MANUSCRIPT: Annual report for the first Jewish Sunday school in America.
Manuscript Annual Report for the First Jewish Sunday School in America
[Judaica] Hebrew Sunday School. [Gratz, Rebecca, as Superintendent.] MANUSCRIPT: Thirteenth Annual Report. [Philadelphia]: March 1851.
3 leaves; in ink; rectos only.
The first two leaves – Gratz’s holograph Annual Report – are in her hand. A third page presents a financial summary in an unknown hand.
Gratz founded the Hebrew Sunday School in 1838; it was the first such institution in America. This is the institution’s thirteenth annual report. Though it is not signed, it was published in the April 1851 issue of Isaac Leeser’s Occident and American Jewish Advocate, with the following introduction: “The superintendent presented the following report which was read by Mr. A. Finzi.” Gratz was still serving as superintendent at this time. Though no Gratz letters have been traced in the auction market since 1968, the handwriting seems to be a match for an 1861 Gratz letter to Elizabeth Gist Blair held by the Library of Congress.
Gratz writes, employing the third person: “The super-intendent has the satisfaction still to speak of encouragement and co-operation among the congregation of Israelites in this city. . . . In pursuing this labor of love her breast warms to the cause. . . . Efforts are making to create a permanent fund which it is hoped in a few years may become sufficient to secure the permanency of the school, should it fall into less zealous hands. . . . Many of the present teachers were former pupils in the school; from the same source others will rise to take their turn, when the present generation passes away, or are called to other duties. May the Guardian of Israel still be nigh to rectify their ways and grant them peace.”
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