RAPHALL, MORRIS JACOB. Ruchama [Hebrew]. Devotional Excercises for the Daughters of Israel… Upon the Various Occasions of a Woman’s Life.

Morris J. Raphall was an active and prolific writer and orator both in his native England and later, in the United States. As well as editing Gal’ed, the first Rabbinical periodical in England, together with David Aaron de Sola he composed the first English translation of portions of the Mishnah. Upon his emigration to the United States in 1849, he was appointed rabbi of Congregation B’nei Jeshurun in New York. In the prelude to the Civil War years, he encountered particular controversy for his stand against Abolitionism. “Raphall was one of the most celebrated orators in the American rabbinate of his time…(his) sermon (on the merits of slavery) aroused more comment and attention than any other sermon ever delivered by an American Rabbi.” See B. W. Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War (1951) pp. 16-20. The present work, both uncommonly traditional in approach as well as unusually directed to the Orthodox American woman was an innovation in its’ place and time.