Connecting Jewish Community
An Anglophone Journal, Rev. Isaac Leeser, and a Jewish Atlantic World
LAURA NEWMAN ECKSTEIN
“It will give me pleasure to serve you in any way either as Regular Correspondent for yr newly projected paper or as Agt here, or as a canvas-ser for Subscribers,” wrote the Charlestonian merchant Thomas Jefferson Moïse to Reverend Isaac Leeser, a prominent Jewish religious leader in Philadelphia during the mid-nineteenth century. 1 Leeser’s reply to Moïse has not survived, but subsequent correspondence between the two men reveals that Moïse did in fact become an agent (“Agt”) and “canvas-ser for Subscribers” for Leeser’s periodical The Occident, and American Jewish Advocate (hereafter The Occident). Moïse’s correspondence with Leeser reveals one example of the many relationships cemented or forged anew through the business conducted over Leeser’s long career as an author and editor.
In addition to his role as founder, publisher, editor, contributor, and occasional typesetter for The Occident (1843–69), Leeser was an author and translator of popular religious texts of the age, including what became known as the “Leeser Bible,” the first Jewish translation of the Hebrew Bible into English, and a Hebrew Spelling-Book (1838), the first Hebrew primer for children in the United States. He also translated many other religious texts, including Sephardic and Ashkenazic prayer books, Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem, and Joseph Schwartz’s Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine. Born in Neuenkirchen, part of Prussian Westphalia, in 1806, by the age of fourteen Leeser was an orphan. In Münster, while attending gymnasium, he met Rabbi Abraham Sutro, “a strong opponent of the burgeoning movement for Jewish religious reform” who would continue to influence Leeser for the rest of his life.2 From Münster, Leeser immigrated to Richmond, Virginia, where his uncle, Zalma Rehiné, was a successful storekeeper.3 Rehiné’s wife, Rachel Judah, was related to two of the most prominent Jewish leaders in the Western Hemisphere, Isaac Seixas and Reverend Gershom Mendes Seixas. While in Richmond, Isaac Seixas taught Leeser the Sephardic rite, how to lead prayers with the Sephardic customs and melodies. Leeser also studied with Jacob Mordecai, the noted Ashkenazi teacher of the Warrenton Female Academy. In 1828, Leeser gained national attention after he published a response in The Richmond Whig to antisemitic attacks that appeared in the London Quarterly Review. In 1829, Leeser applied for and accepted a job as hazan, leader of prayers at Philadelphia’s Congregation Mikveh Israel.4 Over the years, Leeser clashed with his congregation’s board, ultimately resulting in his firing in 1851.5 In 1857, he became hazan at Beth El-Emeth of Philadelphia. Throughout his time in Philadelphia, Leeser was an avid participant in Jewish culture, writing, publishing, and rallying against what would become Reform Judaism, and interacting with notable Jews of the day including Rebecca Gratz. Leeser died in 1868 at the age of sixty-one.
Compared to the twentieth-century Jewish press in the United States, there have been few studies of the Jewish press in nineteenth-century America. One notable exception is Rudolf Glanz, who offers statistics of subscribers, lists different “Jewish communities,” and asserts that the Jewish press was the only organization connecting Jews in the United States prior to the Civil War.6 Robert Singerman, in “The American Jewish Press, 1823–1983: A Bibliographic Survey of Research and Studies,” created a comprehensive bibliography of the Jewish Press in the United States.7 In 1989, Arthur Goren as part of his article “The Jewish Press in the U.S.” spent little time on early Jewish newspapers like The Occident and remarked mostly on news coverage of foreign events by early newspapers.8 Jonathan Sarna’s “The History of the Jewish Press in North America” argued that the Jewish press’s trajectory, “at least until recently, [is] a story of marked decay.”9 More recently, Arthur Kiron examined three mid-nineteenth-century Jewish newspapers: The Occident, The Voice of Jacob, and First Fruits of the West. Kiron argues that these three newspapers formed a network of Jewish culture, “a Jewish Republic of Letters” or an “Atlantic Haskalah.”10 Challenging Kiron, Adam Mendelsohn refutes Kiron’s embrace of the Port Jew schema to understand these newspapers and a larger Jewish Atlantic culture. Instead, Mendelsohn sees the 1840s as a moment of an Anglo-Jewish diaspora. Mendelson asserts that by the 1840s “the period of the Port Jew had passed. In its place emerged a nascent Anglophone diaspora, a cultural and social sphere whose tentacular grasp stretched across the expanding British Empire and deep into the American frontier.”11 More recently the scholar of nineteenth-century mobility and migration Shari Rabin embraced a national model, demonstrating how the newspapers of Isaac Leeser and Isaac Mayer Wise, through their subscribers and agents, functioned as larger projects and visions of American Jewish communal life, even in the most remote towns with scant Jewish populations.12
