AN AMERICAN SILVER PRESENTATION PITCHER OF JEWISH INTEREST, GALE, WOOD & HUGHES, NEW YORK, DATED 1842

The inscriptions read "Presented by the Single Young Men of the Congregation Bnai Jeshurun, Elm St. To their Pastor Rev. S.M. Isaacs." and "As a mark of their high Estimation and Regard for his public character and Private Worth. New York, A.M. 5602."

Rabbi Samuel Meyer Isaacs (1804-1878) was born in Leeuwarden, Holland and emigrated from England to the United States in 1839 to serve as the first Rabbi of the B'nai Jeshurun congregation, where he was also the first rabbi in New York to conduct services in English. Founded in 1825 when a group of Ashkenazic members left Shearith Israel, B'nai Jeshurun was the second Ashkenazi Orthodox synagogue to be formed in New York and the third in the United States. Isaacs served the congregation from 1839-1844, then in Elm Street in 1839, and then Shaaray Tefilla from 1847 until his death.

In 1857, he founded The Jewish Messenger, and he was instrumental in the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, the Hebrew Free School Association, the United Hebrew Charities, and was one of the founders of the Jews' Hospital, now Mount Sinai. He was also one of the officiating clergymen at the funeral of President Abraham Lincoln. He is interred in Salem Fields Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

A Canadian silver Kiddush cup presented to him in 1858 by the Shaar Hashamayim congregation of Montreal was part of the Iris Schwartz collection, sold Sotheby's New York, January 20, 2017, lot 3135.