(ANGLO-JUDAICA)

The Form of Prayers - Machzor mikol HaShanah [festival prayers for entire year]. According to the Order of the German and Polish Jews. Hebrew with English translation on facing pages. Revised and corrected by A. Alexander.
Complete in six volumes. Hebrew and English title-pages. * Vol. I (New Year): ff. (4), 214. * Vol. II (Day of Atonement I): ff. (4), 208. * Vol. III (Day of Atonement II): ff. (4), 208, pp. xiii. * Vol. IV (Feast of Tabernacles): ff. (3), 193. * Vol. V (Passover): ff. (4), 222. * Vol. VI (Pentecost): ff. (2), 158.
Occasionally browned, previous owner’s marks. Uniformly bond in gilt-ruled polished calf, spines gilt and with morocco title-labels, all edges gilt, slightly scuffed, rebacked with minimal loss. Tall 4to.
London.: L. Alexander 1807-8
The volume for the Day of Atonement contains a remarkable 13-page supplement written in English in which the publisher, Levi Alexander, makes unsalutary remarks concerning Chief Rabbi Solomon Hirschell. For there was rivalry between Alexander and the family of another printer, David Levi, who had published prayer books containing various errors. - Yet Alexander’s prayer books also had their defects. CHief Rabbi Solomon Hirschel criticized Alexander’s work but did not mention Levi’s errors.===In the Yom Kippur volume Alexander included critical comments about the rabbi, who kept his peace, but persuaded the Spanish and Portuguese congregation not to give Alexander any more work. “As a result of the printer’s bizarre campaign, on the Sabbath of Sabbaths many Great Synagogue worshipers had the unprecedented experience of hearing their Chief Rabbi preach and recite the Ne’ilah (concluding) service while at the same time utilising a prayer-book containing envenomed attacks on him.” See H.A. Simons, Forty Years a Chief Rabbi: The Life and Times of Solomon Hirschell (1980) pp. 80-2.