אברהם פריירה מנדס

Rav Abraham Pereira Mendes (5585/1825–5653/1893) was a Sephardic rav and educator whose held rabinnic positions from Jamaica to England and at last to America. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, he was the first head of the Beth Limud School there, but gave up the post in order to prepare himself in London for the work of preacher and rav. He learned under Dr. David Meldola, son of Haham Raphael Meldola, and under Rev. D. A. de Sola, the learned chazzan of the London Sephardim, whose daughter Eliza he later married, and he received his diplomas there.

Returning to Jamaica, he served for a short time as assistant to Rev. Isaac Lopez in the Sephardic kehillah of Kingston before being called to lead the community of Montego Bay. In 1851 his wife’s failing health obliged the family to return to the milder climate of her birth, and he was chosen minister and preacher of the Birmingham congregation in England, where he remained until 1858. He then moved to London, stood at the head of Neveh Zedek for six years, and founded Northwick College in Maida Hill, a school for Jewish youngsters; when Haham Artom was niftar he acted as preacher and dayan for the Sephardim of London.

In 1883 Congregation Shearith Israel of New York called him to the historic Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, and he served there through the last ten years of his life. He was the first Sephardic rav to bring out a volume of derashot in English, which appeared in 1855; he translated the daily siddur of the German rite, and completed the translation of the festival and Yom Tov machzorim left unfinished when Rev. de Sola was niftar. He published as well The Law of Moses, a post-Biblical history of the Jews down to the fall of Yerushalayim, an interlinear translation of the siddur, and a Haggadah. Two of his sons became well-known rabbanim in America: Frederick de Sola Mendes and Henry Pereira Mendes.