Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal
Ottoman rabbi
Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal (October 15, 1733, Hebron, Ottoman Empire – May 19, 1777, Barbados) was an itinerant Palestinian rabbi and preacher. He is the first rabbi known to have visited the colonies that became the United States.
Biography
Carregal refers to David Melammed as his teacher. He was an ordained rabbi at the age of seventeen, and in 1754 set out on a series of voyages, usually remaining a brief time in the places he visited; e.g., two years in Constantinople (1754–56); two years in Curaçao, (1761–63); four years in Hebron (1764–68); two and a half years in London (1768–71); one year in Jamaica (1771–72); and one year in the British colonies of North America (1772–73). On July 21, 1773, he sailed for Suriname, and in 1775 he was at Barbados. In London, according to his own statement, he was teacher at the Bet ha-midrash, earning a salary of £100 per annum (equivalent to £14,000 in 2025). At Curaçao, he appears to have held the office of rabbi, though no record of his incumbency is to be found in local annals. He spent some time in New York City and Philadelphia, and sojourned in Newport, Rhode Island (March–July 1773), as the guest of the community. Though not connected with the congregation, he often officiated at divine service, preaching in Spanish.
While in Newport, Carregal became an intimate friend of Ezra Stiles, afterward president of Yale College.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7293968. VIAF identifies the subject as 25033172. The Library of Congress control number is n85368731. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1733, 1777, 1754 and 1761.
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This entry incorporates text from “Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.