Max Lilienthal

Max Lilienthal Menachem ( born November 6, 1815 in Munich, † April 5, 1882 in Cincinnati ) was an advisor for education issues for the Jews living in the Pale of Settlement, and then in the U.S. rabbi of Reform Judaism, the Russian Empire.

Biography

He grew up in Munich and finished his education at the university there from. On the recommendation of Ludwig Philippson, he was appointed in 1839 as director of the Jewish school in Riga. Its held on German " sermons in the synagogue " to Riga he dedicated to the Russian Minister of Education Sergei Uvarov, with whom he was acquainted.

1841 Lilienthal was invited on the recommendation of Uvarov by the tsarist government to build for the Jews in Russia, a project for the construction of public schools that should work according to Western European standards. In this task, Lilienthal tried to move the head of the Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement to the adoption of this project. However, he came with his ideas on a variety of resistance. Orthodox circles, and especially the Hasidim, the project saw as an attempt by the government to destroy the traditional Jewish education in cheder and yeshiva. The maskilim representatives of the Jewish Enlightenment were, in turn upset because Lilienthal ignored and met with representatives of the Orthodox and the Hasidim. After yet another intervention by the Minister of Education, who appointed a commission of Jewish representatives to study Lilienthal proposals, undertook this 1843 a long journey through the Russian Jewish communities. Not to repeat past mistakes made, Lilienthal renounced this time on his proposals, such as the setting of German teachers in Russia and the levying of a tax for Melamdim (plural of Melamed ), the teachers in the cheder. Nevertheless, he also tried to take this opportunity to ally himself with the Orthodox against the Maskilim, and this company was eventually also to a failure. 1844 Although a law on the establishment of state schools for Jews was adopted, but in the same year had Lilienthal Russia suddenly leave. Apparently he had come to the conclusion that the intentions of the tsarist government would serve to use the newly built schools as a means of conversion of the Jewish students to Christianity; all the more so as the study of the Talmud was banned in the curriculum.

1845 Lilienthal emigrated to the United States. He settled first in New York City and headed down there for some years a private boarding school. In 1849 he became rabbi of a short-lived union of the local German-speaking communities and led their day schools. From 1855 until his death in was Lilienthal rabbi of the Bene Israel community in Cincinnati, which he led in the direction of a moderate Reform Judaism. In this city he enjoyed many honors, he was a 1860-69 member of the municipal Department of Education and from 1872 until his death a trustee of the University of Cincinnati. As one of the leading Jewish figures of his era, he called for the systematic exclusion of all religious instruction in public schools. Along with Isaac Mayer Wise, who also worked in Cincinnati, Lilienthal promoted the spread of Reform Judaism. In 1857 he published a German -language collection of poems under the title "Freedom, Spring and Love ".