Introduction: Modern Jewish Preaching

Summary

IT IS UNREALISTIC to attempt in this introduction to survey all of Jewish preaching in the modern period. From the middle of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, there is such a multitude of diverse material that some selectivity is necessary. Limits of space and expertise compel me to exclude in the present context all but passing references to some of the great Jewish preaching traditions of the modern period. These include such celebrated German preachers as Leopold Zunz, Michael Sachs (considered by Steinschneider to be perhaps the most famous preacher of his time), and Nehemias Nobel (the favourite rabbi of the philosopher Franz Rosenzweig), and Austrians including Isaac Mannheimer, Adolf Jellinek, and Moritz Güdemann. The impressive tradition in France is represented in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by such noted preachers as Zadoc Kahn and Jacques-Henri Dreyfuss, each of whom published many volumes of sermons and eulogies. In eastern Europe, the hasidic movement developed its own tradition of homiletical discourse, sermons delivered by the rebbe in Yiddish but usually preserved in Hebrew texts. Non-hasidic preaching in eastern Europe had great exemplars of its own, including the patriotic Polish preachers Izaak Kramsztyk and Marcus Jastrow during the period around the uprising of 1863, Isaac Nissenbaum of Warsaw during the First World War, and Kalonymos Kalman Shapira during the Second. Some of the most celebrated preachers of eastern Europe migrated to Britain or the United States, and delivered their messages in Yiddish under very different circumstances in these countries. Others went to Israel, generating an enthusiastic following in the ultra-Orthodox communities. And throughout this period, rabbis in Middle Eastern countries with Jewish communities— Morocco, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq—preached to their people in Arabic. Though reference will be made to some of these, I will focus here on preaching in Britain and the United States by representatives of the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform movements (but not by the ultra-Orthodox, whose Yiddish and—in Israel—Hebrew preaching is a very different tradition).

CHANGES IN THE MODERN SERMON

From Exegesis to Exposition

Perhaps the greatest transformation in the sermon of the modern period is that the exegetical dimension lost its centrality, often becoming peripheral or disappearing entirely.