The Hamburg Temple (German: Israelitischer Tempel) is a former ReformJewish congregation and synagogue, located in Hamburg, Germany. The congregation was the first permanent Reform Jewish community and the first to have a Reform prayer rite. It operated from 1818 to 1938. On 18 October 1818 the Temple was inaugurated and later twice moved to new edifices, in 1844 and 1931, respectively. The congregation abandoned the synagogue in 1938.
The New Israelite Temple Society (German: Neuer Israelitischer Tempelverein in Hamburg) was founded on 11 December 1817 and 65 heads of families joined the new congregation.[3] One of the pioneers of the synagogue reform was Israel Jacobson (1768–1828). In 1810 he had founded a prayerhouse, adjacent to the modern school he ran, in Seesen. On 18 October 1818, the anniversary of the Battle of Nations near Leipzig, the members of the New Israelite Temple Society inaugurated their first synagogue in a rented building in the courtyard between Erste Brunnenstraße and Alter Steinweg in Hamburg's Neustadt quarter (New Town).
"But Because of Our Sins" in the Day of AtonementAdditional Prayer. Left: the 1818 Hamburg rite, stating "may it be Thy will, O Lord, to accept in mercy the uttering of our lips instead of our obligatory sacrifices and omitting "O gather our dispersions... Conduct us unto Zion." Right: traditional equivalent, from an 1896 Orthodox prayer book.
The new prayer book employed in the Temple was the first comprehensive Reform liturgy ever composed: it omitted or changed several of the formulas anticipating a return to Zion and restoration of the sacrificial cult in the Jerusalem Temple. These changes – expressing the earliest tenet of the nascent Reform movement, universalised Messianism – evoked a thunderous denunciation from Rabbis across Europe, who condemned the builders of the new synagogue as heretics.[4] The religious service of the Hamburg Temple was disseminated at the 1820 Leipzig Trade Fair, where Jewish businessmen from German states, many other European countries, and the United States met. As a consequence, several Reform communities, including New York and Baltimore, adopted the Hamburg Temple's prayer book, which was read from left to right, as in the Christian world.
The members, mostly Ashkenazim, strived to form an independent Jewish congregation besides Hamburg's two other established Jewish statutory corporations, the Sephardic Heilige Gemeinde der Sephardim Beith Israel (בית ישראל; Holy Congregation of the Sephardim Beit Israel; est. 1652; see also Portuguese Jewish community in Hamburg) and the Ashkenazi Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeinde zu Hamburg (DIG, German-Israelite Congregation; est. 1662), however, in 1819 the Senate of Hamburg, then the government of a sovereign independent city-state, declared it would not recognise a potential Reform congregation. Therefore, the New Israelite Temple Society remained a civic association and its members stayed enrolled with the DIG, since one could only quit the DIG by joining another religious corporation. Irreligionism was still a legal impossibility in Hamburg at that time.
With the temple in the Erste Brunnenstraße growing too small in the late 1820s its members applied to build a bigger synagogue. The senate denied the application for a bigger temple in a prominent location, as intended, since this would incite a controversy within the DIG with the other Ashkenazi faithful also demanding a more visible synagogue.[5]:151 In 1835 the Society started another attempt applying for a building licence, but in 1836 Hamburg's building authority recommended to withhold the application until the senate would have decided the request of Hamburg's Jewry for their emancipation, issued in 1834.[5]:151 In 1835 the senate had decided against the Jewish emancipation for the time being, but had founded a commission to further investigate the question.[5]:151
In 1840 then the New Israelite Temple Society (meanwhile comprising 300 families) insisted to get a building licence.[5]:151 This time then Hamburg's Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Isaac Bernays intervened at the senate in order to make it deny the application.[5]:151 However, the senate granted the licence on 20April 1841 and the cornerstone was laid on 18October 1842.[5]:151 Several sites had been bought, thus to allow building the new Temple with a wide forecourt in the courtyard, however, not - unlike the original intention - visible from public streets.[5]:151 Johann Hinrich Klees-Wülbern was commissioned to design the plans for the new temple. The old temple was profaned. The lawyer and notary Gabriel Riesser enforced that the land was registered on the name of the New Israelite Temple Society, till then the senate would register property of Jewish civic association only under names of a natural person.
