Protest rabbis

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Protest rabbis was a blanket term coined by Theodor Herzl and henceforth used polemically for rabbis who positioned and / or expressed themselves negatively towards Zionism .

In July 1897, the executive board of the rabbis association in Germany published a "declaration of protest" directed against essential Zionist ideas and in particular against the organization of the first Zionist congress in the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums , the Berliner Tageblatt and elsewhere. It said that the "efforts of so-called Zionists to found a Jewish national state in Palestine" contradicted the messianic hope of the Jewish religion. Rather, the members are obliged to promote the national interests of their respective fatherland and, which is not a contradiction in terms, to support the construction of Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine that are not oriented towards the establishment of a state. With this declaration, the rabbis association was so successful that the planned Zionist congress was moved from Munich to Basel.

The undersigned were:

  • Siegmund Maybaum , Berlin (liberal);
  • Markus Mordechai Horovitz , Frankfurt am Main (parish orthodox);
  • Jakob Guttmann, Breslau (liberal);
  • Sigmund Selig Aviëzri Auerbach, Halberstadt (orthodox unified community);
  • Mose Cosman Werner, Munich (liberal).
Theodor Herzl (1898)

Herzl responded with his leading article Protestrabbi in the Zionist central organ Die Welt on July 16, 1897; Herzl then stereotyped the rabbis in question with the title “Protestant rabbis”.

In the fight against the protest rabbis, alongside Herzl, the rabbis Isaak Rülf (1831–1902) and Ahron Marcus (1843–1916) emerged. Rabbi Selig Gronemann (1843–1918) was one of the few German rabbis who had not joined them.

The conference of German Zionists in Bingen on July 11, 1897 (initiated and chaired by Max I. Bodenheimer ) also resulted in a resolution against the protest rabbis as one of the results.

For the second Zionist Congress (at the end of August 1898 in Basel ) the slogan of “conquering the communities” was then issued. Even after that there was still significant resistance to Zionism from the Orthodox camp. In response to the news that a group of Russian Orthodox rabbis intended, following the example of the German protest rabbis, “to cast the ban against Zionism”, Max E. Mandelstamm wrote an open letter to them, which was published in der Welt (III / 14) of Reprinted April 7, 1899.

Seventy years after the declaration of protest was published, almost all of the signatories' children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren lived in Israel.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Achim Jaeger, Beate Wunsch: Zion and "Zionism". The German-Jewish press and the First Basel Zionist Congress . In: Achim Jaeger, Wilhelm Terlau, Beate Wunsch (eds.): Positioning and Self-Assertion: Debates on the First Zionist Congress, the 'Eastern Jewish Question' and the First World War in the German-Jewish press . Tübingen 2003, pp. 1–66, here p. 10.
  2. ^ A b c d e Matthias Morgenstern : From Frankfurt to Jerusalem . Tübingen 1995, p. 22.
  3. ^ A b c Norman Solomon: Zionism and Religion: The Transformation of an Idea . In: The Annual of Rabbinic Judaism: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern , Volume 3, Leiden / Boston / Köln 2000, pp. 145–174, here p. 159.
  4. ↑ Friedrich Lotter: Rabbi Ignaz Maybaum - Life and Teaching: The Basics of Jewish Diaspora Existence , Berlin 2010, p. 14.
  5. ^ Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute, Biographical Portal of the Rabbis: AUERBACH, Sigmund Selig Aviëzri, Dr. .
  6. ^ Richard Bauer, Michael Brenner: Jewish Munich: from the Middle Ages to the present . CH Beck, Munich 2006, p. 118.
  7. ↑ Achim Jaeger, Beate Wunsch: Zion and "Zionism". The German-Jewish press and the First Basel Zionist Congress . In: Achim Jaeger, Wilhelm Terlau, Beate Wunsch (eds.): Positioning and Self-Assertion: Debates on the First Zionist Congress, the 'Eastern Jewish Question' and the First World War in the German-Jewish press . Tübingen 2003, pp. 1–66, here p. 16.
  8. ↑ Renate Heuer (Ed.): Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors, Volume 16 (Lewi - Mehr), p. 287.
  9. ↑ Jehuda Reinharz (Ed.): Documents on the history of German Zionism 1882-1933 , Tübingen 1981, p. 43 f.
  10. ↑ Dr. Max Mandelstamm: Letter to the Rabbis . Editor's note: previously published on March 24th in the Hebrew newspapers Ha-Zefirah and Ha-Meliz .