Jacob Itzhak Niemirower

Rabbi Dr. Jacob Itzhak Niemirower (Romanian: Iacob Isaac Niemirower, born March 1, 1872 in Lemberg, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Lviv, Ukraine - died November 18, 1939 in Bucharest, Romania) was a Romanian Modern[1] rabbi, close to reformistic trends in the Western and Eastern European Judaism, theologist, philosopher and historian. Served as the first Chief Rabbi of Romanian Jewry between 1921–1939, and was a member of the Romanian Senate from 1927 and until his death. An ardent supporter of Zionism and a courageous fighter against Antisemitism, Dr. Niemirower defended the civil and human rights of Romanian Jews and led them on the path towards modernization of community life, in the spirit of what he called Cultural Judaism. This meant adhering to Jewish tradition while remaining open to the Romanian language and culture and to universal influences.[2]

Childhood and youth

Iacob Itzhak Niemirower was born on March 1, 1872, in the Galitzian town of Lemberg, or Lviv, then under Austrian administration in the frame of Austro-Hungarian empire, now in Ukraine. His father, Nahum Niemirower, was a Jewish trader. The family moved later to Iaşi, the capital of the Moldova, one of the main regions of the Romanian Kingdom. He received his first lessons of Torah from his paternal grandfather, then from the melamed (Jewish teacher) Mendel Barasch. From them he acquired a good knowledge about the hassidic teachings . Later Jacob became the pupil of the famous rabbi and dayan from Lemberg, Rabbi Isaak Aharon Ettinger. In 1890 Niemirower went to study in Berlin, where he became acquainted with the Haskalah and with the Western philosophy. There met the German philosopher and judaist Moritz Lazarus who became one of his best friends and exercised a great influence on his spirit. Niemirower studied at the Neo-Orthodox Theological Rabbinical Seminary of Berlin, and had as teacher one of its founders, rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer, ideologist of the Modern Jewish Orthodoxy. As demanded by the curriculum, he made parallel university secular studies, of philosophy, history and Oriental studies in Berlin, and then in 1895 he got the title of doctor in philosophy with "Magna cum laude at the University of Bern, in Switzerland. His PhD thesis debated about the reciprocal relations between the free will, the conscience, the reward and the punishment. At the end of the theological studies he got from the rabbi Ernst Abraham Biberfeld the licence of Orthodox rabbi. After some sources he got a licence of rabbi also from the rabbi Michael (or maybe Jacob) Hamburger from Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who was of an orientation near to the Historical Judaism school.

His activity in Iaşi: tradition, modernity and Zionism

On his coming back to Iaşi in 1896 saw himself confronted with the hostility of the more traditionalistic and Hassidic circles who regarded him as a kind of "Reform" rabbi; he found his first job as rabbi and preacher (darshan) at a reform synagogue,[3] Beit Yaakov, known, after the name of its donor, "Jacob Neuschotz Temple". Due to his growing prestige as more open-minded modern rabbi, but also loyal to the Jewish tradition, the young Dr. Niemirower won the hearts of many of the local Jews and succeeded to be elected in 1908 as chief rabbi of the important community of the Moldavian centre. During those years he was very active in supporting the new created Zionist movement: in 1897–1898 renewed the Zionist association "Oholey Shem" (God's Tents - name taken from the Bible who functioned in the past under the leadership of Dr. Karpel Lippe. He took also part to the editing of several Zionist gazettes e.g. "Răsăritul" (in Romanian - " The Sunrise" or "the East"). Himself went to Zionist Congresses, in 1905 and 1908. On these occasion opposed the proposals of rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines to choose the German language as national language of the Jewish people and insisted on the primacy of the Hebrew language. He was also one of the opponents of the Uganda plan which examined the possibility of creating a Jewish national territory in East Africa, as a definite or temporary alternative to the historical Palestine. In 1908, Niemirower launched the term of "synthetic Zionism", which, in his view, had to integrate the political Zionism - the line of Theodor Herzl- with the practical Zionism - that of the resettlement in Palestine, in the tradition of the Hibat Zion movements from Eastern Europe. Rabbi Niemirower was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the modern Jewish education system which tried to integrate the study of Judaism and Hebrew language with the secular studies, including a country's vernacular.

