Tikun Soferim (Pentateuch and Haftarot), Amsterdam: 1726, The copy of Moses Mendes Seixas

Six volumes (6 1/2 x 4 in.; 165 x 102 mm). First five volumes with exquisite engraved historiated titles by Bernard Picart, first volume with additional letterpress title in Spanish and Hebrew, last volume with separate engraved title by Picart. foliation: vol. I: ff. (8), 81. vol. II: ff. (1), 82-149. vol. III: ff. (1),150-198. vol. IV: ff. (1),199-267. vol. V: ff. (1), 268-327. vol. VI: ff. (1), 328-446 (6) (3) (pp. 5-16); lacking only the two unnumbered leaves at the end of vol. VI (pp. 1-4) believed to have carried a printer's advertisement. Includes Hebrew poems dedicated to various notables. The final volume includes Solomon de Olivera's Calendario, with three folding tables. Trace foxed. Edges gilt; marbled endpapers and flyleaves. Uniform contemporary Dutch mottled calf, elaborately gilt, covers panelled within floral borders, spine in compartments; spines rubbed; a few hinges starting; covers of final volume detached. Housed in a modern slipcase, edged in matching calf and marbled paper.

Moses M. Seixas-his inscription on the title pages of all six volumes; by descent to his daughter, Rachel Hannah Mendes Seixas Phillips (1773-1826); her son Joshua Phillips (1801-1880); his daughter, Miriam Gomez Hirsch [nee Phillips)(1856-1937); her son Gordon Bennett Hirsch (1883-1971).

Vinograd, Amsterdam 1292; Joseph R. Rosenbloom, A Biographical Dictionary of Early American Jews: Colonial Times through 1800, Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1960, p.156. Kathryn Harris, “Moses Seixas,” The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, 9/13/2016, http://www.mountvernon.org/digital-encyclopedia/article/moses-seixas/.

to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance

Each of the six volumes in the present lot bears the ownership inscription of Moses Mendez Seixas and the Hebrew date 5531 (=1771). 

Moses Mendes Seixas (1744-1809) was a first generation Jewish-American whose parents migrated from Lisbon, Portugal, to Newport, Rhode Island.  His younger brother Gershom Mendes Seixas was the first American born Jewish clergyman and Moses Seixas himself rose to prominence as warden of Newport, Rhode Island's Touro Synagogue. He served as Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Rhode Island, and was co-founder of the Bank of Rhode Island. Seixas is best remembered however, for the congratulatory letter he penned on behalf of his congregation to then recently inaugurated President George Washington on August 17, 1790. Indeed, it was Seixas who coined the most famous phrase in the history of religious freedom in the nascent United States. Though often misattributed to Washington, it was Seixas who first wrote that the American republic was "a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

The following day, on August 18, when President Washington, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and others, visited the Touro Synagogue, Seixas read his letter to the assembled guests.

In his response, written the same day, Washington pointedly imitated Seixas’ phrasing in his reply, going even further and went on to say that the United States "requires only that that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."

Seixas wrote a second letter to Washington, also dated August 17, 1790, as a representative of King David's Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons. As a fellow mason, Seixas wrote to Washington not from the perspective of a person of a persecuted society, but as a brother in a fraternal order to which both men belonged.

Seixas died on November 29, 1809 at the age of sixty-six. His obituary appeared a few days later in the Newport Mercury , where he was remembered as a Jew with an "unblemished reputation… without bigotry, zealous and uniform in the profession of his faith."

Prized by collectors and scholars alike on account of its beauty and accuracy, this 1726 edition of Tikkun Soferim comprises the Pentateuch and the Haftarot for the entire year. The present lot also includes the prefatory material not found in most other copies. Also present is the rarely found approbation of Rabbi Solomon Ayllon which was removed from many copies because of his alleged Sabbatian tendencies. Finally, this lot includes the complete set of three folding tables that accompany the treatise on the calendar by Solomon Olivera, found in the final volume.

The two rococo title pages were engraved by Bernard Picart, this being  the only Hebrew book for which he prepared engravings. He was of course intimately familiar with the Jewish Community in Amsterdam where his magnum opus, Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, had first appeared in 1723. The first title page depicts a pair of putti supporting an open Torah Scroll, while another pair supports a crown. The cartouches below portray episodes from the lives of the biblical characters: Samuel, Moses and David, an allusion to the names of the three sponsors of the edition: Samuel Rodrigues Mendes, Moses Sarfati and David Gomes da Silva. A separate title page precedes the haftarot section and there are numerous decorated head- and tail-pieces.