Temple and congregation since the opening of its second venue
The New Temple Society invited the Hamburg-born Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy to set Psalm100 (Hebrew: מזמור לתודה, Mizmor leToda) to music for a choir for playing it at the inauguration of the new Temple on 5September 1844.[6] However, disputes on which translation should be used, Luther's, as preferred by the Calvinist Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, or that of his Jewish grandfather Moses Mendelssohn, as preferred by the Society, prevented the realisation of that project, as can be read from the correspondence between the composer and Maimon Fränkel, the praeses of the Society.[7] Psalm100 was then most likely sung the traditional Ashkenazi way on entering the Sefer Torah to the new synagogue.[lower-alpha 1] Presumably Mendelssohn-Bartholdy then provided his versions of the Psalms24 and 25 for the inauguration.[9]
On 1 February 1865 a new law abolished the compulsion for Jews to enrol with one of Hamburg's two statutory Jewish congregations.[lower-alpha 2] So the members of the New Israelite Temple Society were free to found their own Jewish congregation.[10]:78 The fact that its members were no longer compelled to associate with the Ashkenazi DIG meant that it could possibly fall apart.[10]:78 In order to prevent this and to reconstitute the DIG as a religious body with voluntary membership in a liberal civic state the DIG held general elections among its full-aged male members, to form a college of 15 representatives (Repräsentanten-Kollegium), who would further negotiate the future constitution of the DIG.[10]:78 The liberal faction gained nine, the Orthodox faction 6 seats.<[10]:78 After lengthy negotiations the representatives enacted the statutes of the DIG on 3 November 1867.[10]:78 The new constitution provided for tolerance among the DIG members as to matters of the cult (worship) and religious tradition.[10]:78 This unique model, thus called Hamburg System (Hamburger System), established a two-tiered organisation of the DIG with the college of representatives and the umbrella administration in charge of matters of general Ashkenazi interest, such as cemetery, zedakah for the poor, hospital and representation of the Ashkenazim towards the outside.[10]:78 The second tier formed the so-called Kultusverbände (worship associations), associations independent in religious and financial matters by their own elected boards and membership dues, but within the DIG, took care of religious affairs.[10]:78
Each member of the DIG, but also any non-associated Jew, was entitled to also join a worship association, but did not have to.[10]:78 So since 1868 the Reform movement formed within the DIG a Kultusverband, the Reform Jewish Israelitischer Tempelverband (Israelite Temple association).[10]:78 The other worship associations were the Orthodox Deutsch-Israelitischer Synagogenverband (German-Israelite Synagogue association, est. 1868) and the 1892-founded but only 1923-recognised conservative Verein der Neuen Dammtor-Synagoge (Association of the new Dammtor synagogue).[5]:157 The worship associations had agreed that all services commonly provided such as burials, britot mila, zedakah for the poor, almshouses, hospital care and food offered in these institutions had to fulfill Orthodox requirements.[10]:78
Temple, 1st venue (1818–1844), Erste Brunnenstraße, exterior
In 1879, Rabbi Max Sänger asked Moritz Henle to come to the Hamburg Temple and Henle decided to accept the offer. He immediately began his work in Hamburg by forming a mixed choir. One member of the mixed choir was Caroline Franziska Herschel, a relative of Moses Mendelssohn. They married in 1882 and from that date on, his wife accompanied Henle during his performances as well as during official functions. In 1883, Dávid Leimdörfer became rabbi at the Temple, where he was also principal of the school for religion as all other rabbis. He died in 1922.
The influence of the Temple movement was not restricted to the liberal community; one of the lasting effects has been the introduction of the sermon in German, also within the Orthodox community. Today Reform Judaism, with its origins in the Hamburg Temple, has circa 2 million members just in the United States.
Third venue: Tempel in the Oberstraße
With the moving of many members of the Israelite Temple Association into new quarters outside the old city centre, especially into the Grindel[de] neighbourhood, they wished their temple closer to their new domiciles.[5]:161 First demands for a relocation appeared in 1908, in 1924 the moving was decided but delayed due to financial constraints, in 1927 decided a plot on Oberstraße 120 was bought in 1928, after an architectural competition in 1929 the architects Felix Ascher[de] and Robert Friedmann[de] were commissioned.[5]:161 The new synagogue, Tempel Oberstraße, was built from 1930 to 1931 in Modernist style for about ℛℳ 560,000.[3] On 30 August 1931 the new Temple in the Oberstraße was inaugurated[5]:162 and it was a great time with the rabbi Bruno Italiener[de]. The temple in the Poolstraße was profaned in 1931 and sold six years later. In 1937 the Israelite Temple Association celebrated a series of festivities for the 120th jubilee of the Hamburg Temple, many of its members celebrated their Passover Seder together in the synagogue and lectures and a great party were held in the temple and its adjacent premises.
