Samuel Levi (1751-1813)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Samuel Wolf Levi (* 1751 in Pfersee ; † September 13, 1813 in Mainz ) was a rabbi in Worms and Grand Rabbin du Consistoire ("Grand Rabbi") du Département du Mont-Tonnerre . He was thus one of the leading personalities who accompanied the Jewish communities on a regional level from their still medieval structures into the modern age.

family

Samuel Wolf Levi was one of the sons of Rabbi Wolf Levi, who was in charge of the Pfersee land rabbinate . The father let him and one of his brothers attend school in nearby Augsburg , which was still a rarity at the time, even among educated Jews. Samuel Levi received a humanistic education, learned French and the manners of the majority society surrounding the Jewish community.

He was married several times:

  1. 1771 with Pessel Hall , a young widow who died in 1781,
  2. with the daughter of Hirsch Worms from Saarlouis, who also died soon,
  3. with her sister, Brendelchen (also: Sara). She outlived her husband.

A total of eight children lived at his death. His son Benedikt Levi (1806–1899), from his marriage to Brendelchen / Sara, was a rabbi in Gießen from 1829 and from 1842 also the regional rabbi of the province of Upper Hesse in the Grand Duchy of Hesse . Again his son was Hermann Levi .

Career

In 1778 Samuel Levi was appointed rabbi of the Jewish community of Worms , an office that he held until 1808.

In 1789 he organized and directed the Jewish memorial event on the 100th anniversary of the destruction of the city of Worms by French troops in the Palatinate War of Succession . Even such a commemoration, affecting the whole city, had to be organized strictly according to "religions": Protestant , Roman Catholic and Jewish.

When, after the upheaval of the French Revolution, French troops occupied the left bank of the Rhine - and with it Worms - in 1792 , he and his family, like many others in the community, fled to Frankfurt am Main for almost a year . The congregation therefore had to be reconstituted afterwards. As one of the few who could read, write and speak French fluently in Worms at the time, the mayor, the local council and others met for a while in the Judengasse so that he could translate the news that came in with the newspaper from Paris .

As a result of the occupation and subsequent annexation of the areas on the left bank of the Rhine by France, the old political system was also replaced by the Civil Code . As a result, the Jewish communities lost their political autonomy and became purely religious communities. From 1806 to 1808 Napoleon Bonaparte , who wanted a constitution based on the consistorial principle for the Jewish communities in his empire, organized an assembly called the "Great Sanhedrin". It met from August 23, 1806, first as a preparatory conference, then the actual meeting. 71 Jewish notables , including rabbis chaired by David Sinzheim, took part in it for the Samuel Levi community in Worms. The conference had the task of making proposals on the basis of Halacha and Tanach for the constitution of Judaism in the French Empire . Due to his knowledge of French and his intercultural competence , Samuel Levi took on the role of spokesman for the rabbis from the former German area.

The Consistoire central israélite , which still exists today, emerged from the conference and the proposals it developed . This was subordinate to a departmental consistory in each department , which was headed by a grand rabbi. Samuel Levi, who had apparently made a good impression on Napoleon, was entrusted in 1808 as "Grand Rabbin" with the management of the Consistoire du Département du Mont-Tonnerre in Mainz. Alternatively, Napoleon had offered him the same position in Metz . In Mainz he found it very difficult to get the local community used to the new times, and there was considerable tension.

literature

  • Samson Rothschild : Samuel Levi. A rabbi in Worms and a member of the Paris Sanhedrin . In: Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums 1912, Issue 17, pp. 196-198 ( digitized version )
  • Samson Rothschild: Officials of the Worms Jewish community (mid-18th century to the present) . Kauffmann, Frankfurt 1920, pp. 7-14 ( digitized version ).
  • Fritz Reuter : Warmaisa. 1000 years of Jews in Worms . 3. Edition. Self-published, Worms 2009. ISBN 978-3-8391-0201-5
  • Fritz Reuter: Samuel Wolf Levi (1751–1813), rabbi in Worms and Mainz . In: Mainzer Zeitschrift Vol. 96–97, 2001–2002, pp. 163–168.
  • Carsten Wilke (edit.): Biographical manual of the rabbis . Part I: The rabbis of the emancipation period in the German, Bohemian and Greater Poland countries, 1781–1871 . KG Saur, Munich 2004, pp. 586-587 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reuter: Warmaisa. 1000 years , p. 141.
  2. ↑ Rothschild: Officials , p. 7.
  3. ↑ Rothschild: Officials , p. 8.
  4. ↑ Rothschild: Officials , p. 13.
  5. ↑ Rothschild: Officials , p. 13.
  6. ^ Reuter: Warmaisa. 1000 years , pp. 146, 160.
  7. ^ Reuter: Warmaisa. 1000 years , p. 141.
  8. ↑ Rothschild: Officials , p. 8f.
  9. ↑ Rothschild: Officials , p. 9.
  10. ↑ John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 694.
  11. ^ Reuter: Warmaisa. 1000 years , p. 146.
  12. ^ So: Reuter: Warmaisa. 1000 years , p. 146; Rothschild: Officials , p. 13 names the year 1809.
  13. ^ Reuter: Warmaisa. 1000 years , p. 146; Rothschild: Officials , p. 13.
  14. ↑ Rothschild: Officials , p. 13.
  15. ↑ Rothschild: Officials , p. 13.
personal data
SURNAME Levi, Samuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Levi, Samuel Wolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Grand rabbi in the Mont-Tonnerre department
DATE OF BIRTH 1751
PLACE OF BIRTH Pfersee
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 1813
Place of death Mainz