Israel Baer Kursheedt (1766–1852), Jewish lay leader, was a German native who received Talmudic training at Frankfurt under Rabbi Nathan Adler. In 1796 he immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City and becoming active in religious and educational endeavors at Shearith Israel Synagogue. Kursheedt became recognized as an American authority on Judaism. In 1812 he moved to Richmond, where he helped reorganize the Beth Shalome Synagogue and served as a cantor for twelve years. His business ventures did not prosper, and in 1824 Kursheedt returned to New York and was a founder of a separatist congregation, B’nai Jeshurun. He helped organize a Hebrew Mutual Benefit Society in 1826 and served as its president, and in 1834 he founded the Hebrath Terumath Hakodesh, an organization to relieve poor Jews in Palestine. Kursheedt died in New York City (Kenneth Libo and Abigail Kursheedt Hoffman, The Seixas-Kursheedts and the Rise of Early American Jewry [2001], 26–49; Myron Berman, Richmond’s Jewry, 1769–1976: Shabbat in Shockoe [1979], 47–9; Morris U. Schappes, A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States 1654–1875 [1971], 200, 211, 212, 596; Israel Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York: B’nai Jeshurun, 1825–1925, New York’s Oldest Ashkenazic Congregation [1930], esp. 90–2; New York Evening Post, 5 May 1852).

Kursheedt was acquainted with the author, George Bethune English (Herbert T. Ezekiel and Gaston Lichtenstein, The History of the Jews of Richmond from 1769 to 1917 [1917], 132). In the enclosed publications, English argued that the gift of religious freedom in the United States should induce all devout individuals to examine the tenets of their faith and test them against reason and scripture. English’s inability to reconcile the divine revelations of the Old and New Testaments led him to question the foundations of Christianity. He then defended his position against attacks by Samuel Cary and William Ellery Channing, both of whom were Unitarian ministers. In his copy of the second enclosure (DLC), TJ penciled a note suggesting that Cary’s position on miracles was circular (Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends no. 1709).