This chapter argues that Rev. Isaac Leeser foregrounded the Atlantic Jewish world in his attempt to build a readership and a sense of Jewish community by examining the material text of The Occident including often overlooked wrappers, as well as other agent and subscription lists. Scholars have profiled Leeser in various biographies and have used The Occident to discuss Jewish life in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. The historian Bertram Korn described Isaac Leeser as the cornerstone of American Jewish life, insisting that “practically every form of Jewish activity which supports American Jewish life today was either established or envisaged by this one man.”13 For Korn, The Occident represented Leeser’s crowning achievement. If Leeser “could have done only one thing,” he explained, “we would single out publication of his monthly journal.”14 Rabbi Lance J. Sussman built on Korn’s profile of Leeser in his biography Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism. While Sussman’s biography contains details on Leeser’s role as publisher of The Occident, it focuses on Leeser’s contributions to American Judaism more generally.15 Absent from this and other secondary sources are some of the material aspects of Leeser’s journal that are crucial to understanding the periodical’s reach and mission beyond just an American scope.
In the inaugural article of his monthly publication, The Occident, Leeser explained that the periodical’s purpose was to “endeavor to give circulation to everything which can be interesting to the Jewish inhabitants in the western hemisphere.”16 The Occident served as an aggregator and collector of the news of these communities, and Leeser hoped that the newspaper would function as a “one-stop” news source for the Jews of the Atlantic world. Behind this purpose lay what he saw as a religious and cultural mission. The Occident, with its curated articles and news, allowed Leeser to have some cultural control over this community in a diasporic framework. He expressed this underlying mission in 1845 and urged those who remained faithful subscribers to help him increase his readership:
May we in this place urge upon our friends, who are anxious for the success and continuance of a Jewish organ in America, the propriety of endeavouring to increase the circulation of the Occident? . . . Will our friends try to respond to this call? We hope for a favourable consideration.17
For Leeser, the success of The Occident and the length of its list of subscribers reflected the progress or lack thereof of the Jewish community in the Atlantic world. An increase in subscriptions signaled the health and growth of the Jewish Atlantic community. In 1845, when the number of subscribers decreased, Leeser ascribed the downturn to a withering of Atlantic Jewry on his watch. He responded to the decline by calling on the faithful to encourage other Jews to subscribe, in essence trying to reengage the community.
The wrappers, the paper covers that functioned as the beginning and ending pages for each monthly edition, contained subscription lists (beginning in 1846), lists of the periodical’s agents, and advertisements, including information about Leeser’s other publications. These wrappers also provided important announcements that demonstrate shifts in the periodical’s business model over time. Readers at the time often considered The Occident’s wrappers ephemeral and discarded them, even when subscribers saved the remainder of The Occident. The wrappers that still exist today are piecemeal, spread over various archives, and with many months missing. Yet the contents of these wrappers, in combination with the rich text of The Occident, shed light on Leeser’s business operation and cultural mission for his paper. Leeser fostered an economic and religious community, a readership that was a far-flung network that helps us to reenvision Jewish community in America and the Western Hemisphere between 1843 and 1868.
Leeser followed a modified subscription publishing for all of his publications. The Oxford Companion of the Book defines subscription publishing as “a system of obtaining orders (and sometimes payment) in advance to enable publication of a book.”18 Leeser issued prospectuses that announced his plan to publish a certain book, often requiring a certain number of subscribers to begin production. After accumulating sufficient financial means from these initial subscribers, Leeser printed extra copies for future sales.19 Leeser’s model always depended on three important categories of actors. One was the agent, who acted on Leeser’s behalf, receiving a bundle of papers and distributing them, collecting subscriptions, and recruiting new subscribers. Agents also corresponded with Leeser and negotiated for compensation. Another was the subscriber, who either paid Leeser or paid the agent. Subscribers were often connected to one another through familial ties, business, or friendship. They too played a critical role in expanding Leeser’s readership base. Third, and unique to the periodical, were the contributors who received some sort of compensation by Leeser for their articles.
