(Newspaper). New York Daily Tribune.

AUCTION 53 | Thursday, December 08th, 2011 at 1:00
Fine Judaica: Printed Books, Manuscripts Autograph Letters & Graphic Art

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Lot 22
(AMERICAN JUDAICA)

(Newspaper). New York Daily Tribune.

On p. 5: "Slavery and the Hebrew Scriptures / Reply to the Rabbi Raphall" by M. Heilprin, New York, Jan. 11, 1861. pp. 8. Crisp, clean copy. Folio

New York: Tuesday, January 15 1861

Est: $1,000 - $1,500
first jewish reply to pro-slavery rabbi raphall. Michael Heilprin, a Polish-Jewish Intellectual, had taken an active part in the 1848 Hungarian Revolution and served on the editorial staff of Appleton's New American Cyclopedia. He expressed outrage at Raphall's reading of the Bible, subjecting the Rabbi's Biblical exegesis to a thoroughgoing deconstruction. Essentially, Heilprin believed that the Torah's concession to slavery was an example of the Rabbinic maxim, "Dibrah Torah keneged yetzer hara" ("The Torah was addressing the evil inclination"). See B.W. Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War (1951) pp.18-19.