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Discourses on the Jewish Religion, Isaac Leeser, Philadelphia: Sherman & co., 1867
Description
Provenance
Bloch Publishing and Printing Co., Cincinnati Ohio (stamp on title of vol. 4)
Literature
Singerman, 1956; Lance Sussman, Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism, Wayne State University Press, 1996
Condition
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Catalogue Note
a rare and complete set of the collected sermons of isaac leeser, the pioneer of american judaism
Isaac Leeser (1806–1868) was born in Westphalia and received a traditional but limited Jewish education. As a young man with few prospects in Europe, he arrived in the United States in 1824 and went to work for an uncle in Richmond, Virginia. In 1828 he took the first step that would launch his career as a religious leader and writer, and published his first article, a defense of Judaism against a defamatory piece which had appeared in a New York newspaper. The essay attracted wide notice and in 1829 the Sephardi congregation, Mikveh Israel of Philadelphia, invited him to be its hazzan.
Over the next four decades Leeser's list of accomplishments on behalf of American Jewry would grow quite long: founder of the first successful Jewish newspaper in America (1843); founder of the Jewish Publication Society (1845); publisher of the first Hebrew primer for children (1838), the first complete English translation of the Sephardi prayer book (1848), and numerous other Jewish children's textbooks; founder of the first Hebrew high school (1849); first Jewish representative and defense organization, the Board of Delegates of American Israelites (1859), founder of Maimonides College, the first American rabbinical seminary (1867).
Of all his accomplishments, however, it was his role as the pioneer Jewish preacher in the United States that was closest to his heart. It has even been written of Leeser, that "he was totally enamored with the idea of Jewish preaching." Volumes 1 and 2 of Leeser's Discourses were first published in 1837, volume 3 in 1841. The complete set in ten volumes which comprise the present lot, was printed in 1867. Though Isaac Leeser initially delivered these sermons for the benefit of his congregants, his decision to print this ten-volume anthology was motivated primarily by the recognition that it would serve as his lasting legacy for a "new generation that has sprung up." Judge Mayer Sulzberger reflected on the greater implications of the monumental work: "[This book] indeed will be one of the main sources for a history of Judaism in our country . . . Every Jew who is interested in the events that have befallen his co-religionists here, during the last forty years . . . will be glad to possess the work."
Judge Sulzberger's words have proven true. Although he was a strong proponent of traditional Judaism and rejected the innovations of the growing Reform movement in the United States, Isaac Leeser's influence nevertheless impacted the entire American Jewish community. His work laid the foundations for many of the key institutions of present-day Jewish life and his contributions to nearly every area of Jewish culture and religion define him as one of the seminal figures in the history of the development of American Judaism. Perhaps nowhere can the measure of the man and his milieu be better perceived than in the pages of his Discourses.