Israelite Religious Society (Karlsruhe)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Synagogue of the Israelite Religious Society in Karlsruhe, end of the 19th century.
Report of the initiation in the Israelit , 1881
Interior of the synagogue of the Israelite Religious Society in Karlsruhe, end of the 19th century.
Advertisement for rabbinical position, Jewish press 1924

The Israelite Religious Society Karlsruhe (also Adass Jeschurun , ש ישורון) was the only neo- orthodox Jewish exit community in Baden based on the model of the Frankfurt orthodox separate community under the leadership of Samson Raphael Hirsch . Its initiators, who were strictly faithful to the Torah , vehemently opposed the innovations practiced by reform currents such as organ music and mixed choir singing in the synagogue , changes in the prayer book or e.g. B. the cremation of the deceased.

history

A great role model for the Orthodox Karlsruhe Jews was Nathanael Weil , known as Korban Nesanel , who was chief rabbi there from 1750; his meta commentary on the Mishnah tracts Mo'ed and Naschim is still common today. One of the pioneers was the Karlsruhe elder Kaufman Wormser (d. 1860), who promoted Torah studies through private foundations and thus enabled his son-in-law Jakob Ettlinger to manage a training center in Karlsruhe for some time from 1823. Soon afterwards Ettlinger was appointed rabbi in Altona and made a name for himself as an advocate of “modern” orthodoxy. His students, especially Samson Raphael Hirsch, later developed the concept "Tora im derech eretz" ( Hebrew תורה עם דרך ארץ, analogously: "Torah together with secular education"), which the Orthodox parliamentary group in Karlsruhe soon followed.

After years of debates about reforms in the liturgy and church structures, reform-minded people and devout believers came to a break over the question of installing an organ when the synagogue in Kronenstrasse was to be enlarged and redesigned. A group of members around the families Wormser, Altmann, Ettlinger, Kaufmann, Straus, Weil u. a. opposed the - z. Some of the innovations inspired by Protestantism . When the liberal majority did not give in, this Orthodox faction declared its withdrawal from the Israelite religious community in 1869. Rahel Straus later described the events:

"We children have often been told how the merchant Wormser, a respected pious man, picked up the Torah scroll that his family had donated and, accompanied by a small group of faithful, carried it out of the church, which seemed to him desecrated, and created a new prayer room, which was small and scanty at the beginning. "

A report by the Frankfurt rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch confirmed her law-abiding attitude, and a civil suit was brought . At first it seemed that the “resigners” would have to continue paying the religious taxes to the main community. The Administrative Court, however, overturned a corresponding first-instance judgment and emphasized "undisturbed freedom of conscience": No citizen of Baden could be legally compelled to become a member of a religious community.

The group around the Mohel Baruch Hayum Wormser (1809–1872), son of the aforementioned Kaufman Wormser, founded the Israelitische Religionsgesellschaft (Adass Jeschurun) in 1870 , as a makeshift in the form of a religious association set up as a stock corporation and now also resigned from the regional synagogue . With this far-reaching step, Karlsruhe was in a pioneering role in German-speaking countries. Some members of the (mostly liberal) majority faction used the associations and the religious school of the Orthodox, but there was a clear separation in the exercise of the Jewish religious laws (the Halacha ) and in ritual questions.

Newspaper advertisement in Israelit , 1925

Josef Altmann (1818–1874), collegiate rabbi in Karlsruhe since 1849, as a member of the Upper Council of the Israelites in Baden tried to find a compromise, but was also exposed to severe criticism for his compromise position. S. R. Hirsch attacked him sharply in a "missive" because, contrary to his high theological competence in the upper council, he had approved the reforms.

Initially, the resigned families had rooms for minjan and religious instruction at Ritterstrasse 2 in the Ettlinger house. On September 21, 1881, a synagogue building designed by Gustav Ziegler was opened at Karl-Friedrich-Strasse 16 . In the front building from the Weinbrenner era there were a. Housing as well as the religious school. In the courtyard there was now a large prayer house for around 200 people, built in simple forms, with a “winter school” (i.e. weekday prayer room) and an outbuilding for the ritual slaughter of poultry. In 1890 a new ritual bath ( mikveh ) was added in the synagogue courtyard.

