Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study ...americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/... · tain few obvious signs of his piety. He never cites the Bible, although

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2013 · Vol. LXV · Nos. 1 & 2 1

Jewish Time in Early-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study of Moses Lopez’s CalendarMichael Satlow

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 reli-gious history. Synagogues were increasingly seen as purely religious rath-er 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 institu-tions, 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 ob-ject, played an important role in creating and negotiating Jewish identi-ties in early modern Europe and today can be a rich source of informa-tion 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 mar-ginalia), slowly chart the American Jewish community’s transformation from a “synagogue community” facing toward Europe to a more frac-tured and individualized community that negotiated a distinctive iden-tity 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 1767. He became a clerk in Newport, Rhode Island, where, in 1806, he published the first free-standing Jewish calendar in

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

The American Jewish Archives Journal2

the Americas. Prior to 1806, various homegrown Jewish calendars, in-cluding pages in annual almanacs and privately calculated, handwritten ones, provided liturgical information to the small American Jewish com-munity. 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 LopezMoses (given name Duarte) Lopez was born around 1740 to New

Christians in Portugal. He moved with his parents and two brothers to Newport in 1767.5 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 mem-bers. Lopez returned to Newport by 1783 and lived there, unmarried, through 1822.7 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 1822. Accord-ing to Charles Daly, “He is said to have been a man of remarkable capac-ity, distinguished for his acquirements as a mathematician, his mechani-cal 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 (1781–1831) was

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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 actu-ally 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—1827.”11 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 collec-tion—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 $2,020.14 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 syna-gogue. 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) re-cently 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 Syna-gogue & the repairing of the street [which ran from the syna-gogue to the Jewish cemetery] in Newport, but you will do me a greater favor if through your means I can be exempted from



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 ap-pointed with two more men of the congregation in this place.15

Outside of his concern for the synagogue, Lopez’s letters to Gould con-tain 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 Com-mandment 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 18th of March, 1822, being the 25th 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 mon-ey 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 fam-ilies returned after the war, the Jewish community of Newport, like the city generally, would never recover its vitality. Families began to leave for more

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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 CalendarLopez’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 Computa-tion 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 gov-ernment 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 “Rec-ommendation 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 oc-casions—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 ex-perience 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.



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 relation-ship 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 Gre-gorian (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 festi-vals, “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 incre-ments, 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 es-tablished, was also confirmed by an ASCAMA of the Parnas-sim 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 as-signed 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

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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 let-ters 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 WorldLopez’s calendar, of course, follows a long tradition of Jewish calendars

that synchronized Jewish ritual and liturgical time with local (and hege-monic) 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?

Figure 1: Page of Tables 1 and 2 in Moses Lopez, A Lunar Calendar (Courtesy American Jewish Archives)



By 1800, there was an impressive variety of printed Jewish calen-dars in Europe. Many were published annually, like almanacs, and primarily contained tables that noted the secular date and the He-brew date next to each other with, if appropriate, the corresponding Jewish holiday or Sabbath lectionary reading. Some of these calen-dars 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 ar-rangement and were mainly printed in Yiddish with Hebrew orthog-raphy. 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 syna-gogues and rabbis in Amsterdam and England—which followed Spanish-Portuguese rituals—for religious guidance. These communities also pro-duced Jewish calendars, but they tended to be multiyear compositions, taking after the pioneering work of Isaac Abendana, an English Jewish poly-math who published at Oxford what we might call the first Jewish almanac, from 1692–1699.31 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 gen-erations of the Nieto family. David Nieto (1654–1728) 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 1718–1800.33 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 Syna-gogue, published his own calendar as part of his translation of the High Holiday liturgy into Spanish. The calendar, covering the years 1740–1762, appears at the beginning of the book and is arranged by Jewish holiday.36 Interestingly, Isaac’s calendar contains secular dates

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on both the “old” and “new” calendars, taking into account the Eng-lish calendar reformation of 175237; it was thus far easier to use than his father’s. It also contains the times for daily services, on the half-hour, at the London synagogue, “K.K. de Londres.”

