Benno Jacob

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Benno Jacob (also Benno Jakob ; born September 7, 1862 in Frankenstein in Silesia , † January 24, 1945 in London ) was a German liberal rabbi in Göttingen and Dortmund , a Jewish Bible commentator, apologist for Judaism and fighter against anti-Semitism .

Life

Jacob studied at the University of Breslau (graduation Dr. phil. 1899) and at the Jewish theological seminar there . From 1891 to 1906 he was a rabbi in Göttingen, then from 1906 until his retirement in 1929 in Dortmund. He then moved to Hamburg in 1932 and continued to devote himself to exegesis . In 1939 he fled to London from the National Socialists .

Although he cannot be counted as part of Orthodoxy , the conclusions from his text studies were in complete contradiction to modern (Christian) criticism of the Bible . In his opinion, the traditional text was more reliable than the old translations, and he considered the arbitrary textual corrections of the Biblical criticism unscientific because their sole purpose was to confirm their own assumptions. He also accused the representatives of the Bible criticism of cultivating anti-Semitic ideas and prejudices against Judaism. He published his views in The Pentateuch, exegetical-critical research and source separation and exegesis in the Pentateuch .

His most important exegetical work is The First Book of the Torah: Genesis, Translated and Explained . Jacob neither accepted Moses' authorship of the Pentateuch nor the idea of verbal inspiration , but found so much literary unity and spiritual harmony in the structure of the Torah that any search for its "sources" seemed to him a useless hypothetical exercise.

Benno Jacob was the founder of the striking and colorful student association Viadrina im KC , a Jewish association that was founded by Jewish students in Breslau in 1886 in order to fight anti-Semitism at universities with the mensur . He was an opponent of Zionism not only because of his belief in a German-Jewish synthesis, but also because for him Zionism meant a complete secularization of Judaism and a basis for Jewish atheism .

One of Jacobs' grandsons is the American Rabbi Walter Jacob , President of the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam, holder of the Great Federal Cross of Merit and Commander of the Papal Order of Gregory .

Quote

"If a cultivated land has no room for freedom, then the servant of God renounces culture."

- From an explanation of the first sentence of the Ten Commandments .

Publications (selection)

  • The book Ester bei den LXX, in ZAW 10 (1890), pp. 241-298
  • In the name of God, Berlin 1903
  • The Pentateuch, exegetical-critical research. Leipzig 1905
  • The counts in the books Leviticus and Numbers, Frankfurt a. M. 1909
  • The Torah Moses, Frankfurt a. M. 1912/13
  • Separation of sources and exegesis in the Pentateuch, Leipzig 1916
  • War, Revolution and Judaism . Philo-Verlag , 1919
  • An eye for an eye, Berlin 1929
  • The first book of the Torah, Genesis. Translated and explained by Benno Jacob, Schocken Verlag, Berlin 1934 (reprint 2000 / Calwer Verlag Stuttgart)
  • The book Exodus, Stuttgart 1997

literature

  • Walter Jacob : Benno Jacob: Fighter and Scholar . With an introduction by Hanna Liss, from the English by Esther Kontarsky. Centrum Judaicum , Hentrich & Hentrich , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-942271-32-5 (= Jewish miniatures. Volume 115).
  • Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Vol. III, p. 254; Vol. VII, p. 114; 1925 ff.
  • Hans Chanoch Meyer (ed.): From the history and life of the Jews in Westphalia. A collective font. Frankfurt am Main 1963
  • Almuth Jürgensen: Teaching and learning the Torah. Rabbi Benno Jacob in Dortmund (1906-1929) . In: Jan-Pieter Barbian ; Michael Brocke ; Ludger Heid (ed.): Jews in the Ruhr area. From the Age of Enlightenment to the present . Essen: Klartext, 1999, ISBN 3-88474-694-4 , pp. 67-104
  • Christian Wiese : Science of Judaism and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany. Tübingen 1999
  • Günter Birkmann: Benno Jacob. A liberal rabbi in Dortmund. In: home. Dortmund 2/2000
  • Walter Jacob, Almuth Jürgensen (Ed.): Exegesis has the first word. Contributions to the life and work of Benno Jacobs . Stuttgart 2002
  • Trumah 13 (2003), Benno Jacob - man and his work .
  • Till Magnus Steiner, Hans-Christoph Aurin:  Jacob, Benno. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (eds.): The scientific Bibellexikon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff., Accessed on July 18, 2017.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The weekly Torah segment, annotated by Nechama Leibowitz ( Memento October 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Jacob, Benno
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jakob, Benno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German liberal rabbi
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankenstein , today Zabkowice
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 1945
Place of death London