American Jewish Archives Journal, Vol 44, No. 01 (1992)

158 American Jewish Archives
fund and relied heavily on donations from the wealthier Sephardic
communities.
The incumbent hazzan, Moses Lopez da Fonseca, was the son of
Curacao's rabbi. That community sent the most generous contribu-
tion to New York with the stipulation that even though New York
was full of "Tedeschi" (Portuguese for "Germans"), the gift was pred-
icated on New York's using the Sephardic ritual. Although Nathan
Simson had referred to the congregation as Shearith Jacob ("Remnant
of Jacob), its official title became Shearith Israel.
Another factor may have favored the maintenance of Sephardic
custom: In the small town that New York was, Jews lived among non-
Jews, and the latter found Jews and Jewish worship of some interest.
Sephardic worship, led by a hazzan, must have been considered more
dignified for non-Jewish observers than the unstructured babel that
was Ashkenazic worship.
The congregation, recognizing that the Ashkenazim were more
versed in halakhah (Jewish law), engaged them for such synagogue
functions as shochet and bodek (kosher butcher and inspector), and
mohel (circumciser). However, for the conduct of worship the New
York congregation sought Sephardim who could chant in the
Sephardic mode. They were greatly assisted by the appearance in
1761 of an English translation of the Sephardic prayerbook for the eve
of the holidays, followed five years later by a more complete prayer-
book for the year, both presumably the work of Isaac Pinto, an edu-
cated layman.
Shearith Israel was often hard-pressed to find a qualified hazzan.
Those it did obtain did not stay long. How the members must have
welcomed in 1768 a native son reared in the congregation, Gershom
Mendes Seixas! He served for forty-eight years, interrupted by the
Revolutionary War. In August 1776, when it was apparent that
George Washington was losing the Battle of Brooklyn Heights, Seixas
gathered the synagogue's scrolls and appurtenances in a wagon and
joined other patriot congregants and his relatives from Newport,
Rhode Island, in Connecticut.
The British remained in control of New York until the surrender in
1783. Those members of the community who had no other place to go
kept the synagogue open, joined by an occasional Tory hazzan and by