Exhibited here is an original sketch of Rav Azriel Hildesheimer by Hermann Struck. Rav Hildesheimer (1820-1899) was an important pioneering modernizer of Orthodox Judaism in Germany and a founder of Modern Orthodox Judaism. Living at a time of considerable acculturation and the erosion of traditional authority structures in Jewish life, his embrace of modernity as compatible with Orthodoxy – symbolized by his substantial Talmudic learning combined with a university doctorate – was institutionalized in the rabbinical seminary that he established in Berlin (1873), which provided leadership for Jews eager to participate in modern society while retaining fidelity to traditional Judaism. His life was marked by a commitment to both Jewish learning and general education, a strong interest in strengthening the yishuv in Eretz Yisrael, and a commitment to meet Jewish welfare needs internationally.
Broadly recognized as “the father of Modern Orthodoxy,” four of Rav Hildesheimer’s philosophical and pedagogical approaches underscore the essence of modern Orthodoxy: (1) he provided both a Jewish and secular education to both boys and girls; (2) he established a rabbinic seminary where secular studies and academic Jewish scholarship were taught side by side with traditional yeshiva studies; (3) While always maintaining ultimate faithfulness to halacha, he worked with all segments of the Jewish community, including the non-Orthodox, to improve the general Jewish condition and, in particular, to combat antisemitism; and (4) he was a passionate Zionist who worked unceasingly to encourage aliyah and to improve the conditions of Jews living in Eretz Yisrael. He was perhaps the only 19th century German rabbi who argued for the reinstitution of Jewish courts and for the superiority of Jewish civil law over secular law.
Simple in his habits, fearless, and having an unusual capacity for hard work, Rav Hildesheimer joined his great Talmudic learning to his practical administrative ability and, financially independent, he never accepted remuneration for his rabbinical activities. He habitually engaged in philanthropic activities connected not only with his own congregation, but also in the service of the Jews of Germany, Austria, Russia, Abyssinia and Persia, to the point that he came to be affectionately known as the “international schnorrer.”
(Let’s pause here for a moment to recognize Hermann Struck (1876-1944), who is considered one of the most important print artists of Germany and Eretz Yisrael in the first half of the 20th century. His favorite artistic technique was copper etching and its related processes, though he also was a master of the lithograph, and his artistic legacy originates from his love of the print medium, as well as from his landscape and portrait drawings. In Die Kunst des Radierens (“The Art of Etching,” 1908), which became a seminal work on etching, he presented his vast knowledge of etching techniques, which he passed on to students including Marc Chagall, Jacob Steinhardt, Lesser Ury, Max Liebermann and, after making aliyah, Anna Ticho and Nahum Gutman. He was a fervent Zionist, Jewish activist, and founder of the Mizrachi Religious Zionist party who, as the artistic soul of the early Zionist movement, attended several Zionist Congresses, including a display of his art at the Fifth Congress.)
Born into a family of scholars, Rav Hildesheimer attended the Hasharat Zvi school in his hometown of Halberstadt, Prussia before attending the yeshiva of Rav Yaakov Ettlinger in Altona, where the chacham Isaac Bernays, the Chief Rabbi of Hamburg (and the grandfather of Martha Bernays, who would marry Sigmund Freud), was one of his teachers and became his pedagogical paradigm. Rav Ettlinger and Rav Bernays were both vehemently anti-Reform Judaism, which indisputably shaped Rav Hildesheimer’s own activism against the Reform movement. In 1840, he returned to Halberstadt, earned his diploma at the public Königliches Gymnasium, and entered the University of Berlin, where he studied Oriental languages and mathematics while also continuing his Talmudic studies.
In 1842, he went to Halle upon Saale and earned his doctorate from the University of Halle-Wittenberg two years later with his dissertation, The Correct Method of Interpreting the Bible, dealing with the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Pentateuch). He thereby became possibly the only Orthodox rabbi in Germany up to that time to receive a secular Ph.D. Returning to Halberstadt, he married Henrietta Hirsch, whose dowry made him financially independent.
In 1851, Rav Hildesheimer was appointed rav of Eisenstadt, Hungary, the principal city of the Sheva Kehillot (the “seven towns”), where his first notable act was to found a parochial school – in which he personally taught many of the classes – where correct German was used and modern principles of pedagogy were adopted in teaching secular, as well as Jewish, subjects. Perhaps even more radically, the yeshiva curriculum devoted substantive time to studying Tanach and Hebrew language. He introduced limited secular studies in the elementary school, while older students received a secular education as well, but with a focus on mathematics and other subjects that would enhance their understanding of Talmud.
