Ḥevrah Mishnayot mi-bet ha-keneset 

Congregation First Galician Duckler Mogen Abraham (New York, N.Y.) (Author)

Ḥevrah Mishnayot mi-bet ha-keneset Ershṭe Galitsyaner Duḳler Magen Avraham ṿe-Anshe Dziḳiv (The Mishnah Society of the Congregation First Galician Duckler Mogen Abraham and People of Dzików)

Manuscript

New York, [1918] 

Jewish immigrants from Europe carried with them a tradition of decorated pinkasim (Jewish community records books) to preserve information about their congregation’s members and activities in their newly embraced home, the United States.

This monumental American pinkas of Hevrah Mishnayot mi-bet ha-keneset Ershte Galitsyaner Dukler Magen Avraham ve-Anshe Dzikiv (The Mishnah Society of the synagogue of the First Galician Duckler Mogen Abraham and People of Dzików) belonged to the unique congregation, which during its formative years in the 1880s through the 1910s came to represent the Jewish immigrants from several communities from the Galician region of Poland and Ukraine.  

In 1884, the Ershte Galitsianer Chevra (the First Galician Congregation) was established at 87 Attorney Street in the edifice of the former Methodist Church. In 1886, it was  joined by the Congregation Mogen Abraham and the Congregation Anshe Dukle, named after the town of Dukla (now in Poland), to form the First Galician Duckler Mogen Abraham Congregation. More congregations from Galicia joined later on, including the one of the People of Dzików (the Jewish name for the town of Tarnobrzeg in Poland) in 1912. Accordingly, the congregation’s name was changed once again to the First Galician Duckler Mogen Abraham and People of Dzików to reflect this addition. The synagogue continued to operate into the 1980s, but following the collapse of the synagogue’s wall in 1989, the building was later demolished. 

In the pinkas, the names of the congregants are arranged alphabetically. The manuscript has two title pages. The illuminated first title page displayed here features two columns flanking the Torah Ark curtain and the central inscription Pinkas ha-zahav meha-hevrah mishnayot (“The Golden Pinkas of the Mishnah Society”). Shlomoh Asher Zelig ben Ephraim Yitshak Brandt, a president of the Congregation, created the artwork; his name appeared on the second, black-and-white title page (not on display). The manuscript is thoughtfully enhanced with alphabetical leather tabs bearing golden Hebrew letters. They are visible on the left of the pinkas for easy navigation, a reference aid influenced by the American style of life. The lined paper pages of the pinkas were numbered and bound together in leather. Each page features a printed Hebrew quotation on the top that translates to “A long life to those who are written in this book of life.”