Leeser’s approach deviated from the traditional business practice of subscription publishers. The Oxford Companion of the Book notes that “subscription publishing flourished in England for about two hundred years from the mid-seventeenth century. Lists of subscribers were frequently set out in order of the social hierarchy.”20 Subscription publishers used their lists to publish prominent names, like those of nobility, to make their publications more desirable. Leeser, less concerned with social prestige or economic remuneration, instead focused on increasing his subscription list for a publication that, to him, symbolized the vitality of Judaism. The periodical’s motto, printed on the front cover of every issue, also reflected Leeser’s focus on promoting Judaism and Jewish life, declaring its mission to promote “the diffusion of knowledge on Jewish literature and religion.” In April 1846, Leeser called on the “presidents and secretaries of congregations and societies in England, West Indies, British America, and the United States” to send in announcements and news of their respective communities: “The Occident being established to diffuse information on Jewish subjects, we request all having local information to communicate the same to us at our own expense.”21 By sharing news with one another through a mass media publication rather than through a single letter, Jews separated by rough terrain and seas could build community and, to Leeser’s mind, keep their Judaism alive.
The Occident reflected a dual process. News came from Leeser’s correspondents and subscribers, while Leeser selectively curated this information for The Occident’s readership. Correspondents, agents, and subscribers were necessary to supply the news of their Jewish communities that kept the periodical relevant. At the same time, those correspondents, agents, and subscribers saw the paper as an authoritative source of news. Presumably, the publication of accurate news from each community would lend authenticity to news published about other communities, reinforcing confidence. Leeser, who received the news reports, in turn functioned as the editorial hub for the paper, choosing which news items to include and which to withhold.22 Without both those who submitted the reports and the editor who compiled them, the paper could not function. Book history scholar Ryan Cordell discusses a similar duality in contemporary newspapers. Focusing on the role of newspaper editors in the pre–Civil War United States, Cordell writes: “Through the process of selection and republication, editors appropriated the collective authority of the newspaper system, positioning their publication as one node within larger political, social, denominational, or national networks.”23 While Cordell’s editor model cannot be transposed onto The Occident precisely, Leeser, “appropriated the collective authority” of the Jewish Anglo-Atlantic by selecting articles and functioning as the gatekeeper of the news.24 Letters written to Leeser with news announcements reveal this process of selection. In an 1849 letter, Sophia Tobias, president of the Ladies Sewing Association of New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel, wrote: “I enclose you a report of the Ladies Sewing Association, if you deem it a worthy place in your valuable periodical, it is at your service.”25 The next volume of The Occident included Tobias’s detailed report.26 Tobias’s letter and Leeser’s subsequent publication of her notice reflects the growth of Jewish benevolent associations in the United States throughout the nineteenth century, as well as increasing involvement of women in American religious spaces and organizations.27 In a separate piece of correspondence, Nathaniel Levine, secretary of Congregation Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim of Charleston, wrote to Leeser, “enclose[d] . . . the copy of the Resolutions unanimously adopted by the Board of Trustees at a regular meeting convened this day” on March 3, 5627 (1867).28 The April 1867 edition of The Occident carried the “copy of the Resolutions,” attributed to “Nathaniel Levin,” publishing it verbatim.29 Tobias and Levine informed Leeser and his readership of the affairs of their respective organizations. It was at Leeser’s discretion whether or not to include these announcements. In the August 1863 wrapper, Leeser noted that “several articles are omitted this month for want of room.”30 Leeser curated the pages of the paper, exercising his power of selection. Leeser’s decision to publish the report of the Ladies Sewing Association and the resolutions from Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim reflects Leeser’s attitude toward Jewish community. Leeser saw Jewish organizations and congregations as crucial infrastructure to the growth and longevity of Jewish life in the United States, and therefore in the inaugural issue of his paper he “offer[ed] pages to congregations and societies as a medium of giving publicity to their intended assemblings and of their transactions.”31 Jewish “congregations and societies” took Leeser up on this “offer,” and The Occident was filled with Jewish communal reports, meeting minutes, and announcements. Leeser was the gatekeeper of a newspaper that functioned as a public record-keeping system and archive of Jewish communal life for a disparate diaspora.
