Leeser’s Jewish Bible (1853) is a Jewish Bible (Old Testament) made for Jews in the United States in the 1800s.
The Twenty-four Books of the Holy Scriptures: Carefully Translated According to the Massoretic Text, On the Basis of the English Version, After the Best Jewish Authorities; and supplied with short explanatory notes. By Isaac Leeser. Philadelphia, 1853.
The Jewish Encyclopedia article on Leeser emphasizes his importance in the history of nineteenth-century American Judaism:
When Leeser commenced his public career the scattered Jewish individuals and the members of congregations in the United States did not number more than from 12,000 to 15,000. His purpose to mold these into a community was to be achieved in part by the pulpit and in part by the press.
Besides engaging in the activities sketched above, Leeser participated in all Jewish movements. He was the earnest promoter of all the national enterprises—the first congregational union, the first Hebrew day-schools, the first Hebrew college, the first Jewish publication society—and of numberless local undertakings. The “Occident” acquired a national and even an international reputation; the Maimonides’ College, of which he was president, paved the way for future Jewish colleges in the United States; and his translation of the Bible became an authorized version for the Jews of America.
In the religious controversies of his time Leeser took an active part on the Conservative side, and lived and died in the unshakable belief that the existence of opposing parties was but transient and short-lived.
Harry Orlinski makes the following remarks on Leeser’s work in his book Notes on the New Translation of the Torah (1969), p. 14.
Rabbi Isaac Leeser (1806-1868) of Philadelphia was responsible for the first Jewish translation of the Bible made for American Jewry. Leeser’s considerable learning in matters biblical and rabbinic derived in major measure from the fine research then flowering in Germany, and his translation of the Bible became in a short time the standard Bible for English-speaking Jews in America. First there appeared, in 1845 in Philadelphia, his version of the Pentateuch, Torat ha-Elohim (“The Torah of God”), in Hebrew and English (five volumes). This was followed eight years later by The Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures … Carefully Translated According to the Masoretic Text on the Basis of the English Version, the Hebrew text facing the English translation. Leeser’s Bible, as it came to be known, had considerable merit, and it is useful even to this day. Its main fault lay in the style; too much of the Teutonic protruded in the translation. On the other hand, the grammatical niceties of biblical Hebrew frequently came through successfully, and the scholarship in general was on a consistently adequate level. Leeser’s Bible would have retained much more of its deserved popularity well into the twentieth century—for it is generally superior even to such early twentieth-century authorized translations as the American Standard Version of 1901 (ASV)—had it not been for the appearance in 1917 of the translation sponsored by the Jewish Publication Society of America. (https://www.bible-researcher.com/leeser.html)
Leeser’s Jewish Bible (1853)