The development of centralist states at the end of the eighteenth century and the restriction of the autonomy of Jewish communal institutions had a direct impact on the status of the rabbi and the rabbinic court. At the same time, the nature of the rabbinate as an institution was an issue of primary importance in internal Jewish public discussion.
Thus, for example, the Austro-Hungarian government gradually abolished the rabbinic judicial system, forbade the excommunication of those who had abandoned the religious path, and required a general secular education as a condition for appointment to the rabbinate. The Edict of Toleration of 1797 for the Jews of Bohemia stated, for example, that after four years’ time, only those holding a university degree would be eligible for a rabbinic post. In Galicia, it was similarly established in the Edict of 1789 that within six years, every rabbi would have to have graduated from a modern German school. The application of these regulations was delayed for several decades, but beginning at the end of the 1830s it became increasingly difficult for the larger Galician Jewish communities to appoint rabbis lacking a general education. In many regional cities the office of the rabbi remained vacant, for when the previous rabbi left his position or died, another rabbi was not appointed in his place. In Hungary, on the other hand, the new law was not implemented until 1848, and generally speaking the rabbinic courts continued their traditional ways of functioning.
In the Russian Pale of Settlement, as well, legal steps were taken to accord the government a dominant role in selecting a rabbi and determining his duties and the conditions of his appointment. It was in Russia that the model of a dual rabbinate came into being. The authorities effectively recognized two types of rabbis: crown rabbis and spiritual rabbis. According to the Russian Constitution of 1835, every community and district (excluding the Polish provinces) was supposed to have a crown rabbi, who had acquired at least a high school education. He represented the community before the authorities with respect to religious issues, and was responsible for recording births, deaths, marriages, and divorces. Some crown rabbis had extensive rabbinic knowledge and were recognized as learned authorities in their communities, but many lacked traditional rabbinic training. By contrast, spiritual rabbis were not recognized as having official status, but communities were permitted to hire them; however, the law greatly limited the ability to pay such rabbis a fitting wage.
Nathan Ehrenfeld, chief rabbi of Prague, ca. 1890. (YIVO)
Centralist state policies were also behind various attempts to create national rabbinic organizational frameworks. At the end of the eighteenth century, “state rabbinates” were established in various places, and chief rabbis (rav kolel) were appointed. This is what happened, for example, for a short period at the end of the eighteenth century in Galicia, and likewise in Bohemia.
Legal changes in the Romanian principalities also brought about great shifts in the status of the rabbinate. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century Bessarabia, Moldavia, and Walachia were affiliated with the Ottoman Empire. Already at the beginning of the eighteenth century and following the Ottoman model, most Jewish administrative and judicial authority was concentrated in the hands of the ḥakham bashi (chief rabbi), and he was also responsible, among other things, for the appointment of rabbis. Polish and Hungarian immigrants generally accepted his authority as well. The new constitution that was instituted in 1832 in Moldavia and Walachia (known as “the Organic Law”) brought an end to the judicial autonomy of the Jewish courts. The authority of the ḥakham bashi was restricted exclusively to the religious realm, and two years later the office was abolished altogether. The great wave of Jewish immigration to Romania also affected the nature of the institution of the rabbinate, and from the 1830s on, many of those appointed to the positions of rabbi and dayan (rabbinic judge) were immigrants from Galicia or the Pale of Settlement.
Changes from Within
The spread of ideas arising out of the Enlightenment and the aspirations for acculturation among the Jewish elite also led to changes in the status of the rabbinate. Maskilic activists criticized the institution, the traditional conception of the rabbi’s function, the methodology of rabbinic study, and the process of ordination. They wanted to appoint rabbis who had a European education, espoused modern ideological positions, and would make a positive impression on the authorities. Liberal congregations that began to take shape in the 1840s in the larger cities (including Lemberg, Kraków, Warsaw, Vilna, Odessa, Prague, and others) tried to secure for themselves some positions of religious leadership in the community—and the preachers and rabbis whom they recruited to lead these new congregations tried to develop new models of rabbinic leadership, in sharp contrast to those embraced by the traditional rabbis. The need for rabbinic courts also diminished as more and more Jews resorted to the civil court system.
