Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar

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1 2013 Vol. LXV Nos. 1 & 2 1 Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar In his sweeping narrative, American Judaism: A History, Jonathan D. Sarna identifies the 1820s as a remarkable decade in American Jewish history, during which the small American Jewish community began a process of transformation that ultimately led to the forging of a distinct identity. 1 This new identity mirrored broader trends in American religious history. Synagogues were increasingly seen as purely religious rather than communal institutions, and Jews moved toward a Judaism that was much more democratic, free, diverse, and competitive. 2 American Jews, in other words, became American, developing native institutions and attitudes that increasingly left Europe behind. While Sarna charted this shift primarily through the study of institutions, it can also be seen through the lens of time. In her recent book, Elisheva Carlebach has shown that the Jewish calendar, as a material object, played an important role in creating and negotiating Jewish identities in early modern Europe and today can be a rich source of information for the cultural historian. 3 More than a simple utilitarian tool, the Jewish calendar remained a vital and dynamic locus of Jewish creativity through the early modern period. 4 Just as calendars provide a distinctive lens for viewing the history of Jews in early modern Europe, so too do they provide a different angle from which to view the momentous transformation of the American Jewish community in the early years of the Republic. The calendars from this period, and the ways in which they were used (as seen in their marginalia), slowly chart the American Jewish community s transformation from a synagogue community facing toward Europe to a more fractured and individualized community that negotiated a distinctive identity amid the new possibilities and challenges that America presented. One man, Moses Lopez, plays a particularly important role in this story. Lopez was born in Portugal and immigrated with his family to Rhode Island in He became a clerk in Newport, Rhode Island, where, in 1806, he published the first free-standing Jewish calendar in

2 2 The American Jewish Archives Journal the Americas. Prior to 1806, various homegrown Jewish calendars, including pages in annual almanacs and privately calculated, handwritten ones, provided liturgical information to the small American Jewish community. Lopez s calendar itself a hesitant hybrid that drew on previous European models even as it adapted them to a new, American context appears to have circulated widely and had a powerful influence on the production of Jewish calendars throughout the nineteenth century. This essay puts Lopez s calendar into historical context, extending Carlebach s investigation of Jewish timekeeping to the early Republic. At the same time, the history of Lopez s book, and the unexpected uses to which its owners put it, provides a lens through which to see the life and evolution of the Jewish community in the nineteenth century. The Author: Moses Lopez Moses (given name Duarte) Lopez was born around 1740 to New Christians in Portugal. He moved with his parents and two brothers to Newport in Later that same year, when he was twenty-eight years old, he and his brothers were circumcised in Tiverton by a mohel who traveled up from New York. 6 Moses was the nephew of both Aaron Lopez (who settled in Newport around 1750) and Aaron s half-brother, Moses Lopez (who arrived in Newport around 1747, and with whom he is sometimes confused). His uncle Moses died in 1767, shortly before the younger Moses arrived in Newport. During the British occupation of Newport, Lopez lived in Leicester, Massachusetts, with his uncle Aaron and other family members. Lopez returned to Newport by 1783 and lived there, unmarried, through After the death of his brother Jacob in 1822, he moved to New York and lived with the family of Sarah Lopez, Aaron s widow. He was said to be the last [Jew] who quited [sic] the town. 8 Relatively little is known about Moses Lopez prior to According to Charles Daly, He is said to have been a man of remarkable capacity, distinguished for his acquirements as a mathematician, his mechanical skill, and his conversational powers. As a man of business he was noted for his uprightness, and is said to have been particularly earnest in his religious belief. 9 Due to the preservation of a cache of letters that he sent to Stephen Gould in Newport between 1822 and 1828, we gain at least a sketchy picture of him in his later years. Gould ( ) was Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar

3 2013 Vol. LXV Nos. 1 & 2 3 from a distinguished Quaker family and served without pay as Lopez s agent in Newport after Lopez moved to New York. Lopez wrote several letters each year to Gould concerning his affairs, as well as the upkeep of the synagogue. (While the words were Lopez s, the letters were actually penned by various cousins due to Lopez s obstinate rheumatism, an ailment that he mentioned at every opportunity.) It is, in fact, from these letters that we can definitively identify this Moses Lopez as the author of the calendar. In his letter to Gould dated 7 September 1827 he writes, To comply with my promise I shall inclose in this one of my calendars unbound, as I have not a single one bound left on hand. 10 The copy he sent also survives and is inscribed, Moses Lopez the author to Stephen Gould It is unclear if the handwriting is his own or that of his cousin, Joshua Lopez. 12 The letters reveal that at least by this time, and perhaps always, Lopez had only modest means. He relied for support on the rent of a modest shop and the apartment above, and much of his correspondence with Gould involved issues dealing with this property (especially the collection or noncollection of rents, repairs, and the complaints of one particularly difficult or shrewd tenant). Among his last letters to Gould, dated 31 January and 7 April 1828, he instructs Gould to auction his property for no less than $2,000, for As you know my chief dependence has been upon the little I receive from there & I am at present in want of some money. 13 None other than the complaining tenant, Betsey Perry, purchased it for $2, Lopez died in New York in 1830 and was interred in the Jewish cemetery in Newport. In these letters Lopez shows great concern for the abandoned synagogue. Most of his letters include some kind of instruction for Gould concerning its upkeep, as well as his consternation that Gould refused compensation for his services. Despite his obvious dedication to the preservation of the synagogue, Lopez refused Gould s suggestion that Lopez be appointed as a trustee to administer the funds ($20,000) recently left by Abraham Touro: I thank you for your good wishes to have me appointed one of the Trustees to receive the legacy left by Touro to the Synagogue & the repairing of the street [which ran from the synagogue to the Jewish cemetery] in Newport, but you will do me a greater favor if through your means I can be exempted from

4 4 The American Jewish Archives Journal that appointment, as my nervous and rheumatic complaint rather increasing, totally unfits me to take upon myself the management of such business, being more than half of my time confined at home, which will oblige me to decline. My deceased uncle Aaron Lopez was the first Founder of the Newport Synagogue, & as he has two sons yet alive, Joshua & Samuel Lopez, as well as a grand son married in this City, by the name of Aaron L. Gomez, a man I can recommend to be of the greatest integrity, I think they have the prior right to be appointed with two more men of the congregation in this place. 15 Outside of his concern for the synagogue, Lopez s letters to Gould contain few obvious signs of his piety. He never cites the Bible, although he makes one passing reference to a mutual friend, a compleat substantial old bachelor, who, about to marry, might actually fulfill the Divine Commandment which enjoins every living creature to increase & multiply. 16 He gives detailed instructions for the inscription of a headstone for the grave of his brother Jacob, which was to be in English with one word of Hebrew on the top and one on the bottom. 17 It is the only time in these letters that he refers to a Hebrew date: He died the 18 th of March, 1822, being the 25 th of the Hebrew Month Adar 5582, Aged 70 years. 18 Twice in these letters he refers to our Hollydays of Passover as an excuse for not being able to reply promptly to Gould. 19 He received from his uncle Aaron Lopez a copy of an edition of the Prophets that was published in Amsterdam, but there is no evidence that he read or studied it. 20 Lopez s personal motives for writing the calendar are unclear. He seems to have printed it at his own expense at the office of the Newport Mercury newspaper in 1806 and undoubtedly hoped that he would make some money from it; as his later letters show, however, it certainly did not make him wealthy. 21 Lopez may also have been driven simply by intellectual curiosity. The tone to his comments in Table IX suggests that he enjoyed creating the first two tables, and he may have continued with the rest as a diversion from his mundane tasks. Lopez, however, does not appear to be addressing a local communal need. Many of the Jews of Newport left the city when it was occupied by British troops during the Revolutionary War. Although several of these families returned after the war, the Jewish community of Newport, like the city generally, would never recover its vitality. Families began to leave for more Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar

5 2013 Vol. LXV Nos. 1 & 2 5 commercially viable cities, and in 1791 the synagogue, to which George Washington had sent his famous letter on toleration the previous year, was shuttered. According to Morris Gutstein, By 1800, the Jewish Society of Newport contained no one outside the families of Rivera and Seixas, and some of their relatives, Lopez and Levy respectively. 22 To our knowledge, by 1806 there was a very small Jewish population and no organized Jewish prayer services. Moses Lopez s Calendar Lopez s calendar, A Lunar Calendar, of the Festivals, and Other Days in the Year, Observed by the Israelites, Commencing Anno Mundi, 5566, and Ending in 5619, being a Period of 54 Years, Which by the Solar Computation of Times, Begins September 24th 1805, and will End the 28th of the Same Month, in the Year 1859, was the first free-standing Jewish calendar in the Americas, and it was as unassuming as its author. 23 Although it would best be categorized as an almanac, it lacked nearly all of the features that made contemporary almanacs interesting. Composed of little more than tables that record the dates of Jewish holidays and their proper lectionary readings, Lopez s book lacked astrological observations, weather predictions, cures for maladies, commercial conversion tables, lists of officials in the government or any other organization, and road distances. 24 Also unlike these almanacs, which were issued annually, Lopez s work covered fifty-four years. The published calendar takes the form of a slim pamphlet, containing sixty-eight unnumbered pages. After the title page comes a one-page Recommendation of the Rev. Mr. Seixas, dated 1 February 1806 in New York: Sir, Having seen your proposals for publishing a Calendar, containing our Festivals and Fasts, &c. &c. together with the rules observed for reading the Law, &c. &c. on such public occasions shewing the day of the solar and lunar months, with the day of the week, throughout the year am well convinced it will be of the utmost utility and sincerely hope you may experience as much benefit in its productions, as it will be found useful and necessary by all of our Brethren, the House of Israel. GERSHOM MENDES SEIXAS Lopez probably knew Seixas, or at least his brother, Moses Seixas, who ran a bank in Newport.

