Herz Homberg
Naftali Herz Homberg (* September 1749 in love in Prague; † August 24, 1841 in Prague) was a patron of the Jewish Enlightenment movement Haskalah.
Life
As a teenager, he attended the yeshivas of Prague, Bratislava and Great Glogau, after which he moved to Breslau. In 1767, he began secretly to learn German and later studied languages and mathematics in Berlin and Hamburg. Under the influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment, Jean- Jacques Rousseau Homberg turned to pedagogy and 1779 tutor of Joseph Mendelssohn, son of Moses Mendelssohn. In 1782 he moved to Vienna, where state education initiatives have been promoted as a result of tolerance patents of Joseph II. 1783-1784 taught Homberg at the Jewish school in Trieste. His efforts to establish a professorship at a university failed, however, because he was a Jew.
In 1787 he was appointed by the Austrian authorities to superintendent of the German- Jewish schools in Galicia and oversaw the censorship of Jewish books. In a letter to the Galician rabbi he suggested in 1788 the right to adapt Jewish education principles to the European culture, the teaching of Hebrew grammar, German language and manual skills should be encouraged and the importance of training have nots was emphasized. A total of 107 Homberg founded schools and schools in Galicia, including a teacher seminar in Lviv. Most religious Jews refused to send their children to these schools, which they saw as a means of forced converting to Christianity. Homberg threatened the rabbis, the government would enforce the implementation of its principles, even if they would not be willing to. He called for the abolition of all externals, which distinguished Jews from non-Jews, such as beard and traditional clothes. He did not hesitate to inform the authorities when religious Jews who refused to comply with its provisions, and to exert pressure on them.
As an expert on Jewish affairs in government circles Homberg was appointed temporarily to Vienna in 1793 to develop proposals for the reorganization of Jewish life, which served as the basis for the Bohemian Systemalpatent of 1797. During this time he compiled a list of Jewish books that should be banned or censored. These included kabbalistic works, most Hasidic writings and also the traditional prayer book.
1808 published a Homberg Imre Shefer ( " Fine words " ) titled catechism for young people in Hebrew and German. In addition, Homberg wrote at this time a commentary on the Pentateuch and Isaiah, Jeremiah and Job, issued 1817-1818 in Vienna.
Homberg was unpopular with almost all of his Jewish contemporaries, even hated. Even Moses Mendelssohn was critical of the extreme form of Homberg cooperation with the authorities to compel compliance with its principles. Heinrich Graetz described him as a morally and from a performance point of weak personality in the field of education.