The orientation of the prayer room to the east meant that behind the middle risalit stood the Torah shrine :

“On the left was a staircase to the gallery for women, on the right the entrance for men. Inside, next to the prayer desk, on both sides, some stairs [steps] led to Aron HaKodesch, which was built into the wall. In the middle was the bimah (dais) with the desk for the reading of the weekly cider. […] Our cantor and religion teacher Mr. Rabinowitsch SA lived in the front building. Part of his apartment was used by the Jewish kindergarten. Rabbi Dr. Michalski sA ​​"

One of the achievements in Karlsruhe, in addition to the Almemor (the aforementioned "Bimah"), which was moved to the traditional center of the room , was that prayers and Torah reading were not allowed to be disturbed by conversations or loud coming and going, or that the wedding ceremony was not outdoors but in the Synagogue took place. Rabbis appeared in robes and beefs , married women wore wigs (called: "parting"). The local southern German customs with some elements from Eastern Europe took a back seat.

The Karlsruhe Religious Society maintained u. a. the Israelite Kindergarten Association (Dr. Sinai Schiffer Foundation) , a nursing, loan and funeral association Chevra Kadischa (Gmilut Chassadim) , the New Cemetery at Rintheimer Feld, established in 1872 , a youth learning association Chinuch Neorim founded in 1876 , a charity association Dower Tow and a local group of the Esra ( Agudas Yisroel youth), a group of Palestine pioneers who are loyal to the Torah . Evidently from the early 1920s, the front building was home to the Israelite Kindergarten and from 1923 to 1928 the “Hebrew Bookstore”, run by teacher Isaak Rabinowitz.

At the religious school (also "Talmud Torah"), which was connected to a library, taught in the pre-war period a. a. Dr. Michalski, Isaak Rabinowitz and Ekiba Leib Meyer. In the evenings and on Sundays, boys and girls alike learned the "alef-beis", the daily prayers and their translation as well as chumash and worked their way up to reading the unpunctured Shulchan Aruch . The older boys learned about Gemara from Mendel Wiernik, David Kalisch and Pessach Pack . The grades of the annual exams were included in the state school report. Every year at Lag B'Omer the whole school went on an excursion, e.g. B. in the Black Forest.

The pre- Zionist settlements of European Jews in Palestine (" Alter Jischuw ") had one of their most important supporters in the banker Samuel Straus (1843–1904), a Karlsruhe member of the religious society:

"Jerusalem owed Straus the construction of seven houses in the Batei Machasseh and near the Nablustore, together with the Mainz Rabbi Marcus Lehmann."

“[Straus] had bought a large house for free housing for Talmudic scholars [...] There he opened a boys' school [...] for studying the Torah; he maintained the school from his own resources. He worked with great zeal and great success for the pilgrims' apartments and the Schaare Zedek hospital [...] ”

In 1890 the kehilla comprised about 95 paying heads of families, in 1904 there were about 100. Most of the members belonged to the upper middle class. The "Eastern Jewish" families who immigrated from Russia , Poland and Austria-Hungary since the end of the 19th century mostly belonged to the Old Orthodoxy and only found a few to the "Israelites", as the members of the exit community were called colloquially. Only on the basis of the laws of the Weimar Republic was the IRG in Karlsruhe recognized in 1922 as a corporation under public law . B. Equal to other religious communities for tax purposes.

One of the most influential and well-known representatives of the Karlsruhe exit orthodoxy was Maier ha-Cohen Altmann (1852–1932), son of senior councilor Josef Altmann and wine merchant at the circle. He was on the parish council for 48 years, including the last few decades as Parnas . Posthumously he received the title of Morenu . Other members of the board of directors were (in 1927): Jakob Ettlinger jr., Kaufman Ettlinger, Emil Kaufmann, Philipp Süß, Leopold Schwarz and Dr. Wilhelm Weil. Markus Stern as administrator of the fund Keren HaTora and Elias Krotowsky as Gabbai were also among the celebrities in the community.

From autumn 1936, there was a "Jewish school department" at Markgrafenstraße 28 in Karlsruhe's Lidell School with eight classes for the more than 200 children who were excluded from regular schools due to the racial laws . The responsible school commission was equal staffed by delegates from the liberal community and the Orthodox religious community. Orthodoxy was represented there by Rabbi Michalski, Jakob Altmann and the doctor Wilhelm Weil; in the college u. a. by Max Ottensoser.

Interior view of the fire ruins of the synagogue after the November pogrom in 1938

During the November pogroms , the synagogue was set on fire early in the morning on November 10, 1938 by organized troops (including members of the SA ). The fire department found that large amounts of gasoline had been poured into the building. Raw Abraham Michalski tried to save Torah scrolls and other sacred objects, but was - like teacher Rabinowitz - taken into “ protective custody ” and in the following days, along with many other Jewish men, were taken to the Dachau concentration camp . The burnt-out ruin had to be demolished by order of the authorities at the expense of the community.

Congregation member Karl Kaufmann was able to dig up burned, damaged and intact Torah scrolls in the rubble of the synagogue and received one of them as a gift from the board of the community. About the destroyed holy books it says in the register of the new [Israelite] cemetery under the date January 1, 1939 (d. I. 10th Tevet 5699), it “[…] were the on November 10th. 1938 by the Synag. Fire buried Torah scrolls and schemas [scriptures containing the name of God] ”.

Released from Dachau, Rabbi Michalski and teacher Rabinowitz managed to immigrate to the mandate of Palestine in a detour and to resume their work in Tel Aviv with the small community of Adat Jeschurun .

A memorial plaque on today's G.-Braun-Medienhaus on the site of the former synagogue reminds of the disappeared building.

Rabbis, teachers and cantors (incomplete)

  • Gumpel (Gabriel) Thalmann (1809−?) And Nathanael Weil jr., Both collegiate rabbis until around 1874
  • Herz Naftali (Heinrich) Ehrmann (around 1850–1918), rabbi from 1874 to 1876, writer under the pseudonym "Judaeus"
  • Gabor (Gedalja) Goitein (1848–1883), rabbi from 1877 to 1883
  • Bernhard (Naftali) Blumgrund (around 1863–1905), collegiate rabbi from around 1896 to 1905
  • Samuel Würzburger (1818–1902), prayer leader , slaughterer and teacher from 1879 to 1889
  • Simon Mansbach (1820–1905), Torah writer and “children's teacher” from 1888 to 1905
  • Jacob Kramer (around 1876–1921), collegiate rabbi and teacher from 1905 to 1921
  • Sinai Schiffer (1852–1923), rabbi from 1884 to 1923
  • Eduard (Chaim) Biberfeld (1864–1939), collegiate rabbi and teacher from 1900 to 1901
  • Israel Baruch Kwiatkowsky, called Israel Baruch (1863–1932), prayer leader and slaughterer
  • Jehuda Leib (Ekiba) Meyer (1859–1930), collegiate rabbi, teacher and Dayan
  • Isaak (Itzhak) Rabinowitz (1882–1968), teacher and prayer leader from 1923 to the end of 1938
  • Abraham Jechiel (Julius) Michalski (1889–1961), rabbi from 1923 to late 1938.

Known pupils and members (selection)

  • Mordechai Breuer (1921–2007), Torah scholar emigrated in 1933
  • Sara Lupolianski born Landau (1882–1942), Holocaust victim, namesake of the charity Yad Sarah
  • Leopold Plachzinski (1875–1932), singer at the Karlsruhe Court Theater
  • Sigmund Seeligmann (1873–1940), historian and bibliographer
  • Rahel Straus b. Goitein (1880–1963), doctor and women's rights activist
  • Raphael Straus (1887–1947), historian
  • Samuel Straus (1843–1904), banker and philanthropist, grandson of the Baal Schem von Michelstadt
  • Moritz Wormser (1867–1940), doctor and playwright
  • Raphael Wormser (approx. 1839–1901), community leader (Parnas) and Mohel

