Service for the Two First Nights of Passover According to the Custom of the Spanish, Portuguese, and German Jews … Translated … by David Levi, London: 1794

42 leaves (8 x 4 3/4 in.; 203 x 122 mm). ff. 39, pp. 7. Hebrew and English on facing pages, with occasional instructions and translations in Ladino and/or Yiddish. Lightly stained; light erasure on title-page. Modern half-calf over marbled boards.

Yudlov 371; Ya'ari 254.

A RARE COPY OF THE PRECURSOR TO THE FIRST AMERICAN HAGGADAH

David Levi was best known to his fellow English Jews for the translations he published, including a Pentateuch for synagogal use (1787, see lot 93), and a Sephardic liturgy in 6 volumes (1789–93). Many of Levi's translations would serve as the foundation for numerous later works published both in England and in America. Indeed, due to the accuracy of Levi's translation of the Haggadah in particular, it was reproduced almost verbatim in the first Haggadah printed in America in 1837. In addition to his translations Levi was a tireless defender of the Jewish faith. He was the first Jew to write, in English, polemics in defense of Jews and Judaism. Among his literary adversaries were noted scholar Joseph Priestley, whose attempts at converting Jews were vehemently opposed by Levi in his Letters to Dr. Priestley (1787); he also took on Thomas Paine's attacks on the Bible and the authenticity of prophecy, in his Letters to Thomas Paine in Answer to his "Age of Reason" (1797).