Newport, R. I., p. 72.