Beginning in the early and mid-nineteenth century, rabbinical seminaries were founded in several of the larger cities of Eastern Europe. Such institutions were established in Warsaw (1826), in Vilna and Zhitomir (1847), and in Budapest (1877), among other places; unsuccessful attempts to create a seminary in Galicia were made in the 1830s. These efforts to promote a new system of rabbinic training, generally at the initiative of the authorities and with the support of Haskalah circles, threatened the status of the established rabbinate and underscored the polarization that existed within the Jewish community at that time.
Young rabbis, Budapest, ca. 1934. (Seated, third from left) József Katona, future chief rabbi of the Dohány Synagogue. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ferenc Katona)
The process of internal migration in Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century—to the larger cities, to new cities in the southern districts of the Pale of Settlement, and to the Romanian principalities—also undermined commitment to the institution of the rabbinate. Many Jews no longer felt bound by ancient communal traditions, and were less in need of the local rabbinic leadership to represent them and their needs.
Difficulties in appointing rabbis also arose in those communities where most inhabitants remained faithful to tradition—in no small measure because of the spread of the Hasidic movement. The charismatic leadership of the Hasidic tsadik eroded the formal authority of the communal rabbi. The issues of who would exert communal leadership and who would serve as rabbis and other religious functionaries became subjects of political and social contention between Hasidim and their opponents, as well as among the followers of the various Hasidic courts.
The consolidation of changes in the character of the rabbinate was not uniform in degree. In countries and regions where the leadership classes inclined to cultural modernization, new legal foundations assisted in accelerating the process. Thus, in Bohemia the 1797 law paralleled the processes of change that the Jewish elite was undergoing on its own, and by the 1840s a fifth of the communal rabbis had earned doctoral decrees, and many others had studied in secondary schools and universities.
In Galicia, by contrast, the application of new laws encountered difficulties because of internal opposition. At the end of the 1830s, a Haskalah devotee was for the first time appointed to serve as a rabbi, and less than a decade later at least two liberal Western European rabbis were chosen (in Lemberg and Sambor) to serve as community rabbis. From that time on, rabbinic posts in several communities were filled by rabbis who identified with the Haskalah movement, or by men who at least tried to fulfill the new educational requirements.
A real conflict between reformers and traditionalists broke out in Hungary. The spread of the Reform movement in the 1840s directly threatened the hegemony of the traditional rabbinate. Mosheh Sofer of Pressburg and other rabbis wrestled with the advocates of change, thereby redefining the desired role of the rabbi to be a guardian of tradition, an unquestioned authority in the community, and a hereditary, though yeshiva-trained, leader.
The process was more complicated in Russia. The critiques leveled by Russian maskilim against the traditional rabbinate, and their active efforts to establish rabbinic seminaries, intensified the cultural war regarding the desired type of the communal rabbi. For most of the nineteenth century, however, the status of the crown rabbi in the Pale of Settlement remained marginal in relation to that of the unofficial spiritual rabbi. This was true not only in the eyes of conservative elements in the community but even in the eyes of the members of Haskalah circles, who quickly lost hope of producing worthy rabbis in the new rabbinical seminaries. The official abolition of community leadership (the kahal) in Russia in 1844 also complicated the process of appointing rabbis. Philanthropic and voluntary bodies began to substitute for the older official leadership, but were not necessarily capable of managing the complex political process of appointing rabbis.
Changes in the Role of the Rabbi
The processes of change, both imposed from without and impelled from within, brought about comprehensive changes in the role of the rabbi. These changes involved the structure of the office and its character, the diversity of rabbinic models, and the economic status of the rabbi as well as the course of his professional advancement.
The number of available rabbinic posts dwindled in many places. Communities that chose not to appoint a new rabbi did not immediately feel his absence, at least in larger communities. Indeed, at the end of the nineteenth century the larger communities were home to many rabbinic scholars and halakhic authorities, and those who had queries could direct their questions regarding kashrut and other halakhic matters to them. The traditional ideal model of a “learned bridegroom” also changed, and the number of wealthy Jews searching for scholarly husbands for their daughters diminished. The reduction in available rabbinic posts spurred the growth of the new Lithuanian yeshivas, which replaced the wealthy father-in-law as a source of support during the years of study. Among the Torah scholars of Lithuania, the prevalent and accepted ideal was that of a Torah scholar who devoted himself to such scholarship for its own sake, and who entered the rabbinate only when he had no alternative.
