Before arriving in America, Raphall was a prominent figure in British Jewry and was one of its chief exponents to the Christian world, fighting for the political rights of Jews and against defamations of Judaism. In 1849 Raphall went to the U.S. to serve as rabbi of B'nai Jeshurun Synagogue in New York. There he associated himself with Isaac Leeser and S. M. Isaacs and preached against Reform. He was New York’s leading Orthodox clergyman.

Raphall states in the introduction that “Experience has taught me that discussions on dogmas so abstract, and altogether unpractical as the resurrection, are not likely to interest the public. At the same time I was struck by the fact, that those Jews, whose reading is limited to English, possess no work, elementary or otherwise, in which the important and practical doctrines of repentance and of a future state as held by the house of Israel, are placed within their reach. As I had to write on the subject of the resurrection, I determined to say something likewise respecting these other equally important and more practical doctrines; and this led me to publish the present little essay.”

The present copy was part of Isaac Leeser’s library. “The library, consisting of some 2,400 volumes of Judaica and Hebraica, was probably the richest private and institutional library of its time. It is a collection steeped in historical associations.” (S. I. Wisemon, “The Library of the Dropsie College,” JBA 24 (1996-7) p. 46).