Background
A scion of a traditional rabbinic family, Azriel Hildesheimer was born in Halberstadt on May 29, 1820.
A scion of a traditional rabbinic family, Azriel Hildesheimer was born in Halberstadt on May 29, 1820.
He had both a secular and religious education, being ordained as rabbi in 1842. He studied philosophy and Semitic languages at the universities of Berlin and Halle, becoming one of the few Orthodox rabbis to receive a secular doctorate (a study of the Septuagint, the first Greek translation of the Bible) up to that time.
Hildesheimer’s belief that it was necessary to create a modern variety of Orthodox Judaism which took into account the political, religious, and cultural changes that were transforming central and western European Jewish life, following the philosophy of Samson Raphael Hirsch, Torah im derekh eretz (traditional Jewish study combined with Western culture). The majority of Orthodox Hungarian rabbis pronounced a ban of excommunication on him for his innovations. When he came under fire at the Congress of Hungarian Jewry convened in December 1868 to discuss the establishment of a rabbinical seminary for the whole of Hungary, he broke away from the main Orthodox stream and formed the Cultural Orthodox group.
In 1869 Hildesheimer moved to Berlin to take up the post of rabbi of the Adass Jisroel community, the largest in Germany, where he stablished a modern Orthodox elementary religious school for boys and girls. Hildesheimer led the struggle against the Reform movement and especially against its main proponent in Berlin, Abraham Geiger. He assisted the organization for refugees from pogroms in Russia and helped collect funds to build a hostel for pilgrims and the poor in the Old City of Jerusalem.
By the end of his career in Germany. Hildesheimer had attained a position of stature and respect in both the German and the European Jewish communities and he was called upon to adjudicate disputes within the community and to represent the community in relations and dealing with the secular authorities in various lands. His students were constantly sought by communities throughout Europe and by 1884 he did not have enough graduates of his seminary to fill requests for rabbis.
Hildesheimer wrote several books and articles in the accepted German academic style, and in 1870 established the German Jewish weekly Die Jüdische Presse to enable him to disseminate his views to the German-reading public. It included Hebrew and Yiddish sections and ceased publication in 1923. His works in Hebrew and German dealt with rabbinical subjects, a description of the Herodian Temple, commentaries on manuscripts in the Vatican, an article on the blessing of the new moon, and responsa on numerous subjects. His collected essays were published in German Gesammelte Aufsätze (Frankfurt, 1923)and his responsain Hebrew, The Responsa of Rabbi Esriel (1969 and 1976).
Despite activities in behalf of Eretz Israel, he saw the rebuilding of the Land of Israel in religious terms and refused to participate in Hovevei Zion, a conference convened by the early Zionist movement at Kattowitz, because the majority of the participants were nonreligious.