An Autograph Manuscript Apologia for Isaac Leeser's Bible Translation, Philadelphia: 1853; Written on the Verso of an Important Rare Printed Circular Calling for A Convention of Jews in the United States, Philadelphia: 1849

1 leaf (10 x 7 3/4 in.; 250 x 200 mm). Blue paper, printed on one side; manuscript on verso written in brown ink in cursive English script by Isaac Leeser;  very lightly stained, central crease. Mylar sleeve.

a doubly important document of the american jewish experience

More than any other person of his time, Isaac Leeser (1806–1868) envisioned the development of a major center of Jewish culture and religious activity in the United States. He single-handedly provided American Jews with many of the basic religious texts, institutions, and conceptual tools they needed to construct the cultural foundation of what would later emerge as the largest Jewish community in the history of the Jewish people. In addition to his decades of service in the pulpit of Philadelphia's congregation Mikveh Israel, Leeser's accomplishments as an architect of the American Jewish community include the founding of the Jewish Publication Society, the first Hebrew high school, and the first American Jewish rabbinical seminary. In 1843 he founded the monthly The Occident, the first successful Jewish newspaper in America and for 25 years, an important forum for articles on Jewish life and thought.

In the Spring of 1849, Leeser promulgated a circular, calling for the disparate Jewish congregations across the nation to delegate representatives for a proposed convention to be held in June of that year. This was the latest in a series of steps taken by Leeser and his contemporaries, Isaac Mayer Wise and Max Lilienthal to try to effect the formation of a union of all Jewish congregations in the United States of America. Although the proposed convention never took place, Leeser retained this copy of the rare circular until late in 1853, when he used the blank side to draft an impassioned defense of his new bible translation, entitled Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures, which appeared in 1854. Leeser's Bible, as it has come to be known, was the result of 15 years of Isaac Leeser’s literary labors, and quickly became the standard Bible for English-speaking Jews, especially in America. The text of this manuscript was printed in the Occident in January of 1854.

The present lot is a rare relic of the man who exerted the greatest influence on the development of traditional Judaism in 19th-century America.

LITERATURE:
Joseph Buchler, “The Struggle for Unity,” in American Jewish Archives Journal, vol. 2 no.1, June 1949, pp. 21-46.; Isaac Leeser, “The Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures …” Occident, vol. 11, no. 10, January 1854, pp. 521-523