Background
Kaufmann was born in Moravia on June 7, 1852.
Kaufmann was born in Moravia on June 7, 1852.
He was educated at local schools and attended the Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was ordained. He also attended the University of Leipzig, obtaining a Ph.D. in 1874 for his dissertation on the philosophy of religion of Saadiah Gaon.
Kaufmann was already recognized during his student days as a brilliant scholar and upon his ordination was invited to the chair of philosophy of religion and Jewish history at the newly established Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, where he remained for the rest of his short life.
After his death, his family donated this unique library to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Some items from the Kaufmann Collection have become known worldwide. The first was a facsimile edition of a beautifully illuminated late 14th-century Haggadah from Spain, known as the Kaufmann Haggadah (1954). Selected pages from Moses Maimonidcs’ Mishneh Torah, the four-volume Codex Maimonides, were published in 1980. A third manuscript, an illuminated 18th-century Scroll of Esther, has also been reproduced in facsimile in its original scroll form.
Many of Kaufmann’s scholarly writings dealt with medieval Jewish philosophy and philosophers, including Judah Halevi and Bahya Ibn Pakuda. One of his works dealt with physiology and psychology in Jewish and Arabic sources in the Middle Ages. He also wrote historical works (e.g., on the expulsion of the Jews from Vienna and Lower Austria) and genealogical studies, on the Wertheimer and Bacharach families among others.
He was known as a great fighter against manifestations of anti-Semitism affecting the Jewish community and the Jewish faith. He strongly opposed and disproved the theses of the German orientalist Paul Lagarde and the anti-Semitic preachings of the German court cleric Adolph Stocckcr in two booklets.