Isaac’s son Phineas authored yet another calendar in 1791.38 This calendar, covering the years 1790–1840, was in English and more ac-cessible 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 be-ginning of the Sabbath in thirty-minute intervals (including, unusu-ally, the difference between the exact time of sunset and the com-mencement 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, primar-ily 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 transforma-tion 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,



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 secu-lar 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 Caro-lina and Georgia includ-ed a Hebrew calendar, “furnished for this Al-manac only, by a Mem-ber of the Hebrew con-gregation.”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 fes-tival; and Hebrew name of the festival. Some ver-sions contain a helpful notation indicating the holidays on which busi-ness transactions are for-bidden.45 A similar table can be found in a Dutch almanac from Surinam published in 1820.46

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)

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Where did the “Member of the Hebrew congregation,” and the print-ers of these other non-Jewish almanacs, get their data? It is possible that these calendars drew from the Phineas Nieto calendar. The varying ar-rangements of these tables, though, suggest that individuals (presum-ably, 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 pub-lished 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 demon-strate that at least some individual Jews were making these calculations on their own. There are several full, handwritten Jewish calendars extant that date from 1776–1790 and were probably produced in Pennsylva-nia. 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 accompany-ing 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 1807–1852 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 calen-dars 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 alma-nacs. The creators of a Jewish calendar belonging to a merchant from



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 care-fully 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.

Figure 3: Page from handwritten Jewish calendar (Courtesy of the Library of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic

Studies, University of Pennsylvania)

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Presumably, for most Jews the synagogue was the source of their calen-drical information. Yet while many Jews in America would have been con-tent 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 increas-ing 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 alma-nacs produced by contemporary ethnic groups in the early Republic high-lights 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 calen-drical tables along with other useful tables and short essays. These calen-dars appeared annually until 1809.56

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 Ameri-can 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 Lo-pez’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



Jewish Observances in the Early RepublicGiven the conventional nature of these calendars, they tend to re-

veal 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; “Sec-ond 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, em-phasis 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 holi-days. 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 cal-endar 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

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practice in the synagogue. While Lopez made the calendrical calcula-tions 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 preci-sion was not necessary; almanacs containing accurate and detailed sun-set 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-nine-teenth 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 availabil-ity of more precise data and timekeeping tools that led to this change in the Jewish calendars.

Material JudaismOn its face, Lopez’s calendar seems to be a strictly utilitarian refer-

ence 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, con-tains a Hebrew dedication to an educational institution and then an



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 (1773–1870), 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 annu-ally 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 Re-becca Gratz acquired her copy of the calendar in 1808 and noted the dates of death of forty-three relatives through 1858.76

If using Lopez’s calendar to record the yahrzeits of family members is somewhat understandable, the other annotations are less so. Several own-ers used the calendar as a kind of diary, noting not only yahrzeits but also births and marriages (which would have had no future liturgical sig-nificance), 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 mem-bers.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 1857.78

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 1857.

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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 ex-ample, 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. Co-hen, whose family continued to make annotations.80 In another copy, a handwritten notation makes explicit the value of the calendar: “This cal-endar 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 impor-tant 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 nine-teenth 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 nota-tions, until the collection of tables had become a historical memento well after it ceased to be practically useful.

AftermathWhile a full examination of later Jewish calendars and contemporary

timekeeping practices is well beyond the scope of this article, it is worth



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 Insti-tutions 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 Is-rael 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 informa-tion while also, unlike Lopez’s calendar, containing essays that empha-size Jewish connectedness.

By the mid-nineteenth century, Jewish books were also increasingly published and available in America. Between 1845 and 1853 a new Jew-ish Bible appeared, translated into English by Isaac Leeser. Leeser also established the first Jewish Publication Society in 1845, to publish other

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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 sug-gestive 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 is-sues in particular:

The transmission of religious knowledge. Until the mid-nineteenth cen-tury, with rare exception (Gershon Seixas being the exception), the Ameri-can 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 Am-sterdam to help them resolve a conflict they were having with a mem-ber.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.



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 per-spective on this discussion. Through the mid-nineteenth century, Jews ap-proximated 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 activ-ity, 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, Bavar-ian) 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 appre-ciate 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 1993. 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.

