The last of the American pioneer Reform rabbis whose activities date back to the time before the outbreak of the Civil War was Bernhard Felsenthal (b. in Germany, 1822; d. in Chicago, 1908). While originally intended for a secular career, he was a thorough Talmudical scholar, and for a decade before he came to this country (in 1854) he was a teacher in a Jewish congregational school. After three years spent in Madison, Ind., as rabbi and teacher, he removed to Chicago, where he became an employee of a Jewish banking firm. In 1858 the Jüdische Reformverein of Chicago was formed, with Felsenthal as its secretary and guiding spirit. In the following year he published a pamphlet in favor of Reform which attracted much attention; and two years later, after the Reformverein developed into Sinai Congregation, he became its first rabbi. In 1864 he took charge of Zion Congregation, the second Reform congregation of Chicago, and held the position until he was retired as rabbi emeritus, in 1887. While he was theoretically an extreme radical in religious matters, his extensive knowledge of rabbinical literature and his love for Jewish learning, added to his generous disposition and real affection for Jewish scholars of the old type, helped to make his relations with the Orthodox Jews more pleasant than in the case of other representative rabbis of his class. He was probably the only Reform rabbi in this country who was really beloved among the masses of the immigrants from the Slavic countries, and he thus exemplified a possibility of a better understanding between the different wings of American Judaism, which was then, and partly still is, by many considered difficult of accomplishment. Samuel Hirsch (b. in Rhenish Prussia, 1815; d. in Chicago, 1889) belonged to this group, although he did not arrive in America until 1866, after having served as chief rabbi of Luxembourg for nearly a quarter of a century. He succeeded David Einhorn in Philadelphia, where he remained for twenty-two years. After retiring from the ministry he removed to Chicago, where he spent his last days with his son, Dr. Emil G. Hirsch (b. in Luxembourg, 1852), the eminent preacher and professor of rabbinical literature at the University of Chicago. Samuel Hirsch belonged to the extreme wing of radical reformers, and was one of the first to advocate the holding of special services in the Temple on Sunday. His chief work was written in Germany, “Die Religionsphilosophie der Juden” (Leipsic, 1842), of which only one part appeared. It is an effort to explain Judaism from the Hegelian point of view, but as it was written long before he arrived in this country, it has no interest for American Jewish history except, perhaps, as an instance of the influence of the German method of abstract theorizing on the uncompromising radical pioneers of the American Reform movement. CHAPTER XXII. CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM AND ITS STAND AGAINST REFORM.