Evening Service of Roshashanah, and Kippur, or The Beginning of the Year, and The Day of Atonement [Isaac Pinto], New York: W. Weyman, 1761

52 pages (7 1/2 x 4 7/8 in.; 192 x 125 mm). Lightly browned and stained  Lower margin renewed, p. 21-22, shaving catchword; outer margin and paper renewal pp. 23-24, costing a few letters; small tear to upper margin and corner renewed pp. 45-46 not affecting text; manuscript emendations pp. 11, 18: "everlasting" to "everliving"; p.16: "the" to "our"; several other marginal tears repaired; corners rounded. Previous owner's inscription (illegible) on rear pastedown endpaper. Contemporary blind-tooled calf; spine defective at head. Rubbed.

Goldman 31; Vinograd, New York 1; Singerman 0035. Abraham J. Karp, "Pioneer Prayer Book" in Beginnings: Early American Judaica, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1975, pp. 1-10.

THE FIRST JEWISH PRAYER BOOK IN AMERICA

THE FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE JEWISH LITURGY ISSUED FOR A JEWISH AUDIENCE

This pioneering American edition contains the evening liturgy for the High Holy Days. A second volume, containing a translation of the morning liturgy for the High Holidays, the festivals and the Sabbath, appeared in 1766. Dividing  up  the  liturgy for the evening and morning into two separate volumes was an innovation of the present edition. The translator listed in the second volume was Isaac Pinto, and it is widely presumed that he was also responsible for this first volume.

Isaac Pinto (1720-1791) immigrated to America from the West Indies. A merchant and teacher of Spanish, Pinto was a member of Shearith Israel, the only Jewish congregation in New York City from 1654 until 1825.  It has been suggested that Pinto published the first volume anonymously to avoid incurring the wrath of the officials of the Jewish community in London who had forbidden the printing of an English translation there. When the anticipated negative reaction failed to materialize, Pinto felt more comfortable putting his name on the second volume. There he clearly iterated in the preface that he had no designs to replace Hebrew as the language of worship but that his translation was meant only for those who could not comprehend the Hebrew text.  The English translation is based on David Nieto's Spanish translation.

The present work is the first book published in America for the Jewish community. It is exceedingly scarce and only three other complete copies are known to exist, all held by institutional libraries. It was very likely only printed in a small quantity and had apparently disappeared from use by the 1820s, as Isaac Leeser was only aware of the second volume (See Occident 24.7 [Oct. 1866], 296).