If part of The Occident’s mission was to “endeavor to give circulation which can be interesting to the Jewish inhabitants in the western hemisphere,” then Leeser needed access to Jews who would relay news of their far-flung communities, advertise and deliver papers, and collect subscriptions.32 To do so, Leeser developed a diasporic model of subscription publishing that was transnational. He relied on his authority as a Jewish leader to foster networks of other communal leaders throughout the hemisphere to act as agents, such as Reverend M. N. Nathan of Kingston, Jamaica, Aaron Wolff of Saint Thomas, and Rabbi Abraham de Sola of Montreal. This diasporic model developed over time. The May 1846 wrapper of The Occident signaled two significant changes in publishing practice. One change was noted at the end of a list of subscribers for the month: “We mean in the future to acknowledge receipts of money in a similar manner, when we are prevented from writing especial letters.” This signaled a change from yearly to monthly subscription lists.33 It also meant that each monthly subscriber list was not comprehensive, but rather part of a system through which Leeser could account for and acknowledge subscription payments without “writing especial letters.” In a time when post roads and steam packets were not always reliable and railroads were expanding but still inaccessible in many places, it proved useful for subscribers to know if their payments had indeed reached Leeser.34
M. B. Simmonds’s correspondence illustrates the precarious nature of reliance on specific transportation networks that encompassed the island of Saint Thomas. An agent for The Occident, Simmonds wrote to Leeser in June 1843 that he was “disappointed in not being able to remit you the amount of the subscription list for the Occident.” Simmonds explained, “the fault is not mine,” and suggested that Leeser “try & send them [The Occident] regularly by way of New York as there are numerous opportunities from that City for this place.”35 We do not know if Leeser had in fact sent the papers through New York. We do know from Simmonds that the other agent on the island, Aaron Wolff, did receive his packet of The Occident to distribute. Simmonds complained of this discrepancy in his letter: “Mr Wolff has received his May Number, and I have received none.”36 Perhaps Leeser sent the two shipments separately, but based on the fact that Simmonds and Wolff appear on the earliest known agent lists for The Occident from April 1843, Leeser undoubtedly knew he would be sending his periodical to these two men. It seems unlikely that he would send the periodical at different times to the same place. For unknown reasons, but illustrating the precarity and unreliability of delivery, in the 1840s, Leeser could not be sure that his paper would arrive safely to his agents and subscribers. His published subscriber lists at least provided a record for himself, his agents, and his subscribers of who should have received a copy of the periodical.37
The 1846 announcement, “Occident Advertiser,” in prominent black-letter typeface signaled a new era for the periodical. This announcement stated that Leeser would double the pages of the wrapper to create more space to publish advertisements: “we make this month the experiment of issuing a double cover, so as to enable us to give more room for our advertising friends, and for our own purposes.”38 It is unclear why Leeser decided to change the format of the periodical. Perhaps he had received inquiries regarding advertisements, or perhaps he wanted to see whether he could profit financially.39 As with the newfound monthly subscriber lists, Leeser sought out the best methods to coordinate the various cogs of his subscription publishing enterprise.
How did Leeser’s marketing and distribution techniques compare to his colleagues in the field of religious publishing? The historian Rosalind Remer discusses the testing of various marketing and distribution techniques, albeit for booksellers and publishers, who wished to spread their volumes to the American backcountry between 1800 and 1830. For example, “William Woodward, a prominent publisher of religious works, employed an ad hoc network of ministers to sell his books.” Another publishing firm took a different approach. As Remer details, “the firm of McCarty and Davis dispatched professional traveling salesmen and later established branch stores in likely backcountry entrepots” to facilitate distribution of their publications. Jacob Johnson and Benjamin Warner, Quaker publishers, “traveled extensively themselves, opening branch stores and establishing large wholesale accounts with country storekeepers, printers, and booksellers.” According to Remer, the varying business practices of these publishers illustrate how booksellers devised techniques to sell and advertise their books, particularly in rural areas. Their “strategies were experimental but not sequential, and there seems to have been no ‘learning curve,’ of progress in terms of evaluating the efficacy of distribution methods,” Remer writes.40 In some ways, Leeser’s approach resembled that of Remer’s booksellers. Leeser too talked of “experimentation” when discussing new practices. And like the booksellers, Leeser also had to establish a network to transport papers to subscribers in faraway places. Unlike Remer’s booksellers, Leeser’s attempt to reach those who resided far from Philadelphia was not solely about the bottom line, but also about his belief that The Occident kept Judaism alive in the far-flung communities of the Atlantic world.
