Isaac Leeser. The Claims of the Jews to an Equality of Rights.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

C. Sherman

Philadelphia

1841

Singerman 745; Rosenbach 476.

In his book “The Claims of the Jews to an Equality of Rights,” Rev. Isaac Leeser (1806-68) emerged as the national leader of American Jewry. The volume contains six essays which first appeared as a series of letters to the Philadelphia Gazette seeking to thwart the efforts of Christian missionaries. In his final missive, Leeser boldly 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.