Subject: Jewish Rituals

Manuscript book containing 36 records of circumcisions performed by a mohel (ritual circumciser). Written in Ashkenazic Hebrew with names, places, and family names in English. The majority of the circumcisions were performed in New Orleans, Louisiana, beginning in 1836, with the last entry in New York City in 1850. This represents the most important extant Southern Jewish record of circumcisions from this early period. Early American mohel records are rare and are typically only found in institutional archives. This book predates the founding of the first synagogue in New Orleans (1827), and there is no evidence the first hazzan, Manis Jacobs, who served until 1839, also performed circumcisions.

Manuscript containing 63 inscriptions of circumcisions performed in Albany and Kingston, Ulster County, New York. Written in Hebrew and some English. The book includes a signed endpaper in German and Yiddish indicating ownership by David b. Segal (Loewy) of Bierstadt (Vinograd, Amsterdam 1585). Rabbi Segal emigrated to the USA in the mid-1800s and performed circumcisions in Albany and Kingston. The manuscript dates to around 1843.

This volume contains a printed book and an appended manuscript. The printed book, *Sepher Berith Yitzchak*, edited by Selomoh Levy Maduro, is a prayer book for circumcision ceremonies according to the Sephardic rite. Published in Amsterdam by I. Mondovi for G.J. Jansson in 1768, it includes woodcut illustrations, dedications, and lists of qualified mohelim (circumcisers) across the Spanish and Portuguese communities of Europe and the Americas. Notably, it details ceremonies for the circumcision of slaves, mamzerim (bastards), Marranos, and converts. The appended manuscript, written in Hebrew by Salomon Seruya of Lisbon in 1839, is a handwritten Brith Milah manual comprising two parts: *Hanhagot HaMohel* and a piyut for circumcision ("Ezrahi Haya Yahid Ben Le-umim"). The Seruya family were long-term residents of Gibraltar.