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NotesI 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 re-viewers and staff of the AJAJ saved me from many errors.1Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 54.2Ibid., 61.3Elisheva Carelebach, Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011).4Ibid., 207.5Duarte’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), 104–107. 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): 560–580, at 569. See also the family tree in Malcolm H. Stern, First American Jewish Families: 600 Genealogies, 1654–1988, 3rd edition (Baltimore: Ottenheimer Publishers, 1991), 175.6Chyet, Lopez of Newport, 106–107. Documents relating to this circumcision and its after-math can be found in Jacob Rader Marcus, American Jewry—Documents—Eighteenth Cen-tury (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1959), 91–92.7Lopez is not listed in the 1810 census of Newport. Sarah Lopez is listed as a head of house-hold 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 forty-five. The other resident was almost certainly his brother Jacob. 8This letter is labeled number fourteen among the cache of letters sent to Gould and is now lo-cated in the American Jewish Archives (SC–13432), Cincinnati, Ohio (hereafter AJA). It is ti-tled in penciled notation, “Important. Letter to Town Council by Touro family re: Synagogue.” 9Charles P. Daly and Max J. Kohler, The Settlement of the Jews in North America (New York: Phillip Cowen, 1893), 89.10This letter is among the cache of letters sent to Gould and is now located in the AJA (SC–13432). 11This copy is now located at the American Antiquarian Society. It has a record ID of 280898 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, 1801–1819, no. 10746 and no. 50565.



12Lopez’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.13Letter dated 31 January 1828, SC-13432, AJA. According to a notice dated 9 January 1826, Gould gave a bill for $259.68 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. Un-fortunately, 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. 14Letter of 15 May 1828, SC-13432, AJA.15Letter of 12 December 1822, SC-13432, AJA. 16Letter of 10 October 1828, SC-13432, AJA. 17The enclosed strip with the Hebrew words were not preserved, but the stonecutter appar-ently 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, 1658–1908 (New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1936), 309 (inscription no. 18).18Letter of 12 July 1824, SC-13432, AJA. 19Letters of 27 April 1827 and 7 April 1828. This precise formulation occurs in the first of these letters, SC-13432, AJA. 20The 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 1502 1705). 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): 393–405.21Between 1801 and 1810, the Newport Mercury hired out its presses for independent pub-lications. 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, 12th April, 1808. Printed at the Office of the Newport Mercury.22Gutstein, Jews of Newport, 217.23Lopez’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. 0134.The book can be accessed online at http://www.he-brewbooks.org/45715 (accessed July 24, 2013), although it is scanned out of order.

