Leeser, ISAAC (transl.) Joseph Johlson. Instruction in the Mosaic Religion.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

Adam Waldie

Philadelphia

1830

FIRST EDITION. On opening blank, signature of former owner: "Mayer Sulzberger, Feb. 16, 1866." Uncut copy.

Rosenbach 321; Singerman 489

Isaac Leeser’s First Book, The First Religious Manual For The Jews of America. As chief proponent of American Orthodoxy, Leeser’s primary rabbinic concern was to improve the educational level of American Jewry. This, his first published book was a translation, with additions, of Joseph Johlson’s Unterricht in der Mosaischen Religion (Frankfurt a/Main, 1819). Leeser states in the preface: “The design of this work is the instruction of the younger part of Israelites, of both sexes…It is universally acknowledged, that there is a great scarcity of elementary books of this kind amongst us [in America]; and this is, therefore, the first of a series, which is attempted, to remedy this defect… if the encouragement held out for this will warrant me in the undertaking. The assistance, hitherto promised, is far from sufficient to pay the expenses of the publication even of this alone, and I was obliged to assume the publication myself.” See Lance J. Sussman, Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism (1995) pp. 67-70.