JOHLSON, J[oseph]. Instruction in the Mosaic Religion. Translated from German to English by Isaac Leeser.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA)

Adam Waldie

Philadelphia

1830

FIRST EDITION. English interspersed with Hebrew.

Rosenbach 321; Singerman 489

Leeser’s First Book, The First Religious Manual For The Jews of America. The translator, Isaac Leeser (1806-1868), pioneer of Orthodox Judaism in America, dedicated the book to his uncle, Zalman Rehine of Richmond, Virginia, who was Leeser’s sponsor and benefactor in America, having brought him over from Germany. 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.” The title has Johlson a “teacher of an Israelitish School at Frankford on the Maine.” The truth be told, Johlson (1777-1851), son of the rabbi of Fulda, was closely associated with the emerging Reform movement in Germany. It is somewhat ironic that the great champion of Orthodoxy, Isaac Leeser, would deem Johlson’s work an appropriate text to educate the young Jews of America. See L. J. Sussman, Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism (1995), pp. 67-70.