Next, he established a rabbinical school which also employed secular methods of instruction and which introduced secular subjects, Tanach, and Hebrew and was the only Orthodox institution where students were required to have a significant secular education before they could be admitted. Notwithstanding great opposition from all sides, the yeshiva became immensely successful, growing from an initial class of six students in 1851 to one hundred twenty-eight students in 1868, which included one student from the United States.
The introduction of modern methods of education and of secular learning into the Eisenstadt School was deeply resented and opposed by Jewish leaders on both the right and the left. In a truly repugnant and treacherous act, some ultra Orthodox leaders denounced the yeshiva to the representatives of the Hungarian government, which ordered the school closed within twenty-four hours and all its pupils removed from the city. (However, soon afterward in 1858, Rav Hildesheimer succeeded in obtaining state recognition for his yeshiva.) In 1860, the ultra Orthodox Rav Akiva Yosef Schlesinger, the rav of Pressburg, Hungary, placed Rav Hildesheimer under a cherem (ban) as “not truly a sincere Jew,” which had little effect, if any, on Rav Hildesheimer or his activities. Reform Jewish leaders also saw the yeshiva as a threat because its graduates would be equipped to defend Orthodoxy to Reform Jews, who had been misled by their leaders regarding what constitutes authentic Judaism.
Rav Hildesheimer brilliantly took on an 1865 Judicial Decision signed by many ultra Orthodox Hungarian religious leaders. For example, as to the prohibition by the rabbanim against preaching in a gentile language or listening to a sermon in a gentile language, he proved that there is simply no halachic support for such a proposition. As to their prohibition against entering a synagogue where the platform is not located at the center of the shul, he responds that though that is the position of the Shulchan Aruch, nevertheless, many prominent authorities disagree and permit one to do so; moreover, he pointedly asks, what should we do with most of the Sephardic synagogues, whose platform is on the west side?
As to the Judicial Decision forbidding a wedding to be held in a synagogue, he proves that nowhere in the Shulchan Aruch do we find such a prohibition, and, although the Rema does bring an opinion that weddings should be conducted under an open sky, many congregations and countries long ago rejected this custom. On the other hand, he fully embraced rulings by the Judicial Decision regarding the mechitza, which he agreed must be such that men cannot see women during prayers, and its ruling that it is forbidden to change any Jewish custom or synagogue practice received from our ancestors.
At the December 14, 1868 Hungarian Jewish Congress, which met to decide on the establishment of a rabbinical seminary for all Hungarian Jewry, Rav Hildesheimer initially sought to associate himself with the existing Orthodox party, but after meeting with great opposition, he formed a separate group, with thirty-five followers, which has been described as “Cultured Orthodox.” At the Hungarian Jewish Congress held at Budapest the following year, he defined this party as representing a “faithful adherence to traditional teachings combined with an effective effort to keep in touch with the spirit of progress.” Had they been adopted, his moderate proposals might have preserved the unity of Hungarian Jewry, but the Congress ended in a radical split in Orthodox Judaism.
In 1869, the Orthodox community in Berlin was granted permission by the government to found a separate Orthodox synagogal congregation, the Israelite Synagogue Congregation Adas Jisroel in Berlin, then comprising about 200 families. Dissatisfied with Rabbi Joseph Aub, who had been appointed by the Jewish community as its leader in 1867, Adas Jisroel chose Rav Hildesheimer to represent them as “Orthodox rabbi of standing.” Despairing of ever being able to unite Hungarian Jewry, he accepted the position, led the fight against Rabbi Abraham Geiger and Reform Judaism, and established what became known as the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary, for which he was responsible for the training and ordination of virtually all Orthodox rabbis in Germany during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
Rav Hildesheimer was an active worker on behalf of stricken Jewish communities throughout the world, including those rarely recognized by traditional Jewish leadership. In 1864, he published a declaration recognizing the Jewishness of Ethiopian Jewry, and as a member of the central council of the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden (the “Aid Association of Jews in Germany”), he was deeply involved in assisting the victims of Russian pogroms, beginning in 1882. He was the lone member to plead that Jewish survivors be directed to Eretẓ Yisrael rather than to the New World, and he was a passionate lifelong supporter of the Jews of Eretz Yisrael and the development of the yishuv.
In Eisenstadt, Rav Hildesheimer had collected large sums of money for Jerusalem Jewry and, in 1858, co-founded the Society for the Support of Eretẓ Yisrael. When the Missionary Society of Palestine provided seventy free dwellings for homeless Jews in 1860, he personally built houses in Jerusalem for the free use of Jewish pilgrims and for the poor and, at his direction, the Battei Maẓaseh dwellings were erected in the Old City of Jerusalem (they were destroyed in 1948 and rebuilt after the 1967 Six-Day War). In 1872, he founded the Association for Settlement in Eretz Yisrael, with the object of raising the educational and vocational standards of Jerusalem Jews, and he established a Jewish orphanage in 1879. Because he did not trust the rabbanim to distribute funds properly, he advocated assigning responsibility for the administration of the orphanages in the hands of a committee which, yet again, drew the ire of the ultra Orthodox, who placed him under a cherem. Rav Hildesheimer was an enthusiastic supporter of Chovevei Zion and the colonization movement and, for various political and legal reasons, newly acquired lands of Gedera were registered in his name.
