Register of Internments, Isaac Leeser, Manuscript on Paper, Philadelphia: 1830-1858. Bound with: Sof Adam (The End of Man), Jacob de Meza, Amsterdam: 1827

26 leaves (7 ¼ x 4 ½ in.; 182 x 115 mm). manuscript collation: 36 pages, 2 blank leaves; 2 additional manuscript folios interleaved within Sof Adam, whose pagination is [2], 6. Written in various inks on paper. Manuscript title page detached as are front free endpapers of printed book. Hinges cracked. Paper browning at edges. Leeser’s ownership inscription on rear pastedown endpaper: “Isaac Leeser, Hazzan KK.M.I. Phil^a ”; a separate pair of inscriptions on front free endpaper: the first in English and Hebrew recording the gifting of the volume from Jacob Ezekiel to Leeser; the second, by Leeser recording its receipt (in Hebrew only). Supralibros, gilt-tooled red morocco lettering piece on front board. Quarter morocco over marbled paper boards, with losses to spine and boards. Extreme wear.

Goldman, p. 1169 (illustrated). 

The small printed pamphlet, Sefer Sof Adam, was published in 1827 as a handbook for members of the Burial Society of the Jewish Community of Surinam in the Dutch West Indies. Because there was no Hebrew press in the Caribbean or South America at the time, the work was printed in Amsterdam, under the auspices of Jacob P. de Meza, a resident of Paramaribo during one of his visits there.

This copy, however, found its way to the Philadelphia bookbinder, Jacob Ezekiel, who, in 1830, made a gift of it to the Reverend Isaac Leeser, inscribing it, “From Jacob Ezekiel to Isaac Leeser A.M. 5590 [1830]. Leeser himself acknowledged the gift with his own Hebrew inscription, "From Jacob bar Ezekiel who presented this to me as a gift, Isaac bar Uri, of blessed memory, Eliezer [Leeser]." It is safe to assume that it was Ezekiel who personalized the binding, by affixing the gilt-tooled red leather lettering piece marked: “Rev. Isaac Leeser, and binding in the blank leaves for Leeser’s register. Leeser began using the volume almost immediately, as described upon the title page, which reads: "Register of Interments in the burial ground of the K[ehila] K[edosha] M[ikve] I[srael] which I attended in my official capacity beginning Friday the 12th of March 1830 Corresp. With 17th Adar 5590.”

 The thirty five handwritten pages contain 196 entries, written in the clergyman’s distinctive hand, recording the deaths and burials of Leeser’s congregants between 1830 and 1850, the year he retired from Mikveh Israel. Practically every Jewish family in Philadelphia is recorded in Leeser’s register, but the most poignant entry may well be the one which records the death of his brother, Jacob in 1834. The younger Leeser had traveled to Philadelphia to nurse his smallpox-stricken sibling back to health, only to succumb to the disease himself.

A final three entries are recorded in 1857, when Leeser took up a new position at the newly formed Congregation Beth-El-Emeth in Philadelphia, a post he would keep until his death in 1868. We can only assume that internments at which Leeser presided in the final decade of his life were recorded in another volume. Two additional blank folios were interleaved into the printed text; these contained Leeser's manuscript list of Hebrew names of individuals for whom he recited memorial prayers (hashkavot) at the appointed times.