On May 28, 1773, Rabbi Raphael Chaim Yitzhak Carigal Delivers America’s First Official Jewish SermonOn this day in 1773, two years before the American Revolution began, Rabbi Raphael Chaim Yitzhak Carigal delivered the first official Jewish sermon in America, at the Newport Synagogue, in what was then the British colony of Rhode Island. A legendary Torah scholar and emissary from his native city of Hebron in Judea, Carigal was born in October 1733 to a family of Sephardic Jews, expelled from Spain in 1492, who had settled in the region. Carigal’s birthplace is historically known to be where Judaism’s three patriarchs, and three of the four matriarchs, are buried. It was in Hebron where he was well-educated, becoming a rabbi at just 17 years old. Carigal set out on his first voyage in 1754 when he was appointed as a shaliach of Hebron at the young age of 21. He served as a shaliach (emissary) for the Jewish communities of Judea, then under Ottoman-Turkish rule. He would spend the next several years traveling to places such as Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), Turkey, Curaçao, London, and Jamaica, also spending one year in the British colonies of North America. As shaliach, Rabbi Carigal was tasked with much more than just raising funds for the Jews of Ottoman Palestine. He was also responsible for representing the absolute best of Jewish wisdom from the Holy Land and providing answers to difficult questions and dilemmas, posed to him by both Jews and non-Jews throughout his travels. During his stay in Rhode Island, he was recorded to have given the first official Jewish sermon in America on May 28, 1773 during the festival of Shavuot, corresponding to the Hebrew date of the 6th of Sivan, 5533. The full speech was recorded and printed in newspapers throughout the colonies that year, and it reads in part as follows: “The voice of Zion speaks weeping and lamenting, for the wretched state of her children: For their faces are black with hunger... We are hungry, thirsty and naked. Our children ask for bread and we have none to give them. And in addition to this, the Turks have laid us under a contribution of fifty thousand dollars, which if not paid will be the ruin of all the Jews here… and [we] have sent on the Rabbi Enoch Zindal [sic]... son of the great Rabbi Hersh, one of the most learned men in the world. He will fully explain to you our afflictions… Help him by any way and means in your power, by obtaining donations, and forming societies among all denominations. And we will pray for you in all the holy places… and we hope with all the scattered tribes and the Messiah at their head, to meet you soon in the Holy City, the desire of all nations.”While he stayed in Newport, the rabbi became close friends with Ezra Stiles, who would eventually become both the president of Yale University and the founder of Brown University. Intimate knowledge of the Hebrew language was considered, among intellectuals of the time, to be of supreme importance to understanding the Bible in its original tongue. And so, Stiles seized the opportunity to befriend Rabbi Carigal and practice entire conversations and written memoirs in Hebrew. In his personal memoirs, Stiles lovingly describes his Jewish friend and even describes his manner of dress, traditional of Jews from the Holy Land in those days, but different to American culture at the time. Rabbi Carigal then departed for Suriname, and then on to Barbados, where he died in the year 1777, survived by his wife and son in Hebron. His life and legacy became a spark which lit the flames of Jewish education throughout the Americas that would burn for centuries to come, even to this day. Rabbi Carigal then departed for Suriname, and then on to Barbados, where he died in the year 1777, survived by his wife and son in Hebron. His life and legacy became a spark which lit the flames of Jewish education throughout the Americas that would burn for centuries to come, even to this day.