Freehof was born in England and came to the United States in 1903. His work outside Appalachia included studying at the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College, and serving as rabbi at Congregation Kehillath Anshe Maarav (now KAM Isaiah Israel) in Chicago. His time in the region took place in Pittsburgh, where he was rabbi at Rodef Shalom Congregation from 1934-1966. He was a kind of mentor to Walter Jacob, who succeeded him as rabbi and went on to found The Solomon B. Freehof Institute of Progressive Halakhah in his honor.
Additional information can be found on Freehof’s Wikipedia page; an article in Encyclopedia Judaica; and a Biographical Sketch on the website of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati.
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Freehof User Guide
Robert H. Ellison
The User Guide for the Library of Appalachian Preaching is a Google Sheet that can be searched, sorted, and downloaded for offline use.
This part of the Guide provides information about Freehof's lectures. It includes the title, scripture text, date and place the address was delivered (if known), and so on. This information is available in the master list of sermons as well.
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Modern Jewish Preaching
Solomon Bennett Freehof
According to the title page, the five addresses in this book were “Based upon the Alumni Lectures Given at Hebrew Union College, March, 1941.” The “theme” for that year, as stated in Julian Morganstern’s Foreword, was “the aims and techniques of modern Jewish preaching” (p. 16).
