JUDAISM IN AMERICA, FROM THE STANDPOINT OF A LAYMAN
New Orleans: Simmons & Loomis, 1894. Item #42368
1st edition. Original Illustrated Paper Wrappers, bound into period boards, 8vo, 20 pages. Includes illustrations; 24 cm. Singerman 4719.
Mayer Sulzberger's copy with his bookplate.
“By Leo N. Levi, esqr. of Galveston, Texas.”
Leo Napoleon Levi (1856-1904) was born in Victoria County, Texas, to Abraham Levi, “one of the oldest and most prominent citizens of Victoria, Texas, and the senior member of the extensive, and popular banking house, and wholesale grocery business of A. Levi & Co.” (Rose, “Some Historical Facts in Regard to the Settlement of Victoria, Texas: Its Progress and Present Status,” 1883). At age sixteen Leo “enrolled at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he received the medal for being the best university debater and at age twenty received his law degree….He settled in Galveston and became associated with the law firm Flournoy and Scott in 1876; later he became a partner in Scott, Levi, and Smith….
Levi was a well-known orator, and officials at the University of Texas invited him to give the commencement address in June 1899. The Independent Order of B'nai B'rith published this speech and others by Levi in a book in 1905. In 1887 Levi was elected president of Temple B'nai Israel, and the next year he brought Rabbi Henry Cohen to Texas. Levi retained the presidency for twelve years.
In Galveston he joined the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, a Jewish fraternal organization, and was elected president of District Seven, which comprised seven Southern states. In 1900 Levi was elected national president of the IOBB. That same year he moved to New York City to pursue his work with B'nai B'rith.
As president of B'nai B'rith, Levi penned a petition on July 4, 1903, to Czar Nicholas II, after the massacre at Kishinev, that demanded Russians stop abusing Jews. Secretary of State John Hay signed the Kishinev petition, and President Theodore Roosevelt endorsed it....He was one of the first Texas-born Jews to receive national recognition” (Texas State Historical Association).
“In 1887 Levi addressed an ‘open letter’ to the American rabbinate, under the title ‘Tell Us: What Is Judaism?’ The replies being unsatisfactory, he answered his own interrogation in the pamphlet ‘Judaism in America’” [this publication] (JE). For more on Levi, see "Report of the Executive Committee of the I. O. B. B. for 1902-3"; Isidor Singer, "Russia at the Bar of the American People," 1904, ch. iii.; Cyrus Adler, "The Voice of America on Kishineff," 1904).
The previous owner, Mayer Sulzberger “was closely associated with Isaac Leeser, and assisted that scholar in editing The Occident, contributing to it a partial translation of Maimonides' 'Moreh Nebukim.' After Leeser's death Sulzberger edited vol. xxvi. of The Occident. He was one of the founders of the Young Men's Hebrew Association, which he served as president; and he has taken great interest in the Jewish Hospital of Philadelphia, of which he has been vice-president since 1880.
He was from the beginning (in 1888) chairman of the publication committee of the Jewish Publication Society of America; was one of the original trustees of the Baron de Hirsch fund; and interested himself in the establishment of agricultural colonies at Woodbine, N. J., and in Connecticut. Sulzberger had one of the best private libraries in America; it contained a very large number of Hebraica and Judaica” (WIkipedia).
SUBJECT(S): Jews -- United States. OCLC: 21283109. OCLC locates 6 copies worldwide in addition to this copy (AJHS, JTS, LSU, Penn, UT-Austin, Virginia Historical). Ex-library with marks to blank endpapers and faint blindstamp on title page. Spine rebacked, internally very clean, Very Good Condition thus. (B) (AMR-57-19-D-'kklex).
Price: $1,750.00