Call for the Foundation of the Terumat ha-Kodesh Society, Solomon Hirschell, New York: Aaron Levy and Solomon Seixas, 1832

1 sheet (11 x 8 in.; 280 x 204 mm). Mounted. Light soiling.

Singerman 0533; Hyman Grinstein, The Rise of the Jewish Community of New York, 1654-1860, pp. 441-46. Jacob Rader Marcus, United States Jewry, 1776-1985, p. 328.

Despite the overwhelming generosity of Jewish communities across the Diaspora towards their brethren in the Holy Land, there was in the early nineteenth century a growing concern regarding the ever-growing numbers of emissaries who arrived from the Land of Israel to solicit funds. Those being asked to donate saw the system as inefficient since so much of what each emissary collected went to underwrite his travel expenses and upkeep during a journey that sometimes lasted years. In addition, there were well-founded suspicions in some cases that fraudulent, or simply unscrupulous emissaries were misappropriating the funds they received. In order to alleviate these concerns, in 1824, Rabbi Solomon Hirschell of London and Rabbi Zevi Lehren of Amsterdam established Hebrat Terumat Hakodesh, an organization whose purpose was to make collections on behalf of the poor Jews of Palestine, and remit the proceeds directly.

After New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel committed itself to the direct transmission of funds without the intervention of messengers, Hirschell and Lehren invited the remaining Jewish communities in America to follow suit. In response to the letter of Rabbi Hirschell, printed here, Aaron Levy and Solomon Seixas called a meeting of the three existing  New York City congregations at the Mill Street synagogue on November 11, 1832, to form the first American branch of Hebrat Terumat Hakodesh, called in English the Society for Offerings of the Sanctuary. Its stated objective was to "minister to the wants of our poor and oppressed brethren residing in the Holy Land." All funds collected by the society were to be transmitted to agents in Europe and in "no instance whatever to be paid to any Messenger or agent … who may be sent here to collect the same." Despite their best intentions, however, the messengers continued to come to America. The doyen of American Jewish history, Jacob Rader Marcus, has called Hebrat Terumat ha-Kodesh “the forerunner of the twentieth-century United Israel Appeal.”