From Avraham Yitsḥak Kook in Jerusalem to Rabbi Ḥayim Ozer Grodzenski in Vilna, n.d., asking him to help spread awareness of the plight of Rabbi Ya‘akov Tuviah Rappoport of Minsk, a scholar and shoḥet (ritual slaughterer) who has been sentenced to eight years in prison by Soviet authorities. Hebrew. Copy of a letter, typed with handwritten corrections. RG 107, Letters Collection. (YIVO)
The diminished status of the communal rabbi did not mean that rabbinic leadership disappeared. The role of the communal rabbi was filled by voluntary rabbinic institutions and by other officeholders, including the dayan, the rabad (the chief dayan in the community), and the neighborhood or vinkel rabbi. Outstanding and charismatic rabbis, dayanim, and heads of yeshivas—Ḥayim of Volozhin, Shelomoh Kluger of Brody, Yitsḥak Elḥanan Spektor of Kovno, Yisra’el Me’ir ha-Kohen (Ḥafets Ḥayim) of Radin, Ḥayim Ozer Grodzenski of Vilna, and many others—continued to achieve recognition and influence even beyond the confines of their own communities.
During the period under discussion there were a wide variety of rabbinic models: Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox rabbis; traditional rabbis with some general education; “enlightened” rabbis, who internalized some elements of the ideal future as envisioned by the Haskalah movement—along with maskilic leaders who served as rabbis; neo-Orthodox Western European rabbis with a formal general education; and liberal “German” rabbis.
A prominent group of rabbis adopted a proactive style, both responding to and initiating change. They had difficulty accepting the Haskalah movement’s vision of the future, if only because they identified within it threats that they attributed to negative Western European influences. They worked to raise the walls separating the Jewish community from the “other” and demanded greater obedience to Jewish law and its authorities. They strictly defined the limits of possible cooperation with modern, German-speaking neo-Orthodox rabbis, some of whom were beginning to serve in rabbinic posts particularly in regions adjoining Western Europe. On the other hand, a growing number of rabbis supported moderate reforms in the educational system, as well as certain changes in choices of vocations, adoption of a modern style of dress, and the like.
A significant number of religious functionaries took advantage of new realms of study and research that had been opened. They collected, edited, and published manuscripts, thus developing annotated and corrected editions of rabbinic texts; they were actively involved in the early stages of historical-chronographical research, which was the traditional East European branch of Wissenschaft des Judentums (the science or scientific study of Judaism), and they persisted in this area of research from that time on; they expanded the output of the Orthodox publishing houses, availing themselves of the new leniency in the censorship laws; and they operated their own printing presses, publishing an enormous quantity of new and old rabbinic texts, and wrote for the new periodicals that were appearing as well. They also adjusted the structure of the educational and training programs in the traditional community bate midrash to meet the new challenges, and some engaged in the development of new frameworks for the training of rabbinic scholars and halakhic decision-makers.
The conception of the function of the rabbi gradually changed as well. Spiritual leaders of new progressive congregations generally took upon themselves the roles of preaching, ethical teaching, religious instruction, and ritual observance. Some of these roles involved novel practices and some conflicted with roles that had previously been assigned to the community rabbi, necessitating a clarification of the division of roles between the traditional rabbi and the new modern prediger (progressive preacher). On the other side, the “Orthodoxization” of the traditional community, and the reduction in the number of people deferring to the authority of the rabbi, led to greater dependence upon the rabbi and to the expectation that he would articulate halakhic positions on a wide variety of contemporary moral, social, and behavioral issues. The spread of the concept of daas Toyre (loosely, Torah viewpoint) in its new sense, which began in the middle of the nineteenth century and reached its climax in the interwar period, was one sign of the change. One of Orthodoxy’s tools for dealing with the threat to the authority of traditional halakhic decision making was grounding that authority not in the halakhic justification for a ruling, but in the stature, charisma, and Torah wisdom of the halakhic decisor himself.
