Prophet in a Time of Priests. Janice Rothschild Blumberg

no Walt Whitman, the would-be bard tended to imitate Algernon Charles Swinburne and Edgar Allen Poe, often emulating their meter and rhyming schemes as well as their flowery romanticism. Yet for all his sophomoric versifying, the ardent youth revealed an astonishing breadth of knowledge and interests. His metaphors ranged from copious use of scripture to such references as mythology, ancient and modern history, astronomy, botany, and Dalton’s law on the use of gasses. He also displayed, for one so recently arrived in America, a surprising knowledge of national politics. The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson inspired him to write the last poem in his collection, entitled “North and South.”

      To you in the North

      Whose arrows go forth

      To strike a fallen hero,

      Whose venomous mouth

      Denounces the South:

      “Remember the end of a Nero!”

      And the South in despair

      I remind: “be aware,

      There are roses enough among thorns.

      Wade and Butler the beasts

      The devil’s best priests

      Have lost the power of their horns.

      Though radical wrath

      Presages but death

      And sends you defying the challenge;

      Up on high watches God

      With righteousness’ rod,

      Adjusting the uneven balance!”

      Browne’s apparent sympathy for the South, particularly the allusion to Generals Benjamin Wade and Benjamin Butler as “the beasts,” probably stemmed from Wise’s influence. Although there is no evidence to suggest that either man ever condoned slavery—Browne, in fact, as shall be seen, displayed unpatronizing friendship for African Americans even while serving Southern congregations—it is likely that as Wise’s disciple he absorbed his teacher’s views that the South should have been allowed to secede unchallenged in order to avoid war. Browne probably dedicated the poem to Johnson out of personal sympathy rather than endorsement of the president’s political decisions.22

      After one year Wise sent Browne to Savannah, Georgia, for “seasoning” and to improve his English while teaching Hebrew at the Savannah Hebrew Collegiate Institute. It is possible that he also wanted to divert his protégé’s attentions from Cincinnati’s social life. The wily mentor may even have tried to arrange a suitable marriage, a shittoch, for Browne, as he reputedly did for future rabbinic candidates at Hebrew Union College, cautioning them to take a wife before signing on with a congregation. He secured lodgings for Browne in Savannah at the home of the school’s superintendent, Rabbi Raphael Lewin, whose wife, Adeline, had an unmarried sister. They were daughters of Abraham Einstein, one of the city’s wealthiest Jews and a founder of the Hebrew Institute. According to rumor, the Einsteins encouraged Browne to become their son-in-law and never forgave him for declining the favor. Over a decade later, when false charges were brought against Browne in New York, his nephew believed that they had been instigated by the Einstein family in revenge.23

      Besides teaching at the Hebrew Institute, Browne matriculated at the Savannah Medical College, and also gave several lectures there in chemistry. His experience in the laid-back city of colonial origins and wartime captivity enabled him to deepen his understanding of American history, to acquaint himself directly with a segment of the South under the burden of Reconstruction, and to intensify his sympathy for southerners of both races.24

      Browne returned to Ohio the following year, resumed his medical studies at the institution that later became the Medical School of the University of Cincinnati, and earned his Doctor of Medicine degree by the end of the term. At the same time Wise gave him s’micha—rabbinic ordination—possibly the first and only one conferred in America before the first graduation at the Hebrew Union College in 1883.

      Now Wise believed that his protégé was ready to test his skills as an American rabbi. Browne was well connected, well endowed intellectually, and no less well suited sartorially for the very visible position of Jewish leadership in the rising middle class communities of the United States. Photographs reveal him as a courtly youth with a full head of brown hair above a wide oval face, sporting a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee, garbed in black cutaway with a medal dangling from his watch chain, posed proudly in Napoleonic stance with right hand in vest and gray eyes determinedly forward. Although only five foot three and three quarters inches tall—slightly less than average height—he was slim, fashionable and debonair, suggesting affluence and sophistication, attributes much admired and eagerly sought by nineteenth century American Jewry.

      Happily, Browne had none of the negative characteristics generally associated with the typical “greenhorn.” What he lacked was not visible, its absence not quickly detected. It was, however, an ephemeral quality highly necessary for success as a congregational rabbi. As Wise later expressed the need, one must be “very circumspect, particularly in an age and in a country where rabbis are looked upon as ice cream only.”25

      Browne could not be compared to ice cream. His persona more closely resembled the culinary specialty of his native land. Hungarian goulash is highly seasoned, greatly nutritious, and for many people hard to digest.

      II - UNCHARTED WATERS AND SOPHIE

      Browne sailed forth into the uncharted, turbulent seas of the American rabbinate only partially prepared for the conditions that awaited him. Although Wise had ostensibly introduced his protégé to the real world of the American rabbinate by taking him along on some of his travels, the fledgling rabbi had yet to observe the far reaching ramifications of the power struggle that divided American congregations and their rabbis.

      This was a period of transition, a time when many were undecided about the degree of reform that would best serve their needs both as new Americans and as Jews. Congregations fluctuated back and forth between the modern orthodoxy taking root in Europe, and the emerging neologism—radical reform—that they were now free to practice without restraint in America. Much depended on the views of congregational presidents and their boards of directors. No longer ruled by a government-appointed rabbi as in Europe, laymen rebelled against rabbinic domination and often relegated their spiritual leader to the position of mere functionary, an employee to be curbed or fired at the will or whim of an influential member. Personal egos ran high on both sides of the bima (pulpit).1

      A few exceptionally well-qualified rabbis prevailed over this condition by gaining “star power,” through authorship of periodicals and prayer books, as well as by crowd- pleasing oratory. Occasionally a congregation would import an already renowned rabbi from Europe, as did New York’s B’nai Jeshurun in 1849 when it lured Morris Raphall from Birmingham, England, with the promise of high salary and life tenure. Such rabbis represented a range of Jewish thought from the uncompromising orthodoxy of Abraham Rice, who immigrated in 1840 and was the first ordained rabbi to serve an American congregation, to the extreme Reform of David Einhorn, who arrived in 1855, unable to hold a pulpit in Germanic states because of his radical views. Between these poles others maintained their own agendas for the salvation of American Jewry, some remaining adamant proponents of particular views; others compromising to further their various missions, and some genuinely moved by a change of philosophy.2

      Isaac Leeser, although educated in America and unordained, was a traditionalist who nevertheless advocated Americanizing Judaism. Despite his German background, he had served as hazan (cantor and reader) of Mikveh Israel, Philadelphia’s historic Portuguese Congregation. Widely known for his efforts to educate American Jews through his many publications including the first Jewish-oriented translation of the Bible into English, and the Occident, the first nationally disseminated American Jewish periodical, he traveled extensively performing weddings, dedicating synagogues, and persuading far flung communities such as that of Atlanta to form congregations. As early as 1841, he attempted to organize a congregational union. The only rabbi of his day to approach him in output or travel