Max Lilienthal: Rabbi, educator, and reformer in nineteenth-century America.
Item
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Title
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Max Lilienthal: Rabbi, educator, and reformer in nineteenth-century America.
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Identifier
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AAI9732968
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identifier
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9732968
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Creator
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Ruben, Bruce Leonard.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Robert Seltzer
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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History, Modern | History, United States | Biography
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Abstract
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This dissertation traces the life and career of the prominent nineteenth-century rabbi Max Lilienthal (1814-1882), a founder of American Reform Judaism who also made important contributions to the professionalization of the American rabbinate. Born in Munich, Lilienthal received a traditional yeshivah education followed by secular degrees from the gymnasium and University of Munich. He emerged as one of a new breed of rabbi who reshaped and broadened the profession in Western Europe and the United States. Invited to Riga to create a modern Jewish school, Lilienthal was enlisted by the Russian government in the national effort to reform Jewish schools there. In 1845 he joined the growing German-Jewish immigration to the United States.;Lilienthal established himself in New York City as the rabbi of three German synagogues, serving from 1846 to 1848. Subsequently he formed a successful private boarding school which allowed him to develop his increasingly liberal religious ideology. Engaged by Congregation Bene Israel, Cincinnati in 1855, he gradually moved the congregation into the Reform camp, while he simultaneously expanded his rabbinical role in unprecedented directions, as the first rabbi to preach in a Christian church, a member of the local school board, a founder of the University of Cincinnati, and a leader in city-wide charitable work. An outspoken advocate of the separation of church and state, he also articulated a Jewish version of an American civil religion, which helped his immigrant congregants integrate Jewish and American values.;Lilienthal was a central figure in the conferences leading up to the creation of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Hebrew Union College, and the Rabbinical Literary Association, precursor of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. He consistently strove for harmony among an increasingly polarized American Jewish leadership.;Broader historiographical concerns relate his career to the debate over the relative importance of German and American factors behind the success of American Reform, the lay-rabbinic power struggle, and a comparison of German Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish immigrant adjustment to an increasingly liberal American religious environment. The dissertation also traces Lilienthal's complex relationship with Isaac M. Wise, the dominant American Jewish leader of the period.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
