Leeser begins with something of a feint: offering an extremely weak defense of the existence of Jewish prayer outside of the Psalms and the Siddur. He acknowledges the difficulty of writing prayers and wishes for “a manual of devotion” to “aid us to fashion our thoughts into prayer.” And yet, Leeser doesn’t hold a high opinion of the “occasional prayers” collected outside of the Siddur, for “there are but few public occasions when we need anything beyond [the prayer book’s] contents.” He is critical of the “ancient” teḥinot in Yiddish for their antiquated ideas in a “barbarous jargon” (a reference to the tkhines literature as found in the Seder Teḥinot). And he does not restrain his criticism of the new petitionary prayers in the languages of newly emancipated European Jews — “for the simple reason that the authors could not think for the people” (possibly an off-hand reference to Imrei Lev, an anthology of teḥinot and paraliturgical prayer in French, authored and compiled by Jonas Ennery and Rabbi Arnauld Aron in 1848).

But it would be a mistake to read Leeser’s criticisms as an opposition to prayer literature or to women’s prayer literature. What he seems to truly want are prayers that speak, in English, for those who, despite their distance from Hebrew, still wish for a devotional practice; in Leeser’s words: “to commune with their heavenly Father in meekness of spirit.” It’s important to note that for Leeser, prayers made public had a purpose — and that purpose was not to be confused with self-expression. “We would only caution all who make the attempt to take heed how they mix their own private thoughts in their outpourings; for, however blissful in its effects a prayer for the moment may be to the individual, it cannot make a good impression on another, who may never be placed in similar circumstances.” What distinguishes tkhines from so many liturgical prayers is the voice of the first-person, singular — an unapologetic “I voice.” As a patron of this literature as the editor of the Occident, Leeser was in a powerful position to indicate for an audience and a generation of aspiring Jewish women liturgists, what was an acceptable I-voice and what was merely self-indulgence.

The legacy of this patronage is complicated and a cautious lesson to those taking a benevolent but active interest in the creative work of others, especially where there is a power dynamic in play.^[2] Or exactly as it was between domineering men and enterprising women in the 19th century up until and including the present day.  Just over a decade later, in 1863, Leeser published his own “correction” to Hester Rothschild’s Meditations & Prayers (1855), her English translation of the French Imrei Lev by Ennery & Aron. Rothschild’s translation had the approval of Nathan Marcus Adler, chief rabbi of the Jews of the British Empire, and Rothschild herself considered Leeser’s attention as unwanted (at best) and in so many words, a work of piracy in the days when printers in the United States regularly transgressed the copyright of authors in other countries. –Aharon Varady