This is a new release of the original 1926 edition.

Additional Editors Include Jacob R. Marcus, A. L. Sachar And Others. Contributing Authors Include Hugo Bieber, A. W. Binder, Boaz Cohen And Others.

1926. This volume is a purposive reworking of the Bible for the Jewish child; for the Bible has a special significance for the Jewish child. Not only because it was written by the Jews, but that the Bible has always been for the Jew more than an ancient literature of a half forgotten age. It is more than the mere beginning of Jewish literature. It has been the center of all Jewish self-expression.

1926. This volume is a purposive reworking of the Bible for the Jewish child; for the Bible has a special significance for the Jewish child. Not only because it was written by the Jews, but that the Bible has always been for the Jew more than an ancient literature of a half forgotten age. It is more than the mere beginning of Jewish literature. It has been the center of all Jewish self-expression.

1926. This volume is a purposive reworking of the Bible for the Jewish child; for the Bible has a special significance for the Jewish child. Not only because it was written by the Jews, but that the Bible has always been for the Jew more than an ancient literature of a half forgotten age. It is more than the mere beginning of Jewish literature. It has been the center of all Jewish self-expression.

This fiftieth anniversary edition of W. Gunther Plaut’s classic volume on the beginnings of the Jewish Reform Movement is updated with a new introduction by Howard A. Berman. The Rise of Reform Judaism covers the first one hundred years of the movement, from the time of the eighteenth-century Jewish Enlightenment leader Moses Mendelssohn to the conclusion of the Augsburg synod in 1871. In these pages the founders who established liberal Judaism speak for themselves through their journals and pamphlets, books and sermons, petitions and resolutions, and public arguments and disputations. Each selection includes Plaut’s brief introduction and sketch of the reformer. Important topics within Judaism are addressed in these writings: philosophy and theology, religious practice, synagogue services, and personal life, as well as controversies on the permissibility of organ music, the introduction of the sermon, the nature of circumcision, the observance of the Sabbath, the rights of women, and the authenticity of the Bible.