The New Jamaica Almanack, and Register, Calculated to the Meridian of the Island for the Year of our Lord 1790, Kingston: Bennett & Dickson for Thomas Stevenson & Co., [1789]

An early specimen of Hebrew type in the Western Hemisphere.

The present almanac contains a “Kalendar of Months, Sabbaths, and Holidays, which the Hebrews or Jews observe and keep, for the Years 5550 and 5551 of the Creation” (p. 15). The names of the Jewish festivals, fast days, and new months are given in both Latin and Hebrew type, as is the date on which Jews living in the Diaspora start reciting the prayer for rain (which begins with the words barekh aleinu according to the Sephardic rite).

Jamaican almanacs included a Latin-type Jewish calendar as early as 1776, presumably intended to serve the many Jewish residents of the island who required accurate information about important dates when planning and making their business voyages. The first almanac to list the festivals and new months in Hebrew type was Anne Woolhead’s, issued in 1779 in Kingston.

These Jamaican calendars contain the earliest appearance of Hebrew type in the Western Hemisphere in publications intended for Jews. (Earlier works with Hebrew type, such as Judah Monis’ Dickdook Leshon Gnebreet, were largely directed at Gentile audiences.) The first book published for the Jews of North America containing Hebrew type was not issued until more than two decades after the present lot, and the first Hebrew calendar to appear on the continent was not printed until 1851 in Montreal.

Physical Description

140 pages (5 7/8 x 3 5/8 in.; 150 x 93 mm) (pagination: 120, [20]) on paper, with six blank folios interleaved at front; two pencil marks on p. 89; two pen marks on final page. Slight scattered thumbing, foxing, and staining (see, e.g., pp. 41-42); small hole in lower margins of pp. 27-28; numerous original blank folios excised at rear. Original(?) gilt-tooled leather with flap extending from upper board to lower board, slightly scratched and scuffed around edges; clasp no longer present; date lettered in gilt on spine; original(?) marbled paper flyleaves and pastedowns, rear flyleaf excised.

Literature

Bertram W. Korn, “The Haham DeCordova of Jamaica,” American Jewish Archives 18,2 (1966): 141-154.

Yosef Goldman with Ari Kinsberg, Hebrew Printing in America 1735-1926: A History and Annotated Bibliography, vol. 2 (Brooklyn: Yosef Goldman, 2006), 1041 (no. 1191).