Prayers for Shabbat, Rosh-Hashanah and Kippur

“Hebrew,” writes Isaac Pinto (1720-1791), “being imperfectly understood by many, by some, not at all,” necessitated an English rendering of the siddur. His model, Ishac Nieto’s “elegant Spanish translation,” was (and was to remain) predominant in Sephardi-majority England. Pinto, amongst the first US Government translators, was described as “a learned Jew at New York” by Ezra Stiles (Yale’s President), and may also have lived in Stratford, Connecticut.