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24For an overview of the almanac’s popularity and its place as a literary form in early Amer-ica, see Marion Barber Stowell, Early American Almanacs: The Colonial Weekday Bible (New York: Burt Franklin & Co., 1977); idem, “The Influence of Nathaniel Ames on the Literary Taste of His Time,” Early American Literature 18 (1983): 127–145. Almanacs were also ve-hicles of “popular religion” in early America. See Charles H. Lippy, Being Religious, American Style: A History of Popular Religiosity in the United States (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 60–61. According to Russell L. Martin, despite the relatively expensive price of books at this time, “many people of middling or modest means managed to own a Bible, a psalter, a schoolbook or two, and each year’s almanac” [“Appendix Three: A Note on Book Prices,” in Hugh Amory and David D. Hall, eds., The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, Volume one of A History of the Book in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 523].25Technically, the Jewish calendar is soli-lunar. Following the Lopez’s lead, however, I retain the “lunar” terminology. 26For example, “Ordinary Common Year, containing 354 days” (for year 5566), or “Com-plete Leap-Year, containing 385 days” (5567). Years that contain other numbers of days receive other designations: a year of 355 days is called a “Complete Common Year” (5568); 383 days is a “Deficient Leap-Year” (5570) and 384 days is an “Ordinary Leap-Year” (5586).27There are fifty-four traditional lectionary readings of the Torah, to accord with the Jewish leap year. During non-leap years two readings are combined on a few Sabbaths. These places are noted with two numbers, indicating the two readings. It also lists the readings for the spe-cial Sabbaths (as they appear in the book): Beresit; Hanuca; Secalim; Zachor; Para; Ahodes; Agadol; Pessah; and Tora. Other holidays are noted only if they occur on the Sabbath. The first and last of these, Beresit and Tora, are preceded with an “H.” in column (2), standing for hatan. The last entry in the table, “H. Tora,” also has the day of the week—it is the reading on Simhat Torah. “H. Beresit,” on the other hand, is always on a Saturday. Table II also uses the notation “Com’ts” to mark the two weeks during which the Ten Commandments are read.28On Pinto, see N. Taylor Phillips, “The Congregation Shearith Israel. An Historical Re-view,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 6 (1897): 123–140, at 128–129; H.P. Salomon, “Joseph Jeshurun Pinto (1729–1782): A Dutch Hazzan in Colonial New York,” Studia Rosenthaliana 13 (1979): 18–29. I have not been able to find an original at-testation of Pinto’s calendar.29For an overview, see Carlebach, Palaces of Time, esp. 59–68.30Ibid., 67.31For an account of Abendana’s literary works, see I. Abrahams, “Isaac Abendana’s Cambridge Mishnah and Oxford Calendars,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England VIII (1915–1917): 98–122; Jan Willem Wesselius, “‘I Don’t Know Whether He Will Stay for Long’: Isaac Abendana’s Early Years in England and His Latin Translation of the Mishnah,” Studia Rosenthaliana 22 (1988): 85–96; David S. Katz, “The Abendana Brothers and the Christian Hebraists of Seventeenth-Century England,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 40 (1989): 28–52.32There is a significant bibliography on Nieto. See esp. I. Solomons, “David Ni-eto and Some of his Contemporaries,” Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England)



Vol. 12 (1928–1931): 1–101; J.J. Petuchowski, The Theology of Haham David Nieto: An Eighteenth-Century Defense of the Jewish Tradition (New York: Bloch, 1954); David B. Rud-erman, “Jewish Thought in Newtonian England: The Career and Writings of David Nieto,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 58 (1992): 193–219.33David Nieto, Repertorio delos Ros-Hodes, Fiestas, y Ayunos que se celebraràn annualmente en Yisrael; desde el año 5478 hasta el 5560; que corresponden a la Epoca Vulgar, desde el 1718 hasta el 1800 (London, 5478 [=1718]). This edition shortly followed a Hebrew version titled Bina L’etim. In an exchange of letters with John Covel in 1705–1706, Nieto already mentions his plan to publish a Jewish calendar that would improve on Abendana’s. See Solomons, “David Nieto,” 21–24, 35. Nieto later published a more theoretical tract on the calendar as Pascalo-gia ovvero discorso della Pasca (Livorno: Strambi, 1765).34David Nieto includes the holidays of: R. Asana [Rosh Hashana]; Guedalia [Fast of Geda-liah]; Kipur [Yom Kippur]; Sucoth; Hanucah; A. Tebet [Fast of Tevet]; A. Ester [Fast of Esther]; Purim; Pessah; Sebuhot [Shavuot]; A. Tamuz [Fast of the Tenth of Tammuz]; and A. Ab [Tisha b’Av]. The synagogue officially adapted the calendar in 1723. See Moses Gaster, History of the Ancient synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews: the cathedral synagogue of the Jews in England, situated in Bevis Marks : a memorial volume written specially to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of its inauguration, 1701–1901 (London: Typ. Harrison, 1901), 105. 35They are at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (in the Israel Solomons Collec-tion); Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati; and one that apparently has a Hebrew title page at University College of London.36Isaac Nieto, Orden de las Oraciones de Ros-Ashanah Y Kipur (London: R. Reily, 1740). The calendar is titled, “Calendario Hebraico, que Contiene Los Novilunios, Fiestas, y Ayunos; las Parasiot que se juntan; La Bendizion de las Lluvias; Las horas en que se toma Sabath y se reze Minha y Harbit;y las que se reze Tephilah en esta Ciudad.” The holidays mentioned are: R. Asana; A. Guedalya; A. Kipur; F. Sucoth; Hosanah Raba; Hanucah; A. Tebet; A. Ester; Purim; F. Pesah; Sebuoth; A. Tamuz; A. Ab.37Cf. Robert Poole, “‘Give us our Eleven Days!’: Calendar Reform in Eighteenth-Century England,” Past & Present 149 (1995): 95–139.38The calendar is titled, A new calendar containing the new moons, festivals, and fasts annually celebrated: together with the sections of the Bible that are read every Sabbath day; likewise the time of taking of the same, from the year 5551 till 5600, corresponding to the year 1790 till 1840 (printed by permission of the gentlemen of the Mahamad). The item is listed in Cecil Roth, Magna Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica: A Bibliographical Guide to Anglo-Jewish History (London: The Jewish Historical Society of England, 1937) as 1313a. While this book contains no author or publication information, two later writers indicate that Phineas Nieto wrote it. In the preface to his calendar, A Jewish Calendar for Sixty-Four Years detailing the New Moons, Festivals, and Fasts (printed by L. Thompson, London, 1838), Elias Hayim Lindo justifies his publication with the statement that “The Jewish Calendar, published by Mr. Nieto, A.M. 5551, -1791, comprising also the corresponding dates of the Christian Era, is now about ex-piring” (iii). In 1902, Abraham Nieto published yet another calendar, Nieto’s Jewish Almanac

