page_title: Jewish English Bible translations
section_title: Isaac Leeser translation
hierarchical_section_title: Jewish English Bible translations / Isaac Leeser translation
caption_attribution_description: English: German-born American rabbi Isaac Leeser (1806-1868)
context_page_description: Jewish English Bible translations are English translations of the Hebrew Bible according to the Masoretic Text, in the traditional division and order of Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim. Most Jewish translations appear in bilingual editions.
  Jewish translations often reflect traditional Jewish exegesis of the Bible; all such translations eschew the Christological interpretations present in many non-Jewish translations. Jewish translations contain neither the books of the apocrypha nor the Christian New Testament.
context_section_description: The first American Jewish English translation of the Torah, and subsequently of the entire Tanakh, was the 19th century effort by Isaac Leeser. Leeser began with a five-volume, bilingual Hebrew–English edition of the Torah and haftarot, The Law of God (Philadelphia, 1845). His translation of the entire Bible into English was completed as The Twenty-four books of the Holy Scriptures in 1853 (commonly called The Leeser Bible). In 1857 he re-issued it in a second (folio-size) edition, with abridged notes.
  Until the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation, the Leeser translation was the most important Jewish English translation. It was widely used in North American synagogues and reprinted in England.
  A modern writer notes that despite its longevity, Leeser's translation was "wooden" and "devoid of literary distinction". He concludes that "it is perhaps the existence of Leeser's work rather than its merits that marks it as a noteworthy achievement".
caption: Isaac Leeser
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