Ezekiel, Jacob

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EZEKIEL, JACOB

EZEKIEL, JACOB (1812–1899), U.S. communal leader. Ezekiel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was apprenticed as a bookbinder. In 1833 he moved to Baltimore, where he helped to establish the Hebrew Benevolent Society. The next year he moved to Richmond, Virginia, where he entered the dry goods business, and became active in Jewish affairs. In 1841 Ezekiel took issue with President Tyler's reference to Americans as a "Christian" people, and Tyler acknowledged Ezekiel's protest as well founded. In 1845 Ezekiel protested local ordinances that severely punished violators of the Sunday blue laws and brought about their repeal. A revised code adopted in Virginia in 1849, as a result of Ezekiel's campaigning, protected citizens who observed the Jewish Sabbath from incurring penalties for violating Sunday laws. Ezekiel was a leading protester against seeming U.S. acquiescence to Swiss anti-Jewish discrimination which helped to bring about a modification of the U.S.-Swiss treaty in 1857. Moving to Cincinnati in 1869, Ezekiel served as secretary to the board of governors of Hebrew Union College from 1876 to 1896. His son was the sculptor Moses Jacob *Ezekiel, whose Ecce Homo, a bronze sculpture of a suffering Christ, done about 1899, was included in the exhibition "The Hand and the Spirit; Religious Art in America, 1700–1900," which was shown at the University Art Museum, Berkeley, in 1972.