Steinhardt, Mendel

German rabbi and scholar of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; held the rabbinate of Minden. When the consistory of Westphalia was convened in 1807 he was elected its counselor. In defense of Israel Jacobson's advocacy of the Reform movement among the Jews of Westphalia, Steinhardt wrote "She'elot u-Teshubot Dibre Menaḥem" (Offenbach, 1804), containing ninety responsa on various rabbinical subjects, and supplied with an index arranged according to the Talmudic treatises; he wrote also "Dibre Iggeret" (ed. W. Heidenheim, Rödelheim, 1812), a work seeking to justify the innovations introduced by the Jewish consistory at Cassel, and essaying to prove that they were undertaken in conformity with Talmudic principles.

Bibliography:

  * S. Bernfeld, Toledot ha-Reformazion ha-Datit be-Yisrael, p. 59, Cracow, 1900;
  * Zeitlin, Bibl. Post-Mendels. p. 379.



S. S. O.