Immanuel Löw

Immanuel Löw ( born January 20, 1854 in Szeged, † July 19, 1944 in Budapest) was a Hungarian rabbi and scholar.

Life

Immanuel Löw, son of Leopold Löw took over, three years after his father's death in 1878 the post of rabbi of the Southeast Hungarian city of Szeged. 1889-1900 he published in five volumes, the collected writings of his father. He studied at the College of Jewish Studies in Berlin and at the University of Leipzig. For the New Synagogue, built in 1903 in Szeged ( Architect: Lipót tree horn) he contributed the plans and designs of stained glass windows. During the White Terror, and the counter-revolution in Hungary 1920-1921 Loew anti-state rhetoric against Horthy was accused and sat so for 13 months in prison a. There he worked on his four -volume work, The Flora of the Jews. From 1927 he represented the reform-oriented " Neology " communities in the Upper House of the Hungarian Parliament and was also a member of the Jewish Agency. Took place two months after his 90th birthday, the German occupation of Hungary. Löw was initially held in a brick factory in the ghetto and then sent to a deportation train to certain death. In Budapest, however, he was freed from Zionist workers and died in the same year in the Hungarian capital.

Work

Like his father, Löw a great preacher in the Hungarian language, and 1900-1939 hundreds of his speeches were published in four volumes. In 1883 he published a Hungarian Prayer Book for women and translated the Song of Songs as well as some psalms also into Hungarian.

Loew's fame as a scholar is mainly based on his pioneering work in the field of Talmudic and rabbinic lexicography as well as in the study of plant names. This particular interest is already evident in his doctoral thesis Aramaic name of the plant (1879 ) and Meleager from Gederah and the flora Aramaea (1883 ). Half a century later, found this research in the four-volume Flora of the Jews (1924-1934) her coronation. Loew systematically explored the basics of plant terminology in different periods of the Hebrew and Aramaic language, dominated the latest scientific methods in this field, became familiar with literary sources of plant names and made careful use of manuscript material. With the help of Semitic languages, especially Syriac, he contributed to the clarification of etymologies. Its flora of the Jews brought the phenological, the biblical and the botanical aspects to a common denominator, where he held mainly at the original Hebrew name; the book is still regarded as one of the major works on Biblical botany.

Both in the area of the fauna as well as the minerals he published in scholarly publications more posts. However, his manuscript minerals of the Jews was lost in the tragic events of 1944. A part of his literary legacy was passed on to the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, another part of the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest. 1969 fauna and minerals of the Jews was with an introduction by Alexander Scheiber, director of the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary, published.