Jessurun Cardozo

Who was Jessurun Cardozo?

Rabbi David Abraham Jessurun Cardozo was a Dutch-born American Sephardic Rabbi who served as assistant minister of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York City, the oldest synagogue in the United States and was the first rabbi to conduct High Holidays services in Spain since the Alhambra Decree of 1492 expelled Jews from that country.

Cardozo was born in Amsterdam on March 29, 1896, to Abraham Jessurun Cardozo and Marie Serlui. He attended the Sephardic Seminary there and Jews' College in London, as well as the University of Amsterdam and the University of London. Rabbi Cardozo was spiritual leader of the Montefiore synagogue in Ramsgate from 1929 to 1936.

In 1948, The New York Times published a letter signed by Rabbi Cardozo and two dozen prominent Jewish figures including Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein, which criticized the Herut party, described as an outgrowth of the Irgun which the letter called a "a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine" and criticized a visit to the United States by its leader, Menachem Begin.