Isidore Koplowitz

The Mosheeach or Messiah [Inscribed and Signed]

Banner Job Office: Athens, GA, 1907. Very Good. Item #6825

Athens, GA: Banner Job Office, 1907. First Edition. First Printing. Small, slim octavo (19.25cm.); publisher's blue gilt-lettered cloth; [2],89,[3](ads)pp. Some light shelf wear, brief soil to rear cover, hair-line crack to front hinge, else Very Good and sound. Inscribed and signed by the author on front flyleaf: "To his friend Prof. S.O. Sanford / With kind regards and well wishes / I. Koplowitz / Athens, Ga. Jan. 1908."  

At the time of publication the author was Rabbi of the Congregation B'Nai Israel in Athens, though two years later he would assume the position of Rabbi at Keneseth Israel in Kansas City. The present work was written in response to the "exertions now being made for the conversion of the Jews" (p. 6), at the time of publication making up less than 5% of the population in Georgia. The author assures the reader that he "disclaims any intentions to excite controversy," (p. [5]) and though instances of antisemitism were relatively few at the time of publication, the work-- approximately contemporaneous with the case against Leo Frank, whose lynching in 1914 may be tied to the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan--displays unease at the present-day reality that Jews were still hugely and uncomfortably outnumbered in Dixie.

Price: $150.00