Hirschel Levin

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Hirschel Levin alias Hart Lyon
Portrait from the Jewish Encyclopedia

Hirschel Ben Aryeh Löb Levin (also known as Zvi Hirschel Levin , Hart Lyon and Hirshel Löbel ; born 1721 in Rzeszów , Poland-Lithuania ; died August 26, 1800 in Berlin ) was the Grand Rabbi of the United Kingdom , Oberlandes Rabbi in Berlin and Rabbi von Halberstadt and Mannheim .

Life

He was born as the son of Aryeh Löb and Miriam Lowenstam in Rzeszów, Poland. His father was a rabbi in Amsterdam , his mother was the daughter of Zwi Hirsch Aschkenasi ; he was also a descendant of the Polish rabbi Elijah Ba'al Shem von Chełm .

Levin was a respected Talmudist and in 1751 got into the dispute between Jacob Emden (who was his uncle) and Jonathan Eybeschütz , in which he understandably sided with his uncle. His epistles against Eibschütz made a great impression, so that in 1756 he was elected Grand Rabbi of the Great Synagogue in London . In 1763 (or 1764) he resigned from this position to accept the Rabbinate of Halberstadt ; there he also ran a Talmud school . His successors in London were Meshullam Solomon and Tevele Schiff , two competing rabbis appointed by two differing factions of the London Jewish community. Levin subsequently became Rabbi of Mannheim in 1770 , and in 1772 (or 1773) he was appointed Chief Rabbi of Berlin. He was good friends with Moses Mendelssohn .

In 1782 Levin began to persecute the writer Hartwig Wessely for his book Divrei Shalom we-Emet ("Words of Peace and Truth", 1782), in which Wessely referred to the Jews concerned in relation to the recently published tolerance patent of Joseph II in Austria called for people to be worthy of the reform by taking secular content into account in their education. Levin prohibited the work from being printed and insisted on the author's expulsion from Berlin. His friend Mendelssohn, on the other hand, defended Wessely, which made their friendship suffer very much.

His glosses on the Talmud appeared in the Vilnius edition under the name of Rabbi Tsvi Hersh Berlin . His son Solomon Hirschell also became chief rabbi of the German and Polish communities of Jews in Great Britain. His older son, Saul Berlin , became a Talmudist and notorious forger of the Besamim Rosh .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b News in the West on Google Books
  2. a b c RBB - Prussia Chronicle: Hirschel Levin accessed on November 24, 2010
  3. Jewish Encyclopedia: HIRSCHEL BEN Aryeh LÖB LEVIN