Pinchas Horowitz

Pinchas Horowitz , also Horwitz ( Pinchas Ben Zwi Hirsch Ha-Levi ; born 1730 or 1731 in Czortków (today Ternopil Oblast , Ukraine ); died on July 1, 1805 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a rabbi in Frankfurt am Main from 1771 until his death Main.

Life

Gravestone on the field of honor of the cemetery on Battonnstrasse

Horowitz was born in Czortków, where his father Zwi-Hirsch Halevi Horwitz was a rabbi. He studied first under his father and later under his two brothers, Nachum and Samuel Horowitz , who later became rabbi of Nikolsburg . During this time, he and his brother visited the circle around Rabbi Dow Bär von Mesritsch and got to know Rabbi Schneur Salman , the founder of the Chabad movement. He married Rachel-Debora Halpern, the daughter of the community council Joel Halpern in Leshnyuv (Leszniow) in Eastern Galicia.

Horowitz was first a rabbi in the small Polish town of Witkowo and in 1764 in Lachowicze. In 1764 he became a rabbi in Lyakhovichi (Lachowicze), Belarus. He took sides in the "Clever dispute" against the Prague chief rabbi Landau and thus won the sympathy of the Frankfurt Talmudists. In 1771 he accepted an offer from the Jewish Community of Frankfurt am Main , where he remained as a rabbi until his death. In Frankfurt Horowitz led a private minyan in which the Sephardic rite was followed, while the rest of Frankfurt's Jews followed the Ashkenazi rite. The only exception besides Pinchas Horowitz was Rabbi Nathan Adler , who established a public minyan in the Judengasse according to the Sephardic rite and was banned for it in 1779 and 1789, also with Horowitz's consent.

Horowitz was a vehement opponent of the Haskala movement. In 1782 he preached against the German translation of the Bible by Moses Mendelssohn and the accompanying commentary, the so-called Biur . Despite his criticism of Mendelssohn's translation, he approved the German translation of Wolf Heidenheim's Machsor , the prayer book for Jewish holidays. Among his most famous students was Rabbi Nathan Adler, who in turn was the teacher of Moses Sofer , who respected his Talmudic scholarship and his halachic authority. Horowitz wrote mainly commentaries on some Talmud tracts. His two most important works are Sefer Hafla'ah and Shevet Achim (for example "When Brothers Sit Together"). He explains this title as follows: “It is desirable that brothers sit together and at the same time strive for clear study and clear halacha . For only through a thorough study of the Halachot and a focus on its results is it possible to understand the early Poskim (rabbinical authorities) and the depth of their systems. "

Horowitz was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt am Main. His gravestone has been preserved and can be viewed on the Ehrenfeld in the southwestern part of the cemetery.

The web links contain the inscription of the tomb via an online database, which, however, also reveals a discrepancy in the date of death.

literature

• Encyclopedia Judaica , Vol. 8, pp. 999-1001
• Entry HORWITZ, Pinchas. 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 , p. 464 f.

Web links

• Horowitz grave inscription, Hebrew / German