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for One Hundred Years from New Year 5663/1902 to 5763/2002 (New York: Burr Printing House, 1902). Nieto claimed to be a “lineal descendant” of David, Isaac, and Phineas Nieto, “famous almanac makers.” He writes: “Phineas, son of [Isaac], published his almanac for 47 years—from 1791–1838. This was the famous Nieto’s Almanac so much enquired for.” He then mentions Lindo’s calendar, which itself was expiring in 1902. I have consulted the edi-tion in the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.39There was a robust book trade in America in the eighteenth century, with booksellers espe-cially in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia importing books from Europe. Cf. Madeleine B. Stern, Antiquarian Bookselling in the United States: A History from the Origins to the 1940s (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985); and James Raven, “The Importation of Books in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, 183–197.40For a pair of phylacteries imported from Europe, see Nathan family papers undated, 1791-ca. 1953 box P-54, American Jewish Historical Society, New York (hereafter, “AJHS”). Da-vid Franks testified in a deposition in 1792 that his sister’s birthdate was on “‘Tamuz 15, 5482’ to these are added in Hebrew her name and the Month and Year of her Birth. That he was presenting from Gershom Seixas copied the Entries of the Names and Times of Birth of the Children of the said Jacob Franks out of the Family Bible.” P-142/box 1/folder 8, AJHS. Franks had another Bible as well that was printed in Amsterdam. See P-142/box 1/folder 11, AJHS. The Bible contains no record of family events. Predictably, the Gratz family owned both Bible and prayer books.41Leo Hershkowitz, “Original Inventories of Early New York Jews (1682–1763),” American Jewish History 90, no. 4 (2002): 239–321 and 385–448. Judah Samuel owned a Hebrew Bible and five prayer books (278); Joseph Tores Nunes owned a “Spanish Bible” (285); and Joseph Bueno de Mesquita possessed a Hebrew Bible and “Five Books of Moses” (300).42Rivington’s new almanack, and ephemeris…for the year of our Lord, 1775: … Fitted for the vertex of New-York, but may without sensible error, serve all the adjacent provinces./ Truly calculated from the Caroline tables, by Copernicus, philomath (New-York: Printed by James Rivington, at the corner of Queen-Street, facing the north front of the coffee-house., 1774). Early American imprints. Series I, Evans (1639–1800); no. 13230. The pages are not num-bered, but the “New Hebrew Calendar” is located toward the end. The previous edition of Rivington’s new almanack, published in 1773, does not contain a Hebrew calendar.43Single page listings of the Jewish holidays appear immediately after the monthly tables in several (but certainly not all!) almanacs from Jamaica. See, for examples, An Almanack and Register for Jamaica, for the Year, 1760 (Kingston, James Forsyth) and An Almanack and Reg-ister for the Year of Our Lord, 1775 Being the Third after Bissextile, or Leap Year, Calculated for the Meridian of Jamaica (Kingston, Joseph Weatherby). A copy of the first can be found in the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, RI. In both, with only very minor variation, the page is titled “Kalendar of Months, Sabbaths, and Holidays, which the Hebrews or Jews observe and keep.” A similar calendar apparently appears in The New Jamaica Almanack and Register, Calculated to the Meridian of the Island for the Year of our Lord 1796 (printed by Da-vid Dickson for Thom S. Stevenson, Kingston; 1796). The only known extant copy of this almanac is in private hands; it was part of a Sotheby’s auction, Sale N08173 (30 November



