Ahron Daum

Ahron Daum ( born January 6, 1951 in Bnei Brak, Israel) is an Israeli -born modern - Orthodox rabbi, teacher, author and former sole rabbi in Frankfurt am Main. He currently resides in Antwerp.

Personal life and education

Ahron Daum was born in Bnei Brak in a religious Ashkenazi family. His father was a teacher and writer Shmuel thumb and came from a well-known rabbinical family from Poland and Bohemia. His mother, Rivka Gina Daum, was born into a merchant family in Sopron. He has three younger brothers.

Ahron Daum's religious training began at the age of 13 years in the Lithuanian- Hasidic " Ruzhin " Yeshiva in Bnei Brak. At the age of 14, he left Israel in the direction of UK, where he initially continued his studies at Yeshiva "Ha- Rama ", then later moved but to the Zionist Yeshiva " Etz Chaim " in Montreux. In 1975, after he had passed his baccalaureate ( high school ) in Switzerland he went to the Jews' College, University of London, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Jewish Studies (with distinction). From 1978 he attended the Theological Seminary of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan ( RIETS '82 ) of Yeshiva University, New York, where he earned a master's degree in Biblical Studies ( with honors ) and received his rabbinical ordination. The offer to continue his studies in order to gain the title of Dayan, he refused and returned to Europe. There he married Francine Frenkel, with whom he has three daughters. Thumb dominated Hebrew, German, English, French, Dutch and Yiddish spoken and written, and has passive knowledge of Aramaic and Latin.

Rabbinical career

In 1982, Ahron Daum rabbi was in Biel ( Switzerland ). He left office in 1986 to become a PhD student at " Christian-Jewish Institute " in Lucerne, which was affiliated to the Faculty of Theology of the University of Lucerne. In 1987 he took up the post of sole community rabbi of the Jewish community in Frankfurt am Main, at that time the largest Jewish community in what was then West Germany.

In 1994 he resigned for family reasons from the office of community rabbi and moved to Antwerp, where already lived most of his family. There he began to teach Judaism in the state school system and to Jewish day schools. In 1995 he took a job as a lecturer in Jewish Law at the Faculty of Comparative Religion at the University of Antwerp. In recognition of his teaching there, and his written works to Halacha him the faculty awarded an honorary professorship in Jewish law.

Since 2001, he, together with his wife, a number of projects for public relations for Baal Teshuva, non-Jews who are interested in Jewish Studies, and aspiring Geerim by. Today, this takes up most of his time and as part of these activities, he organized together with the Shalom center based in the Netherlands / Israel regularly study days on various topics in the field of Jewish studies.

Work and publications

Ahron Daum published on a variety of topics of Jewish Studies. During his time in Switzerland, he was a freelancer for the Jewish German -Swiss Jewish weekly newspaper Rundschau " with regular publications of articles on Halacha. During his tenure as the only rabbi in Frankfurt am Main, he regularly wrote articles for the " The Jewish General " and the bimonthly magazine "The community ". Since 2010, he writes a monthly column for the magazine " Joods Actueel ", the most common Jewish publication in Belgium. In these columns, he writes about the entire spectrum of Jewish studies, such as a series on the history of Judaism.

Daum published two books. His first book " Halacha currently " is a two-volume work, written in German, which treats halachic and current issues, as they emerge in the halachic literature and in particular the so-called "response literature." Some items in this book were written in rabbinic Hebrew and later published separately under the title " Iyunim b'Halacha ". His second book, " The Jewish Holidays in view of the tradition " is a two-volume anthology that halachic articles, sermons, literary references, homiletic thought, folklore and funny stories about the Jewish holidays and Shabbat combines.

Published works

• Halacha date, Jewish religious laws and customs in modern life ( Hague and Herchenhain Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1992, Vol 2, p 387 -. P 773. )
• Iyunim b'Halacha (Haag and Herchenhain Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1992, p. 93)
• The holidays of Israel, the Jewish holidays in the view of tradition ( Herchenhain Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, vol. I, 1993, p. 556, vol. II, 1994, p. 557 )
• " The Ashkenazi Rabbinate: studies of faith and destiny " ( Julius Carlebach ) / The role of the rabbi in Germany today ( Ahron Daum )