Leeser developed a remarkable geographic reach as part of an anglo-phone diaspora. The 1846 Occident Advertiser announced: “Our works circulate extensively, though not in large quantities, over nearly all the United States, Canada, Jamaica, St. Thomas, Barbadoes [sic], St. Lucia, Venezuela, St. Domingo [sic], Curaçoa [sic], New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, New Zealand and England.”41 Despite a subscriber base that reached into the Spanish and Dutch Atlantic, notably the vast majority of the subscribers were part of an anglophone diaspora. The Occident functioned as a tool, as scholar Adam Mendelsohn writes, that “knitted the Jewish communities of English-speaking countries into a new cultural, religious, and social sphere.”42 The Occident was at once a unifying cultural force in the Jewish anglophone diaspora but also offered new perspectives for its readers. Arthur Kiron describes Victorian-era Jewish newspapers in the Atlantic world as “provid[ing] a kind of a town hall . . . in which Jews and non-Jews of all different backgrounds, ideological commitments, and geographical locations could metaphorically sit together and learn about each other’s views and circumstances.”43 Within this anglophone world, with a disparate subscriber base, The Occident aimed to function as a cultural harbinger of Jewish culture and news. The map in figure 10.1 illustrates every person known to have subscribed to The Occident between 1843 and 1869, based on Leeser’s subscription lists. From the subscribers in the Oceania region, to those in the Caribbean, to those throughout the United States, and scattered throughout Europe, the geographic diversity of Leeser’s subscription base is clear.
FIGURE 10.1. Subscribers to The Occident, 1843–69.
As Leeser made a name for himself and his publications, he used personal travel to augment his system of agents and correspondents, and his networks of Jewish communities. In doing so, Leeser took on multiple roles: as editor, agent, contributor, and representative of the larger community he strived to serve. Through details from The Occident and other newspapers, we can trace Leeser’s travels. In the news section of the October 1851 issue of The Occident, Leeser penned an article titled, “Consecration of the New Synagogue, Kenesseth Shalom, at Syracuse, New York.” Reflecting back upon an earlier visit to the community, Leeser reminisced, “It is just seven years ago that we passed . . . through the western part of the State of New York, on our return from Canada homeward. . . . It was about the time when we passed through the city, that the Jewish community numbered seven members.”44 In 1851, Leeser returned to the growing community’s newly built synagogue for its consecration, as part of a tour of congregations throughout the northern, western, and southern United States. It appears that the northern component of the trip (when he traveled to Syracuse for the second time) came during the fall of 1851. We find the only other reference to Leeser’s northern journey in the wrapper of the November 1851 issue. Under the list of subscribers, Leeser wrote: “The EDITOR returns his thanks for the hospitable reception . . . during his late northern journey. . . . It is his intention, . . . to visit, before long, the western and southern congregations, in order to urge in person, the necessity of sustaining his Magazine.”45 Leeser’s northern journey served multiple purposes. His travel was a way to “urge in person, the necessity of sustaining his Magazine, the only strictly Jewish publication in the country,” as well as his other publications. It gave him the opportunity to assess expanding communities, such as Syracuse; it gave him a literal and figurative pulpit in which to advertise and ascertain interest in The Occident as well as his other subscription publications (in this case the “Leeser Bible”); and it gave Leeser and subscribers the opportunity to connect personally.
