(AMERICAN JUDAICA)
Moses Hyman. Autograph Letter Signed, written in ...

Moses Hyman. Autograph Letter Signed, written in English to Sir Moses Montefiore, London.
Forwarding, via a bill of exchange executed by a Rothschild agent, the sum of $31.00 to be sent to Jerusalem for “charitable purposes.” Autograph address panel. Sir Moses’ secretarial notes alongside. One page, with integral blank. Small punch-holes, blank margin removed. 4to.

Sacramento City, California: 3rd July, 1851.


The first documented connection between the Jews of California and the Jews of Jerusalem.
     The city of Sacramento grew following the discovery of gold in the vicinity in 1848. It became California’s state capital in 1854. The city’s Jewish presence began in 1849, when emigre Moses Hyman invited fellow Jews into his home, located above his jewelry shop on Front Street in Old Sacramento, in order to celebrate the High Holy Days. He subsequently joined with Albert Priest to co-found Sacramento’s Congregation B’nai Israel - a beacon of Orthodox Judaism in the rough and tumble of the Gold Rush and the first synagogue established west of the Mississippi.
     Contributions to assist the poor Jews of Palestine were often sent from America via the London based offices of Sir Moses Montefiore, the broadly accepted leader of world Jewry due to his advocacy and philanthropic largesse. The earliest recorded relationship between California and the Land of Israel in this regard was in 1859, see Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush: A Documentary History, 1849-1880, (Ed.) Ava F. Kahn (2002) p. 470.
The present letter is a full eight years earlier.