A Guide for Preachers on Composing and Delivering Sermons: The Or ha-Darshanim of Jacob Zahalon, A Seventeenth Century Italian Preacher's Manual

Banned by the Inquisition in 1693, fourteen months after the author's death, this manual by one of the Italian Jewish community's most effective preachers has remained unpublished since then. But this guide to composing, organizing, and delivering sermons is remarkably valuable. The vital questions of the sermon's length, problem's of organization, opening and conclusion, the preacher's use of examples, his manner of speech and gesture--all these are taken up in Rabbi Zohalon's work.