February 1: The Slavery Debate

Rabbi Morris Raphall, leader of B’nai Jeshurun in New York, became the first Jewish clergyman to open a session of the U.S. House of Representatives with prayer on this date in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War. On January 4th of the following year, however, Raphall published an essay in the New York Herald that defended the institution of slavery from a Biblical perspective and became a cherished document of the slave states. “I grieve to find myself saying a good word for slavery, but God and the truth must prevail!” Raphall wrote. The piece earned a passionate response from Rabbi David Einhorn, an abolitionist rabbi in Baltimore, who tore Raphall’s treatise apart on Biblical, political, and moral grounds. As a result of his own sermon, Einhorn was chased from his pulpit by a pro-slavery mob; he spent the rest of his life in Philadelphia and New York. (For more on Einhorn, see Jewdayo for April 23, 2010.)

“Dr. Raphall . . . a descendant of the race that offers daily praises to God for deliverance out of the house of bondage in Egypt, and even today suffers under the yoke of slavery in most places of the old world, crying out to God, undertook to designate slavery as a perfectly sinless institution, sanctioned by God.” —Rabbi David Einhorn