Pepys' Simchat Torah visit to Creechurch Lane synagogue in 1663 is well known but it wasn't his first visit. As a young man he visited the synagogue ('for observacion') a few months before the Restoration on Shabat Dec 3 1659 which was the sheloshim for Antonio Carvajal, the founding father of the English community, who had died, late in years, after an operation for 'the Stone' (bladder stone lithotomy - without anaesthetic!). Pepys (who later had anniversary celebrations of his survival of the operation) must have had some fellow feeling for Carvajal as he had successfully undergone the same operation 19 months earlier. The visit is recorded in a Post Scriptum to a letter to his patron Edward Montagu, later Lord Sandwich:"Being this morning (for observacion sake) at the Jewish Synagogue in London I heared many lamentacions made by Portugall Jewes for ye death of Ferdinando ye Merchant, who was lately cutt (by the same hand wth my selfe) of ye Stone.For ye right Honoble Generall Mountagu at Hinchingbrooke, Huntingdon. post pd 2.Sam: Pepys Decembr 3. 1659"Incidentally Abraham Israel Carvajal was buried as Abraham Hisquiau Carvajal (Hisquiau = Hezekiah). Hezekiah was a name often adopted in a rogativa after recovery from illness because King Hezekiah, though told by Isaiah that he had no hope of recovery, lived another 15 years as a result of his entreaties to God. Presumably the rogativa had taken place between the operation and Carvajal's death.Just to make the anecdote more lively I have added Marin Marais' musical description of an operation for the stone (1725)