6 6 The American Jewish Archives Journal Lopez s preface and explanation take up the next three pages of the calendar. He launches directly into a description of the Hebrew (lunar) calendar, explaining both the problem of intercalation and the relationship of intercalation to determining the lectionary cycle ( The Sections or Parasshas which the Pentateuch is divided ). 25 He then explains the tables. Nowhere does he discuss why he wrote the book. The book contains nine tables, but the first two comprise its bulk. Tables I and II are printed on opposing sides of each page; there is one of each for each Jewish year between 5566 (1805/1806) to 5619 (1858/1859). Table I synchronizes the Jewish festivals to the secular Gregorian (solar) months. This table includes line items only for dates that have corresponding Jewish holidays. The order of its three columns is: secular date; name of the holiday; day of the week. It contains no Hebrew dates (the Hebrew dates of the holidays are listed in Table III), and the bottom of the page contains a notice of whether it is an ordinary or leap year in the Hebrew calendar. 26 Table II for each year faces Table I and contains the lectionary readings for the Sabbaths that year. 27 (Figure 1) After these annual tables comes a series of other short tables. As noted, Table III gives the Hebrew dates of each holiday. Tables IV VII note the lectionary and prophetic readings for the Sabbaths and festivals, being deemed useful, to such persons as are unprovided with the Books containing them. Table VIII is Of the Hour to commence the Sabbath, in the City of New York. The time is given in half-hour increments, depending on the time of year. For example, from 15 March to 8 April, Sabbath is said to begin at 5:30 PM. The earliest time it begins is 4:00 PM from 22 November to 22 January, and the latest is 7:00 PM from 15 May to 22 July. The note at the bottom reads: N.B. This calculation of time was made by the Rev. HAZAN Joseph Jesserun Pinto, Ano Mundi, 5519; and Solar year 1759; for the meridian of New-York; which being by him established, was also confirmed by an ASCAMA of the Parnassim and Junta of that Congregation. It may, with a small variation, answer well for all the Northern States of America. 28 Table IX is a small table of the dominical letters that is, the letters assigned to each day of the week of the solar year. Knowing the day of the week on which 1 January of any given year falls, one can find the day of the Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar

7 2013 Vol. LXV Nos. 1 & 2 7 Figure 1: Page of Tables 1 and 2 in Moses Lopez, A Lunar Calendar (Courtesy American Jewish Archives) week on which any other month in that year begins. Lopez says that he used this table in constructing some of the others. The use of dominical letters for calculating the solar calendar was quite old and used by Christians. The book ends with a citation of Psalms 22:23: Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the Seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the Seed of Israel. A page containing a few minor errata follows. The Calendar in Context: Jewish Timekeeping in the Atlantic World Lopez s calendar, of course, follows a long tradition of Jewish calendars that synchronized Jewish ritual and liturgical time with local (and hegemonic) calendars. Such calendars date all the way back to antiquity and, as Carlebach has recently demonstrated, had a rich and active life through the Middle Ages and the early modern period in Europe. How did Jews in America prior to 1806 know and convey ritual time, and what was Lopez s connection to the knowledge and publications that preceded him?

8 8 The American Jewish Archives Journal By 1800, there was an impressive variety of printed Jewish calendars in Europe. Many were published annually, like almanacs, and primarily contained tables that noted the secular date and the Hebrew date next to each other with, if appropriate, the corresponding Jewish holiday or Sabbath lectionary reading. Some of these calendars also contained other information, such as the time at which the Sabbath begins or a short chronograph of important dates in Jewish history. 29 Small printed annual pocket calendars began to appear in Germany in the mid-eighteenth century. These calendars, printed in Berlin, Frankfurt-am-Main, and Breslau, tended to have a similar arrangement and were mainly printed in Yiddish with Hebrew orthography. They often had five columns: (1) the name of the new Jewish month and other holidays and observances; (2) day of the week; (3) day of the Jewish month; (4) secular day of the month; and (5) secular month and holidays. Some contained zodiacal signs and discussions, all in Yiddish. 30 Most Jewish communities in the early Republic, though, turned to synagogues and rabbis in Amsterdam and England which followed Spanish- Portuguese rituals for religious guidance. These communities also produced Jewish calendars, but they tended to be multiyear compositions, taking after the pioneering work of Isaac Abendana, an English Jewish polymath who published at Oxford what we might call the first Jewish almanac, from In England, the publication of Abendana s almanacs, which were probably primarily intended for a non-jewish readership, was followed over the next century by Jewish calendars produced by three generations of the Nieto family. David Nieto ( ) was the first rabbi of Bevis Marks Synagogue in London. 32 He took a keen interest in calendrical matters and published a set of tables that covered the years The tables are for specialists; they do not detail the calendar in chronological fashion but rather provide the data needed for a reader to compute his or her own Jewish calendar. 34 The print run was apparently quite small; the library catalog WorldCat.org lists only three extant copies. 35 Nieto s son Isaac, who succeeded him as rabbi at Bevis Marks Synagogue, published his own calendar as part of his translation of the High Holiday liturgy into Spanish. The calendar, covering the years , appears at the beginning of the book and is arranged by Jewish holiday. 36 Interestingly, Isaac s calendar contains secular dates Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar

9 2013 Vol. LXV Nos. 1 & 2 9 on both the old and new calendars, taking into account the English calendar reformation of ; it was thus far easier to use than his father s. It also contains the times for daily services, on the halfhour, at the London synagogue, K.K. de Londres. Isaac s son Phineas authored yet another calendar in This calendar, covering the years , was in English and more accessible than those of either of his two predecessors. It was arranged according to the day of the week, but only for those days that had Jewish holidays. Like Lopez s calendar, it includes tables for the beginning of the Sabbath in thirty-minute intervals (including, unusually, the difference between the exact time of sunset and the commencement of the Sabbath). (Figure 2) Given both that the Jewish community in America maintained close organizational and personal contact with those in London and Amsterdam and that there was a brisk book trade between Europe (especially England) and America, there is surprisingly little evidence that Jews bought European-printed religious books. 39 A few, primarily wealthy, Jewish families possessed Bibles and prayer books, but these appear to have been relatively rare. 40 In his study of inventories of twelve early New York Jewish families between 1682 and 1763, Leo Hershkowitz found that only three owned a Bible and only one owned a set of prayer books. 41 There is to my knowledge no direct evidence for a single American Jew owning a Jewish calendar printed in Europe. If Jews in the Americas in the eighteenth century did not directly consult the Nieto calendars, how did they keep track of liturgical time? Much of this knowledge must have been transmitted orally through the synagogues. At the same time, though, and indicative of the growing value of individualism and the approaching transformation of the Jewish community from a synagogue community to a community of synagogues, Jews developed alternative avenues for the transmission of this knowledge. Some Jews relied on tables published in secular annual almanacs. The publication of almanacs at this time was a big business; large communities generally supported competing versions. A few of the almanacs printed in the Americas contained an annual table of Jewish holidays. The New York 1775 issue of Rivington s new almanack, and ephemeris, for example,

10 10 The American Jewish Archives Journal contains a single page with the new moons and holidays for 1774/1775, beginning with the Hebrew month of Tishri. The table contains the name of the holiday; its corresponding day(s) of the week; the day(s) of the secular month; and the name of the secular month. 42 At almost precisely the same time, such single-page calendars can be found in almanacs produced in Jamaica. 43 For several years at the end of the eighteenth century, the almanac for South Carolina and Georgia included a Hebrew calendar, furnished for this Almanac only, by a Member of the Hebrew congregation. 44 These tables include the new moons and holidays, beginning in January rather than according to the order of the Hebrew year. They begin with the Hebrew month; Hebrew day; day of the week; secular date; English name of the festival; and Hebrew name of the festival. Some versions contain a helpful notation indicating the holidays on which business transactions are forbidden. 45 A similar table can be found in a Dutch almanac from Surinam published in Figure 2: Page from Phineas Nieto, A new calendar containing the new moons, festivals, and fasts annually celebrated. (Courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America) Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar

11 2013 Vol. LXV Nos. 1 & 2 11 Where did the Member of the Hebrew congregation, and the printers of these other non-jewish almanacs, get their data? It is possible that these calendars drew from the Phineas Nieto calendar. The varying arrangements of these tables, though, suggest that individuals (presumably, but not necessarily in every case, Jews) independently calculated the data for each of these almanacs. Such calculations were not trivial, but they were also not overly complex if the calculator had access to a set of rules and tables that by this time had had appeared in several published versions in England. Moreover, almanac calculation in general had become something of a popular hobby in America at this time, and individuals might have turned their attention to Jewish calendars for both the challenge and potential (but modest) profit. Several handwritten Jewish calendars from early America demonstrate that at least some individual Jews were making these calculations on their own. There are several full, handwritten Jewish calendars extant that date from and were probably produced in Pennsylvania. They were in Hebrew (occasionally with the secular months written in English) and sometimes covered more than one year. 47 One typical calendar devotes a single page to each Hebrew month, with accompanying columns containing the name of the Jewish holiday or lectionary reading; day of the week; day of the Hebrew month; day of the secular month; and name of the secular month. 48 (Figure 3) A later handwritten Jewish calendar, written after the availability of a printed Jewish calendar in America, also attests to a continuing tradition of Jews creating their own private calendars. This calendar covers the years and was written by or for J. Solis of New York. 49 Solis organized his calendar in a unique way. He created a separate table for each holiday and listed the corresponding dates that that holiday would fall on each of the years. The calendar also contains a list of times for the beginning of each Sabbath, as in the European calendars mentioned previously, in half-hour increments according to the time of year (e.g., 22 January to 22 February, 4:30 PM). Other handwritten Jewish calendars must have existed, but given their lack of survival it is impossible to gauge the extent of their circulation. 50 In addition to consulting printed pages in almanacs and creating their own handwritten calendars, Jews modified existing secular almanacs. The creators of a Jewish calendar belonging to a merchant from

12 12 The American Jewish Archives Journal Figure 3: Page from handwritten Jewish calendar (Courtesy of the Library of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania) Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for example, began with a pocket almanac from the year 1780 and modified it to include a handwritten Hebrew calendar. 51 Michael Gratz, a prosperous merchant from Philadelphia, had blank leaves sewn into his 1777 pocket almanac, on which he carefully wrote the Hebrew dates of holidays and the Sabbath lectionary readings. 52 Barnard Gratz, Michael s older brother, in 1795 wrote to his son-in-law, Solomon Etting: I have an allmanock for you to put all the Hebrew feasts and fasts in it which shall send you by first safe oppt y. 53 It was apparently not unusual for Jews to add handwritten notations of their holidays presumably which they either calculated or learned from another source to their inexpensive, annual pocket almanacs. Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar

13 2013 Vol. LXV Nos. 1 & 2 13 Presumably, for most Jews the synagogue was the source of their calendrical information. Yet while many Jews in America would have been content to obtain information about approaching holidays through synagogue announcements and other oral modes of communication, the smattering of personal almanacs and handwritten calendars demonstrates the increasing desire of Jews to function as independent religious actors, without having to rely on the synagogue. In this respect, these Jews participated in a wider trend that was taking place on both sides of the Atlantic. The production of Jewish calendars and almanacs was sporadic and haphazard. A comparison of these Jewish calendars to calendars and almanacs produced by contemporary ethnic groups in the early Republic highlights their strictly utilitarian nature. In 1781, for example, the French Fleet in America published its own almanac, the first Roman Catholic almanac printed in the United States. 54 Other Roman Catholic almanacs followed. 55 The German community made a more sustained effort at using almanacs to reinforce their ethnic identity. Der Neue hoch Americanische Calendar made its debut in 1791, first published in Philadelphia but later moving to Baltimore. Written in German, this almanac contained calendrical tables along with other useful tables and short essays. These calendars appeared annually until On the one hand, Lopez s calendar, too, can be seen as supporting a distinct Jewish identity in the early Republic. On the other hand, though, the lack of Hebrew and other cultural essays in the calendar would at least mute its effects as an agent of identity formation. It thus complicates what Roger Daniels calls the hyperassimilationist ideal of the early Republic, as Americans of all ethnic groups sought to enter into a distinctly American identity. 57 Whatever his personal motives, Lopez s spartan almanac filled a wider Jewish need while at the same time dovetailing with the general move within the Jewish community toward increasing democracy. 58 By 1825, an almanac in South Carolina servicing the largest Jewish community in America had been copied directly (but without attribution) from Lopez s calendar. 59 Lopez s calendar minimally allowed Jews without access to a handwritten calendar to know the dates of the holidays in advance without having to rely on religious authorities. At the same time, a similar move toward the lessening of the power of religious authorities was taking place among Christians. 60

14 14 The American Jewish Archives Journal Jewish Observances in the Early Republic Given the conventional nature of these calendars, they tend to reveal disappointingly little about the religious observance of Jews in early America. Lopez s calendar lists the following as holidays: the first of each month (also known as the minor holiday of Rosh Hodesh); Rosh Ha- Shanah; the Fast of Gedaliah; Yom Kippur; Sukkot; Hoshanna Rabba; Hanukkah; the Fast of Tevet; the Fast of Esther; Purim; Passover; Second Passover ; Lag b Omer; Shavuot; the Fast of Tammuz; and Tisha b Av. 61 With some minor variations, these holidays tend to appear in all of the calendars. 62 That Lopez includes them says more about the precedents on which he was drawing than it does about which holidays American Jews actually observed at this time. Four features of the calendar, though, deserve special mention. The first is the notation in lectionary tables of when the Ten Commandments were to be read. This notation points to the special importance that Lopez and his community placed on this reading. In part, that may well have derived from an old Sephardic custom. 63 At the same time, though, emphasis on the Ten Commandments would have helped American Jews to connect with their overwhelmingly Christian environment. The second unexpected feature is the absence from Lopez s calendar of the concluding days of Sukkot and Passover, which are both festivals on which work is forbidden. Lopez s is not the only Jewish calendar to do this, and it is likely that their absence was merely to save space, as they can easily be calculated from the dates of the beginning of the holidays. It is also possible, though, that their absence might point to the lack of interest in observing these holidays. The third feature is the inclusion of several minor holidays. The calendar notes the date of the seventh day of Sukkot, Hoshanna Rabba (which is not a holiday on which work is forbidden), whereas, as noted above, it does not note the next two concluding days. Hoshanna Rabba had special significance for Sephardic Jews and is frequently noted on the earlier calendars. The inclusion of Pesach Sheni ( Second Passover ) and Lag B Omer (the thirty-third day after Passover, a quasi-festive day in the middle of a fifty-day period of mourning leading to Shavuot) can be explained primarily by the fact that they required adjustments to the daily liturgy. 64 These calendars all sought to help guide proper liturgical Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar

15 2013 Vol. LXV Nos. 1 & 2 15 practice in the synagogue. While Lopez made the calendrical calculations himself, it is likely that he consulted other resources in deciding which days to include. The fourth feature deserving note in Lopez s calendar is Table VIII, which indicates the time at which the Sabbath begins. Lopez attributes the table to the Rev. Hazan Joseph Jesserun Pinto; Pinto made it in 1759 for the meridian of New York, and it was accepted by the Parnassim and Junta of that Congregation. Pinto, himself born and trained in Europe, followed the common practice in London and Amsterdam of indicating the start of the Sabbath on the half-hour. 65 This lack of precision was not necessary; almanacs containing accurate and detailed sunset data were common in Pinto s (and Lopez s) day and, in fact, noted in the calendar by Phineas Nieto. It is interesting to note that in New York in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the visible sunset in winter was (and continues to be) around 4:30 PM, shortening to around 4:15 in Boston. 66 Thus by our reckoning (which may not agree entirely with theirs!), the time for the commencement of the Sabbath, 4:00 PM, allows for proper observance. The approximate time designations for the commencement of the Sabbath persisted in Jewish calendars in America until the mid-nineteenth century. 67 The publication of more exact times for the Sabbath coincided with the increasing importance of railroad time. 68 It was most likely the changing attitude toward time rather than the availability of more precise data and timekeeping tools that led to this change in the Jewish calendars. Material Judaism On its face, Lopez s calendar seems to be a strictly utilitarian reference tool. It thus comes as a surprise that it became a valued material object, in some cases filling the role played by the Bible in contemporary Christian homes. 69 It became an important component of the material Judaism of the early Republic. 70 Lopez s almanac was intended as a liturgical guide. Several extant copies contain notations that confirm that some owners indeed used it in this manner. The copy owned by the library of the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, for example, contains a Hebrew dedication to an educational institution and then an

