Heymann Arnhem

Heymann Arnheim , also Chaim haLevi Arnheim (born on January 15, 1796 in Wągrowiec ; died on September 22, 1869 in Glogau ) was a Prussian rabbi , educator and Hebrew .

Youth and education

Arnhem grew up in very poor circumstances. Since he had lost his father at an early age, he left his parents' house at the age of eleven and from then on was mostly on his own. He had Talmud lessons as a child, and his skillful Hebrew style was noticeable. But the public schools were closed to him and he continued his education as an autodidact . He was married at the age of 18, and against his interests he was thereafter a businessman for the three years of his marriage. After the death of his wife he worked as a private tutor in Bojanowo , Fordon , Thorn, Berlin, Hamburg, Penzlin and Neustrelitz . In doing so, he opened up the Greek and Latin languages ​​as well as - only now - the German language and literature. In 1824 he found his first permanent job as a teacher in Fraustadt , where he married. He received the Prussian citizenship. In 1827 he was appointed to teach at the Israelite elementary and religious school in Glogau. By this time he had also learned French, English and Arabic.

Publications

Soon afterwards, Arnhem drew attention to itself with its own publications. In 1830 he published a guide to Jewish religious education and in 1836 an annotated translation of the book of Job . In the preface he admired Friedrich Rückert's way of translating and characterized his own work: “Literal loyalty, without the compulsion of conflicting forms and phrases, was my guideline, which I also adhered to when I tried to reproduce the puns and paronomas of the original. “This biblical commentary was the reason that he was invited in 1836 as one of the main translators of the Rabbinical Bible, which was edited by Leopold Zunz .

Since 1836 he was a member of Abraham Geiger's Association of Jewish Scholars . In 1840 he worked for the Halle yearbooks and the magazine for foreign literature as well as for various Jewish magazines. In the same year he gave the first sermon in German in the Glogau synagogue. Since then he has been a preacher at the great synagogue in Glogau and religion teacher at the grammar school there.

In a publication from 1840, Heymann Arnheim was critical of the traditional teaching method of cheder : gifted pupils “like any food, in what cans and how prepared it is served”; But in view of the average gifted student, a method is reprehensible in which the teacher only ever turns to one student “in order to recite the ten times recited verse eleven times, and condemn the others to a mind-numbing, stupid brooding. "

Last years of life

In 1849 the Heymann congregation elected Arnheim as rabbi of the Zaller Foundation (monastery synagogue of Isaac Zaller Cohn), whereupon he worked as a communal rabbi in Glogau until 1860 and then continued to devote himself to his studies. After spending Yom Kippur in the temple on September 15, 1869 , he died after a short sick bed.

He left the widow Sarah geb. Cohn, daughter of Salomon Cohn. His eldest son Josef Arnheim was the director of the Jacobson School in Seesen.

Works

• The book Job, translated and fully commented . H. Prausnitz, Glogau 1836.

literature

• Nekrolog , Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums , Leipzig October 26, 1869. pp. 874–875.
• Michael Brocke et al. (Ed.): The rabbis of the emancipation period in the German, Bohemian and Greater Poland countries 1781–1871 . Walter de Gruyter, 2010. p. 145.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Heymann Arnheim: The book job . S. vii-viii .
2. ↑ Heymann Arnheim: Devarim aḥadim: The little Präparant. A sufficient resource for elementary students to prepare for lessons in the scriptures . tape 1 . H. Prausnitz, Glogau / Leipzig 1840, p. i .