Bidspirit auction | (AMERICAN-JUDAICA). CARTE DE VISITE PHOTOGRAPH

(AMERICAN-JUDAICA). CARTE DE VISITE PHOTOGRAPH of Rabbi David Einhorn. (Baltimore), 1860’s.     Rabbi David Einhorn (1809-79), was the leading figure of Reform Judaism in the United States.     Einhorn was born in Bavaria to a traditional Jewish family, and studied for seven years at the last remaining great yeshiva in Germany in Fuerth, where he received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Wolf Hamburger (1770-1850). Following this he studied at university, where he became inclined towards the Reformist viewpoint advocated by Abraham Geiger and his school.     When Einhorn emigrated to the United States in 1855, he became the rabbi of Baltimore’s Temple Har Sinai and acquired a reputation as a more far-reaching reformist than the other great American exponent of Reform Judaism, Isaac Mayer Wise.     Einhorn established the German-language periodical Sinai, which he devoted to Reform thinking, but also to espouse the Abolitionist viewpoint that was dear to him. In 1861 Einhorn delivered a sermon that was a focused rabbinic response to Rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall’s controversial proclamation that Judaism supported slavery.     Eventually Einhorn relocated to New York, where he became rabbi of a new congregation Adas Jeshurun, which later merged with Ansche Chesed and was renamed Congregation Beth-El, the flagship of Reform Judaism in New York City. See also www.shapell.org/manuscript/abolitionist-crusader-rabbi-david-einhorn/