Prophet in a Time of Priests: Rabbi “Alphabet” Browne 1845-1929

Who was “Alphabet” Browne... and why is this the first time anyone has written about him? Between his arrival in the United States during post-Civil War Reconstruction and his death at the onset of the Great Depression, he grabbed headlines as a rabbi, journalist, attorney, and political activist, all in the pursuit of justice. He was widely known as an authority on the Talmud and the life of Jesus, and highly acclaimed nationally for his public lectures which one reviewer thought to be wittier than Mark Twain’s. While serving congregations in numerous cities, among them New York and Atlanta, Edward Benjamin Morris Browne published the South’s first Jewish-interest newspaper