Levi Alexander. The Axe Laid to the Root, or, Ignorance and Superstition Evident in the Character of the Rev. Solomon Hirschell, Major Rabbi, Commonly Called the High Priest of the Jews of England.

<<A MOST UNUSUAL POLEMIC ATTACKING THE BRITISH CHIEF RABBI SOLOMON HIRSCHEL. OF EXCEPTIONAL RARITY.>> Scion of one of Europe’s distinguished Rabbinical dynasties, Rabbi Solomon Hirschel (1762-1845) succeeded his father R. Tzvi Hirsch Berlin in 1802 as Rabbi of the Great Synagogue, London. Following a conference to devise a means of union between the three City Synagogues of London - the Great, the Hambro’ and the New-Hirschel was accepted as the spiritual head of all three and subsequently recognized as England’s first Chief Rabbi. During the course of his rabbinic career Hirschel sought to raise the standard of Hebrew education, boldly countering the conversionist movement that had begun targeting Jews in general and their children in particular. However he was the last of the old-type Aschkenazi chief rabbis and mostly ignored the intellectual challenges of modernity that were facing his community, believing that the automatic answer to all was the safe way of old-time traditional custom. The author of this pamphlet Levi Alexander (d. 1834?) son of Alexander Alexander (d. 1807), printed Hebrew and English works for many years, reproducing several of his father’s editions for the benefit of Anglo-Jewry. The present text relates to the following series of events: Upon visiting the Alderney Road Cemetery in Mile End where his brother Saul was buried, Solomon Hirschel instructed the sexton to fell a tree near the grave without however, specifying the reason for this. The action provoked hostility from Alexander whose parents were buried nearby and a heated correspondence ensued between him and the Chief Rabbi. Alexander subsequently publicized these lengthy inflammatory letters, publishing them under the heading “The Axe Laid to the Root.” The letters are of absorbing interest, displaying not only Alexander’s rabbinical and classical scholarship but also his erudite command of the English language. The frontispiece of Hirschel is based upon the well-known portrait-painting of him by Frederick Benjamin Barlin, however here the Rabbi is hardly made to appear flattering. It also features the offending tree in the background. WorldCat records no copies in the United States of this exceptionally rare text. See R. Apple, www.oztorah.com/2010/06/solomon-hirschel-high-priest-of-the-jews; and H.A. Simons, Forty Years a Chief Rabbi: The Life and Times of Solomon Hirschell (1980) p. 124-152.