A commentary on the first Book of Samuel, with particular reference to Saul the first King of Israel by R. Dr. Adolph Moses, 1840-1902. He was born in Poland. Both his father and his grandfather were scholars and he was trained in his youth in the traditions of our faith. He later studied in Breslau, first at the University and later at the first seminary of Reform Judaism where he was ordained while still a relatively young man. He was a soldier, and an ardent patriot for the cause of Liberty. He fought in Italy with Garibaldi and then for Polish independence against the Czar. And after two wars and three universities he accepted an invitation to come to America as a rabbi for the community of Montgomery, Alabama. In 1870, he was called to Mobile where he served for nearly 10 years. Here he met and married a Miss Emma Isaacs. In 1881, he came to Louisville where he established a great reputation as a scholar and a speaker and a community leader who was loved by all.

In the course of twenty years of service, R. Dr. Adolf Moses established his congregation as a leading force in the young Reform movement and a ground breaking influence toward the close interfaith ties which have been the hallmark of the congregation and community ever since. He counted among his closest friends the president of Southern Baptist Seminary, Dr. Broaddus, the president of Presbyterian Seminary, Dr. Hemphill, the Catholic Bishop of Louisville, the Episcopal Bishop, the pastor of the Unitarian Church, the Monsignor of the Cathedral of the Assumption, and the minister of Warren Memorial Presbyterian Church.

He preached from all of their pulpits. And each of them preached from the Temple's. And in an Interfaith service held more than a century ago he spoke such words of universal friendship and faith as would be the envy of any gathering which we might hope to inspire yet today. It was a service of music and of faith attended by Jews and Christians alike, and in it he spoke these words: "Music and song are the universal language of religion. All hearts understand it, all souls are thrilled by it... In music and song, the din and confusion of creeds cease at once. All souls are of one faith. For this language is free from the limitations of thought, from the tyranny of logical categories, from all the fetters of common speech. Music does not deal with particulars. It hovers, an uncaught bird, in the pure divine air of the universal, the spiritual. Music is the spirit of harmony which moves as the principle of unity above the parts, giving them meaning and beauty. God is the living harmony of the universe, the creative Unity of nature and humanity. By the magic of musical harmony the soul is able to reveal her faith and ecstatic joy in the all-pervading Harmony divine we adore and love as God. In the music of Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn this divine mystery sounds its clearest notes of love and redemption, and sails up in the thousand responses of the yearning heart. From of old all true prayer has been a song, accompanied by the sounds of musical instruments. It is in the immortal songs called the Psalms that Faith sounded all the heights and depths of the soul's relation to the world-soul. It is the swelling song of the congregation, rising and falling with the hymnal notes, that all hearts feel their nearness to God, and experience the beatitude of spirits blending in adoration with the Universal spirit."