Leeser, Isaac. Instruction in the Mosaic Religion

(AMERICAN JUDAICA)

Adam Waldie

Philadelphia

1830

Uncut copy. With Hebrew type. Signature of Charity S. [Solis] Cohen on the front pastdown endpaper. (Active in the Hebrew Education Society of Philadelphia, of which Leeser was a founder).

Singerman 489; Rosenbach 321

First publication by Isaac Leeser. This Copy with a Manuscript note by Leeser pertaining to the publication of the work. Leeser’s primary concern was improving the educational level of American Jewry. This, his first published book was thus 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.” This copy contains a manuscript letter from Leeser to Eleazar Cohen, a known Philadelphia merchant (pasted onto the front free endpaper). It notified Cohen that Leeser was leaving him some pages from his manuscript of Instruction in the Mosaic Religion. Leeser requested that Cohen “show them to Tower and Hogan and ask them if they could publish them.” Thus revealing that Leeser had originally intended to have someone other than Adam Waldie publish the volume. See Lance J. Sussman, Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism, pp. 67-70.