(JUDAICA.) Isaac Leeser. Discourses on the Jewish Religion. 10 volumes. 12mo, matched contemporary cloth, moderate wear, except for first volume in later buckram; staining to first 3 leaves of Volume I only, otherwise minimal wear; mixed provenance with various private library bookplates or institutional "withdrawn" stamps. Philadelphia: Sherman & Co., 5627-5628 [1866-1868]
Isaac Leeser (1806-1868) was an influential Orthodox rabbi who began delivering English-language sermons at the Congregation Mikveh Israel in 1830. He published two volumes of these sermons in 1837--the first anthology of sermons by an American Jew--and another in 1841. This 1867 collection, published shortly after his death from cancer, includes 7 volumes of additional sermons, lectures, and prayers. A few touch upon secular concerns, such as Leeser's 1867 dedication address for the Jewish Hospital Association of Philadelphia (X:159-173) and an 1841 address in honor of the late President William Henry Harrison (IV:30-45). "Mr. Lincoln's Death" was delivered at the synagogue Beth-el-Emeth on the day after the president's assassination in 1865 (X:235-242). Although the sermons are in English, a few passages are printed in Hebrew type.
Leeser's preface for this expanded edition offers "these volumes as my religious legacy" and hearkens back to his early career, when he was "perhaps the only Jewish public speaker in America" (page vii). The editor, Mayer Sulzberger, noted that "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" (quoted in Goldman 687n). Singerman 1956.
