Brown, Saul Pardo
BROWN, SAUL PARDO
BROWN, SAUL PARDO (d. 1702), the first known religious leader, or ḥazzan, of New York. Brown (an English alias for Pardo) came to New York in about 1685 from Rhode Island where he had been a merchant. In that year he petitioned Governor Thomas Dongan for permission to engage in retail trade. The privilege was denied to all Jews, but he did receive the right to be a wholesale trader. In 1695 Brown was already ḥazzan when he is recorded as ministering to the Congregation Shearith Israel. It is possible that Brown died in Curaçao. The family disappeared from New York records after the death of his wife in 1708.
bibliography:
Rosenbloom, Biogr Dict., 14; M.U. Schappes, A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States, 1654–1875 (1950), 569; D. and T. de Sola Pool, An Old Faith in the New World (1955), 159–60.
[Leo Hershkowitz]