In this historic letter on his personal letterhead, Rav Hildesheimer in Berlin advises Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch in Frankfurt that he learned from the head of the Jewish community in Konigsberg that Eduard (Yitzchak) Lasker, a lawyer and one of two Jewish representatives in the Prussian House of Representatives, intends to support the resolution to preserve Adas Jisroel and to “preserve the legal status of the Jewish Community.”
The letter involves the issue of religious pluralism and the Orthodox secession from the general Jewish community in Germany. Pursuant to the Prussian Jew Law of 1847, all Jews, regardless of their personal religious beliefs, were required to pay a tax to the Jewish community, which had been endowed with the status of a quasi-governmental body. (A Jew could avoid this tax only by converting to Christianity, which most Reform Jews refused to do.) However, in 1873, when the Prussian Parliament enacted a bill “Concerning Secession from the State Church,” which granted Christians the right to withdraw from membership in the State Church while remaining Christian, some Jews saw this as a perfect opportunity to modify Prussian law to exempt them from paying a tax to the Jewish community.
As the Jewish leader of the then powerful National Liberal Party, Lasker argued on March 19, 1873 that, consistent with the general principle of equality for all citizens, the government should permit Jews to secede from the Jewish community. His proposal triggered great controversy within the Jewish community; non-Orthodox Jews and the Breslau Seminary generally opposed it, claiming that it would lead to the destruction of the Jewish community, while Orthodox Jews, most notably Rav Hirsch, strongly supported it.
In fact, some authorities maintain that Rav Hirsch was the force behind Lasker’s proposal. If so, even absent the notice from Rav Hildesheimer in our letter, Rav Hirsch would have been well-aware that Lasker would support the resolution to “preserve the legal status of the Jewish Community.” In his pamphlet, The Principle of Freedom of Conscience, in which he argued that compulsion could not bring a religious community into existence and that only a sense of shared religious duty could do so, Rav Hirsch concluded:
The divergence between the religious beliefs of Reform and Orthodoxy is so profound that when an individual publicly secedes he is only giving formal expression to convictions which had long since matured and become perfectly clear to himself. All the institutions and establishments in the care of a community are religious in nature, and they are… intimately bound up with the religious law.
In any event, when the Lasker Bill was passed on July 17, 1876, the greatest share of the credit for its success was attributed to Rav Hirsch. Throughout the entire affair, Rav Hildesheimer urged passage of the law and supported Rav Hirsch’s efforts.
Although Rav Hildesheimer and Rav Hirsch shared the leadership of the German Orthodox Jewish community and were personally close, there were fundamental philosophical differences in their halachic approaches. In particular, a crucial issue that divided these two rabbinic luminaries, an issue that continues to be debated to date, is the question of the relationship that Orthodox Jewry should maintain with heterodox Jewish groups, ranging from full cooperation, to no cooperation, to everything in between.
To be clear, Rav Hildesheimer rejected religious pluralism under all circumstances and he was resolute that he would never compromise on religious issues or cooperate with non-Orthodox institutions on matters of halacha. Thus, for example, he prohibited Orthodox congregations from retaining graduates of the Breslau Seminary to serve as rabbis because the Breslau Seminary was not totally committed to halacha, particularly the Oral Law. In fact, this is one of the issues that led to his founding his own rabbinical school: so that the Jewish community would no longer need to rely on the Breslau Seminary for congregational rabbinic leadership.
However, he had a powerful sense of Klal Yisrael and a stronger sense of Jewish solidarity. He maintained friendships with non-observant Jews and he was always careful to distinguish between his opponents’ religious views, which he vociferously denounced without pulling punches, and the humanity and inherent value of his fellow Jew, which he worked to protect. He resolutely believed that Western Orthodox Jews could not segregate themselves behind ghetto walls; to the contrary, he maintained that traditional Judaism had nothing to fear from European secular culture and that modern Jewish education must teach Jews how best to confront and deal with modernity in all its aspects. He stood for the idea of harmony between Judaism, science, and European culture on one hand and an unconditional devotion to the faith and traditions of Judaism on the other.
Accordingly, as a “modern” religious activist and institution builder, he undertook a variety of modifications, including Jewish education for males and females including both religious and secular studies; the creation of a seminary which incorporated both secular studies and academic scholarship; a program emphasizing traditional Jewish attachments to Eretz Yisrael and working with non-Orthodox Jews on its behalf; and working together with communal leaders, even in the non-Orthodox community, on issues that affected the entire community, such as antisemitism and ritual slaughter.