2005, New York), lot 150. Cf. Bertram W. Korn, “The Haham DeCordova of Jamaica,” American Jewish Archives 18, no. 2 (1966): 141–154, at 141, n. 2. In this note Korn men-tions The New Jamaica Almanack and Register of 1779 as containing a Jewish calendar that also used Hebrew type, but curiously the ad for the Almanac omits this from the list of its contents. See Frank Cundall, “The Press and Printers of Jamaica Prior to 1820,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 26 (1916): 290–412, at 302.44See The South-Carolina and Georgia almanac printed in Charleston, for the years 1798 (Early American Imprints, no. 32857; containing the citation), 1799 (EAI, no. 34578), and 1800 (EAI, no. 36341). The 1799 and 1800 editions also contain a French calendar. 45Ibid., for 1799 and 1800.46Surinaamsche almanak voor het jaar 1820 (Paramaribo and Amsterdam: E. Beijer and C. G. Sulpke, 1819). The table is titled “Almanak der Joden 5580.”47Jonathan D. Sarna, “An Eighteenth Century Hebrew Lu’ah from Pennsylvania,” American Jewish Archives Journal 57 (2005): 25–27, and plate 3.48Library at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsyl-vania, mss. 58 (very primitive writing); 59, 61, and 62 (beautifully produced by commission).49Papers of Jacob da Silva Solis, box 1/folder 2, AJHS.50Handwritten documents or “scribal publications” may have played an important role in early American religious life. Cf. David D. Hall, “Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Centu-ry New England: An Introduction and a Checklist,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society n.s. 115 (2005): 29–80. Hall’s article deals with an earlier time, but he highlights both the importance that scribal publications may have had and the elusiveness of the evidence.51Library at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Penn-sylvania, lu’ah shel shenat 541 [1780–1781] including the parallel Christian calendar. CAJS Rar MS 60, fols. IV-2r. 52This almanac, along with Michael Gratz’s 1779 pocket almanac (which contains no He-brew dates or holidays, only notations relating to his business), can be found at the Rosen-bach Library and Museum. My thanks to Judith Marla Guston, who shared with me both this information and a copy of her excellent analysis, The Almanacs of Michael Gratz: Time, Community, and Jewish Identity in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia (unpublished master’s thesis in early American culture; University of Delaware, 1999).53Gratz family (Philadelphia) papers undated, 1753–1916 Gratz Family Collection, P–8/box 1, AJHS. Cited in Guston, The Almanacs of Michael Gratz, 7.54Cf. Howard Millar Chapin, “Calendrier Français pour l’année 1781 and the Printing Press of the French Fleet in American Waters during the Revolutionary War” (contributions to Rhode Island Bibliography II; Providence, RI: Preston & Rounds, 1914). The almanac was printed in Newport.55Cf. Joseph H. Meier, “The Official Catholic Directory,” The Catholic Historical Review 1 (1915): 299–304. The first Catholic Directory, which contained an almanac, was published by Matthew Field in 1817 in New York.