In 1906, Niemirower was among the founders of the Cultural Society "Toynbee Hall" in Iaşi. That was a kind of Jewish popular university under Zionist inspiration, which had the cooperation of a lot of intellectuals and celebrities from Romania and abroad. There lectured during ten years Jewish personalities like Bernard Lazare, Nachum Sokolov or Sholem Aleichem who delighted the public with lectures from his stories and novels in Yiddish. Niemirower was also very active in the B'nai B'rith organization and became its leader, first in Iaşi and later in whole Romania.

His activity in Bucharest: the aspiration to a "New Yavne"
The modern Choral Temple of Bucharest, the center of the activity of Dr.Niemirower and of Romanian Jewish chief rabbis in Bucharest

In 1911, despite being Ashkenazi, dr Niemirower was invited by the old Sefardi Jewish community of Bucharest to be its rabbi. He functioned also as the rabbi of the Bucharest garrison and as examiner of the new Hebrew language teachers, also was nominated by the Romanian Public Instruction Ministry as the Jewish representative in the Committee for Welfare Affairs presided over by Queen Maria of Romania. As speaker of the Jewish minority in Romania rabbi Niemirower took part to the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 together with dr Wilhelm Filderman, the leader and founder of the Union of the Native Jews, who became his close partner in the defense of the Romanian Jews rights. The next years he had the satisfaction to be witness to the recognition by the Romanian authorities of the civil rights of all Jews in the recently reunited great Romanian state. After the failure of the effort of the more traditionalist orthodox rabbi Haim Schor to arrive to the leadership position in Bucharest, in 1921 Dr. Jacob Itzhak Niemirower was elected as Grand Rabbi of the Old Kingdom Jewry (that is - of the Jews of Moldavia and Walachia), then as Chief Rabbi, a new office created by the community of Bucharest. In 1936 he was reconfirmed as Chief Rabbi of the Federation of Jewish Communities in all Romania. Thus, after intensive efforts, he succeeded to achieve the centralization and the recognition by the authorities of the organization of the "Mosaic cult" communities of the Romanian Jews, valid till now. Factually, he united under his leadership all the Jewish communities in Romania, from the traditionalist Orthodox to the modern Orthodox, called till the Communist era "Jewish of Western rite" and the Neolog Jews of Transylvania. He won the collaboration of the Gaon Rabbi Bezalel Shafran and other Jewish Orthodox rabbinical authorities in order to preclude such a scission as had occurred in Hungary and Transylvania between the Orthodox and the Modernists (who went on the path of the Neologs) and to preserve the modernizing trends within the frame of the Orthodox tradition [4](somehow similarly to the French Consistorial Judaism and the British modern Orthodox Judaism under the leadership of Nathan Marcus Adler) In this spirit Niemirower led to the foundation in 1936 of the Central Council of the Romanian Jewry which comprised personalities with a wide range of opinions, as the adepts of the "civil assimilation" trend led by dr Wilhelm Filderman from the Union of the Native Jews, and also their Zionist rivals led by A. L. Zissu.

Dr. Niemirower's main residence was the Choral Temple (Choral Synagogue) of Bucharest where the intellectual and religious modern Orthodox elite of the Romanian Jews created a kind of Jewish Academy - the Cultural Institute of the Choral Temple. In his activity in Bucharest Niemirower was assisted by personalities as dr.Filderman, the bankier Ely Berkowitz, the rabbis Meyr Moritz Beck and dr.Meyer Abraham Halevy.