Although Rav Hirsch provided an ideological approach to Torah im Derech Eretz (combining Torah with general education), he and Rav Hildesheimer took differing paths. Rav Hirsch aimed to supply laymen with the tools of preaching and writing, emphasizing German culture as playing a positive role in Jewish life and creating the model of an urbane Orthodox Jew. Rav Hildesheimer on the other hand, focused on Talmud and Jewish law, training rabbanim who could serve in Jewish communities throughout Germany and beyond and who could connect with the broader Jewish public; for him, German culture was, at most, a permitted pleasure. Moreover, while Rav Hirsch categorically rejected “Jewish Science” as having any place in Jewish study, Rav Hildesheimer considered it imperative to train rabbis schooled in the scientific disciplines. As such, the essential distinction between the two leading rabbanim was their approach to the propriety of academic Jewish studies, which Rav Hildesheimer advocated and Rav Hirsch rejected.
Rav Hildesheimer and Rav Hirsch also disagreed dramatically in their attitudes toward non-Orthodox Jews. Where Rav Hirsch advocated Orthodox separation from the Reform-dominated communal structure as a desired goal, Rav Hildesheimer accepted separation only as an unfortunate necessity in limited situations. And where Rav Hirsch opposed joining any combined effort together with non-Orthodox leaders and communities, Rav Hildesheimer supported joint efforts whenever possible and was even a member of the Berlin chapter of Bnai Brith and the Union of German Rabbis. (It is worth noting, however, that he resigned from the Union of German Rabbis when it was reconstituted as the fully cross-denominational General Union of Rabbis in 1897 and he formed the Union of Torah Faithful Rabbis.) Thus, unlike most his Orthodox colleagues, he was willing to work with non-Orthodox Jews, even those with whom he maintained sharp ideological differences or whose lifestyles were antithetical to halacha.
As one dramatic example of their difference in this regard, when Rav Hildesheimer, notwithstanding his disdain for Heinrich Graetz as a heretic and hypocrite, joined with Graetz’s call for establishing an orphanage in Jerusalem (1872), Rav Hirsch wrote a letter to him bitterly criticizing him for joining efforts with such a heretic. (Rav Hildesheimer replied that Graetz’s heresies should not prevent people from working with him to assist impoverished Jewish orphans.) As another example, Rav Hildesheimer believed that it was particularly important to unite all Jews in the battle against German antisemitism, and, accordingly, he joined in an 1894 declaration against antisemitic attacks against the Jews, their institutions (including ritual slaughter), and the Talmud. Through his son-in-law and successor, Rav Hirsch attacked Rav Hildesheimer for cooperating with Reform Jews, but Rav Hildesheimer replied by accusing Rav Hirsch of failing to see the dangers to the entire community, which require a unified effort.
Some commentators argue that it is possible to harmonize the seemingly adverse positions of the two great rabbanim. Rav Hildesheimer was in Berlin, where Reform Jews were generally mumarim le’tayavon (sinners who sinned for their own personal pleasure, and not out of malevolence). Rav Hirsch, on the other hand, was in Frankfurt, where Reform Jews were generally mumarim le’hachis (premeditated and intentional sinners) who launched a systematic campaign to eradicate Torah study and to destroy Orthodox institutions. In the former case, even Rav Hirsch would arguably, under certain limited circumstances, work together with Reform Jews for the Jewish communal good and, in the latter case, even Rav Hildesheimer would refuse to work together with such spiteful sinners or to bestow upon them any imprimatur of propriety.
It is thus possible to argue that, with respect to contemporary Reform Jews, most are non-observant because they are intent on “doing their own thing” and simply do not want to be bound by Jewish law, rather than purposefully, spitefully, and publicly denouncing Torah and halacha – although there are certainly some of those as well. As such, it would appear to be permissible in some circumstances for Orthodox leaders and their communities to work together with non-observant Jews for the benefit of the broader Jewish community. (Nevertheless, the American branch of the Council of Sages of Agudath Israel instituted a formal separation from Reform Jewish leaders; in any event, as they say in the vernacular, “always consult your local Orthodox Rabbi.”)
By the end of his career in Germany, Rav Hildesheimer had attained a position of stature and respect throughout the German and the European Jewish communities and he was called upon to adjudicate disputes within the community and to represent the community in relations with the secular authorities in various lands. His students were constantly sought by communities throughout Europe and, by 1884, he lacked sufficient graduates of his seminary to meet the massive demand for rabbanim.
Rav Hildesheimer’s grave is preserved in the Cemetery of the Synogogal Congregation of Adas Jisroel on Wittlicher Strasse, Berlin-Weissensee. Moshav Azriel in Israel is named for him, as are streets in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
