Adler, Abraham Jacob ("Koppel")

German rabbi, educator; born in 1813; died at Worms in 1856. He was the son of Isaac Adler, associate rabbi in Worms, and brother of Rabbi Samuel Adler. He studied at the universities of Bonn and Giessen, and afterward went to Frankfort-on-the-Main, where he became teacher at the Buchholz School, and to Gross-Kanizsa, Hungary, in 1839, where he was engaged as tutor in a private family. He was elected rabbi of Worms in 1842, but gave up his rabbinical career in the same year, and, assisted by his wife, founded a private school for young girls. At the rabbinical conferences at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in 1845, he distinguished himself as a great Talmudical scholar and radical reformer, siding with Holdheim, Geiger, and Einhorn, and wrote "Die 77 Sogenannten Rabbiner und die Rabbinesversammlung," Mannheim, 1845, a pamphlet which created some stir. In 1848 he established a political paper, and became a contributor to Nowack's "Kirchenzeitung." In the revolutionary movement of 1848 Adler espoused the cause of political freedom with all the ardor and eloquence of his enthusiastic nature. He did not commit any overt act which could be justly brought up against him, but after the scattering of the revolutionary forces by the Prussian arms he was seized in his study by gendarmes, on the eve of the Day of Atonement, and hurried away to the Iron Tower at Mayence. There he languished for many months, his wife lying at the same time at the point of death. At last he was acquitted by a jury, and was released from his prison. The position of rabbi at the New York Temple Emanu-El was first offered to him in 1854, but his poor health prevented him accepting the call, which his brother Samuel entered upon three years later. Broken in health by the trials through which he had passed, he died in the winter of 1856. Among his works are: "Geschichte der Juden in Frankfurt-am-Main," and "Reform des Judenthums," written with the aid of his friend Wagner of Mannheim, 1846.

Bibliography:

  * Sermon by L. Lewysohn (of Worms) and another by Dr. Stein (of Frankfort-on-the-Main), in Archives Israélites, 1856.



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