(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

Philadelphia

ISAAC LEESER. Discourses, Argumentative and Devotional, on the Subject of the Jewish Religion. Delivered at the Synagogue Mikveh Israel, in Philadelphia, in the Years 5590-5597. Two volumes bound in one. Vol. I: pp. (2), 5-10, (2), 297, (2). * Vol. II: pp. (4), 293, (3). [Singerman 632; Rosenbach 413]. Philadelphia: Haswell and Fleu, 1837. * AND: ISAAC LEESER. Discourses, Argumentative and Devotional, on the Subject of the Jewish Religion. Delivered Chiefly at the Synagogue Mikveh Israel, in Philadelphia, in the Years 5598-5601. Second Series or Vol. III. pp. 12, 268. [Singerman 748; Rosenbach 479]. Philadelphia: C. Sherman, 1841. * BOUND WITH: ISAAC LEESER. The Claims of the Jews to an Equality of Rights. FIRST EDITION. pp. 99. [Singerman 745; Rosenbach 476]. Philadelphia: C. Sherman, 1841.

The First Collection of Jewish Sermons Printed in America. The appearance of the first two volumes of the Discourses marked a turning point in Isaac Leeser’s career. The 500 copies printed were quickly disseminated throughout the Continental United States and Caribbean and subsequently established Leeser’s reknown as a most facile preacher. Due to the success of the “Claims of the Jews to an Equality of Rights,” Isaac Leeser emerged as the singular national leader of American Jewry. The work contains six essays which first appeared as a series of letters to the Philadelphia Gazette in an attempt to thwart the efforts of Christian missionaries. In his final letter to the Gazette, Leeser wrote: “As citizens with equal rights, not as tolerated aliens, we demand of our fellow-citizens to abate the causeless prejudice which so many entertain for us” (p. 82). See L. J. Sussman, Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism (1995) pp. 106-7.