It was inspired of Professor Saperstein to collect and examine the sermons and notes given in response to Nazi persecution from 1933-1945. These primary sources give us an understanding of the time and the experience through the eyes of contemporaneous rabbis — and what an understanding it is.

In the early part of the 20th century, the sermon was a major event in the life of the community. It would be the highlight for many, often lasting 20 minutes or more, and on the evidence of this book the rabbis used them well. The 135 rabbis quoted here dispel the idea that people did not know or speak out about what was happening: they did. The rabbis inform and protest, frame the information and provide some spiritual lens, if not much consolation. The questions of God are perhaps the most painful, the birth pangs of a homeland; the pathos of the suffering bleak and clear. Reading this book can bring one to tears as the realisation dawns slowly that Jew-hatred is not only on the rise but is the driver for expulsion and extermination. 

Israel Mattuck in 1933 proclaimed, “The German Jews refuse to accept as final their exclusion from German life… Their dignity and courage in the face of such violence will be one of the proud pages in Jewish history.” Abba Hillel Silver wrote in 1937, “The Jew is being pushed back into… the Middle Ages… we insist that the Jews who have lived in their countries for a thousand years have every right to remain where they were born.” Saperstein’s own father wrote in 1940, “Other people at least can die in their homes and mingle the lifeblood… in the soil of the land that they have loved. But the Jews of Europe today… have no homes.” 

As time goes on, the horrors of churban are revealed. Joseph Hertz notes in 1943 that not only are the people destroyed, but every school of Jewish learning is gone too, exhorting the English and Americans to rebuild Jewish life and scholarship. 

Saperstein notes the fundamental difference between written text and the spoken sermon: delivery and emphasis are missing. But the voices shine through; the biblical scholarship and political realities are there for us to see. We meet Haman and Ahasuerus, Pharaoh, Amalek, Elijah and Crusaders in these texts, and we see that none are enough to cope with current experience.

For me the most powerful sermon was Jacob Rudin in 1933 on dealing with fascism. “For a long time we counselled prudence. We said Hitler would never come to power. Then when he came to power we said responsibility would sober him and teach him moderation. How foolish were our hopes… Fury has been unleashed. Death, destruction and despair.” This is a book for our times, too.