Background
He was born on December 7, 1847 in Focşani, Moldavia (now Romania) to Rabbi Yitzchok Hakohen, a shochet and member of Chabad hasidim. He was named after its founder, Shneur Zalman of Liadi.
He was born on December 7, 1847 in Focşani, Moldavia (now Romania) to Rabbi Yitzchok Hakohen, a shochet and member of Chabad hasidim. He was named after its founder, Shneur Zalman of Liadi.
He studied at the Jewish theological seminary in Vienna and also at the university there.
In 1882 he went to England as a private tutor in rabbinics and in the years that followed he published many important articles and books, including Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (1909). In 1892 he was appointed reader in rabbinics at Cambridge University, and ten years later he assumed the presidency of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, a position he held until his death in New York City, November 19, 1915. In his time, Schechter was the recognized leader of Conservative Judaism in America: he founded the United Synagogue of America (an association of Conservative synagogues), and under his guidance the Jewish Theological Seminary became one of the leading rabbinical schools in the world. He was a profound scholar: his best-known contribution to Jewish scholarship was his exploration of the Cairo Genizah, a store of hidden ancient Hebrew books and manuscripts. In 1896 he identified a fragment shown to him as part of the lost Hebrew text of the Book of Ecclesiasticus; he set out for Egypt immediately, succeeded in tracing the fragment to the Genizah, and recognized the scope and value of the Genizah collection, the greater part of which he acquired for Cambridge University.
He is most famous for his roles as founder and President of the United Synagogue of America, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and architect of American Conservative Judaism.
Schechter's name is synonymous with the findings of the Cairo Geniza. He placed the JTSA on an institutional footing strong enough to endure for over a century. He became identified as the foremost personality of Conservative Judaism and is regarded as its founder. A network of Conservative Jewish day schools is named in his honor, as well as a summer camp in Olympia, Washington. There are several dozen Solomon Schechter Day Schools across the United States and Canada.
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Schechter, on the other hand, believed in what he termed "Catholic Israel. " The basic idea being that Jewish law, Halacha, is formed and evolves based on the behavior of the people. This concept of modifying the law based on national consensus is an untraditional viewpoint. Schechter was an early advocate of Zionism. He was the chairman of the committee that edited the Jewish Publication Society of America Version of the Hebrew Bible.
Quotations:
"Judaism is not a religion which does not oppose itself to anything in particular. Judaism is opposed to any number of things and says distinctly "thou shalt not. " It permeates the whole of your life. It demands control over all of your actions, and interferes even with your menu. It sanctifies the seasons, and regulates your history, both in the past and in the future. Above all, it teaches that disobedience is the strength of sin. It insists upon the observance of both the spirit and of the letter; spirit without letter belongs to the species known to the mystics as "nude souls" (nishmatim artilain), wandering about in the universe without balance and without consistency. .. In a word, Judaism is absolutely incompatible with the abandonment of the Torah. "
"Whatever the faults of the rabbis, consistency was not one of them. "
"You cannot be anything if you want to be everything. "
"By vulgarity I mean that vice of civilization which makes man ashamed of himself and his next of kin, and pretend to be somebody else. "
