Colonial Interfaith Friendship

Here's a lovely story of interfaith friendship. Rabbi Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal, who died May 5, 1777, was a Palestinian rabbi, and the first rabbi known to have visited the colonies that became the United States. Once he settled in Newport, he became friends with Yale president Ezra Stiles, who wrote in his diary with love and admiration of the rabbi. Stiles didn't know much Hebrew and wanted to improve. Carregal helped him to the extent that they eventually wrote letters to each other in Hebrew about biblical and Jewish topics. Stiles visited him at the Newport synagogue and commissioned this portrait of the rabbi.