Twenty Festival Sermons (1897-1902): Festpredigten

The Festpredigten – festival sermons – were originally published in German in Frankfurt am Main in 1903. A window into the past, they offer a fascinating glimpse of German Jewry at the turn of the century. The author, Isaac Rosenberg, received his semichah at the Rabbiner-Seminar (Hildesheimer) in Berlin in 1888, and graced the synagogue pulpit in the eastern German city of Thorn for twenty-fififive years. He belonged to anew class of rabbis known as “Rabbiner Doktor” – with Ph.D.s as well as ra…