BORN in 1898 in Antwerp, Belgium, Ferdinand Isserman emigrated to America with his family in 1906. Like many Reform rabbis of his generation, he completed a combined programme at the University of Cincinnati and the Hebrew Union College. Though exempt from conscription as a rabbinical student, he enlisted in the army in 1918, an experience to which he alluded in his subsequent preaching on war. After ordination, he served as assistant rabbi in Rodef Shalom of Philadelphia, rabbi of Holy Blossom Congregation in Toronto (preceding Eisendrath), and—beginning in 1929—in Temple Israel of St Louis, where he remained until his death in 1971.

In the summer of 1933 Isserman spent a month in Germany, and upon returning in the autumn he preached about his impressions of how Jews were living under the Nazi regime. On 28 October that year, after reporting extensively on the tragic experiences of individuals he had met, he concluded by warning Americans against being deceived by the disinformation circulated by Nazi propagandists:

Two years later, reporting on a second visit, he concluded that ‘the antidemocratic, anti-Christian nationalistic Nazi philosophy is relentlessly being worked out’, though—perhaps rather naively—he also claimed that the policies of the regime were creating ‘a vast and an increasing opposition’. As for practical advice to Americans and the rest of the civilized world: ‘Whoever gives the Nazi regime moral support, whether it be by participating in the [Berlin] Olympic games, or in any other fashion, is strengthening the hands of the barbarians who are in the process of ruining Germany and who may bring chaos upon all of Europe and destroy Western civilization.’