literature

  • Der Israelit , Jan. 12, 1870, pp. 26-27; July 17, 1872, pp. 629 ff .; December 1, 1932, p. 11, ub.uni-frankfurt.de (PDF)
  • Adolf Lewin: History of the Jews in Baden since the reign of Karl Friedrich: 1738–1909 . Braun, Karlsruhe 1909, pp. 388-393.
  • Berthold Rosenthal : Home history of the Baden Jews from their historical appearance to the present . Konkordia Verlag, Bühl 1927, pp. 373-376.
  • Heinz Schmitt u. a. (Ed.): Jews in Karlsruhe. Contributions to their history up to the Nazi seizure of power . 2nd Edition. Badenia, Karlsruhe 1990, ISBN 3-7617-0268-X .
  • Rahel Straus : We lived in Germany. Memories of a German Jewess 1880–1933 . DVA, Stuttgart 1961, p. 12 ff., P. 34 ff. And passim (2nd and 3rd ed. 1962).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. z. B. Leon Meyer in: Jews in Karlsruhe . 1990, p. 597
  2. ↑ cf. Dedication to the merchant Wormser-Turlach (1852), Bad. Regional library Karlsruhe R 111 A 71257 and Andreas Gotzmann: Jewish law in the cultural process . […] Tübingen, 1997, p. 308
  3. ^ Leon Meyer: The exit community and other minyanim . In: Rahel Straus: We lived in Germany. Memories of a German Jewess 1880–1933 . 3. Edition. DVA, Stuttgart 1962, p. 13.
  4. ^ SR Hirsch: The question of separation in Karlsruhe. Illumination of the address given by the Grand Ducal High Council against the Israelite Religious Society in Karlsruhe . In: Collected writings , Volume 5. J. Kauffmann , Frankfurt am Main 1910, pp. 522-542
  5. ↑ B. Rosenthal: Homeland history of the Baden Jews . Konkordia, Bühl 1927, p. 373 and Der Israelit , January 12, 1870, p. 26
  6. ^ Lewin (1909), p. 393
  7. ↑ Lt. Breuer (1986: 291) Karlsruhe was the “first completely separate exit municipality”.
  8. ^ Rosenthal: Heimatgeschichte . P. 374
  9. ^ Robert Goldschmit et al .: The city of Karlsruhe, its history and its administration. Festschrift to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the city . Karlsruhe 1915, p. 248 and address books
  10. ^ Program for the inauguration of the synagogueבית תפילת עדת ישורוןin Karlsruhe . Malsch and Vogel, Karlsruhe 1881, 23 pp.
  11. ↑ cf. Israelit , July 17, 1890, p. 1008
  12. ^ Leon Meyer: The exit community and other minyanim . In: Jews in Karlsruhe. Contributions to their history up to the Nazi seizure of power . 2nd Edition. Karlsruhe 1990, p. 596.
  13. ↑ cf. Matthias Morgenstern: From Frankfurt to Jerusalem. Isaac Breuer and the story of the 'exit dispute' […] . Tübingen 1995, pp. 153-156.
  14. ↑ Stadtarchiv Karlsruhe, fonds 1 / AEST 36; Der Israelit , Jan. 6, 1927, p. 8
  15. ↑ Der Israelit , January 17, 1924, etc.
  16. ↑ cf. Memoirs by Anni Rephun-Fruchter (www.chareidi.org) and Juden in Karlsruhe (1990): 309 u.ö.
  17. ↑ Fritz Meir Fraenkel: German Jews in the Old Jischuw . In: Nachalath Zwi , 1937, p. 40
  18. ↑ See Palestine . In: Der Israelit , No. 18. March 3rd 1904
  19. ↑ cf. Manfred Koch. In: Jews in Karlsruhe. Contributions to their history up to the Nazi seizure of power . 2nd Edition. Karlsruhe 1990, pp. 113 and 120.
  20. ↑ cf. Jewish Encyclopedia (1904), Italy – Leon, Sp. 449.
  21. ↑ GLA Karlsruhe, 480/11203
  22. ↑ Der Israelit , March 10, 1932, p. 7
  23. ^ State Handbook for Baden . Braun, Karlsruhe 1927, p. 304.
  24. ↑ cf. Memories from Anni Rephun-Fruchter, chareidi.org and others.
  25. ^ Joseph Walk: The "Jewish School Department" in Karlsruhe 1936–1940 . In: Heinz Schmitt (Ed.): Jews in Karlsruhe . Contributions […]. 2nd Edition. 1988, pp. 311-320 and Centrum Judaicum Berlin, CJA 75 A Ka 3, 14, # 4027 passim
  26. ↑ Josef Werner: Swastika and Star of David . Badenia, Karlsruhe 1988, p. 185
  27. ↑ Interview with the Shoa Foundation, VHA No. 26936, segment 25
  28. ↑ HStA Stgt J 386 Bü 312 p. 23
  29. ↑ See files GLA Karlsruhe 480 / EK 24440 and / EK 11203
  30. ↑ Landesarchiv BW, inventory EL 228 b II: LDA BW: Documentation of Jewish gravestones in Baden-Württemberg, Karlsruhe, Haid- and Neu-Straße (Orthodox cemetery)