The spread of the Hasidic movement also had an impact on the range of rabbinic models. The Hasidic tsadik drew his authority from his personal charisma or his genealogy. He was, therefore, judged by his followers more in accordance with his religious piety and his ability to lead his court than on his proficiency as a halakhic arbiter or rabbinic scholar. Some Hasidic leaders openly admitted that they chose not to deal with the “technical” aspects of the rabbinic office—that is, serving as a rabbinic judge and issuing halakhic rulings. In actual practice, however, we find a variety of Hasidic rabbinic types: the Hasidic leader who served as a community rabbi and fully bore the burdens of the rabbinic office, including providing judicial rulings and Torah scholarship; the Hasidic leader who served officially as the community rabbi but delegated the roles of halakhic decision making and Torah scholarship to halakhic authorities who served alongside him; and the tsadik who led a Hasidic court and left the role of community rabbi in the hands of others.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, the mobility of rabbis was greatly reduced, along with opportunities for their professional advancement. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, rabbis enjoyed a great deal of mobility between the various communities all across Europe. From that time on, however, the new national borders began to restrict that mobility, because of both the legal restrictions on emigration and the growing gap between the cultural and religious tendencies of the Jewish communities in Central and Western Europe and those in Eastern Europe. It is also possible to point to the growing differences between those rabbis serving in the towns and small cities and those serving in the larger cities where the internal and external pressures were more tangible and comprehensive.
The practice of “bequeathing the rabbinate”—that is to say, handing down the office of community rabbi from father to son or son-in-law—also played a role. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the prevalent tendency was to refrain from bequeathing the office of community rabbi. Thereafter, however, inheriting a rabbinic office became the common practice. The phenomenon was particularly common in areas under Hasidic influence, where inheriting the spiritual office was one of the conservative characteristics of the movement, but the practice was widespread in non-Hasidic circles as well. The entrenchment of this custom over the course of the nineteenth century stemmed from its being a powerful social tool that aided in the struggle with the threat posed by modernity to the institution of the rabbinate. The promise that the office would pass down to one’s son was an important tool in the hands of the father to ensure a livelihood for his descendants. From the community’s perspective, bequeathing the office was a convenient solution to the problem of choosing a rabbi, and a way around otherwise unresolvable conflicts in that regard.
Politicization and the Encounter with Nationalism and Zionism
Orthodox society’s entry into the arena of political activity, and rabbinic involvement in the Zionist movement in particular, also affected the status of the institution of the community rabbinate.
Rabbinic involvement in political activity vis-à-vis non-Jewish authorities was not a new phenomenon; there are striking instances of such involvement also after the partitions of Poland, such as the intensive activity of Dov Berush Meisels during the period in which he served as rabbi of Kraków and Warsaw. The strengthening of liberal circles in Hungary and Galicia in the middle of the nineteenth century and their attempts to force the establishment of a statewide Jewish leadership in which they would play an influential role forced the Orthodox rabbinic leadership to enter the fray. Prominent rabbis cooperated, willingly or in the absence of an alternative, in attempts to convene rabbinic conferences that sought to forge an active Orthodox front and establish a national traditional rabbinic organization. This was the goal of the series of conferences that were held in Hungary in the 1860s—including the conference of ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Michalovce and the rabbinic conference in Buda, both in 1865—which culminated in the establishment of a Hungarian Orthodox organization in 1870. In Russia, on the other hand, such rabbinic gatherings (more than five were convened between 1852 and 1910) served as a means for the non-Jewish regime to force its authority upon the Jewish communal leadership.
Avraham Tsevi Perlmutter (second from right) and other members of the Warsaw rabbinate during a demonstration in honor of the 125th anniversary of the Polish Constitution of 1791, Warsaw, 1916. Photograph by Marjan Fuks. From a postcard printed by B. Wierzbicki, Warsaw. (YIVO)
The establishment of the liberal Shomer Yisra’el organization in Galicia in 1867 and of the Orthodox Makhzikey ha-Das organization a decade later reflect the beginning of the process of politicization of the rabbinate. The traditional style of rabbinic intercession as engaged in by earlier generations was replaced by Orthodox party activity, which took note of the challenges posed by modernity and responded to them with modern political tools. Instead of a “politics of dignitaries,” in which the appointment of a rabbi to a position of influence depended upon his connections as a shtadlan (intercessor), from this point on it was possible to identify in Eastern Europe a “politics of identity,” in which the selection of a rabbi as a political leader was based on his ideology.
Toward the end of World War I the polarization of the rabbinate was intensified in various regions. In Russia, rabbinic activity was increasingly impaired following the Communist revolution in 1917. The laws that were enacted in the aftermath of the revolution greatly restricted the authority of the rabbis and, among other things, proscribed private religious schools, including the heder and the yeshiva. In 1929, religious activity was limited to the confines of the synagogue, and rabbis were defined as “classless.” Beginning in the 1920s, several rabbis were put on trial for antigovernmental activity; and by the end of the 1930s there were only a few rabbis left in the Slavic republics. Prominent rabbis chose to leave the country or were forced to emigrate: among others, Yosef Yitsḥak Shneerson, the rebbe of Lubavitch, was expelled in 1927; Shemu’el Yosef Zevin of Novozybkov emigrated to Palestine in 1934; and Moshe Feinstein of Luban in Belorussia emigrated to the United States in 1936.
