Emil Schorsch

Emil Schorsch ( born January 12, 1899 in Hüngheim, † 1982 in Vineland (New Jersey) ) was a German rabbi.

Life

Emil was the son of the merchant Isaac Schorsch. Since 1907, he grew up in the orphanage. 1915-1920 he was trained in Esslingen as a primary school teacher, interrupted by war service.

From 1922, he studied philosophy, psychology and Oriental Languages ​​at the University of Breslau and the University of Tübingen. At the same time he trained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau. In 1925 he received his doctorate with a thesis on " The teachability of religion."

1927 Schorsch was called to Hanover, the second rabbi of the local Jewish synagogue next to Samuel friend. A religious indifference Schorsch met with the excitation of establishing a Jewish adult education center, the " house of study ". Emil Schorsch operation to rebuild youth work and modernized compulsory for Jewish pupils religious instruction. Schorsch initiated the " youth church" and thus led initially a few hundred, later, several thousand children and young people together.

From Emil Schorsch's marriage to Fanny Rothschild (1901-1983), a daughter of Theodore Rothschild, the daughter Hanna and one son: The later rabbis, President of the Leo Baeck Institute ( LBI) New York and Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Ismar Schorsch, was born in 1935 in Hanover.

In the so-called " Kristallnacht " in 1938 Emil Schorsch was arrested and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp.

After his release fled Schorsch with his family only to England, in 1940 then in the United States. In Pottstown (Pennsylvania ), he was active as a rabbi.

1963 visited Emil Schorsch Hanover at the inauguration of the building synagogue and community center Haeckelstraße.

Works

• The teachability of Religion (1935, PhD thesis)
• Memoirs ( manuscript, typewritten, 4, 95 and 16 pages)