My copy of this significant book touches on various aspects of Anglo-Jewish history, including Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Birmingham, London, Swansea and other places.
The author of the book, which includes sermons preached in Birmingham and at the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London, was Abraham Pereira Mendes.
There is also an interesting provenance, as my copy was previously owned by Reverend Herbert Julius Sandheim.
Abraham Pereira Mendes was born on February 9, 1825 in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Sephardic family.
He was the first master of the Beth Limud School of Kingston, but resigned in order to prepare in London, England for the vocation of preacher and rabbi. He studied under Dr. David Meldola, son of Haham Raphael Meldola, as well as under his future father-in-law, the Rev. D. A. de Sola, known as “the learned Hazzan” of the Sephardic community, who gave him semicha (his rabbinic diploma).
He returned to Jamaica and became for a short time assistant to the Rev. Isaac Lopez, minister of the Kingston Sephardic congregation, but was soon called from that position to be the minister of the Montego Bay community. There he stayed until his wife’s failing health compelled him, in 1851, to return to her milder native British climate. Mendes was then elected minister and preacher to the Birmingham congregation, and remained there until 1858.
He then settled in London and became head of the Neveh Zedek – the Ashkenazi Jews Hospital and Orphanage – for six years. He established Northwick College, a school for Jewish youth in Northwick Terrace, Maida Hill, at which many of the sons of the wealthier Jewish families were educated. On the sudden and unexpected death of Haham Benjamin Artom in 1879, Abraham Pereira Mendes acted as preacher and dayan, and in July 1879 he was appointed ‘lecturer’ at both Sephardic Synagogues in London.
His son, Henry Pereira Mendes had become the first honorary Chazan and Minister of the Sephardic community in Manchester when this new synagogue was consecrated on Cheetham Hill Road in 1874, but was appointed Hazan of the Shearit Yisrael Congregation of New York in 1877. His brother also emigrated to New York.
Abraham Pereira Mendes followed his sons to the United States in January 1883 when he was appointed Rabbi of the historic Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, and continued as its minister until his death ten years later. He was killed in a street accident in New York City on April 19th, 1893.
My copy belonged to Reverend Herbert Julius Sandheim, who was born in Glasgow on 13th October 1882. His father, Isaac Sandheim was a co-founder of the Hammersmith Synagogue, and his grandfather, Reverend Julius Sandheim, who was born in Prussia, served as Reader, Shochet and Mohel from 1839 at Dublin’s Mary Abbey Synagogue.
Herbert Sandheim was educated at Jews College, London and served as minister of the Swansea Hebrew Congregation, in Wales, from January 1907. He left Swansea in 1912 and emigrated to Canada, where he served a a minister in Winnipeg and Montreal. When he died, at a relatively young age, on 23rd June 1926, in Asheville, North Carolina, his body was repatriated to Wales, and he is buried in Swansea Townhill cemetery.
My copy is also stamped “Rabbi Stern’s Library”. He was perhaps a Canadian or American.
The book had significant support and includes a subscription list headed by the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Nathan Adler, and 14 copies were bought by Sir Moses Montefiore. Multiple copies were bought by the wardens of the Birmingham Hebrew Congregation, in its prior building to the current Singers Hill synagogue, Abraham Danziger and Jacob Phillips.
The sermons are very structured, each consisting of an introduction to usually three sections, followed by a prayer. The one for Yom Kippur has been scanned below.
Jewish Miscellanies 