19th Century Missionariana and Apostatiana

A wealth of a resource for Jewish life in the 19th century is to be found in the periodical and journals of Christian missionaries to the Jews, which was a very popular English pursuit of the time. With the usual caveats about how to critically evaluate sources, here are a couple of interesting things I found recently.

The following three illustrations appear in a book from 1838:







The following notice is a memoir by a Jewish apostate, written in 1839:





The careful reader will see what makes this particularly interesting:

"addressed as Rabbi Moreni"

"A book, intitled Schebet Misser"

The convert, a Galicianer born in Brody in 1761, writes his Hebrew transliterations with the form of Hebrew pronunciation known today because it is preserved by the Chassidim.