Hermann Adler (Chief Rabbi)
Hermann Naftali Adler (born May 30, 1839 in Hanover ; died July 18, 1911 in London ) was the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom from 1891 to 1911.
Life
He was the son of Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler and moved from Hanover to London in 1845 when his father was elected Chief Rabbi of Great Britain. 1852 to 1854 he attended University College School in London. He then went to Prague and then to Leipzig, where he received his doctorate in 1861. In the same year he became headmaster of the Jews' College founded by his father, and in 1864 he got a position in the synagogue of Bayswater .
Since 1879 he represented his sick father as Chief Rabbi and was elected his successor a year after his death. He continued the tradition instituted by his father, combining Orthodox Judaism with strong organizational skills and a sense of the dignity of his office.
Although he had visited Palestine and was active in the colonization movement Chowewe Zion , he was opposed to the ideas of Theodor Herzl and described the political Zionism developed by Herzl as "deceiving the masses" ( egregious blunder ). Herzl, however, called him a "Herrgottsfopper" in a letter to Nordau on October 29, 1898
- "... it would be a relief if the JCA doesn't like me and sets my resignation as a condition for calling. I have until then that rascals like the London Herrgottsfopper eagle insult me and. pretend to be pulling people's clocks after three years of laboring myself, giving away my time and work and forty thousand guilders from my pocket for the Judaism from which these wretched thugs live ... "
Another source of tension were the numerous Russian-Jewish refugees who streamed into Western Europe, including Great Britain, after the assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II and the subsequent pogroms , and who were strangers to the relatively small Jewish community in late 19th century England stayed. Although Hermann Adler did not succeed in building a relationship of trust with the Russian immigrants, he was recognized as their official representative at public events by British Reform Judaism and the Sephardic communities based there . Like his father, he represented the neo-orthodoxy founded by the Frankfurt rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in Great Britain . A selection of his sermons was published in London in 1909 under the title Anglo-Jewish Memories .
Elkan Adler was a half-brother of Hermann Adler.
Fonts (selection)
- Anglo-Jewish memories, and other sermons . London: G. Routledge, 1909 (work edition)
literature
- Michael Brocke (ed.), Julius Carlebach (ed.); Carsten Wilke : Biographical Handbook of Rabbis Part 1: The rabbis of the emancipation period in the German, Bohemian and Greater Poland countries 1781–1871 . Volume 1. Munich: KG Saur, 2004, ISBN 3-598-24871-7 , p. 126f.
- Encyclopedia Judaica , 1973, Vol. 2, Col. 278-279
- Geoffrey Alderman : British Jewry since emancipation. The Univ. of Buckingham Press, Buckingham 2014.
Web links
- Literature by and about Hermann Adler (chief rabbi) in the bibliographic database WorldCat
- Office of the Chief Rabbi: Past Chief Rabbis ( Memento from July 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) - Information on Hermann Adler (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Theodor Herzl: Letters and Diaries , ed. Bein et alii, Vol. 4, 1990, p. 567
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Adler, Hermann |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Adler, Hermann Naftali (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom (1891-1911) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 30, 1839 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hanover |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 18, 1911 |
| Place of death | London |