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56On these calendars, see Thomas A. Horrocks, Popular Print and Popular Medicine: Al-manacs and Health Advice in Early America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008): 25–27. On the community generally, see Steven M. Nolt, Foreigners in Their Own Land: Pennsylvania Germans in the Early Republic (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002).57Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, 2nd edition (Princeton, NJ: HarperCollins, 2002), 101–118. On the heated nature of ethnicity at this time, see Andrew W. Robertson, “‘Look on This Picture… And on This!’ Nationalism, Localism, and Partisan Images of Otherness in the United States, 1787–1820,” American His-torical Review 106 no. 4 (October 2001): 1263–1280, esp. 1276.58On the increasing democratization of American Judaism, see Sarna, American Judaism, 52–61.59Directory and stranger’s guide for the city of Charleston: also, for Charleston Neck, between Boundary-Street and the lines; to which is added, an almanac for the year of our Lord 1825; with other useful and important information (Charleston, SC: A.E. Miller, 1824), “compiled prin-cipally by the late Wm. F. Shackleford, Esq. while taking a census of the city.” The one-page table of Jewish holidays appears opposite the secular almanac page for January. My thanks to Dale Rosengarten for bringing this source to my attention. 60Cf. Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989). Hatch points to the explosion of Christian publica-tions at the turn of the nineteenth century as creating a “mass religious culture in print” (141–146).61In Lopez’s rendering: Tisri Rossanna; Fast of Gedaliah; Kipur; Sucot; Hossanna Raba; Roshodes Hesvan; Roshodes Kisleu; Hanuca; Roshodes Tebet; Fast of Tebet; Roshodes Se-bat; Roshodes Adar; Fast of Esther; Purim; Roshodes Nissan; Pessah; Roshodes Yiar; Pessah Seni; 33 of Homer; Roshodes Sivan; Sebuot; Roshodes Tamus; Fast of Tamus; Roshodes Ab; Tishabeab; Roshodes Elul.62The calendar by Phineas Nieto, for example, added the last days of Sukkot (“Sem Haseret” and “Sim Torah”); the date at which a minor liturgical change is made in the Amidah prayer (“B Halenu); Tu b’Shevat (“R A Lahilanot”); Purim Qatan (“Pu Katan”); and Tu b’Av (“Tu-beab”). Isaac Nieto’s calendar, on the other hand, omits from Lopez’s list “Second Passover” and Lag b’Omer.63Proper behavior during the reading of the Ten Commandments was actually a matter of some controversy in the Sephardic community at this time. See Marc D. Angel, “Sephardic Customs: Reflections of a Sephardic Religious Worldview,” in Exploring Sephardic Customs and Traditions, ed. Marc D. Angel (Jersey City: Ktav Publishing House, 2000), 12–13.64Additionally, Hoshanna Rabba had special prominence among the Sephardim. See Jacques J. Lyons and Abraham de Sola, A Jewish calendar for fifty years: containing detailed tables of the Sabbaths, new moons, festivals and fasts, the portions of the Law proper to them, and the cor-responding Christian dates, from A.M. 5614 till A.M. 5664 (Cincinnati and Chicago: Bloch, 1854), 28: “It is observed with heart-stirring and special solemnity by the Portuguese Jews.”



