SELECT SENTENCES: DESIGNED AS A MORAL GUIDE-BOOK FOR YOUNG ISRAELITES, [SARAH HARRIS], PHILADELPHIA: [ISAAC LEESER], 1854

SELECT SENTENCES: DESIGNED AS A MORAL GUIDE-BOOK FOR YOUNG ISRAELITES, [SARAH HARRIS], PHILADELPHIA: [ISAAC LEESER], 1854

200 pages (4 3/8 x 2 7/8 in.; 111 x 73 mm) on paper; intermittent marginal pencil marks. Slight scattered staining; some corners rounded; small repairs in lower-outer corners of pp. 9-14; repairs in outer edges of pp. 197-200. Original (?) blind-tooled leather, slightly stained and worn; title lettered in gilt on upper board; red edges; original (?) paper flyleaves and pastedowns, some damage to pastedown of lower board.

First edition of an early, pocket-size English-language musar manual.

Isaac Leeser (1806-1868), a German-born immigrant to America, contributed significantly to the growth of Jewish life in his adoptive country by founding and editing The Occident and American Jewish Advocate, the first successful national Jewish newspaper; helping to organize several important Jewish communal institutions; and translating a number of foundational Jewish texts into English, including the Pentateuch (with haftarot) and the complete Bible. Leeser was particularly invested in Jewish education, and in the late 1830s he compiled two tracts, The Hebrew Reader and Catechism for Younger Children, in conjunction with the opening of the Sunday School for Religious Instruction of Israelites in Philadelphia.

The present text, prepared by Sarah Harris (though issued anonymously), continues in the same vein. Leeser explains in his preface that “[t]he compiler of the following little work, who is a lady for whom I entertain a high esteem, has had the design to furnish, in a small compass, a number of moral and religious sentences, partially drawn from the source of all religion, the Sacred Scriptures, which must tend to impress the young mind with correct thoughts, and cannot do otherwise than influence the more mature with sentiments of devotion and resignation to the Divine will.”

The book organizes short quotations from the Bible and Pirkei avot, paraphrases of other sources, and independent observations into twenty-eight chapters of religious and moral aphorisms. Examples include wisdom of general applicability, such as: “Take all things that befall you coming from God’s providence, for your particular profit” (p. 50), as well as specifically Jewish teachings, like: “The Mezuzoth on the doorpost, the Tephillin on the arm, and the Tezitzit [sic], are monitors to warn us from the pursuit of our heart’s desire, or our eyes’ delight, if they lead us astray from the paths of virtue and peace” (p. 144).

Leeser notes that “a collection like the present has until now been wanting among English and American Israelites.” Indeed, the treatise appears to have filled a void and met with commercial success, as a new edition was published in 1861, the same year that Leeser printed a corrected version of Harris’ Thoughts Suggested by Bible Texts: Addressed to My Children, which had originally appeared in London a few years prior.

Provenance

Miriam (flyleaf of upper board)

Literature

Dov Rappel, “A Bibliography of American Jewish Textbooks 1766–1919,” Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 18 (1993): 27-62, at p. 40 (no. 128).

Robert Singerman, Judaica Americana: A Bibliography of Publications to 1900, vol. 1 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 254 (no. 1325).