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Even if Rabbi Abba
Hillel Silver had not led The Temple for 46 years, or led the fight
for public and government support for the
establishment of the State of Israel, or been a civic activist, his writings would place him as Cleveland's
most published and best known Jewish
author. If time permits reading only one book by Abba Hillel
Silver, my suggestion is "Where Judaism Differs".
Arnold Berger |
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BOOKS |
A History of
Messianic Speculation in Israel:
From the First Through the Seventeenth Centuries (1927)
The nucleus of this book is Silver's doctorate
thesis at Hebrew Union College. It begins before the birth of Jesus
and continues through the Shabbatai Zevi movement in the 17th
century.
The cover shown is that of the 1978 republished
edition. |
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The Democratic
Impulse and Jewish History (1928)
Two short essays on Israel's mission, a total
of only 43 pages, published in 1928.
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Where Judaism
Differs (1956)
An Inquiry Into the Distinctiveness of Judaism
This book's origin may have been in a series of six Sunday morning
lectures Rabbi Silver gave starting in February 1952 titled Where Judaism Differs. His publishers at
Macmillan insisted that the title be in the past tense: Where Judaism Differed.
A later edition, with a foreword by
his son Rabbi Daniel Jeremy Silver and a preface by Emil Fackenheim,
a German-born Jewish philosopher and Reform rabbi, was titled Where Judaism
Differs. The books are otherwise identical.
Reviewers have noted
that the book is careful not to assert superiority or uniqueness. |
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MOSES and the
Original Torah: the real character of Moses and the
essential message of the Torah (1961)
Young Abe Silver was in a
pageant produced by the Herzl Zion Club he helped found. He played
Moses. Moses was also the subject of this, his last book.
Searches found no mention of this book in
Cleveland's Jewish weeklies, and no review in the Plain Dealer.
Fortunately the online archive JSTOR has an eight page review
published in the Fall of 1963 by another rabbi-scholar, David S.
Shapiro, of Milwaukee's Orthodox Anshe Sfard, in Tradition: A
Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought. We show the first page below. |
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Read
the entire review online (JSTOR registration required)
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COLLECTIONS OF SERMONS AND ESSAYS |
Religion in a
Changing World
Richard R. Smith, Inc. 204
pages. (1931)
A collection of ten essays by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver:
- The Role of Religion in a Changing
World
- Science and Religion
- The Church and Social Justice
- The Widening Horizons of Social Service
- The Church and World Peace
- The One and the Many
- Liberalism at the Crossroads
- What is Happening to the American Home
- Education and the Good Life
- How Shall We Measure Life?
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The World
Crisis and Jewish Survival
- A Group of Essays
Richard R Smith NY (1941)
- The World Crisis and Jewish Survival
- The Rediscovery of Judaism
- Israel
- In the Midst of Many Peoples
- The Prophet and His People
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Vision and
Victory (1949)
A Collection of Addresses by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver 1942 - 1948
Published by the Zionist Organization of America
This 232 page book is a celebration of the
establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Here are the credits
- Speeches are by
Abba Hillel Silver.
- Foreword by Dr. Emanuel Neumann
- Historical notes by
Harold P. Manson
- Assistance by Sulamith Schwartz
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| The book's collaborators ...
were
connected by their Zionism and friendship with Abba Hillel Silver
(1893 - 1963).
- Dr. Emanuel Neumann
(1893–1980) grew up with Abba Hillel Silver in New York's Lower East Side.
Their adult lives were devoted
to the Zionist cause, Silver as a rabbi, Neumann as an
attorney and organizational leader. His last service to his
friend was to speak at his funeral. (See
our page.) (Read my
recollections.)
- Harold P Manson
(1918-1984), who wrote the historical notes that are an
important part of Vision and Victory, was director
of information for the American Zionist Emergency
Council from 1944 to 1948. He married Emanuel
Neumann's daughter Natanya in 1957.
- Sulamith Schwartz
(1908-2002), who assisted, was a
granddaughter of Rev. Tzvi Hirsch Masliansky (1856-1943),
our
nation's greatest Yiddish preacher and an early Zionist
leader. Our Masliansky pages
describe how he was Silver's boyhood mentor and oratorical inspiration.
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Volume I • Therefore
Choose Life
Selected Sermons, Addresses and Writings of Abba Hillel Silver,
edited by Herbert Weiner (1967)
- Memoir by Rabbi Solomon Freehof
- The Vision
- The Way
- The People
- The Rabbi
Volume 2 • A Word In Its Season
Selected Sermons, Addresses and Writings of Abba Hillel Silver,
edited by Herbert Weiner (1972)
- The Cycle of Faith
- The Cycle of Life
- The Cycle of History
- The Cycle of Memory
Organized and published in the nine years
following his death in November 1963, these two volumes are the
largest collection of Rabbi Silver's sermons, speeches and writings.
The Temple - Tifereth Israel in Beachwood
Ohio has a collection of his sermons. |
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