A Tree with Two Different Fruits: The Jewish Encounter with German Pietists in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

Abstract

N May 7, 1759, the Salzburg Lutheran minister Johann Martin Q X Boltzius made note in his diary of a discussion he had had a Jew in Savannah, Georgia, just a few days earlier. As he was passing by the Jew's house, going about his business in town, the Jew pulled him aside a friendly but urgent application. He handed me an English languageperiodical printed in Pennsylvania called the American Magazine, Boltzius wrote, with the request that I read the sermon which a distinguished rabbi had preached.... He made so much of this sermon, as if nothing like it had ever appeared before, although I found nothing special in it.I Boltzius did not name his Jewish contact in Savannah, nor did he provide any specifics of the article he had read or give any indication of what prior contacts he had had the anonymous Jew in question, although the man was clearly someone who knew him well. Examination of the many published volumes of the diary, printed in Germany by Samuel Urlsperger as part of his Ausffihrliche Nachricht von den Salzburgischen Emigranten (Detailed