Braunstein, Baruch

THE CHUETAS OF MAJORCA; CONVERSOS AND THE INQUISITION OF MAJORCA [ASSOCIATION COPY BELONGING TO SUPREME COURT JUSTICE BENJAMIN CARDOZO AND LATER DANIEL FRIEDENBERG]

Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House, 1936. Item #42470xt

1st edition. Original publisher’s cloth, large 8vo, xv, 227 pages. 26 cm. Important association copy, belonging first to Justice Benjamin Cardozo, the first Sephardic Jew to be appointed to the US Supreme Court, with his bookplate; Later to Jewish art scholar and book collector Daniel M. Friedenberg with typed letter signed to him from the author (Braunstein) referencing a new edition of this book which Braunstein was then preparing. Friedenberg’s bookplate is also present, on the front blank endpaper. The work is one of the first serious scholarly works on the Majorcan Jews, the "xuetas", including their history, customs, names, and families, as well as on the mass baptism of 1435 which made the Majorcan Jewish community the first in all Spain to be totally converted to Christianity. Includes bibliographical references on pages 203-220. Part of the series:Columbia University. Oriental studies, v. 28. Issued also as thesis (Ph. D.) Columbia University. Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (1870-1938) “was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the New York Court of Appeals from 1914 to 1932 and as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1932 until his death in 1938. Cardozo is remembered for his significant influence on the development of American common law in the 20th century, in addition to his philosophy and vivid prose style….In 1932, President Herbert Hoover appointed Cardozo to the U.S. Supreme Court to succeed Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Cardozo served on the Court until his death in 1938, and formed part of the liberal bloc of justices known as the Three Musketeers. He wrote the Court's majority opinion in notable cases such as Nixon v. Condon and Steward Machine Co. v. Davis. Both Cardozo’s maternal grandparents, Sara Seixas and Isaac Mendes Seixas Nathan, and his paternal grandparents, Ellen Hart and Michael H. Cardozo, were Western Sephardim of the Portuguese-Jewish community, and affiliated with Manhattan’s Congregation Shearith Israel. The family were descended from Jewish-origin New Christian conversos. They left the Iberian Peninsula for Holland during the Inquisition. There they returned to the practice of Judaism. Cardozo family tradition held that their marrano (New Christians who maintained crypto-Jewish practices in secrecy) ancestors were from Portugal….Among their many cousins, given their deep history in the US, was the poet Emma Lazarus. Other earlier relations include Francis Lewis Cardozo (1836–1903), Thomas Cardozo, and Henry Cardozo, free men of color of Charleston, South Carolina. Francis…was elected as Secretary of State of South Carolina during the Reconstruction era…..One of Benjamin’s tutors was Horatio Alger. At age 15, Cardozo entered Columbia University….In February 1914, Cardozo was designated to the New York Court of Appeals under the Amendment of 1899. He was reportedly the first Jewish person to serve on the Court of Appeals…. In November 1917, he was elected on the Democratic and Republican tickets to a 14-year term on the Court of Appeals.In 1926, he was elected, on both tickets again, to a 14-year term as Chief Judge. He took office on January 1, 1927, and resigned on March 7, 1932 to accept an appointment to the United States Supreme Court…..In 1921, Cardozo gave the Storrs Lectures at Yale University, which were later published as The Nature of the Judicial Process, a book that remains valuable to judges today. Shortly thereafter, Cardozo became a member of the group that founded the American Law Institute, which crafted a Restatement of the Law of Torts, Contracts, and a host of other private law subjects. He wrote three other books that also became standards in the legal world.On February 15, 1932, President Herbert Hoover nominated Cardozo as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court….Democrat Cardozo's appointment by a Republican president has been referred to as one of the few Supreme Court appointments in history that was not motivated by partisanship or politics, but strictly based on the nominee's contribution to law.….The entire faculty of the University of Chicago Law School had urged Hoover to nominate Cardozo, as did the deans of the law schools at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone strongly urged Hoover to name Cardozo, even offering to resign to make room for him if Hoover had his heart set on someone else (Stone had suggested to Calvin Coolidge that he should nominate Cardozo in 1925 before Stone). Hoover originally demurred; he was concerned that there were already two justices from New York, and a Jew on the court” (wikipedia) SUBJECT(S):Inquisition -- Spain -- Majorca. Crypto-Jews -- Spain -- Majorca. Inquisition -- Espagne -- Majorque. Cryptojuifs -- Ibe´rique, Pe´ninsule. Europe -- Iberian Peninsula. Spain -- Majorca. OCLC: 285638. Light sunning to spine, Very Good Condition. (SEF-35-32A).

Price: $500.00