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Bidding Information
Lot #    19634
Auction End Date    1/8/2008 11:34:00 AM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Fest=Reden
Title (Hebrew)    î÷øàé ÷ãù
Author    [Only Ed.] R. Solomon Plessner
City    Berlin
Publisher    E. Eichler
Publication Date    1841
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description		    Only edition. xxvi, 421, [1] pp., 205:120 mm., wide margins, light age and damp staining. A very good copy bound in contemporary wrappers.
          
Detailed
Description		    Speeches in German by R. Solomon Plessner. The title page states that these speeches (homilies) are from R. Plessner, teacher of religion (Religionslehrer) in Berlin. There is a forward from R. Plessner and then the text, which is in German (fraktur in a single column). Homilies begins with biblical quotes in Hebrew, repeated in German, and then the discourse, of which there are eighteen. The volume concludes with a table of contents. R. Solomon Plessner (1797-83) was a preacher and Bible commentator. Having lost his father when very young, R. Plessner had to support his mother and himself. He engaged in business, but found time to study Hebrew, rabbinics, and German, under Wessely's influence. At the age of seventeen R. Plessner began to study Wessely’s Hebrew translation of the Apocrypha, resolving to continue the translation himself. He indeed published at Breslau in 1819 his Hebrew translation of the Apocryphal additions to the Book of Esther, under the title Hosafah li-Megillat Ester, with a literary-historical introduction. At the same time he became known as an eloquent preacher. Many of his sermons were published, among them his funeral oration on the death of Abraham Tiktin, bearing the Hebrew title Zeker Zaddik li-Berakah (Breslau, 1821). R. Plessner through his sermons was recognized as a warm defender of Orthodox Judaism, and on this account was congratulated by R. Akiba Eger of Posen. Soon the conflict arose between the Orthodox and Reform Jews concerning the introduction of the organ into the synagogal services. R. Plessner naturally fought against the Reform leaders; and as they were the more powerful and began to persecute him, forbidding him through the police to deliver any sermon, he in 1823 settled at Festenberg, a small town in Silesia. In 1825, the government of the province of Posen having issued a decree forbidding Talmudic instruction in schools, R. Plessner, at R. Eger’s request, summed up all the observations and opinions of Christian scholars, beginning with Jerome, on the Talmud. This document, published the same year at Breslau under the title Ein Wort zu Seiner Zeit oder die Autorität der Jüdischen Traditionslehre, with a part of it in Hebrew entitled Edut le-Yisrael, was in 1826 presented to the Posen government. Accompanied with a petition signed by the presidents of several communities, it proved efficacious; and the anti-Talmudic decree was revoked. In 1830 R. Plessner removed to Berlin, where for a short time he was a teacher in the normal school. Although possessing all the knowledge necessary for an Orthodox rabbi, he persistently declined rabbinical office, preferring freedom of speech. He earned a livelihood by preaching every other Saturday in the Berlin bet ha-midrash, continuing at the same time his study of the Apocrypha. In 1832 his Nozelim Min Lebanon was published in Berlin. This work consisted of a Hebrew translation of a part of the Apocrypha, with an appendix, entitled Duda'im, containing exegetical notes, verses in Hebrew and German, and sermons. The following year he was invited to dedicate the new synagogue at Bromberg, for which occasion he composed poems in Hebrew and in German, which were published under the title Shirim la-Hanukkat Bet ha-Tefillah (Berlin, 1834). In his sermons R. Plessner adopted the expressions of the most eminent Christian preachers, interspersing his sentences with verses of Schiller and Goethe, and rejecting the derashic or homiletic interpretation of the Bible. In 1834 he began to publish his sermons in yearly volumes under the general title Belehrungen und Erbauungen (2d ed. Berlin, 1840, under the title Religiöse Vorträge). In 1838 R. Plessner published his "Dat Mosheh wi-Yehudit," a catechism in twelve parts, preceded by an introduction, on the nature and history of Jewish religious instruction. His oratorical talent is particularly exhibited in his Mikra’e Kodesh (Berlin, 1841), a collection of holy-day sermons for the years 1835 to 1839.

A powerful party of antagonists worrying R. Plessner beyond endurance on account of his outspokenness, he left Berlin and settled at Posen (1843), where he was active as a preacher for forty years. In Posen R. Plessner preached chiefly at the Neuschul. During his residence in that city he published the following works: "Shay la-Mora" (Posen, 1846), poem in honor of Moses Montefiore; "Shire Zimrah" (Berlin, 1859), poems composed on the occasion of the completion of the publication of the Talmud by the Talmud society Hebrat Shas; Shire Zimrah (ib. 1865), Hebrew poems composed for the celebration of the one hundred find fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the society of mohelim. After R. Plessner’s death two collections of his sermons were published at Frankfort-on-the-Main: Sabbathpredigten (1884) and Festpredigten (1890).
          
Reference
Description		    Fürst, Bibl. Jud. iii. 107; H. Hirschfeld, in Elias Plessner, Biblisches und Rabbinisches aus Solomon Plessners Nachlasse; JE; Zeitlin, Bibl. Post-Mendels. p. 271.
        
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Listing Classification
Period
19th Century:    Checked
  
Location
Germany:    Checked
  
Subject
Homiletics:    Checked
  
Characteristic
First Editions:    Checked
Language:    German
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica