What the Rabbis Said: The Public Discourse of Nineteenth-Century American Rabbis (review)

Sermons were a staple of the nineteenth-century American Jewish newspaper. Anyone perusing the pages of the press will be struck by the frequent reprinting of lengthy sermons first delivered from American and European pulpits. Perhaps this should be unsurprising given that a number of prominent editors and proprietors were themselves preachers, and evidently eager to amplify their own orations to a wider audience. Naomi Cohen has done historians of the period a great service in dissecting the rhetoric of rabbis who preached and published in English. Where others have been put off by the voluminous and often turgid prose disgorged by these preachers—whose penchant for prolixity and stamina for sermonizing would impress even Fidel Castro—Cohen has patiently persisted and produced an important work on a relatively unexplored subject. For that alone she deserves plaudits.

Cohen wisely adopts a thematic approach, presenting the diversity of rabbinic opinion on subjects ranging from restoration to Zion, the origins and appropriate responses to the growing tide of racial antisemitism, the presentation of Judaism at the World's Parliament of Religions, and the degree of permissible adjustment to American mores. She discusses both the public polemics between Reformers and traditionalists (highlighting the debate between Max Lilienthal and Isaac Leeser, as well as that between Kaufmann Kohler and Alexander Kohut) and within the Reform movement itself (between rabbis and laity over the retention of ritual and the creation of a creedal foundation for the movement). Although Cohen analyzes the rhetoric of a range of rabbis, they are predominantly Reformers active in the last quarter of the century. To compensate for this bias, Cohen devotes a chapter to Sabato Morais, and ample attention to Isaac Leeser and Samuel Isaacs. Nonetheless, some of their loquacious Orthodox colleagues, most notably the eloquent Morris Raphall, are all but absent.

Given the range of topics broached, at times the volume reads like a collection of essays rather than as an integrated whole. One fascinating chapter, for example, explores biblical archetypes that recurred in contemporary sermons. Mordecai was portrayed as an exemplar of the kind of selfless lay leadership required in America. Amalek, by contrast, was reimagined in symbolic and universalistic terms in order to outflank Christian critics who pointed to the biblical injunction to wage holy war as evidence of a merciless Hebrew God. Another chapter examines the sermons and literature produced by Max Lilienthal and Hermann Baar for Jewish children. Lilienthal, who edited the magazine Hebrew Sunday School Visitor between 1874 and 1882, and Baar, who served as director of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York, were pioneers in this area. Both infused their sermons and articles with lessons in etiquette, decorum and morality, all with the intention of making the members of their young Jewish audience into model American citizens. Cohen considers the impulse to impart the values of America and celebrate the synergy between Judaism and Americanism to be a common underlying trend in much of rabbinic discourse during this period.

Cohen, however, is to some extent hamstrung by the intrinsic limitations of working with nineteenth-century sermons and other public statements made by rabbis. Although by the last quarter of the century hazans and rabbis were expected to preach regularly, contemporary homiletic conventions and the strictures imposed by nervous synagogue boards (discussed at length in chapter one) sapped these sermons of much that might otherwise be of historical interest. Only a handful spoke about the major social and political turbulence of the day, and even then, more often than not, in guarded terms. Christian–Jewish relations in the United States and the emergence of racial antisemitism were pulpit poison to all but a bold few. Although this pattern of avoidance weakened by the end of the century, much of the public discourse of American rabbis in English was at best predictable and at worst pabulum.

We are also left to wonder about the reception of these...