Three Formative Documents.
One Of The Earliest American Catechisms In English
Formative Documents For Mickvé Israel
[Judaica]. Constitution of the Kaal Kadosh Mickve Israel [name in Hebrew characters]. Reported on the Twenty-ninth June, 1823. Philadelphia: Printed on the Vertical Press by Daniel Neall, 1823.
12mo.; 8 pages; printed self-wrappers, unopened.
Boxed in a quarter-morocco slipcase together with:
Charter and Bye-Laws [sic] of Kaal Kadosh Mickve Israel, of the City of Philadelphia… Philadelphia: Printed by John Bioren, 1824 (5584).
12mo.; 24 pages; unprinted wrappers.
Also boxed with:
Form of Service, at the Dedication of the New Synagogue of the “Kahal Kadosh Mickvi Israel.” In the City of Philadelphia. New York: Printed by S.H. Jackson, 1825 (5585).
12mo.; 21 pages; marbled wrappers.
First editions: Rosenbach 246, 256 and 270, each with a full-page illustration. Shoemaker 17613 and 21874 for the latter two only, the first unlisted. Rosenbach lists only two or three other contemporary publications for other congregations, and this is the first in Philadelphia. The Form of Service bears the signature of Miriam Hays, 1825.
Three precious documents that encapsulate the most successful moment in the formative period of Mikvé Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in Philadelphia, and a ground-breaking institutional advocate of American Jewish culture and education. The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia recounts its earliest formations, from its founding in 1745:
The congregation worshipped in a small house in Sterling Alley. An increased Jewish population, produced by the arrival of immigrants from the West Indies and other centers of Sephardic settlement, made the building of a synagogue seem imperative, but no move was made until the beginning of the Revolution. The synagogue removed to a new house in Cherry Alley in 1776, and in 1782 the congregation finally dedicated its own building.
During the American Revolution, the Mikvé Israel congregation was significantly augmented by Jewish refugees from British-captured New York. Among the most active new, though temporary, members were Gershom Mendex Seixas and Haym Salomon. Seixas, the first rabbi of Mikvé Israel, came in 1780 by way of exile in Connecticut, but eventually repatriated to his Shearith Israel congregation in New York in 1784, as many New York refugees would do. Salomon, who remained in Philadelphia, provided financial aid to the development of the community, even supplying a portion of the funds used to purchase its second home, on Cherry Street, where they head-quartered their operations until 1825. The Form of Service included here dedicates the new synagogue to which the congregation had moved earlier in the year. Isaac Leeser, arguably the most significant activist to join the Mikvé Israel clan, became their Hazan in 1829, and remained their rabbi until 1850.
At the end of the Revolution, the Jewish population in Philadelphia stood at 500; by 1850, it had grown to approximately 2500. During those years the Jewish constellation of the city expanded to include several distinct communities, with Mikveh Israel (the spelling of the name changed around 1829) retaining their original orthodoxy. Their contiguous communities were led by Rodeph Shalom, a conservative Hebrew German society founded in 1802, Beth Israel, founded in 1840, and Keneseth Israel, founded in 1847. That Mikveh Israel thrived was attributable largely to the leadership of Isaac Lesser, whose “broad learning and enterprising spirit… was of great importance to the Jews of the entire country…the activities which he inaugurated marked cultural progress for the American Jews” (UJE, pp. 477). In 1838, with Rebecca Gratz (a leading activist for women’s participation in the community, and the model for Scott’s Rebecca in Ivanhoe), Leeser organized the first Jewish Sunday School in America, making Mikveh Israel a pioneer in Jewish education. UJE reports: “The He
Print Inquire