The former Temple in the Oberstraße since 1938
After the November Pogrom in 1938 the Nazis closed the Temple, which had not been burnt but realised vandalism of its interior.[5]:162 Italiener emigrated to the United Kingdom.[3] On 28 November 1940 the legal successor of the DIG, the Jewish Religious Association (Jüdischer Religionsverband in Hamburg), was forced to sell the building for the ridiculous sum of ℛℳ 120,000 to the Colonial Office (Kolonialamt; a legally dependent subunit of Hamburg), which, however, did not realise its plans for the rebuild for its purposes.[5]:163
While the profaned temple in the Poolstraße was destroyed in the bombing of Hamburg in 1944, the temple and its adjacent community centre in the Oberstraße remained intact and were rented to the bombed-out editorial department of the newspaper Hamburger Fremdenblatt in August 1943.[5]:163 The ruin of the former Poolstraße temple is preserved until today. In 1946 the city-state rented out the former temple building in the Oberstraße to the British-founded Northwest German Broadcasting (NWDR; Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk), which acquired the building in 1948.[5]:163 Meanwhile, the 1945-founded Jewish Community of Hamburg[de], holding legal succession of the Jewish Religious Association in Hamburg, applied for the rescission of the enforced sale of the Temple in 1940.[5]:163 So with the pending restitution of the temple the NWDR asked the Jewish Community for its permission before it installed a ceiling in order to separate the synagogue hall into two halls, a broadcasting hall above and a radio drama studio below.[5]:163 In 1952 the court restituted the temple to the Jewish Trust Corporation, who then sold it to the NWDR in 1953, whose legal successor North German Broadcasting (NDR) owns it until today.[3][5]:163 Since 1982 the former temple is a listed building.[3] On 6 March 2000 the NDR renamed its studio within the former temple, called at times Studio 10 or Großer Sendesaal (big broadcasting hall) as Rolf Liebermann Studio in honour of the homonymous composer, who led the NDR music department between 1957 and 1959.[3] It is used as a venue for concerts, lectures and other artistic performances.[3]
Chazzanim were David Meldola[de], Joseph Piza, John Lipman, Ignaz Mandl, Moritz Henle, Leon Kornitzer, and Joseph Cysner, who was deported to Zbaszyn, Poland in the Polenaktion on October 28, 1938.
↑ Minute of the meeting of the directorate (Tempel-Direction) of the New Temple Society of 18May 1844.[8]
↑ On 4 November 1864 the Hamburg Parliament passed the Law concerning the relations of the local Israelite congregations (Gesetz, betreffend die Verhältnisse der hiesigen israelitischen Gemeinden) with effect of 1 February 1865.
Related Research Articles
Samuel Hirsch, was a major Reform Judaism philosopher and rabbi who mainly worked and resided in present-day Germany in his earlier years. He promoted the radical German Reform Judaism movement and published several works in the 1840s. He moved to the United States in 1866 where he would die in Chicago, Illinois in 1889.
Israel Jacobson was a German-Jewish philanthropist and communal organiser. Jacobson pioneered political, educational and religious reforms in the early days of Jewish emancipation, and while he lacked a systematic religious approach, he is also considered one of the heralds of Reform Judaism.
Isaac Mayer Wise was an American Reform rabbi, editor, and author. At his death he was called "the foremost rabbi in America".
Marcus Jastrow was a German-born American Talmudic scholar and rabbi, most famously known for his authorship of the popular and comprehensive Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature.
The Leopoldstädter Tempel, also known as the Israelitische Bethaus in der Wiener Vorstadt Leopoldstadt, was a Jewish congregation and synagogue, located on Tempelgasse 5, in Leopoldstadt, in the 2nd district of Vienna, Austria. Completed in 1858, the synagogue was destroyed as a result of Kristallnacht. A monument marks the location of the former synagogue.
Isaac Noah Mannheimer was a rabbi and member of the House of Deputies.
The Rockdale Temple, formally Kahal Kadosh Bene Israel, is an Ashkenazi Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue, located in Amberley Village, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, in the United States. Founded in 1824, it is the oldest Jewish congregation west of the Allegheny Mountains, the oldest congregation in Ohio, the second oldest Ashkenazi congregation in the United States and one of the oldest synagogues in the United States.
Moritz Henle was a prominent German composer of liturgical music and cantor of the Jewish reform movement.
The Königsberg Synagogue, called at the time, the New Synagogue, was a former Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, located in Königsberg in Prussia, East Prussia, Germany.
Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, more commonly known as Beth Shalom B'Nai Zaken EHC, or simply Beth Shalom, abbreviated as BSBZ EHC, is a Black Hebrew Israelite congregation and synagogue, located at 6601 South Kedzie Avenue, in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. The congregation is led by rabbi Capers Funnye; and assistant rabbis are Avraham Ben Israel and Joshua V. Salter. Beth Shalom is affiliated with the International Israelite Board of Rabbis.
From about 1590 on, there had been a Portuguese Jewish community in Hamburg, whose qehilla existed until its compulsory merger with the Ashkenazi congregation in July 1939. The first Sephardic settlers were Portuguese Marranos, who had fled their country under Philip II and Philip III, at first concealing their religion in their new place of residence. Many of them had emigrated from Spain in the belief that they had found refuge in Portugal.