The fundamental concept which guided Niemirower's work was a "cultural judaism" (constituted mainly by traditional, European, liberal and Zionist elements), based on ideas taken from his friend, the philosopher Moritz Lazarus from Germany, with adaptations to the local conditions, and combined with influences from Ahad Ha'am, the father of the "cultural Zionism" and from the historian Simon Dubnov, ideologue of the Jewish "spiritual nation". The antique model was, in his eyes, Yohanan Ben Zakai, the founder of the Academy in Yavne, after the destruction of the Second Temple (70 a.Ch). Niemirower dreamt about the foundation of a new Yavneist Academy in the Holy Land, to which should have participate many spiritual personalities of the world Jewry.

His last years

Given the rise of the Nazi- type Antisemitism in his country and in Europe, in 1938 rabbi Niemirower visited Palestine in order to check, the possibilities of a mass emigration of the Jews from Romania. Such plans became soon impossible to be translated to reality because hostile circumstances. The British government blocked in that period all major action in this direction and in September 1939 broke the Second World War.

On November 18, 1939 Jacob Itzhak Niemirower died in Bucharest. He was buried in the Old Jewish Orthodox cemetery of Bucharest. In his place was elected as chief rabbi of Romania (Rav Kolel) the young rabbi dr Alexandru Şafran, already a prestigious scholar, the son of the rabbi Bezalel Şafran from Bacău. Both for Rabbi Alexandru Şafran, and for his successor, Rabbi Moses Rosen who became chief rabbi during the Communist regime, the figure and the activity of Niemirower were a source of inspiration.

His writings

Dr.Niemirower published about 650 articles in journals and reviews in German, Romanian,French, Hebrew and Yiddish languages. Here is a selection of his books:

  • Zichron Nachum - sermons and conferences (1903),H. Goldner

publishing house, Iaşi

  • Hassidism and Zadikism (in German -Chassidismus und Zaddikismus) (1913), Baer Publ. house, Bucharest.
  • Frei und treu, Jabnehist.Essays (1914)
  • Contributions à la philosophie historique juive (in French). 1914

the article:

  • Spinozaverehrung eines Nichtspinozisten In: Spinoza-Festschrift : Zum 300. Geburtstage Benedict Spinozas (1632–1932) / Herausgegeben von Siegfried Hessing. - Heidelberg : Winter, 1933: 164-166.

(Homage to Spinoza from the side of Non-Spinozist - in a publication at the anniversary of 300 to the birthday of the philosopher, 1933)

  • Complete writings - Scrieri complete -in Romanian, in 4 volumes, 1918–1932
  • Iudaismul - (The Judaism) - Hasefer, Bucharest, 2005
  • Iudaismul - Ed Hasefer, Bucureşti, 2005

Notes
  1. Studia Hebraica
  2. Representatives of Romanian "Cultural Judaism" were rabbis Moses Gaster, Meyr Moritz Beck, Meyer Abraham Halevy. This Cultural Judaism distinguishes from secular Judaism, as the latter is considered more inclined towards assimilation. Secular Judaism was led by Adolphe Stern, Wilhelm Filderman and Zionists such as Mişu Benvenisti, who concentrated themselves more on Aliya. - see Harry Kuller http://www.romanianjewish.org/en/mosteniri_ale_culturii_iudaice_03_11_19.html#i1
  3. jacob-de-neuschotz-un-om-fericit
  4. dr.Yaakov Geller - article in Hebrew about Betzalel Shafran, on the site of the journal Hazofeh , December 21st 2008

Sources
  • Ion Mitican - Evreii din Tîrgul Cucului (Ed. Tehnopress, Iaşi, 2005)
  • Neue Deutsche Biographie, Band 19, Nauwach - Pagel, S.238 Duncker und Humblot, Berlin, 1999, (Noua Biografie Germană, vol. 19. p. 238 publ. de Comitetul istoric al Academiei de Ştiinţe a Bavariei, Berlin, 1999)
  • G. Wigoder - Evreii în lume, Dicţionar biografic, redacţia română - Viviane Prager- Editura Hasefer, Bucureşti, 2001 ( Romanian edition of the Dictionary of Jewish Biography, ed.Vivane Prager, Hasefer Publ.House, Bucharest.2001)
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