ISRAEL LEVINTHAL was born in Vilna in 1888. His father, Bernard (1865 –1952), a distinguished Orthodox rabbi who emigrated to America with his family in 1891 to assume a rabbinic position at Philadelphia, later helped establish the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada. As we have seen above (see the introduction to Sermon 13), the young Israel worked as a reporter on Jewish affairs for a Philadelphia periodical and was deeply impressed by the oratorical abilities of the Reform rabbi Joseph Krauskopf. Entering a joint programme with Columbia University (for undergraduate courses) and the Jewish Theological Seminary (for rabbinic courses), despite his father's commitment to the Orthodox Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, he received his BA from Columbia in 1909 (where he won a silver medal in the university oratorical contest) and was ordained rabbi the following year. He continued his studies, eventually gaining both a law degree from New York University and a doctorate in Hebrew Letters from the seminary.

Following his ordination, Levinthal served in two Brooklyn congregations before becoming in 1919 the first rabbi of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, where he would serve for the rest of his career, during which its membership grew to a peak of close to 2,000 families in 1946. In addition to holding leadership positions in a variety of Conservative and Zionist organizations, he established a national reputation as one of the outstanding preachers of his time. The books of his published sermons reveal an unusual homiletical artistry and enable the sensitive reader to feel something of the power of the message as it was heard by the congregants. Levinthal himself was aware of his power; the hand written texts of the sermons in his collected papers contain notations about his perception of their effectiveness, ranging from ‘good’ to ‘most excellent’. These texts were not written out in full; some serve as extensive outlines, while others are no more than a list of phrases. We therefore have in some cases three different versions of the sermon: the handwritten notes, a brief newspaper account with quotations, and the published text.