Isaac Leeser

• Born: December 12, 1806
• Birthplace: Neuenkirchen, Westphalia, Prussia (now in Germany)
• Died: February 1, 1868
• Place of death: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

German-born religious leader, writer, and translator

Leeser was a prominent nineteenth century Jewish leader, whose preaching, journalism, and significant English scriptural translations fortified Jewish educational efforts. He served as a hazan, a catechist, a publisher, a public speaker, and president of Maimonides College.

Early Life

Isaac Leeser (I-zak LEE-zur) was one of three children born to working-class parents. They both died when he was a teenager, before he enrolled in the Muenster Gymnasium, a secondary school. It was in Muenster that Leeser was persuaded by a local rabbi to champion Conservative over Reform Judaism. Like many in his generation, Leeser was attracted to the opportunity for a fresh start in the United States, enhanced by the welcome extended by his uncle in Richmond, Virginia. He happily found in his new home a welcome haven for Judaism, but not one without perils of discrimination and scarcity of resources known elsewhere. Jews risked losing their identity in the prosperous melting pot in which Christianity was the main ingredient and Judaism a novelty.

Life’s Work

Leeser’s apologetic stance for Conservative Judaism was well served by his writing skills, first put to work in rebutting an anti-Semitic article in the London Quarterly Review. With the help of connections, he became a hazan (an official) at Mikveh Israel synagogue in Philadelphia, a position he held from 1829 until 1850. Despite his many disagreements with the congregational board about liturgical and administrative matters—chief of which was their objection to his introduction of preaching—Leeser thrust himself into work with the Hebrew Sunday school being formed by prominent educationalist Rebecca Gratz. Leeser continued his literary and educational career with the translation and publication in 1830 of Joseph Johlson’s Unterricht in der Mosaischen Religion (1819; Instruction in Mosaic Religion, 1830). Leeser revised Johlson’s manual to reflect more Orthodox views, but the publication did not reach the young audience for which he intended it, being more suitable for adults.

Leeser modeled his catechism on one by Eduard Kley, who published his Catechismus der Mosaischen Religion, an early effort at the reinterpretation of Judaism characteristic of the era, in Berlin in 1814. Again, Leeser revised certain of Kley’s answers but found it otherwise an attractive model for use in the Philadelphia Sunday school program. Language barriers, not conceptuality, posed problems for use of the catechism in English, which was a second language for many Jewish youth in the school. Both Leeser’s catechism and his Hebrew Reader (1838) afforded children textbooks for training in language and beliefs, and The Hebrew Reader saw decades of use. Several other of Leeser’s book translations into English from Hebrew and from a variety of European languages enhanced classroom teaching, among them Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine (1850), by Joseph Schwarz, and Jerusalem (1783), by Moses Mendelssohn.

Leeser further championed education by helping found Hebrew schools in Philadelphia and the short-lived rabbinical seminary, Maimonides College (1867-1873), of which he was faculty president and professor of homiletics. Among his scriptural translations, apologetic, and liturgical works produced across his career, Leeser published five volumes of translated Torah, The Law of God (1845); the first English translation of the Hebrew Bible by a Jew, often called the Leeser Bible (1853); a theological work titled The Jews and the Mosaic Law (1834); the ten-volume Discourses on the Jewish Religion (1867); The Form of Prayers According to the Custom of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews (1837); and an Ashkenazic prayer book (1848). His Bible translation meant to give English-speaking Jews recourse to a more authentically Jewish text than the King James version to which they often had to resort, with its vocabulary canted toward Christian presuppositions.

His The Occident and American Jewish Advocate was a monthly journal designed to strengthen Jewish intellectual life and promote the sharing of editorial opinion. Aside from his publications, Leeser believed the introduction of preaching to synagogue services (a trend already present in Germany) was among his most important labors. Leeser also spent some time touring American Jewish communities, lecturing on sources of communal identity, and helping to create several Jewish benevolent and social service organizations. Leeser never married and lived in a scholar’s genteel poverty. He died at the age of sixty-one in 1868.

Significance

Preaching, teaching, and writing were the three primary means Leeser chose to strengthen Jewish self-understanding in mid-nineteenth century America. Any innovations he introduced in his career were not for the sake of accommodation to modernity but to enhance Jewish life. In Leeser’s estimation, American modernity and pluralism were a mixed blessing for Jews and did not keep him from championing the return of a Jewish state.

Bibliography

Berlin, George L. Defending the Faith: Nineteenth Century American Jewish Writings on Christianity and Jesus. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. The chapter “Isaac Leeser: A Traditionalist’s Approach” summarizes the apologetic aims of Leeser’s writings.

Fierman, Floyd S. Sources of Jewish Education in America Prior to 1881. El Paso, Tex.: Temple Mt. Sinai Publication Fund, 1960. Important background for assessing Leeser’s influence on teaching children their Jewish heritage, namely, the educational systems and emphases in place at the time Leeser began his career through the decades immediately following his death.

Sarna, Jonathan D., and Nahum M. Sarna. “Jewish Bible Scholarship and Translations in the United States.” In The Bible and Bibles in America, edited by Ernest S. Frerichs. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988. The authors recount Leeser’s contributions as a biblical translator, examining the rationale for his biblical work and its fruits in a legacy of American Jewish biblical scholarship.

Sussman, Lance J. Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1995. This is a thoroughly researched biography of Leeser, placing him in context as a shaper of American Judaism. Details of his background and his legacy are included, as well as a wealth of bibliographical resources for further study.

Whiteman, Maxwell. “The Legacy of Isaac Leeser.” In Jewish Life in Philadelphia, 1830-1940, edited by Murray Friedman. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1983. This article places Leeser specifically in his Philadelphia context, the site of his most prolific educational activity.