Israel Friedlaender

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Israel Friedlaender

Israel Friedlaender (also Friedländer , Friedlander ; born on September 6, 1876 in Kovel , Russian Empire (today Ukraine ); died on  July 5, 1920 in Jarmolynzi near Kamjanez-Podilskyj , Soviet Union ) was a rabbi , teacher and Bible scholar .

life and work

Growing up in Warsaw , Israel Friedlaender studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin from 1896 until he moved to the University of Strasbourg in 1900 , where he received his doctorate in 1901 under Theodor Nöldeke with a study on Maimonides ; the work was published in abridged form the next year, as was customary at the time. Until 1903, Strasbourg was the first stage of his academic career as a private lecturer and lecturer for Semitic languages . In parallel to his studies, he trained as a rabbi and also obtained his seminary in 1901 at the rabbinical seminary in Berlin founded by Esriel Hildesheimer .

In October 1903 Friedlaender moved to the United States . Through the mediation of Solomon Schechter he was able to take up a teaching position at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City and taught biblical studies , philosophy and the history of Judaism until the end of his life as Sabato Morais Professor of Biblical Literature and Exegesis . He was considered one of the most important Arabists in the country. In addition to his teaching activities, he supported colleagues in the translation of texts, especially from German and Russian, and published several important works in German translation himself. In addition to his academic work, he held various offices in American Judaism: he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Intercollegiate Menorah Society , the Executive Committee of the Bureau of Education of the Jewish Community in New York City and the Executive Committee of the Federation of American Zionists . He was known to be a passionate supporter of Zionism . In 1912, together with Rabbi Mordechai M. Kaplan, he founded the Young Israel Movement of modern Orthodox Judaism.

After a few years in the USA, he returned to a subject that was rather far removed from his simultaneous studies, but which he had dealt intensively with during his time in Strasbourg: the mysterious figure al-Chidr ( transcribed by him as Chadir ), which occurs in various texts of early Islam , especially the Koran itself, with references to the Old Testament , as well as to classical antiquity, here especially to the Alexander novel . By discovering and tapping sources that were not accessible to the classical philologists for linguistic reasons, he promoted the understanding of how the later reviews of this text came about.

In 1905 he married Lilian Bentwich (1882 to 1954), the eldest daughter of Herbert Bentwich , from an important Jewish-Zionist-minded London family, to which Solomon Schechter had also established a connection. The couple had six children, but their life came to an abrupt, unhappy end as early as 1920. When, during the turmoil of the Polish-Soviet War , he and two friends wanted to observe the situation of the Jewish communities in Poland and Ukraine on behalf of the American Joint Distribution Committee and to secure the support of Marshal Piłsudski , it happened on the Kamianets Strait -Podilskyj to Lemberg at the entrance to Jarmolynzi about a momentous incident. The members of the small group, especially since they appeared in American uniforms, were mistaken for Polish officers and killed by members of the Red Army . Friedländer's body was initially buried in the Jarmolynzi cemetery, but in 2001 it was transferred to the property of his wife's family on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem .

Fonts

Bibliography: Cohen, Boaz: Israel Friedlaender. A bibliography of his writings with an appreciation . Moinester, New York, NY 1936.

  • The usage of Maimonides: a lexical and grammatical contribution to the knowledge of Central Arabic . (Vol. 1. Arabic-German Lexicon ). Kauffmann, Frankfurt a. M. 1902. [No more published] online
  • The problem of Judaism in America . Jewish Comment, Baltimore, Md. 1909.
  • The heterodoxies of the Shiites according to Ibn Hazm. Introd., Transl. and commentary . New Haven, Conn. 1909. online
  • The legend of Chadhir and the Alexander novel. A legendary and literary historical investigation. Teubner, Leipzig 1913. online
  • The Jews of Russia and Poland. A bird's-eye view of their history and culture . Putnam, New York 1915. online
  • Past and present. A collection of Jewish essays . Ark Publ., Cincinnati, Ohio 1919. online

literature

  • Margery Bentwich: Lilian Roth Friedlander. A biography. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1957. With a portrait of Friedländer
  • Jewish Theological Seminary; Memorial Meeting Israel Friedlaender, Bernard Cantor . Ney York 1920 The online presentation is mostly incorrect
  • Baila Round Shargel: Practical Dreamer. Israel Friedlaender and the shaping of American Judaism. The Jewish Theological Seminary, New York 1985, ISBN 0-87334-027-2 .
  • Olaf Terpitz: Simon Dubnow and his translators. In: Verena Dohrn , Gertrud Pickhan (eds.): Transit and Transformation: Eastern European Jewish Migrants in Berlin 1918–1939 . Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010 ISBN 978-3-8353-0797-1
  • Esriel Hildesheimer, Mordechai Eliav: Das Berliner Rabbinerseminar 1873-1938 , Berlin 2008, ISBN 9783938485460 , pp. 115–116

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Herbert Bentwich and Susannah Solomon had a total of eleven children, of which Lilian was the oldest, Margery, the author of her biography, the fifth. See Benjamin Jaffe, Cecil Roth: Bentwich . In: Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.): Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2.ed. Macmillan, Detroit, Vol. 3 (2007) ISBN 978-0-02-865931-2 p. 381
  2. ^ This is the most detailed account, that of the American Jewish Distribution Committee . According to Margery Bentwich p. 73 it is unclear which of the parties involved is to blame and how exactly the incident came about. Presumably they were mistaken for American spies.