Mordechai Wetzlar

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Mordechai Wetzlar (also Marcus Gerson Wetzlar ; born 1801 in Fulda ; died on December 28, 1878 in Frankfurt am Main ) was the district rabbi of the Hessian and from 1866 Prussian districts of Fritzlar and Melsungen .

Life

Wetzlar was born in Fulda in 1801 as the scion of an Orthodox family. He was the only son of very poor parents. His father was Gerson Wetzlar, his mother Bess, née Marcus. He received private lessons. In 1815 he went as a Talmud student for yeshiva of the famous Rabbi Moshe Tobiah Sontheim in Hanau . He was a classmate of Jakob Löwenstein . Wetzlar was regarded as the most capable of the Hanau Bachurim and received the rabbi diploma as early as 1820 . In 1819 he accompanied Rabbi Sontheim to the cult conference in Kassel .

From 1824 Wetzlar studied theology and philosophy in Würzburg with Johann Jakob Wagner . In December 1827 he matriculated in Marburg . In May 1829 he passed the rabbinical state examination there. This was followed by a nine-month internship at Sontheim in Hanau. He then took on a teaching position in the then small town of Gudensberg in Hesse .

In Gudensberg in April 1830 he was appointed district rabbi of the district rabbinate for the Fritzlar and Melsungen districts, which had existed since 1823. In 1832 he applied to succeed Sontheim in Hanau. The Jewish community in the city of Fritzlar was too liberal for the very orthodox Wetzlar, and therefore he preferred to stay in Gudensberg. He was, together with the four provincial rabbis and a few other learned Jews, a member of the Hessian Land Rabbinate. In the orthodox-minded Jewish circles he was regarded as the "Oberlandesrabbi" in Hesse and enjoyed the highest recognition. Nevertheless, Wetzlar was not inaccessible to all reforms and even promoted them when it seemed right to him. In 1839, for example, he instructed all of his rabbinate's congregations to have important parts of the texts read at the service read aloud in German after the Hebrew reading.

During his term of office in Gudensberg, he set up a Jewish elementary school , one of the oldest of its kind in Kurhessen, and the synagogue there , which was built by Albrecht Rosengarten from 1840 to 1843 and, after renovation, has served as a municipal cultural and meeting place since 1995.

Wetzlar was married to three daughters of the Frankfurt rabbi Jakob Posen; In 1830 he married Hindele-Henriette (born 1804), in 1845 Lipet-Elisabet (born 1812) and in 1860 Jette (born 1813). From these marriages he had eight daughters.

The robbery of an elderly Jewish couple in Gudensberg in December 1875 excited Wetzlar so much that he left Gudensberg after 46 years and moved to Frankfurt am Main with his children. There he died on December 28, 1878 and was buried with great sympathy.

In an obituary it says about him: "All attempts that were made to change the synagogue order in Kurhessen in line with the reform failed because of his tenacious resistance and his well-deserved influence with the authorities."

Fonts

  • Contribution to the rabbinical reports against the Frankfurt Reform Association. 1844.
  • As GW: The correct position of the rabbis. In: The Faithful Guardian of Zion. Organ to safeguard the interests of Orthodox Judaism. Editor Samuel Enoch, Altona 1846, pp. 257f.

literature

  • Leopold Löwenstein : The rabbinate in Hanau along with contributions on the history of the Jews there. In: Yearbook of the Jewish-Literary Society in Frankfurt am Main. XIV, Frankfurt am Main 1921, p. 29, 73-74 ( digitized version ).
  • MJ Japhet: Memories of Rabbi Mordechai Wetzlar. In: Yearbook of the Jewish-Literary Society in Frankfurt am Main. XX, Frankfurt am Main 1931/32, pp. 245-282 8 ( digitized version ).
  • Felix Lazarus: Kassel after foreign rule. From the death of Berlin (1814) to the death of Romann (1842). In: Monthly for the history and science of Judaism . Volume 78, Issue 6, Dresden, Breslau, Berlin 1934, pp. 596, 598 ( digitized version ).
  • Paul Arnsberg : The Jewish communities in Hesse. Beginning, fall, new beginning. Volume I, Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-7973-0213-4 , pp. 225-301.
  • Monika Richarz : The entry of the Jews into the academic professions. Jewish students and academics in Germany 1678-1848. Mohr, Tübingen 1974, ISBN 3-16-835162-8 , p. 126.
  • Carsten Wilke : The Talmud and the Kant: Rabbi training on the threshold of modernity. Olms, Hildesheim, Zurich, New York 2003, ISBN 978-3-487-11950-2 , pp. 113, 145, 172, 434, 528, 627.
  • Entry WETZLAR, Marcus Gerson. 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. 899f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “You will make the following arrangement for Tischebeaf (Tischa beAw, 9th Aw) in this community:… 3. The… teacher has to recite the Haftora in German at the morning service, after it has been recited by the chorister in Hebrew. 4. After the Torah has been recorded, the teacher has to recite all of Echa in German ... Gudensberg, on the eve of the month from 5599. The district rabbi signed Wetzlar. " [1]
  2. ↑ Jewish press. Conservative weekly. Central organ of the Misrachi. Berlin 1879, pp. 13–15, quoted from: Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbiner. Part 1. p. 899.
personal data
SURNAME Wetzlar, Mordechai
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wetzlar, Marcus Gerson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German rabbi
DATE OF BIRTH 1801
PLACE OF BIRTH Fulda , Germany
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 1878
Place of death Frankfurt am Main , Germany