"The Youngest Flower in the Garden of Homiletics": Jewish Youth Sermons in Galicia and Other Parts of the Habsburg Monarchy

Abstract: The article describes Jewish school sermons (known as exhortations) that developed in the Habsburg Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. Youth sermons as such were a novelty in the Jewish homiletical tradition, because until the nineteenth century, children were not among the target audiences of preaching. The article analyzes the origins of exhortations and discusses their legal and social context. Exhortations developed as part of Christian religious school practices, which, with the growing presence of Jews in public schools, were adjusted for them as well. The article presents the dynamics of their introduction and the typical themes they featured, and it presents them as a component of religious instruction received outside of the kheyders . Moreover, it investigates the affinities between Christian and Jewish youth sermons. Exhortations had not previously drawn the attention of scholars, and today they are a virtually unknown homiletical genre. They deserve our attention as an important facet of Jewish religious life in central Europe.