His successor as rabbi of the Elm street congregation was Rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall (b. in Stockholm, Sweden, 1798; d. in New York, 1868), who was, like Isaacs, also the son of a banker. Raphall was a linguist and a good rabbinical scholar, and while in England he delivered lectures on Hebrew poetry, and also began there the publication of the “Hebrew Review and Magazine of Rabbinical Literature,” which was discontinued in 1836. For some time he acted as secretary to Solomon Herschell (1762–1842); he also made translations from Maimonides, Albo and Wessely; he participated in the translation of part of the Mishna, and began a translation of the ♦Pentateuch, of which one volume appeared. After being for eight years minister of the Birmingham Synagogue, he sailed for New York in 1849, and remained with the Bene Yeshurun until shortly before his death. Raphall was the only prominent Northern rabbi who defended the institution of slavery in the pulpit, as well as in one of his works, entitled “Bible View of Slavery.”
Rev. Jacques Judah Lyons (b. in Surinam, 1814; d. in New York, 1877), who was a rabbi in his native city for several years, came to the United States in 1837, went to Richmond, Va., where he was minister of the Congregation Bene Shalom for two years, came to New York in 1839, and became rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, which had removed from Mill street to Crosby street in 1834. He held the position thirty-eight years, “successfully combating every movement to change the form of worship in his congregation.”
Illustration: Rabbi Sabato Morais. Photo by Gutekunst, Phila.
Leeser’s successor in the pulpit of Mickweh Israel in Philadelphia was also a prominent conservative, Sabato Morais (b. in Leghorn, Italy, 1823; d. in Philadelphia, 1897). After having spent five years in London as the master of a Jewish Orphans’ School, he arrived in Philadelphia in 1851, and “until his death his influence was a continually growing power for conservative Judaism.... Though his ministry covered the period of greatest activity in the adaptation of Judaism in America to changed conditions, he, as the advocate of Orthodox Judaism withstood every appeal in behalf of ritualistic innovations and departures from traditional practice,” proving thereby how much the personality of the rabbi counts in this country in deciding the religious attitude of his congregation. When Maimonides College was established in Philadelphia, in 1867, Morais was made professor of the Bible and Biblical literature; and he held the chair during the six years that the college existed. He was the founder and the first president of the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary, which was established in New York in 1886, which position, as well as that of Professor of Bible, he held until his death. Henry Samuel Morais (b. in Philadelphia, 1860), the writer on Jewish historical subjects and the first editor of the Philadelphia “Jewish Exponent” (established 1887), is a son of Sabato Morais.