16 16 The American Jewish Archives Journal English notation on the preface noting astronomical details. 71 Another copy on the private market has only a notation that reads, Kahal Kadosh Shearith Israel. Hazan. 72 The congregational leader apparently used this. The copy owned by the Rhode Island Historical Society went through several owners. Its first was Naphtali Phillips ( ), who appeared to have made only notations related to liturgical matters. 73 In another copy, the owner made only small marks by the Jewish holidays on which he could not work. 74 More commonly, though, the owners used their calendars to record the Hebrew dates of deaths, or yahrzeits, of family members; these dates are traditionally observed as an annual commemoration. Lopez s calendar was not the easiest tool to use for this purpose. The table provided the English date for each new month in the Jewish calendar. Many calendar owners made the calculation for each year and squeezed in an annotation annually either on the table itself or in the margins. In his copy (the one first owned by Naphtali Phillips), Jacob I. Cohen, an immigrant from Bavaria, inscribed the dates of death of his family members in the margins. 75 Rebecca Gratz acquired her copy of the calendar in 1808 and noted the dates of death of forty-three relatives through If using Lopez s calendar to record the yahrzeits of family members is somewhat understandable, the other annotations are less so. Several owners used the calendar as a kind of diary, noting not only yahrzeits but also births and marriages (which would have had no future liturgical significance), as well as other personal events. Hillel Judah s family used the blank pages at the end of the book to record birth, death, and marriage dates (not all for each person) of no fewer than seventeen family members. 77 The copy owned by Hyman Gratz, brother of Rebecca Gratz and the founder of Gratz College, records the significant family events of some thirty relatives right through Other owners went further, recording not only important family events but also other dates of significance. The owner of a copy owned by Yeshiva University noted on the tables for 1820 and1821 that he officiated as hazan in Philadelphia, and in 1821 and 1828 (where he only circled the entry for Passover and wrote, Philadelphia ) he gave the date that he returned to New York. In addition to noting birth and death dates throughout the calendar, he wrote on the top of the table for 1851 that he moved into a new house on 25 September Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar

17 2013 Vol. LXV Nos. 1 & 2 17 With far more forethought, Aaron Levy of New York had his copy bound in red leather with an additional page added to each year, which between 1805 and 1834 he filled with copious notes. In addition to births, deaths, and marriages, he notes travels, illnesses, political events (for 1812: June 18, War against Great Britain declared by the United States ), and more mundane occasions. On 18 October 1806, for example, he notes, Front parlor papered. 79 In some cases Lopez s calendar was passed down through generations, apparently achieving the status of an heirloom, although, strangely, not necessarily for the families who actually owned and used it. Jacob I. Cohen appears to have bequeathed his copy to his nephew, David I. Cohen, whose family continued to make annotations. 80 In another copy, a handwritten notation makes explicit the value of the calendar: This calendar must be kept as a memento on account of its rarity and usefulness in ascertaining back-dates in Lunar calculations, wrote Jacob Ezekiel on his copy in 1897, well after the calendar was functionally useful. 81 The very fact that a relatively large number of copies of the calendar survived also testifies to the attraction that it held and continues to hold, as judged by the hefty prices copies still command on the open market. 82 Lopez s calendar was thus transformed by its owners into an important family heirloom. This, of course, was the role that contemporary Christians assigned to the Bible. For many Christian households in America, the Bible was more important as a physical object, a family register, and a site in which to store important family heirlooms than it was a religious text per se. 83 Yet, as mentioned above, in the early nineteenth century Jews did not have easy access to Jewish Bibles. When they did, they apparently used them for these kinds of recording purposes. Moses Seixas recorded his family s events in his Bible, as did Aaron Levy Jr. 84 However imperfectly, Lopez s calendar filled this need. Once the original owners began using it to calculate the yahrzeits of their relatives, later generations would continue to preserve and build on these notations, until the collection of tables had become a historical memento well after it ceased to be practically useful. Aftermath While a full examination of later Jewish calendars and contemporary timekeeping practices is well beyond the scope of this article, it is worth