65Cf. Jacob Rodrigues-Monsanto, Calendrier Hébraïque: contenant Les Fêtes, Parassiot, Jeûnes, Roshodes, nouvelles Lunes, tecufot ou les Équinoxes, suivant Rab Samuel, pour servir pendant cinquante années, depuis le 1er Tisri 5575 de la création du Monde (15 Septembre 1814) jusqu’au 29 Elul 5624 (30 Septembre, 1864) (Bordeaux: Racle, 1814). This French calendar, intended for Israelites and travelers (3), has a different format from the others but the tables for the commencement of the Sabbath follow fifteen-minute increments.66These calculations were confirmed by reference to the tool found on the website of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: http://www.srrb.noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/sunrise.html (accessed 28 January 2011). In their 1955 history of Shearith Israel, David and Tamar De Sola Pool write that Pinto’s calendar is an “approximate adaptation” of the Amsterdam calendar. “He was neither an astronomer, however, nor a geographer, and the times set in his calendar not infrequently vary rather widely from the time of sunset in New York.” David and Tamar De Sola Pool, An Old Faith in the New World: Portrait of Shearith Israel 1654–1954 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 165.67See, for example, Lyons and de Sola, A Jewish Calendar, 158.68Carlene Stephens, “‘The Most Reliable Time’: William Bond, the New England Railroads, and Time Awareness in 19th-Century America,” Technology and Culture 30 (1989): 1–24. It is also probably related to a general increase in numeracy. Cf. Patricia Cline Cohen, A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1982).69This does not mean, of course, that every owner of the calendar used it in this way. Largely or completely unannotated copies include: one given to Moses L. Solomons by his mother (and now in the Jewish Theological Seminary of America library); one owned by Levy Phil-lips of Philadelphia (now in the John Carter Brown Library); one of the three copies at Ye-shiva University; one of two copies at the New York Public Library; and the copies at Boston University and Yale University. 70For this term, see Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).71My thanks to David Gilner for sharing copies of these notations with me.72My thanks to the owner (who wishes to remain anonymous), who communicated this information to me.73Michael Satlow, “Two Copies of a Printed Early American Jewish Calendar in Providence,” Rhode Island Jewish Historical Association Notes 15 (2009): 416–427, at 421.74One of three copies at Yeshiva University.75Cf. Satlow, “Two Copies,” 420–425. For information on Jacob I. Cohen, see Jonathan D. Sarna, “Jacob I. Cohen (1744–1823),” Dictionary of Virginia Biography 3 (Richmond: Li-brary of Virginia, 2006), 345–347; Herbert T. Ezekiel and Gaston Lichtenstein, The History of the Jews of Richmond from 1769 to 1917 (Richmond: Herbert T. Ezekiel, 1917), 17–20; Aaron Baroway, “The Cohens of Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine 18 (1923): 357–376, at 359–362.76My thanks to Arnold Kaplan for sharing this information with me.

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77This copy is owned by the Jewish and National Library at the Hebrew University in Jeru-salem. My thanks to Elisheva Baumgarten for consulting the book for me. On Hillel Judah, see Holly Snyder, “Reconstructing the Lives of Newport’s Hidden Jews, 1740–1790,” in The Jews of Rhode Island, ed. George M. Goodwin and Ellen Smith (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2004), 27–39, esp. 32–35. 78This copy is in the archives of Congregation Mikve Israel in Philadelphia. My thanks to Louis Kessler for conveying to me the information from this copy.79Cf. “Items Relating to the Moses and Levy Families, New York,” Publications of the Ameri-can Jewish Historical Society 27 (1920): 331–345, at 335–344.80This is the copy at the Rhode Island Historical Society. Cf. Satlow, “Two Copies,” 424–425.81This copy is at the John Carter Brown Library. Cf. Satlow, “Two Copies,” 418–420.82A copy of Lopez’s calendar sold for $8,125 by Sotheby’s at an auction of “Important Ju-daica” on 17 December 2008 in New York City. Sale N08504, lot 23.83McDannell, Material Christianity, 90–92.84“Items Relating to the Seixas Family, New York,” Publications of the American Jewish His-torical Society 27 (1920): 346–370, at 346–350; Archive of Congregation Mikveh Israel, 2008.060.002. 85A digital copy is at http://www.archive.org/details/ajewishcalendar00lindgoog (accessed 18 July 2013).86Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain 1656 to 2000 (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), 79–124.87Lindo, A Jewish Calendar, 101.88Lyons and de Sola, A Jewish calendar for fifty years. The first page, labeled “Advertisement,” tells the curious tale of how both authors announced in the very same issue of the New York Jewish paper The Asmonean (8 July 8 [2nd Tamooz] 1853) their intent to publish such a calendar. When this was brought to their attention they decided to work together. A digital copy is at http://www.archive.org/details/cihm_36523 (accessed 18 July 2013).89Curiously, they do know Abendana’s work. Ibid., 13, 15, 26.90Ibid., 34–35.91Ibid., 158, 161.92Sarna, American Judaism, 81–82.93Robert Singerman, “Bloch & Company: Pioneer Jewish Publishing House in the West,” Jewish Book Annual 52 (1994–1995): 110–130.94See, for example, The New-York Daily Tribune, XI/3262 (Wednesday, 1 October 1851).95Sarna, American Judaism, 44.96Cf. E.P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present 38 (1967): 56–97, and the substantial critique of Mark M. Smith, “Time, Slavery and Plantation Capitalism in the Ante-Bellum American South,” Past and Present 150 (1996): 142–168.