Mordechai Halberstadt

Mordechai bar Elieser Halberstadt (* 1686 in Halberstadt , † 23 May 1769 in Düsseldorf ) was a German rabbi and Talmud scholar .

Life and family

He was born in Halberstadt in 1686 as the son of Eliezer. As a pupil of the rabbi Zevi Hirsch Aschkenasi and the Halberstadt scholar Abraham bar Judah Berlin, Mordechai attended the talmudic college ( Yeshiva ) of R. Jacob Cohn (Jacub ha-Kohen) in Frankfurt am Main around 1730 . After returning from there, he worked for several years in his native city and at the yeshiva there. Acceptance of a rabbinical position in Griesheim, later also in Darmstadt . In 1751 Mordechai Halberstadt came to Düsseldorf and became regional rabbi of the Lower Rhine duchies of Jülich and Berg . Mordechai Halberstadt had a daughter named Miriam, who was married to Isak ben Samson Coma from Mainz (1727–1787) and who died in 1765 long before her husband. He died on May 16 (23 May) 1769 in Düsseldorf.

The Hamburg amulet dispute

As a Kabbalist and a recognized expert on Jewish mysticism, Halberstadt was also involved in the disputes about the scholar Jonathan Eybeschütz (born 1690 in Krakow, died 1764 in Altona), who taught in Prague from 1736 to 1751 , but not as a rabbi. As early as 1733 he had been suspected of heresy and denied him a rabbinical office, which he was only able to take up in 1750 in the north German congregation of Altona, Hamburg and Wandsbeck. Rabbis Samuel Heilmann from Metz and Pene Jehoschua asked Halberstadt for advice on the extent to which the mystical amulets Eybeschütz 'were related to the theories of the Jewish mystic Sabbatai Zewi (1626–1676) and whether he actually had miraculous powers, as was suspected in the Hamburg popular belief . He should give his judgment on the Kameoth written by Eybeschütz and at the same time determine whether they were Sabbathean. In R. Jacob Israel ben Zevi Ashkenazi from Emden, Eybeschütz found his greatest and bitter opponent in the “Hamburg amulet dispute”, which was perceived throughout the empire. The Emden rabbi also inquired in Düsseldorf and waited for R. Halberstadt to answer. The aim of the experiment was to ostracize Eybeschütz and to isolate him clearly from the community of German-speaking rabbis. The Dusseldorf's answer to this dispute was surprisingly diplomatic and relieved the aggressiveness of Eybeschütz's opponents of any energy: He advised “to refrain from any personal attack, because in all likelihood in the end the secular authorities [...], in their opinion, were groundless Accept the persecuted and the attackers would lose out. It would be more expedient, he added, to send a general pastoral letter signed by all rabbinical capacities to all Israelite communities, in which the ban on the sect of the Sabbatheans and all those who were in any way connected with Sabbathai-Zevi, its mission, principles and miraculous power believe "as well as others who write or wear such protective amulets," will be pronounced strongly. "With this letter no one is attacked personally or damaged in his reputation.

Work in Düsseldorf

During his time in Düsseldorf he criticized the teachings of R. Salomon Hanau extremely sharply, for which, however, he was "gloriously mentioned" in wide circles, including in the prayer books of R. Jacob Emden and RW Heidenheim. Another controversy, in which Halberstadt actively participated, paved the way immediately after he took office in Düsseldorf: the religious meat inspection (bedika), as it was practiced on the Lower Rhine, namely in Kurköln and Jülich-Berg . Whether an internally injured cattle (stomach) was kosher or unsuitable for consumption was a fundamental question of halacha . Halberstadt believed to have identified forgeries in the response collections available. In 1762 he founded a Chewra Kadischa in Düsseldorf .

Works

Halberstadt was the author of an unpublished grammatical work, probably in the 1760s, and a collection of responses, the Ma'amer Mordechai, which was only published by his grandson in 1790 years after his death and was printed in Brno. The prayer book Tefillot, which Halberstadt (“Mordechai Düsseldorf”) had revised, was only published in 1774.

literature

• Birgit E. Klein : Benefit and high treason. Elector Ernst of Cologne, Juda bar Cajjim and the Jews in the Old Kingdom (= Netiva. Ways of German-Jewish history and culture. Studies by the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute, edited by Michael Brocke, vol. 5), Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 2003
• Abraham Wedell : History of the Jewish community in Düsseldorf. In: Düsseldorfer Jahrbuch (contributions to the history of the Lower Rhine) 3 (1888) [special edition: History of the city of Düsseldorf in twelve treatises. Festschrift for the 600th anniversary, ed. vom Düsseldorfer Geschichtsverein], pp. 149–254
• Barbara Suchy: The Düsseldorf rabbis from the 18th century to the time of National Socialism. In: Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Düsseldorf (Ed.): Aspects of Jewish life in Düsseldorf and on the Lower Rhine. Edited by Angela Genger and Kerstin Griese, Düsseldorf 1997, pp. 48–59.
• Bastian Fleermann: “… the best rabbinate in Germany.” Biographical sketches of the Düsseldorf rabbis from 1706 to 1941, in: Düsseldorfer Jahrbuch 81 (2011), pp. 107–170
• B [enjamin] H [irsch] Auerbach: History of the Israelite community Halberstadt. Along with an appendix of unprinted letters and documents relating to literature and the religious and political conditions of the Jews in Germany in the last two centuries, Halberstadt 1866, pp. 74ff.
• Jewish Encyclopedia, New York / London 1902, Vol. 6, p. 166.

See also

• Jews in Düsseldorf