Max Lilienthal

Max Lilienthal

Max Menachem Lilienthal (born November 6, 1815 in Munich ; died April 5, 1882 in Cincinnati , Ohio ) was a German educator and rabbi , a consultant for educational issues in the Russian Empire for the Jews living in the Pale of Settlement and then rabbi of the United States Reform Judaism .

biography

Max Menachem Lilienthal was the son of the wholesaler Löb Seligmann Lilienthal. He received lessons from Moses Wittelshöfer in Floß (Upper Palatinate) , from Wolf Hamburger in Fürth and from Hirsch Aub in Munich. In Munich he attended high school.

In 1834/35 he attended the University of Munich . After private studies he received his doctorate there in 1838. When the candidacy for the office of district rabbi in Würzburg was submitted in 1839, the young liberal Lilienthal was defeated by the orthodox businessman Seligmann Bär Bamberger in February 1840 . On the recommendation of Ludwig Philippson , he was appointed director of the Jewish school in Riga in 1839 . As a rabbi in Riga, he dedicated his “Sermons in the Synagogue” in German to the Russian Minister of Education, Sergei Uvarow , with whom he was on friendly terms.

In 1841, on the recommendation of Uwarow, Lilienthal was invited by the tsarist government to set up a project for the Jews in Russia to set up state schools that were to function on the Western European model. As part of this task, Lilienthal tried to persuade the leaders of the Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement to accept this project. However, his ideas met with a variety of resistance. Orthodox circles , and especially the Hasidim , saw the project as an attempt by the government to destroy traditional Jewish education in cheder and yeshiva . The Maskilim , representatives of the Jewish Enlightenment , were upset because Lilienthal ignored them and only met with representatives of the Orthodox and Hasidim. After another intervention by the Minister of Education, who appointed a commission of Jewish representatives to study Lilienthal's proposals, Lilienthal undertook a long journey through the Russian Jewish communities in 1843. In order not to repeat mistakes made earlier, Lilienthal this time renounced his suggestions, such as hiring German teachers in Russia and levying a tax on Melamdim , the teachers in the cheder . Even so, on this occasion too he tried to ally himself with the Orthodox against the Maskilim, and this venture also ended up being a failure. In 1844 a law was passed to establish state schools for Jews, but in the same year Lilienthal suddenly had to leave Russia. Apparently he had come to believe that the intention of the Tsarist government was to use the newly established schools as a means of converting Jewish students to Christianity; All the more so since the study of the Talmud was forbidden in the curriculum .

In 1845 Lilienthal returned to Munich, where he was entered in the matriculation following his father's request, as prescribed in the Bavarian Jewish edict of 1813 . This was the prerequisite for his marriage to Babette Nettre (born on February 19, 1821 in Würzburg) in 1845. During this short time in Munich he worked as a rabbi for the Jewish community in Munich .

In 1845 Lilienthal emigrated to the United States . He first settled in New York City and ran a private boarding school there for several years. In 1849 he became the rabbi of a short-lived association of the German-speaking communities there and headed their day schools. From 1855 until his death, Lilienthal was the rabbi of the Bene Israel community in Cincinnati, which he led in the direction of moderate Reform Judaism. In this city he enjoyed numerous honors, he was 1860-69 member of the city education authority and from 1872 until his death member of the board of trustees of the University of Cincinnati . As one of the leading Jewish representatives of his time, he called for the consistent exclusion of all religious education in public schools. Together with Isaac Mayer Wise , who also worked in Cincinnati, Lilienthal promoted the spread of Reform Judaism. In 1857 he published a German-language collection of poems entitled Freedom, Spring and Love .

Lilienthal was the founder of the Rabbinical Literary Association and editor of The Sabbath Visitor magazine . He was president of the American Rabbis Association.

Fonts

• De origine Judaico-Alexandrinae philosophiae. Dissertation, Munich 1838, print edition: About the origin of the Jewish-Alexandrian religious philosophy. Munich 1839, 22 pages.

literature

• Beth ha-Knesseth - meeting place. On the history of the Munich synagogues, their rabbis and cantors. Catalog for the exhibition in the Jewish Museum Munich (December 2, 1999– May 31, 2000). Buchendorfer Verlag , Munich 1999, pp. 58–59, ISBN 3-934036-09-0 .
• Franz Menges :  Lilienthal, Max. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , pp. 559 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Encyclopedia Judaica . Vol. 11, pp. 243-245.
• Entry LILIENTHAL, Max, Dr. In: Michael Brocke and Julius Carlebach (editors), edited by Carsten Wilke : Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbis. Part 1: The rabbis of the emancipation period in the German, Bohemian and Greater Poland countries 1781–1871. K G Saur, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-598-24871-7 , pp. 601-603.
• Bruce L. Ruben: Max Lilienthal. The Making of the American Rabbinate. Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2011, ISBN 978-0-8143-3516-1 .

Web links

• Short biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ursula Gehring-Münzel: The Würzburg Jews from 1803 to the end of the First World War. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. Volume III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. 2007, pp. 499-528 and 1306-1308, here: pp. 515 f.
2. ^ Carsten Wilke: Country Jews and other scholars. The rabbinical culture of Franconia from the 12th to the 20th century. In: Michael Brenner, Daniela F. Eisenstein (ed.): The Jews in Franconia. Oldenbourg, Munich 2012 (= Studies on Jewish History and Culture in Bavaria. Volume 5), ISBN 978-3-486-70100-5 , pp. 69–94, here: p. 89.