About

Isaac Leeser

By Arthur Kiron

Early Life and Family

Isaac Leeser was born in the village of Neuenkirchen, which at that time was part of the Prussian province of Westphalia, on December 12, 1806. Leeser’s father, Uri Lippman (Uri ben Eliezer), was a merchant of limited financial means and educational background. The name “Leeser” is reputed to have been selected for Isaac by his paternal grandfather, Eliezer (i.e., Liezer). Little is known of Leeser’s mother, Sara Isaac Cohen, who died when Leeser was eight. Her name only recently came to light when a Dutch descendant, Ms. Helga Becker Leeser, discovered it while doing genealogical research in the Dulmen Stadtarchiv name-taking act of September 22, 1813.

Isaac was the second of three children; his one older sister was named Leah Lippman and his younger brother was named Jacob Lippman. Leah married a butcher named Hirsch Elkus who moved the family to the small town of Denekamp, Holland, located near the Dutch-German border. Leeser’s younger brother Jacob died of smallpox at the age of twenty-five in 1834, one year after emigrating to America. Jacob contracted the disease from his brother Isaac after coming to Philadelphia to care for him. While surviving the disease and the trauma of his brother’s death, Leeser’s face remained deeply pock-marked, a disfigurement that would cause him great embarrassment throughout his life. Both Jacob and Isaac died bachelors.


Education and Religious Formation

Leeser received his early education in Dulmen (in Germany), where his family had moved no later than 1812. Leeser was raised by his paternal grandmother Gitla, a devout woman who strongly influenced Leeser. With the death of his father and grandmother in 1820, Leeser found himself orphaned at the age of 14. That same year Leeser left for Muenster where he attended the secular Gymnasium. While living in Muenster, Leeser was befriended by the city’s district Rabbi, Abraham Sutro, who was a strong opponent of the burgeoning movement for Jewish religious reform. The relationship appears to have had a determining character on Leeser insofar as he would take up the cause of traditional Judaism against the Reformers later in America.


Immigration and Richmond Years

Leeser emigrated to the United States at the age of 17, arriving on May 5, 1824. He came on the invitation of his maternal uncle Zalma Rehine who lived in Richmond, Virginia. Rehine, who ran a fairly prosperous dry-goods business, was married to Rachel Judah, whose mother was the sister of Reverend Gershom Seixas, one of early America’s most important Jewish religious leaders. Rachel Judah’s sister Rebecca was married to their first cousin, Isaac Seixas, who was Hazan of the Beth Shalom Synagogue in Richmond. Seixas befriended Leeser and taught him the Sephardic rite, the dominant Jewish rite then practiced in America. Rachel’s brother Isaac Judah was another Richmond relative with whom Leeser formed a strong friendship. In all, Leeser would spend five years in Richmond, a time he would later describe as among his happiest, and in that time become Americanized in one of the more traditional, conservative Jewish communities of the South.

Leeser first achieved national renown in 1828 for his moving response, published in The Richmond Whig, to an attack on the Jews which had appeared in the London Quarterly Review and then been reprinted in American newspapers. Leeser’s response was widely circulated and eventually republished in book form in 1841 as The Claims of the Jews to an Equality of Rights.


Mikveh Israel and Public Leadership

In 1829, with his reputation established and at the urging of Jacob Mordecai, one of Richmond’s leading Jewish figures, Leeser applied for and was elected to the post of Hazan (Cantor and Reader of the prayer service) of the Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia.

Leeser’s tenure at Mikveh Israel was marked by constant bickering with the Board of the synagogue over the extent of the Hazan’s authority, his status and independence, as well as over Leeser’s ongoing demands for a lifetime contract and salary increase. The Board also resisted several innovations by Leeser, such as his introduction into the weekly service of a regular English-language sermon, the first of its kind of note in the United States (first begun on June 2, 1830). Even as his relations with Mikveh Israel were to sour, however, Leeser was to begin a period of intense literary productivity and remarkable organizational activity.


Education, Publishing, and Translation

During the 1830s, Leeser worked closely with Rebecca Gratz, the famous Jewish educator and civic leader, to establish the Free Sunday School movement in Philadelphia. Leeser’s Hebrew Spelling-Book, which he published in 1838 (the first Hebrew primer for children in the United States), was created specifically for use in the Hebrew school which he and Rebecca Gratz opened that same year.

Leeser’s career as a translator also began in Philadelphia in 1830 with the publication of his rendering from German of J. Johlson’s Instruction in the Mosaic Religion. Leeser, as part of his ongoing efforts to contribute to the development of Jewish education and culture in America, translated a number of important works into English from German, Spanish, French, and Hebrew. Among his most important translations were Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem, Joseph Schwartz’s Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine, as well as his renowned Bible translations, first of the Pentateuch and later of the entire Hebrew Bible.

Leeser first published his own major theological work, The Jews and the Mosaic Law, in 1834.


The Occident and Literary Influence

During the 1840s, Leeser began working as an editor and publisher. Among his many contributions to American literary culture were his editions of Louis Salomon’s The Mosaic System in its Fundamental Principles (1841), Grace Aguilar’s The Spirit of Judaism (1842), Benjamin Dias Fernandes’ A Series of Letters on the Evidences of Christianity (1859), and Hester Rothschild’s “Meditations and Prayers” (1866). In 1843, Leeser began publishing what would become perhaps his greatest literary achievement: The Occident and American Jewish Advocate, a monthly journal of news and opinion, which he was to edit and publish until his death in 1868.