Leeser traveled to various western and southern congregations in the late fall and winter of 1851–52.46 “We set out on the 9th of November, and returned on the 27th of February, after an absence of nearly sixteen weeks, during which we travelled upwards of five thousand two hundred miles, and visited at least twenty-five settlements or congregations of Israelites,” Leeser described.47 As with his northern trip, Leeser designed the trip to promote his many publications, including The Occident, to procure new subscribers, and to reconnect with long-time subscribers. Many of the Jews in each locale “had never seen us,” Leeser wrote, and these prospective clients needed to “decide for themselves whether our claims to their kind support were well founded or not.” Leeser continued, “we are happy to state here, that in a great degree our appeal to the public has not been in vain, as the number of our subscribers has increased at least one-third, and also for our other proposed publications we have received a fair portion of public support.”48
In fact, looking at the population estimates provided by the American Jewish Year Book, the number of Jews in the United States had increased dramatically. In 1830 the publication reported that approximately six thousand Jews lived in the United States, by 1840, fifteen thousand, by 1850, one hundred thousand, and by 1860, two hundred thousand.49 Like Christian mission societies, Leeser recognized that he had to forge connections to sustain his mission to connect the communities and disseminate the news of the Jewish communities of the expanding west. He used travel to connect personally with others and to act as his own agent, inserting himself into communities he visited. He admitted that seeing things firsthand gave him greater insight into Jewish life, noting that “it was well that we were thus enabled to judge for ourself [sic].”50 Leeser’s travels were not unusual for publishers. As Rosalind Remer explains, Christian “ministers succeeded at bookselling in part because they were influential figures in their communities, often taking charge of their congregants’ moral and intellectual development.”51 While Leeser was not a bookseller who constantly traveled, his presence undoubtedly made a difference. In this sense, Leeser was a hybrid, wielding the influence of a religious leader, but also sometimes behaving like the bookseller that he was. Many publishers used travel to “evaluate the state of the market, the level of local competition, and status and financial standing of the tradesmen they met. They analyzed the local economies and calculated the best ways to demand and receive payment.”52 During his journeys, Leeser also procured subscribers for his Bible and for The Occident. Leeser’s trips involved self-education and self-promotion, but also cemented and expanded his network of subscribers, agents, and correspondents in order to spark interest in The Occident and his other subscription publications.53
Leeser’s lists of agents reveal the connection between the periodical and Leeser’s other publications. Before he introduced The Occident, Leeser was already a prolific writer and published several books using a version of the subscription publishing model that he later employed with The Occident (see appendix to this chapter). Four publications, published prior to the first edition of The Occident, contained a list of Leeser’s agents for each publication. The same names of agents appear repeatedly, and by the time Leeser began printing The Occident, he had a network of agents ready to help him sell and advertise his paper, as they had his books.
The Occident also became a forum for Leeser (and others) to advertise his publications, building a subscription network through The Occident. Through advertisements in The Occident, we can track the progress and eventual publication of Leeser’s The Law of God, his first edition of the Pentateuch.54 In August and September 1843, Leeser announced that he aimed to publish a translation of the Pentateuch. “We have not abandoned our plan of issuing, for Synagogue service, the Pentateuch, with a revised translation, together with the Haphtoroth, according to the custom of the various synagogues.” Those who wished to receive a copy could hand their subscriptions to Leeser himself (on one of his trips or if they lived in Philadelphia) or to one of his agents. Further, Leeser continued, “the price for the five volumes will be twelve dollars and a half, payable on the completion of the third volume.” Agents would be “allowed fifteen per cost for the trouble in getting subscribers and collecting the proceeds, and any person subscribing for seven copies w[ould] obtain an eighth gratis.” Publication relied upon money from subscribers. Leeser already had one hundred, and “the work w[ould] be undertaken if [he] obtain[ed] three hundred.”55 “The ultimate success seems very probable,” he reflected. Five months later, in April 1844, Leeser issued the same announcement. This time, he added that he “also intend[ed] to issue a cheap edition for Ten Dollars; subscribers will please to state whether they desire the finer or cheaper edition.”56 Eleven months later, in March 1845, the wrapper, titled “To Our Readers,” reported that Leeser had enough subscribers: “We are about completing our arrangements for the speedy issue of the edition of the Pentateuch,” though in the same paragraph he wrote “our subscription list is very small.”57 Whatever the number of subscribers, Leeser was on his way to publishing The Law of God. An important announcement, published