Elias Abraham Rosenberg

Elias Abraham Rosenberg was a Jewish immigrant to the U.S. in the 1880s. He became a trusted friend and adviser of King Kalākaua of Hawaii. He is believed to have been a Russian Jew born c. 1810, and possibly lived in Australia and England.

About Elias Abraham Rosenberg in brief

Summary Elias Abraham RosenbergElias Abraham Rosenberg was a Jewish immigrant to the U.S. in the 1880s. He became a trusted friend and adviser of King Kalākaua of Hawaii. He is believed to have been a Russian Jew born c. 1810, and possibly lived in Australia and England. He was married and divorced three times, and had several children. In 1886, he traveled to Hawaii and performed as a fortune-teller. In June 1887, Rosenberg returned to California, possibly owing to poor health or fear of unrest in Hawaii. A short time after arriving in San Francisco, he died in a local hospital. The Torah scroll and yad presented to the king by Rosenberg remained in the royal collection. These artifacts were later exhibited with other royal treasures and eventually donated to Temple Emanu-El in Honolulu. The king declared Rosenberg a kahuna-kilokilo, a customs appraiser, and guard. He also claimed to have found references to Hawaii in ancient Hebrew texts, and gave him an ornate Torah andYad that he had brought with him to Hawaii.

In February 1887 he paid for a notice to be placed in The Honolulu Advertiser, in which he claims to have lost a letter that was sent to him by Queen Victoria. There has been speculation that the advertisement was a hoax designed by Rosenberg to lend himself prestige. Rosenberg’s fame led to satire: he regularly appeared in a Hawaiian Gazette gossip column, which mockingly called him \”Holy Moses\”, and was satirized by a troupe of amateur minstrels at the Hawaii Opera House. He died in California in 1887; his funeral was held in his hometown of San Francisco on June 14, 1887. He leaves behind a wife and three children, all of whom are now living in the San Francisco suburb of San Diego. He had a son and a daughter with his second wife, who died in the early 1980s in a car accident. He left behind a daughter and a son-in-law, both of whom live in California.