18 18 The American Jewish Archives Journal briefly considering two of these calendars. The first was published in 1838 by Elias Hayim Lindo in London. 85 Lindo s Jewish community was very different from David Nieto s. Whereas Nieto appears never to have learned English, the Jewish community in Lindo s time was in the process of moving comfortably into the middle class. 86 Lindo s calendar is targeted toward a relatively literate and urbane Jewish population. Its tables are clear and informative, and the book contains several other essays and ephemera dealing with Jewish history and the nature of the Jewish calendar; tables that can be used to calculate the secular calendar; the times for prayers in different synagogues in London; the time when the Sabbath begins in New York, Bengal, Sydney, New South Wales, and Jamaica; and an informative list of the Religious and Charitable Institutions of the Jews in London with the Dates of their Foundation. 87 He may have drawn on Lopez s calendar, but for our purposes the important feature is the development of the calendar to accommodate the needs of a new, self-confident English Jewish community. Precisely the same phenomenon is present in the calendar, published in 1854, coauthored by Jacques J. Lyons, the minister of K.K. Shearith Israel in New York, and Abraham de Sola, minister of K.K. Shearith Israel in Montreal. 88 In addition to fifty years of calendar tables, the book contains a long essay on the Jewish calendar and holidays and at the end, much to the delight of modern scholars, a census of Jewish institutions in the Americas and a list of the names of the calendar s subscribers. Although Lyons and de Sola nowhere mention Lopez and his work, it is clear that they used his book as a model. 89 They too used a model of two facing tables, one the dates of the Jewish holidays and the other the liturgical readings. Unlike Lopez s calendar, though, that of Lyons and de Sola included the readings for the German custom that is, the Ashkenazic Jews. 90 They also appear to have copied Pinto s table for the commencement of the Sabbath directly from Lopez s calendar. 91 This calendar thus provides, like Lopez s calendar, useful calendrical information while also, unlike Lopez s calendar, containing essays that emphasize Jewish connectedness. By the mid-nineteenth century, Jewish books were also increasingly published and available in America. Between 1845 and 1853 a new Jewish Bible appeared, translated into English by Isaac Leeser. Leeser also established the first Jewish Publication Society in 1845, to publish other Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar

19 2013 Vol. LXV Nos. 1 & 2 19 Jewish books in America. 92 In 1854 the Bloch Publishing Company, also devoted to publication of Jewish books, was founded. 93 With the ready availability of Jewish Bibles, prayer books, and other resources, Jews became less likely to use their stand-alone Jewish calendars as family registers; these important dates could now be entered directly into the family Bible. Nor by the mid-nineteenth century were the stand-alone calendars the most popular source of Jewish calendrical information. The American Israelite, Cincinnati s weekly newspaper, began publishing this information annually; annual wall calendars circulated; and some secular newspapers noted important Jewish holidays. 94 Conclusions Lopez s calendar provides a lens through which to see practice and development of Judaism and the American Jewish community in the early eighteenth century. Its very production points toward the increasing democratization of Jewish religious practice; its actual use suggests the formation of a material Judaism that paralleled the material Christianity of the era. The story of the production and use of Lopez s calendar is more suggestive than definitive, raising more questions than it answers about the history of Jews in America prior to the massive immigrations that would take place in the mid-nineteenth century. This study highlights three issues in particular: The transmission of religious knowledge. Until the mid-nineteenth century, with rare exception (Gershon Seixas being the exception), the American Jewish community turned to Europe for its religious leadership and guidance. In 1785, for example, the leadership of Congregation Mikve Israel of Philadelphia turned to Rabbi Saul Halevi Loewenstamm in Amsterdam to help them resolve a conflict they were having with a member. 95 Whether the American calendars depended on European models and information is an open question; to my mind there does seem to be a limited dependence. Yet the lack of evidence about the exchange of calendrical information highlights the relative lack of knowledge that we have about the quantity and quality of contacts between the European and early American Jewish communities. To my knowledge there has been no study of this question that incorporates the data of both American and European synagogue archives.

20 20 The American Jewish Archives Journal Temporality. There has been much scholarship on the transition from natural to clock dependent time-consciousness in the early nineteenth century. 96 The Sabbath tables in these calendars provide an interesting perspective on this discussion. Through the mid-nineteenth century, Jews approximated when to begin the Sabbath to the nearest half-hour, even when, as in Phineas Nieto s calendar, they knew perfectly well when it should begin according to the astronomical tables. Was this approximation due to a lack of reliable timepieces, or could it point to a less developed sense of clock dependent time-consciousness than is often argued? There is a second aspect of temporality that these Jewish calendars raise. Jewish ritual time is marked both liturgically, which would have been largely invisible to non-jews, and through the periodic cessation from business activity, which would not have been. Many Jews at this time apparently observed these holidays, including closing their businesses every Saturday. What did this mean to the community and to individuals to be living according to two calendars? How did non-jews understand the Jewish rhythms, or more broadly, what effect did alternative calendars (e.g., Roman Catholic, Bavarian) have on identity in the early Republic? Material Judaism. Jews enacted their religion and identity at home with a wide variety of ritual objects. I have argued here that Lopez s calendar was valued at least as much as an object as for a source of information. In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in the household, yet we continue to know little of actual Jewish households from before the first half of the nineteenth century. What objects did Jews find important, and why? How did they acquire them? And how were they later treasured (or not) as heirlooms? Lopez s calendar alone, of course, cannot answer any of these questions. It can, however, begin to provide a lens through which we can better appreciate the richness of Jewish life in early-nineteenth-century America. Michael L. Satlow received his Ph.D. in Ancient Judaism from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in His research focuses on the social and religious history of Jews and Judaism in antiquity. Satlow s most recent book is How the Bible Became Holy (2014). He is currently researching Jewish lived religion in Late Antiquity. This essay grows out of an interest in Jewish lived religion more generally and a bit of happenstance. Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar

21 2013 Vol. LXV Nos. 1 & 2 21 Notes I owe a great deal of thanks to many people who were very generous with their time and expertise: Elisheva Baumgarten, Linford Fisher, David Gilner, Matt Goldish, Judith Maria Guston, Arnold Kaplan, Louis Kessler, Arthur Kiron, Adam Mendelsohn, Bruce Nielsen, Seth Rockman, Dale Rosengarten, Jonathan Sarna, Barry Stiefel, and Suzy Taraba. The reviewers and staff of the AJAJ saved me from many errors. 1 Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), Ibid., Elisheva Carelebach, Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011). 4 Ibid., Duarte s father, Miguel, was Aaron Lopez s half-brother. Aaron sent the ship to spirit them from Portugal. The dramatic story is told in Stanley F. Chyet, Lopez of Newport: Colonial American Merchant Prince (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970), Cf. Rui Miguel Faisca Rodrigues Pereira, The Iberian Ancestry of Aaron Lopez and Jacob Rodriguez Rivera of Newport, Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes 14 (2006): , at 569. See also the family tree in Malcolm H. Stern, First American Jewish Families: 600 Genealogies, , 3 rd edition (Baltimore: Ottenheimer Publishers, 1991), Chyet, Lopez of Newport, Documents relating to this circumcision and its aftermath can be found in Jacob Rader Marcus, American Jewry Documents Eighteenth Century (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1959), Lopez is not listed in the 1810 census of Newport. Sarah Lopez is listed as a head of household in that census, which records residence of a free white man forty-five years or older I suspect that this was Moses Lopez, who would later board with her family in New York. In the 1820 census he is listed as the head of a household of two white men older than fortyfive. The other resident was almost certainly his brother Jacob. 8 This letter is labeled number fourteen among the cache of letters sent to Gould and is now located in the American Jewish Archives (SC 13432), Cincinnati, Ohio (hereafter AJA). It is titled in penciled notation, Important. Letter to Town Council by Touro family re: Synagogue. 9 Charles P. Daly and Max J. Kohler, The Settlement of the Jews in North America (New York: Phillip Cowen, 1893), This letter is among the cache of letters sent to Gould and is now located in the AJA (SC 13432). 11 This copy is now located at the American Antiquarian Society. It has a record ID of but I m not really sure this is necessary, as it is in the catalogue as normal and is the edition used for the microform edition Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, , no and no

22 22 The American Jewish Archives Journal 12 Lopez s letter to Gould from 7 September 1827 also notifies Gould that he is enclosing a receipt. He mentions that it is in the handwriting of his cousin, but it is unclear whether it refers to the inscription in the book or the receipt. SC-13432, AJA. 13 Letter dated 31 January 1828, SC-13432, AJA. According to a notice dated 9 January 1826, Gould gave a bill for $ to George Engs, who would later serve as lieutenant governor of Rhode Island. The bill was drawn on Moses Lopez at the Store of Aaron L. Gomez Merchant New York, but there were, apparently, not enough funds to cover it. Unfortunately, I could find no further information about this transaction in the correspondence between Lopez and Gould. The bill is in the Rare Documents file, AJA. 14 Letter of 15 May 1828, SC-13432, AJA. 15 Letter of 12 December 1822, SC-13432, AJA. 16 Letter of 10 October 1828, SC-13432, AJA. 17 The enclosed strip with the Hebrew words were not preserved, but the stonecutter apparently followed Lopez s instructions. Jacob s tombstone reads Matzevet, or gravestone, at the top, has the English text from Moses s letter, and then concludes with the Hebrew year. See Morris A. Gutstein, The Story of the Jews of Newport: Two and a Half Centuries of Judaism, (New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1936), 309 (inscription no. 18). 18 Letter of 12 July 1824, SC-13432, AJA. 19 Letters of 27 April 1827 and 7 April This precise formulation occurs in the first of these letters, SC-13432, AJA. 20 The book, edited by Rabbi Joseph Athias, is titled Nevi im Aharonim (Amstelodami: Sumptibus & mandatis Societatis, 1705). This copy, the only in North America, is now in the Special Collections department in the library at the College of Charleston (Restricted Collection BS ). For information about this book, see Barry L. Stiefel, The Lopez Family of Newport and Charleston and its Heirloom, Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes 15 (2009): Between 1801 and 1810, the Newport Mercury hired out its presses for independent publications. See, for example, Asa Burton, A sermon preached at the ordination of the Rev. Caleb J. Tenney, to the pastoral care of the First Congregational Church of Christ in Newport (Rhode Island) September 12, 1804; The Great Audit, or, Good Steward, being some necessary and important Considerations, to be considered by all sorts of people, Taken out of the Writings of the worthy and renowned Sir Matthew Hale, 1805; William Patten, A sermon delivered at the request of the African Benevolent society Newport, 12 th April, Printed at the Office of the Newport Mercury. 22 Gutstein, Jews of Newport, Lopez s calendar has long been noted as the first Jewish calendar printed in the Americas. See Robert Singerman, Judaica Americana: A Bibliography of Publications to 1900, vol. 1 (New York: Greenwood, 1990), 36, no The book can be accessed online at (accessed July 24, 2013), although it is scanned out of order. Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez s Calendar