Form of Daily Prayers, The, According to the Custom of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews.
A Scarce Work Edited By Lazarus’s Grandfather
[Lazarus, Emma]. Lazarus, Eleazar, editor. The Form of Daily Prayers, According to the Custom of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews... Translated into English from the Hebrew by Solomon Henry Jackson. The Hebrew Text Carefully Revised and Corrected by E.S. Lazarus. New York: Printed by S.H. Jackson, A.M. 5586 [1826].
8vo.; preliminaries lightly chipped; lightly foxed, watermarked at edges, not affecting text; prayers printed in English and Hebrew on facing pages; folding plate and 11 pages of notes in English at rear; full contemporary calf, rebacked; original spine and leather labels (heavily rubbed) laid down; a well used copy, two pages (pp. 79, 133) partially removed but present; other pages with some closed tears; covers rubbed; tips worn. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
First edition of the first Hebrew prayer book published in North America; printed in English and Hebrew, the Hebrew text edited by Eleazar S. Lazarus, grandfather of Emma. An uncommon survival of a surprisingly fragile publication: Rosenbach 284; Shoemaker 24984, locating only three copies, two in the U.S. This prayer book, designed for use by the Northeast’s sizable Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities, was an ambitious project apparently long in the making: “The work has been in hand about eighteen months; owning partly to its being new to the compositors, in consequence of which it went heavy and slow, and much needed correction; and partly on account of the spareness of the means of the Editor, it was delayed for twelve months...” (“To The Public,” iii).
Two of the eminent Jews of the era were integrally involved with the publication of this book: It was conceived and translated by Solomon Henry Jackson, the New-York based printer responsible for the first Jewish periodical in America (The Jew: Being a Defense of Judaism Against All Adversaries and Particularly Against the Insidious Attacks of Israel’s Advocate, 1824-25); and Eleazar S. Lazarus, a New York City municipal official, a leading authority on Sephardic liturgy, and the future grandfather of Emma Lazarus, edited Jackson’s text.
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