The modern Reform Cantorate is seen as a result of developments that took place during the 19th century, largely in Europe. The process continued to evolve in America following the emigration of German Reform Jews towards the end of the century.
Meyer Israel Bresselau was a founding member and chairman of the Hamburg Temple, one of the first Jewish reform congregations in Germany.
Jacob Sonderling was a German and American Rabbi. He was born in a chassidic family and was an early Zionist. His aim was to combine art and religion.
Gotthold Salomon was a German Jewish rabbi, politician and Bible translator.
The history of the Jews in Hamburg in Germany is recorded from at least 1590 on. Since the 1880s, Jews of Hamburg have lived primarily in the neighbourhoods of Grindel, earlier in the New Town, where the Sephardic Community "Neveh Shalom" was established in 1652. Since 1612 there have been toleration agreements with the senate of the prevailingly Lutheran city-state. Also Reformed Dutch merchants and Anglican Britons made similar agreements before. In these agreements the Jews were not permitted to live in the Inner-City, though were also not required to live in ghettos.
The Hamburg Temple disputes were the two controversies which erupted around the Israelite Temple in Hamburg, the first permanent Reform synagogue, which elicited fierce protests from Orthodox rabbis. The events were a milestone in the coalescence of both modern perceptions of Judaism. The primary occurred between 1818 and 1821, and the latter from 1841 to 1842.
The history of the Jews in Hannover began in the 13th century. In 2009, about 6200 people belonged to the four Jewish communities in Hannover.
The Jewish Community of Hamburg is one of the larger Jewish communities in Germany, with 2,289 members. It forms an independent state association within the nationwide Central Council of Jews in Germany. The chair of the community is Philipp Stricharz.
The Bornplatz Synagogue was a synagogue located in the Grindel district of Hamburg. It was inaugurated in 1906 and was one of the largest synagogues in Germany. It served as the main synagogue of the German-Israelite Community.
↑ Meyer, Michael (1995). Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism. Wayne State. pp.47–61.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Rohde, Saskia (1991). "Synagogen im Hamburger Raum 1680–1943". Die Geschichte der Juden in Hamburg (in German). Vol.2. Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz. pp.143–175. ISBN3-926174-25-0. Die Juden in Hamburg 1590 bis 1990{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link).
↑ Werner, Eric (1985). "Felix Mendelssohn's Commissioned Composition for the Hamburg Temple. The 100th Psalm (1844)". Musica Judaica. Vol.7. p.57.
↑ Hirsch, Lily E. (2005). "Felix Mendelssohn's Psalm 100 Reconsidered". Rivista del Dipartimento di Scienze musicologiche e paleografico-filologiche dell'Università degli Studi di Pavia. Retrieved January 21, 2013.
↑ Brämer, Andreas (2000). Judentum und religiöse Reform: Der Hamburger Tempel 1817-1938 (in German). Vol.8. Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz. p.191. ISBN978-3-933374-78-3. (Studien zur Jüdischen Geschichte){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
↑ Todd, Ralph Larry (2003). Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Sein Leben – Seine Musik[Mendelssohn: A Life in Music] (in German). Translated by Beste, Helga. Stuttgart: Carus. pp.513, seq. ISBN978-3-89948-098-6.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lorenz, Ina (1991). "Die jüdische Gemeinde Hamburg 1860 – 1943: Kaisereich – Weimarer Republik – NS-Staat". Die Geschichte der Juden in Hamburg (in German). Vol.2. Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz. pp.77–100. ISBN3-926174-25-0. Die Juden in Hamburg 1590 bis 1990{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link).
Gotthold Salomon, Festpredigten für alle Feyertage des Herrn: gehalten im neuen Israelitischen Tempel zu Hamburg, Hamburg: Nestler, 1829
Digitalisat des Exemplars der Harvard University Library
Gotthold Salomon, Das neue Gebetbuch und seine Verketzerung, Hamburg: 1841
Caesar Seligmann, Erinnerungen, Erwin Seligmann (ed.), Frankfurt am Main: 1975
Andreas Brämer, Judentum und religiöse Reform. Der Hamburger Israelitische Tempel 1817–1938, Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 2000. ISBN3-933374-78-2
Philipp Lenhard, The Hamburg Temple Controversy. Continuity and a New Beginning in Dibere Haberith, in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, September 21, 2017. doi:10.23691/jgo:article-24.en.v1
Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden, Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Hamburg (eds.), Jüdische Stätten in Hamburg - Karte mit Erläuterungen, 3rd ed., Hamburg: 2001
Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden (ed.), Das Jüdische Hamburg – ein historisches Nachschlagewerk, Göttingen: 2006
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