In Poland, Lithuania, and Galicia, the politicization of the traditionalist camp accelerated during the interwar period, especially after the establishment of Agudas Yisroel in Poland in 1916. Prominent rabbis participated in its early congresses between 1918 and 1928, and a Council of Torah Sages was placed at its head, though in actual practice its activity was extremely limited. In Galicia and Lithuania, statewide Zionist organizations enjoyed greater success, and there, too, rabbis played an active role. It should be noted, however, that most of the prominent rabbis who were active in Agudas Yisroel or in the Zionist movement in the Russian Empire over the course of the twentieth century did not serve as communal rabbis, or else served as rabbis in small communities where the rabbinate still enjoyed considerable stature.
In Romania, on the other hand, the standing of the rabbinate was strengthened during the interwar period. At the beginning of the 1920s, the first chief rabbi of Romanian Jewry was appointed, and the Agudat ha-Rabanim was established, representing rabbis of all streams. Several years later, the authority of these new rabbinic bodies (the chief rabbinate and the Agudat ha-Rabanim) was officially recognized in the law.
World War II and After
With the invasion of Poland, many Jewish leaders, including part of the rabbinic leadership, escaped to the east. Most of the rabbis, however, remained in the occupied territories, and the Germans murdered some of them in the early weeks of the occupation. The official German position viewed the rabbi as an authoritative figure who played an important role in the leadership of the community and the preservation of Judaism. The Germans also regarded Poland as the primary supplier of rabbis for all of Europe and as the center of world Jewry. In practice, some rabbis were officially included among the members of the Jewish councils (Judenräte) established in the ghettos, especially in the religious departments and sometimes in the rabbinic councils that operated within separate frameworks that were subordinate to the Judenrat. Most rabbis were unofficially involved in the provision of educational and welfare services in the ghettos, and many of them continued to serve as halakhic and moral authorities for the public.
Owing to the difficult circumstances, however, the nature of the halakhic questions addressed to the rabbis changed. In the first years of the war, the questions directed to them focused on issues of religious observance in times of distress (with respect to kosher food, Sabbath observance, ‘agunot [women unable to get a divorce], and other concerns). Later, with the implementation of the plan to destroy European Jewry, rabbis were asked to rule on other matters as well, including issues of life and death. In extreme cases, rabbis were even asked to take a stand on the complicated question of determining who would be sent to the camps.
Some rabbis succeeded in escaping from Nazi-occupied areas during various stages of the war—some in a manner that later gave rise to controversy. Others remained with their communities and served them to the best of their ability until those communities were liquidated by the Germans. Very few of the rabbis who survived the war returned to their original communities, for in most cases those communities no longer existed, either as a result of Nazi genocide or because of Communist takeovers. Many helped in the rehabilitation of survivors in displaced persons camps and in the countries to which they emigrated.
Under Communist rule, the institution of the rabbinate was greatly constrained. In general, rabbis filled a representative-political role, and were active to a limited degree in supplying religious and educational services. At the end of World War II, the Russian authorities decided to allow rabbinic posts in several large cities to be filled, including those in Leningrad and Moscow. Solomon Shlifer, who was appointed rabbi of Moscow, effectively became the official representative of rabbis in the Soviet Union. In the middle of the 1970s, the last of the older rabbis died. From that time on, appropriately trained rabbis could no longer be found in the USSR, and those who served in rabbinic posts were usually graduates of the progressive (Neolog) rabbinical seminary in Budapest.
In Hungary, communal rabbis resumed their activity after the end of World War II, though their legal authority was limited. Orthodox rabbis tried to reactivate some of the yeshivas, but these institutions were closed in 1956 at the time of the Hungarian uprising. Several rabbis left Hungary together with their students and moved to Israel or the United States. The Neolog Rabbinical Seminary also started up again after the war and, among other things, engaged in the limited publication of rabbinic works.
In Romania, the chief rabbi became the official representative of the Jewish community before the authorities. Mozes Rosen, who had been chosen as chief rabbi of Romanian Jewry in 1948, was appointed in 1964 to serve also as the head of the Jewish Federation, a position that he filled until his death in 1994.
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