Gebetbuch fur israelitische Reform-Gemeinde. Prepared by David Einhorn for the Har Sinai Gemeinde, Baltimore.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

Henry Frank

New York

1856

German and Hebrew text.

Goldman 42; Singerman 1433.

The first Siddur in German published in America. David Einhorn (1809-79) was chosen in 1855 as the first rabbi of the Har Sinai Congregation in Baltimore, the oldest congregation in the United States that has been affiliated with the Reform movement since its inception. A year after he arrived in Baltimore, he created this early American prayer book for his congregation, containing the morning prayers for Sabbath and Festivals. The text was incorporated two years later into his “Olath Tamid” a more comprehensive prayer-book for general circulation - the first that radically deviated from the traditional liturgy and was the largest single influence on the Union Prayer-Book of 1892, the foundation under which the mass of American Jews worship. “It was in America, and not in Europe, that the serious attempt was first made to strike a balance with the old and the new. David Einhorn’s prayerbook, ‘Olath Tamid’ (Baltimore, 1856 and 1858), was the first ritual to combine the old and the new in about equal proportions and it was followed in this by the American Union Prayer Book.” See J. Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform in Europe (1968) p. 308.