Jewish Ministers in NYC 1654-1860

Background

The Rise of the Jewish Community of New York 1654-1860 by Hyman B. Grinstein was published in 1945. Appendix A (pages 485-487) contains a list of rabbis, lecturers, and hazzanim holding office in New York City from the earliest times until 1860. Sources for this “Jewish Ministers” list are mainly the minutes and records of the synagogues with which they were affiliated, citations in the periodical press, and for those in the 1950s, a list in Lyons’ and DeSola’s Calendar. Only regularly paid officers are included, not volunteer ministers.

Thanks to volunteers, Mandy Dierks who entered this data and Ethan Parmet who was the proofreader.

A digitized 3-page copy for all entries is available online at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015004711415&view=1up&seq=519.

The next steps after finding the name of a rabbi in this collection would be to research local resources for the individual such as newspapers, city directories, U.S. Federal Census, land, probate, or vital records. Jewish archives could also be searched for the storage of rabbinical papers or synagogue history. JewishGen’s Shul Records America is a finding aid pointing to the location of synagogue record collections in dozens of archives and may be a useful starting point.

Database

There are 64 entries in the database, which include the following fields:

• Job Position
• Given Name
• Last Name
• Synagogue
• Term (in years)
• Link

Searching the Database

This database is searchable via the JewishGen USA Database or the JewishGen Unified Search.