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JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF, born in Ostrowo, Prussia, in 1858, emigrated to America as a teenager. A member of the first class of the newly established Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, he was ordained in 1883. After four years in Kansas City, Missouri, he assumed responsibilities as rabbi of Keneseth Israel Congregation in Philadelphia in October 1887. He immediately established the practice of a regular Sunday morning service with a major address; the sermon reproduced below indicates that 1 May 1898 marked the conclusion of the eleventh year of these services. The Sunday morning discourses addressed a variety of subjects, including but not limited to specifically Jewish concerns. Indeed, in many of them the use of Jewish source material was extremely limited. The texts of these addresses were printed in pamphlet form and distributed to those who attended the following Sunday.
Krauskopf was known as a spellbinding orator. Israel Levinthal, son of a Philadelphia Orthodox rabbi and himself one of the most distinguished preachers in the Conservative movement, described how, as a young reporter in 1904 on Jewish matters for Philadelphia's North American, he was impressed by Krauskopf 's sermons:
He was a gifted orator who would discuss timely themes with eloquence, and he attracted overflowing congregations every Sunday … Dr. Krauskopf used a flowery language and a most effective delivery. The Temple had a wide pulpit, almost like a stage, and Dr. Krauskopf would walk from one end to the other, pouring forth his thoughts. The strange thing about his speaking is that he memorized every Sunday lecture. At the Saturday morning service, when he delivered a brief sermon, he spoke extemporaneously; but the Sunday sermon was memorized … [Often I would marvel] at the remarkable gift that was his to memorize the sermon and yet be able to deliver it in so eloquent and effective a fashion that no one suspected that the flow of his speech was not spontaneous. I was a devout admirer of his oratory, and I would observe most attentively every nuance of his voice, his every gesture, every expression on his face.
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