ABSTRACT
Drawing on the life and work of Samuel Adler (1809–1891), this chapter explores the entanglements of German-Jewish and American-Jewish education in the nineteenth century. Immigrant rabbis like Adler served the needs of a fast-growing American Judaism, that significantly expanded between ca. 1820 and 1880 through the immigration of mostly German-speaking Jews from Central Europe. German-Jewish rabbis but also educators became central to the formation American Judaism, adapting their expertise and experience to the specific challenges of American-Jewish life. This chapter argues that immigrant rabbis and educators like Samuel Adler did not just engage in a simple or straightforward cultural transfer, but were rather involved in a complex process of cultural translation. They drew on local traditions and practices, Jewish and non-Jewish, as well as on traditional notions and “modern” ideas and practices of Jewish education that emerged in Central Europe in the context of enlightenment, emancipation, and acculturation.
