A 1754 property transfer record about the Mill Street Synagogue, in Lower Manhattan, refers to “Westerly by the Jews synagogue” and the creation of “Jew’s Alley,” to “make a Publick Street forever.”
It is “perhaps the earliest reference to American Jewish purpose-built synagogue to reach the market,” says the Raab Collection, which is selling it for $20,000. “This New York reference predates the creation of formal synagogue buildings in Savannah, Charleston, Newport and Philadelphia.”
Though notable, the reference doesn’t reveal much that historians didn’t already know about the synagogue, which still exists today as Congregation Shearith Israel, an Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, according to Zachary Edinger, sexton and ritual director at Shearith Israel.
“This 1754 deed is an interesting piece of colonial New York history,” Edinger told JNS. “While it does not add substantially to what we already know about the synagogue, it serves as a reminder of the deep roots of Jewish life in New York.”
Nathan Raab, a document dealer who acquired the deed from a private collector, told JNS that “from a pure rarity perspective, it’s the earliest reference to an actual synagogue building in America that we’ve ever seen on the market that one could buy.”
The wording on the document, which measures about two feet by two feet, also indicates the visibility of Jewish religious life in colonial New York, when only a few hundred Jews lived in the country, according to the dealer.
“It was proof that the Jewish community was expanding, wasn’t in hiding, was openly practicing their religion in a way that others could see,” he told JNS.
Shearith Israel traces its origins to 1654 and is the oldest Jewish congregation in North America.
The deed’s early ownership remains unclear, according to Raab. The collector from whom he bought it appeared to have owned it for a long time, he said.
“I hope people see it as much more than a land transaction,” the dealer told JNS. “I hope they’ll see its symbolic value of acceptance and of the Jewish community and its growth.”
