Overview

Many scholars have focused on contemporary sources pertaining to the Nazi persecution and mass murder of Jews between 1933 and 1945--citing dated documents, newspapers, diaries, and letters--but the sermons delivered by rabbis describing and protesting against the ever-growing oppression of European Jews have been largely neglected. Agony in the Pulpit is a response to this neglect, and to the accusations made by respected figures that Jewish leaders remained silent in the wake of catastrophe. The passages from sermons reproduced in this volume--delivered by 135 rabbis in fifteen countries, mainly from the United States and England--provide important evidence of how these rabbis communicated the ever-worsening news to their congregants, especially on important religious occasions when they had peak attendance and peak receptivity. A central theme is how the preachers related the contemporary horrors to ancient examples of persecution. Did they present what was occurring under Hitler as a reenactment of the murderous oppressions by Pharaoh, Amalek, Haman, Ahasuerus, the Crusaders, the Spanish Inquisition, the Russian Pogroms? When did they begin to recognize and articulate from their pulpits an awareness that current events were fundamentally unprecedented? Was the developing cataclysm consistent with traditional beliefs about God's control of what happened on earth? No other book-length study has presented such abundant evidence of rabbis in all streams of Jewish religious life seeking to rouse and inspire their congregants to full awareness of the catastrophic realities that were taking shape in the world beyond their synagogues.

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When [Marc Saperstein's most recent] book caught my eye on the new books shelf I put everything aside and just read, and read, and read. WOW, what a massive, systematic, and in-depth study, as always. The preface is powerful, the material is fascinating, and [the] notes, as usual, uncover layers that anyone who reads these sermons would surely overlook. Kimmy R. Caplan, Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry Bar-Ilan University

The High Holidays, 1943. In Chicago and Copenhagen, San Francisco and Nove Mesto, Detroit and Raanana, the Bronx and Brooklyn, rabbis prepared their sermons. They understood that during the previous two years three million European Jews had been murdered, and that millions more stood in imminent danger. What words of consolation, lamentation, or exhortation could they utter? Agony in the Pulpit provides answers. In an impressive feat of sleuthing, Marc Saperstein, a professor at Leo Baeck College, London, found and authenticated hundreds of sermons delivered by one hundred and thirty-six rabbis. Most lived in the U.S. or U.K., others in such outposts as Cape Town and Dublin. Some were even in the belly of the beast: Hamburg, Pin czow, or Lyon. In his introduction, Saperstein argues that the sermons offer important insights into how people understood events at the time. Nearly a thousand pages of excerpts and complete sermons (twenty-one) bear out that judgment. --Laurel Leff, Northeastern University, Oxford University Press Journals: Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 33, Issue 3, Winter 2019 When [Marc Saperstein's most recent] book caught my eye on the new books shelf I put everything aside and just read, and read, and read. WOW, what a massive, systematic, and in-depth study, as always. The preface is powerful, the material is fascinating, and [the] notes, as usual, uncover layers that anyone who reads these sermons would surely overlook. Kimmy R. Caplan, Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Bar-Ilan University

Author Information

Marc Saperstein is professor emeritus of Jewish history at George Washington University and professor of Jewish history and homiletics at Leo Baeck College, London.

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