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Temple Emanu-El, (James Koppel Gutheim) [Felix Adler] : HYMNS FOR DIVINE SERVICE IN THE TEMPLE EMANU-EL

New York : Temple Emanu-el ; M. Thalmessinger, 1871

8vo; 1st Edition. Modern Cloth, all edges gilt. 12mo. 71 pages ; 18 cm. Contains what are almost certainly the first published works of Felix Adler (at 20 years old), founder of the Ethical Culture Movement. James Koppel Gutheim (1817-1886) was the rabbi of Congregation Shangarai Chasset of New Orleans. He was an influential figure in New Orleans, and served as president of the New Orleans Board of Education. “In 1863… he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Union after New Orleans was recaptured. He fled New Orleans, and served as rabbi to Jewish congregations in Montgomery, Alabama, and Columbus, Georgia. Gutheim returned to New Orleans after the Civil War, to serve as Shangarai Chasset's rabbi, but left to serve in New York’s Temple Emanuel in 1868. In 1872 he once again returned to New Orleans to become minister of the New Orleans Temple Sinai, where he preached until his death.” (Wikipedia, 2016) This hymnal was compiled while Gutheim served at Temple Emanu-el in New York, where Felix Adler’s father, Samuel Adler, had been the Head Rabbi since 1857. At the time, Emanu-El “was the leading Reform congregation in the US.” (Wikipedia, 2016) Most of the 37 hymnals are by Gutheim, but 6 (including 4 original compositions) are by Felix Adler, Samuel Adler’s son. Felix Adler (1851-1933) would later found the Ethical Culture movement. While training to become a Rabbi in Heidelberg from 1871-1873 he was strongly influenced by neo-Katianism notions that one cannot prove or disprove the existence of a deity or immortality, and that morality can be established independently of theology. Giving up his Rabbinic studies, Adler founded the Ethical Culture Society in 1877 and the Workingman’s School (a free elementary school, which would become the Ethical Culture School) in 1878. The four original hymns, written before Adler rejected the notion of a Jewish God, are religious. They also show Adler’s esteem for Education. In “School Hymn,” he writes, “But what flower is so fragrant, so sweet and so fair/As the flower of truth blooming here—.” OCLC lists 9 copies worldwide. SUBJECT(S): Jewish hymns. Very good+ condition. (AMR-47-15-D)

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