Stories of the Prophets

Stories of the Prophets is a work by Isaac Landman, the American Reform Jewish rabbi and editor who lived from 1880 to 1946 and who was substantially involved in American Reform Jewish religious education and publishing across the first half of the twentieth century. Landman edited various American Jewish publications and produced substantial educational material for American Reform Jewish religious schools across his long career.

Landman’s most substantial editorial achievement was his role as editor in chief of the substantial Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, the substantial ten volume American Jewish reference work published between 1939 and 1943 that became one of the substantial standard American Jewish reference works for substantial subsequent decades. The encyclopedia provided substantial coverage of Jewish history, religion, literature, culture, and biography for the substantial American Jewish and broader educated audience and represented one of the substantial American Jewish scholarly achievements of the period.

Stories of the Prophets belongs to Landman’s substantial educational writing for American Reform Jewish religious schools. The substantial American Jewish religious education tradition had developed substantial curricular materials across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that drew on the substantial Hebrew Bible material and presented it in accessible form for substantial Jewish children attending the substantial American Sunday school and afternoon Hebrew school programs that the substantial American Jewish communities maintained.

The prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible was one of the substantial central subjects of Reform Jewish religious education. The substantial moral and ethical content of the prophetic books, particularly the substantial social justice material in the writings of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, and Jeremiah, was substantially central to the broader Reform Jewish theological tradition that emphasised the substantial ethical and prophetic dimensions of Judaism alongside or in some cases instead of the substantial ritual and ceremonial material that the more traditional Jewish denominations emphasised more heavily.

Landman’s Stories of the Prophets would present the substantial prophetic narrative material in accessible form for the substantial American Jewish children who were the primary audience. The book typically combines substantial biblical historical narrative with substantial attention to the moral and ethical lessons that the substantial American Reform Jewish religious education tradition wanted to convey to its substantial young students.

The book is of interest now to historians of American Reform Jewish religious education and of the substantial broader American Jewish educational literature tradition. It pairs naturally with Landman’s other substantial educational and editorial work.