(Continuation)
Soon after his arrival in Berlin, Rabbi Hildesheimer established an institution there, as he did in Eisenstadt, for the education of the young. He was assisted in running the Talmud Torah he had founded by Nethanel Deutschlander, a student who had come with him from Eisenstadt.
Though he was greatly occupied with the affairs of his new community, Rabbi Hildesheimer invested great efforts to realize his plan of establishing in Berlin a rabbinical school, whose graduates would serve as spiritual leaders of Orthodox Jewish communities in central and western Europe. Finally, in the autumn of 1873, the new seminary was opened. Rabbi Hildesheimer chose as motto for the new institution the verse of Proverbs 3:6 “Acknowledge Him in all your ways, and He will straighten your path.”
In Berlin as in Eisenstandt, Rabbi Hilesheimer served not only as head of the new rabbinical school he had founded, but also raised the funds to meet its material needs.
He recruited a faculty of like minded men, who combined strict religious observance with wide erudition. Only two of the first teachers of the seminary can be mentioned here. Rabbi Dr. David Zvi Hoffman was a student of the Maharam Schick and studied with Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer and the “Ktav Sofer” in Eisenstadt and Pressburg, respectively. He fought Bible critics, wrote on the Tannaic Midrashim and on Talmudic philology and translated parts of the Mishna into German.
Rabbi Hoffman served without pay as a member and later as head of the Beth Din of Adass Yisroel. His Halakhic responsa were collected in Melamed Leho’il. He succeeded Rabbi Hildesheimer, upon his death, as principal of the Rabbinical Seminary. He in turn was succeeded by Rabbi Avraham Eliyahu Kaplan and Rabbi Yehiel Ya’akov Weinberg. The latter was principal from 1925 until the closure of the seminary in 1938. Another close collaborator of Rabbi Hildesheimer and teacher at the seminary was Dr. Abraham Berliner, the author of many books in various areas of Jewish knowledge including a history of the Jews of Rome. He edited a critical edition of Rashi’s commentary on the Torah, published from manuscripts, writings by early rabbis (among them the commentary of Rabbi Hananel on Tractate Makkot) and discovered in the Vatican Library commentaries on the Talmud by Rabbenu Hananel and Rabbenu Gershom Me’or HaGola. These commentaries were printed in the Vilna edition of the Talmud. Berliner served as chairman of the council of the Adass Yisroel community.
The Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary developed with time into the orthodox Rabbinical Seminary Par Excellence. Its graduates served as rabbis in Jewish communities all over the world.
Members of Adass Yisroel were obligated to pay dues to the Berlin Jewish Community of which officially they were members, and at the same time they had to finance their own institutions, including Shehita and Mikveh receiving no support at all from the main community. The situation was similar in Frankfurt, where members of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch’s Adass Jeschurun (“Isaelitische Religiongesellschaft”) paid taxes to the main community without receiving in return any help in maintaining their own institutions. Rabbinical leaders who headed separatist Orthodox congregations (Rabbi S. R. Hirsch in Frankfurt, Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer in Berlin and Lippman Kahn in Weisbaden) strove, therefore, for the enactment of a law which would permit groups of Jews to secede from their communities to form their own congregations (which not tied to the main communities, would be exempt from paying them communal taxes). Such a law, which was introduced by the Jewish deputy, Eduard Lasker, was adopted by the Prussian Landtag in the summer of 1876. Berlin’s Adass Yisroel now became an independent community.
Sinason stressed that Austritt (secession) from the wider community was, to Rabbi Hildesheimer, a tragic necessity over which he wept many a night. The attitude of the reformers allowed for no alternative to secession, but he never lost sight of the ideal of a unified community. The brotherhood of Klal Yisrael touched his very soul. He remained in touch with these ‘erring children’: they would one day return to the fold. So, indeed many of them did.”
Sinason further writes that it was this attitude of Rabbi Hildesheimer — Jewish brotherhood despite secession – which made possible a religious revival among Berlin’s Jews at the turn of the century, eventually leading to the appointment in 1928 of Rabbi Jacob Freimann, a well-known Orthodox rabbinical scholar who had been a student of Rabbi Shimon Sofer in Cracow, as Av Beth Din.
Sinason also points out as significant that the heirs of Rabbi Hildesheimer’s spiritual legacy invited the new Av Beth Din of the main community to join the faculty of the rabbinical seminary as Maggid Shiur.
(To be continued)
The Jewish Press, Friday, November 13, 1998 p. 84