in March 1845, declared that every agent for The Occident was now also an agent for the Pentateuch, titled The Law of God. The announcement appeared in the next two monthly editions of The Occident until a final proclamation in the June 1845 wrapper that promised that the book “will be issued about the fifth of June.”58 As it represented only the first of a multivolume set (the book of Genesis), Leeser continued, “the remaining volumes will be issued as fast as possible.”59 By September 1845, the headline in the same section of the wrapper proudly asserted that the first volume was “Now Ready.”60 The December 1845 issue contained notice regarding The Law of God. “The Pentateuch will probably be finished about the middle of January at farthest. The text of all the volumes is printed, and the appendixes are now in hand.”61 By March 1846 Leeser announced The Law of God was complete in its entirety, five volumes in total.62
These announcements illustrate that Leeser expressed his vision for bringing Jewish texts to readers through his roles as a publisher, translator, agent, and community liaison. He used The Occident as a communication device to spread not only news of Jewish life but also his ideas of Jewish culture. According to historian Lance Sussman, Leeser believed his Pentateuch provided Jews with the ability for correct interpretation of biblical texts. Leeser’s Pentateuch was historic in that it was the first translation of the Hebrew Bible into English with a distinctly Jewish interpretation. Before its publication, Jews who were not multilingual had sole access to the King James version of the Bible.63 Through the announcements and subsequent publication of The Law of God, Leeser acted not only as the publisher and purveyor of Jewish community news but as a shaper of transregional Jewish intellectual and religious thought and as an alternative to traditionally anti-Jewish theological interpretations of the Bible.64
Historical scholarship has painted The Occident as a cultural triumph that reflected Leeser’s prowess as a leader across Jewish communities of the Western Hemisphere. Leeser did lead: his commitment to Jewish community was intertwined within and reflected through his publishing operations. To explain Leeser’s success, however, historians must look to the subscription publishing operation that he created and maintained, which enabled The Occident and Leeser’s other publications to succeed and be disseminated across a wide geographic space. Analysis of wrappers from The Occident provides a way in which to visualize this success. Leeser created a participatory network, which included agents, correspondents, and subscribers throughout Jewish communities of the Atlantic world and beyond who were actively engaged in reading, spreading, creating, and collecting news. He enabled communication among far-flung communities and allowed them to remain in close touch despite distance. Leeser’s agents acted as his surrogates, promoting subscriptions, collecting fees, and communicating more personally with subscribers. The correspondents wrote articles, contributing them to the paper for compensation, and the subscribers provided the financial means to keep the paper afloat and supplied the material at the heart of the periodical: news. He lived an influential and noteworthy life, made more remarkable by the structures he established to enhance a sense of Jewish community in Jewish outposts across the Atlantic world. Examining the wrappers of The Occident, with their lists of subscribers, agents, and advertisements offers us a new, decidedly transnational conception of the world of Jews in the Western Hemisphere during the middle of the nineteenth century. The Occident touched the lives of Jews throughout the Atlantic world and beyond, revealing the way in which Jewish communities lived in an interconnected world despite a diasporic geography.
Appendix to Chapter 10
List of agents for works by Rev. Isaac Leeser that were published prior to the publication of The Occident, and American Jewish Advocate. Agent names marked with an asterisk (*) indicate the person was later an agent for The Occident.
Instruction in the Mosaic Religion (1830)65
Moses Sarfaty*
Rev. Isaac B. Seixas*
J. B. Kursheedt
Jacob Mordecai
Editors of the Whig
Jacob I. Cohen
Eleazar Block
Nathan Hart
Dr. Jacob De La Motta
Moses Sarfaty*
Lewis Allen
J. L. Hackenburg
The Jews and the Mosaic Law (1834)66
Carey & Hart
J. L. Hackenburg
Rev. Isaac B. Seixas
Zalma Rehiné*
Jacob Mordecai
Dr. Jacob De La Motta
Nathan Hart
Jacob De La Motta Esq.*
Eleazar Block
Discourses, Argumentative and Devotional on the Subject of the Jewish Religion, Second Series, vol. 3 (1841)67
David Q. Henriques
Rev. Henry S. Samuel*
Rev. David Piza*
Aaron Wolff*
Rev. Moses N. Nathan*
Moses Sarfaty*
Moses M. Sollas*
S. Cohen
Jacob De La Motta Esq.*
Dr. Jacob De La Motta
S. N. Hart*
David Lopez
Isaac Lyons*
Phineas Moses
A. H. Cohen
Jacob Ezekiel*
Zalma Rehiné*
Mr. Judah
Eleazar Block
Rev. S. M. Isaacs*
M. H. Cardozo
Morland Micholl
Carey & Hart*
Advertisement (1842)68
Carey & Hart*
Levine & Tavel*
M. H. Cardozo
Z. Rehine*
Jacob Ezekiel*
Isaac Lyons*
Jacob De La Motta, Esq.*
Gershom Kursheedt*
Phineas Moses
M. M. Sollas*
M. Sarfaty*
Aaron Wolff*
Rev. David Piza*
David Q. Henriques
Henry S. Samuel*
I gratefully acknowledge the help and advice of Professor Beth S. Wenger, Professor Ryan Cordell, Professor Sarah Gordon, Dr. Arthur Kiron, Arnold Kaplan, Deanne Kaplan, Jim Green, Lynne Farrington, Cornelia King, Wesley Davis, Dahlia El Zein, and William Angus McLeod IV.