National Institutions and Jewish Communal Life

Leeser continued to play an unceasing role in creating the cultural foundations of Jewish life in Philadelphia and throughout North America. In 1845, Leeser founded the first American Jewish Publication Society and in the same year published his translation of the Pentateuch entitled The Law of God, a bilingual edition which included the unpointed Hebrew text. Three years later, in 1848, Leeser published with a local Episcopalian minister, Joseph Jacquette, a masoretic Hebrew edition of the entire Hebrew Bible, Biblia Hebraica, the first of its kind to be printed in America. That same year, Leeser also managed to issue his translation of the Ashkenazic prayer book.

In addition to his professional activities as minister, educator, writer, translator, editor, and publisher, Leeser also played a fundamental role in either proposing, founding, or leading many significant civic, religious, and charitable institutions.


Later Years and Final Ministry

Leeser’s stormy relationship with the Congregation Mikveh Israel lasted through 1850, at which point he left his ministry. Undeterred by this setback, Leeser embarked on an extensive journey across the United States, travelling over 5,200 miles from November 9, 1851 through February 27, 1852. He visited isolated and emerging Jewish communities, where he lectured on a variety of topics and spoke out on behalf of Jewish causes.

After returning to Philadelphia, Leeser continued his work as editor of The Occident, publisher, bookseller, dealer in Judaica, and translator. In 1853, Leeser completed his monumental English translation of the entire Hebrew Bible, known popularly as “The Leeser Bible.” In 1857, a new congregation was formed for him in West Philadelphia, where he served until his death eleven years later.


Personal Life and Death

In many ways, Leeser’s personal life was filled with quiet anguish. He led a lonely, often sickly life. Reports have it that he caused a stir by living in a boarding house run by a non-Jewish woman, and he was rumored to have been eating there non-kosher food. According to several accounts, one of his ill-fated romantic hopes was dashed by the father of his beloved, Simha Peixotto. Conflict was characteristic of much of Leeser’s public life as well.

Isaac Leeser died in Philadelphia on February 1, 1868, at the age of 61, and was buried in the Beth El Emeth congregation cemetery in West Philadelphia located at 55th and Market Streets.


The Legacy

The Leeser legacy to American Jewish history is a well-documented life of pioneering accomplishments. As Bertram Korn succinctly puts it: “Practically every form of Jewish activity which supports American Jewish life today was either established or envisaged by this one man.”

Perhaps the most lasting testament to Leeser’s energy and hopes can be found in the pages of his journal The Occident and American Jewish Advocate, of which he was the founder, editor, contributor, and occasional typesetter.


Selected Bibliography

The following bibliography represents selected secondary sources, in addition to the dispersed Leeser collection itself, upon which the above outline was based. For the authoritative biography of Leeser, see most recently Sussman (1995).


  • Adler, Cyrus. Catalogue of the Leeser Library (Philadelphia: E. Hirsch and Company, 1883).
  • Ashton, Dianne. Women and Judaism in Antebellum America (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1997).
  • Davis, Moshe. The Emergence of Conservative Judaism (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1963).
  • Diner, Hasia R. A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration, 1820–1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
  • Glanz, Rudolf. “Where the Jewish Press Was Distributed in Pre-Civil War America,” Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly 5 (1972): 1–14.
  • Grunberger, Michael, ed. From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America (New York: George Braziller in association with the Library of Congress, 2004).
  • Karp, Abraham. “America’s Pioneer Prayer Books,” Jewish Book Annual 34 (1976/77): 15–25.
  • Kiron, Arthur. “An Atlantic Jewish Republic of Letters?” Jewish History 20, nos. 1–2 (2006): 171–211.
  • Korn, Bertram W. “Isaac Leeser: Centennial Reflections,” American Jewish Archives 19 (1967): 127–141.
  • Korn, Bertram W. “The First American Jewish Theological Seminary: Maimonides College, 1867–1873,” in Eventful Years and Experiences (Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1954), 151–213.
  • Marcus, Jacob Rader. United States Jewry, 1776–1976, 4 vols. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989–1993).
  • Mendelsohn, Adam. “The Emergence of the Anglophone Jewish Diaspora in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” American Jewish History 93, no. 2 (2007): 177–209.
  • Sarna, Jonathan D. American Judaism: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
  • Sellers, Maxine. “Isaac Leeser, Architect of the American Jewish Community” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1966).
  • Sulzberger, Mayer. “No Better Jew, No Purer Man,” originally published in The Occident 25 (March 1868): 593–601; reprinted in American Jewish Archives 21–22 (1969–70): 140–148.
  • Sussman, Lance J. “Another Look at Isaac Leeser and the First Jewish Translation of the Bible in the United States,” Modern Judaism 5 (1985): 159–190.
  • Sussman, Lance J. “Isaac Leeser and the Protestantization of American Judaism,” American Jewish Archives 38 (April 1986): 1–21.
  • Sussman, Lance J. “The Life and Career of Isaac Leeser (1806–1868): A Study of American Judaism in Its Formative Period” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew Union College, 1987).
  • Sussman, Lance J. Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995).
  • Whiteman, Maxwell. “Isaac Leeser and the Jews of Philadelphia,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 48 (1959): 207–244.
  • Whiteman, Maxwell. “The Legacy of Isaac Leeser,” in Jewish Life in Philadelphia: 1830–1940, ed. Murray Friedman (Philadelphia: Ishi, 1983), 26–47.
  • Wolf, Edward. “Transfer of Custody of Leeser Library,” The Dropsie College Register, Founder’s Day Exercises, March 10, 1913, published Summer Term, 1913 (Philadelphia: Dropsie College, 1913), 26–39.