Elbogen, Ismar

I. Parents, Birth, Family/Cultural/Jewish Background
Ismar Elbogen was born in Schildberg, Posen (Ostrzeszów, Poznan) to Hermann Elbogen (1833–1892), a primary school teacher (Melamed), and his wife Seraphine (née Levy) (1837–1892) as the youngest of four children. Along with his sisters Jenny (1863–1920), Judith (1865–1940), and his brother Eugen (1870–1931) he grew up in traditional and observant religious surroundings, which influenced his conception of Judaism.¹ It was his uncle, Jakob Levy (1819–1892), a linguist and renowned rabbi, who educated him early. His uncle’s connection to the conservative rabbinical seminary in Breslau (Wrocław) might have paved the way for Elbogen’s studies there after leaving secondary school.²

II. Education and Academic Career
From 1893 on, Elbogen studied at the “Jüdisch-Theologisches Seminar Fraenckel’sche Stiftung” in Breslau. There he was mentored by the Talmudist Israel Lewy during his early studies of Jewish liturgy,³ who conferred the rabbinical title to Elbogen in 1899. Parallel to his studies at the rabbinical seminary, he studied philosophy, history, and Oriental philology at Breslau University. Elbogen received his doctorate in 1898 with a thesis on Spinoza’s philosophy.⁴ His student years were the only time he showed an interest in Zionism, when he was a member of a Zionist organization, which he quit just before concluding his studies.⁵

Immediately after his ordination in Breslau, he was offered a position at the “Collegio Rabbinico Italiano” in Florence, where he taught Jewish history and biblical exegesis and published his first book on Jewish liturgy.⁶ While he returned to the “Collegio” as a lecturer in the following years, the institution to which he devoted most of his life’s work was the “Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums” in Berlin.

In 1902, at the invitation of Sigmund Maybaum, he joined the liberal Hochschule as lecturer in Jewish history and literature.⁷ From 1906 on, he also taught there as professor of Jewish history and liturgy. He remained at the institution for decades, becoming one of its unofficial leaders, shaping the then relatively small school into a major center of liberal Judaism in Germany. He embodied the visions of the institution’s founders by becoming the Wissenschaft’s “most penetrating interpreter of its aims and objects, its zealous advocate and fearless defender.”⁸

In addition, Elbogen promoted the implementation of the historical-critical method in the comprehensive systematic research of Jewish sources.⁹ At the same time, he was one of the most prominent advocates of a committed Jewish theology which sought to relate to the lived reality of Jewry (Wissenschaft und Leben)¹⁰ and the political realities of its time.¹¹ For him, the Wissenschaft had to be part of general humanities as a strictly academic discipline, but he never ceased to be observantly religious. Rather, he understood the application of Wissenschaft des Judentums to Jewish history as an important condition for the continuation of a modern religious Judaism itself.¹²

While he expressed his devotion later by his active role in the founding and chairing important organizations of promoting Wissenschaft des Judentums, namely the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, as well as other scholarly organizations such as the Verein für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur Berlin and the Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden, the Hochschule held, in his eyes, a central role for the implementation of these ideals. At the same time, Elbogen was one the leading scholars and prominent figures of liberal Judaism to whom the Hochschule owed its reputation and its strong international reach. He wrote the first history of the Hochschule for the inauguration of its building in 1907.¹³ Two years later, he married the teacher Regina Klemperer (1883–1965). Their daughter Schoshana Ronen (1912–1937) and son Herman Z. Elbin (1915) were born around the outbreak of the First World War.

The only time Elbogen worked practically as a community rabbi was during the war, when he briefly took over the rabbinate in Frankfurt (Oder).¹⁴ While he preferred research and teaching over rabbinical work, his teaching shaped generations of liberal rabbis trained at the Hochschule.¹⁵ 

Although he was renowned for his works on liturgy, his academic reputation was based not least on the range of subjects his texts and thought covered – from classic to modern Jewish theology and history.¹⁶ He produced groundbreaking encyclopedic compendia,¹⁷ periodicals,¹⁸ and editions.¹⁹ Michael Meyer’s biography aptly summarized: “No scholar was more central to the development of Jewish studies in Germany in the early twentieth century than Ismar Elbogen.”²⁰ The Hochschule, which during its entire existence struggled for symbolic and legal recognition by the state, chose Elbogen as one of two of its eminent members to be awarded the title “professor” in 1915.²¹ Elbogen further enhanced his reputation by mediating between divergent inner-Jewish religious and political views, which earned him recognition across divisions.²² Similarly, his stance towards Zionism was ambiguous in later years, since he was cautious of its divisive potential for the Jewish community. However, he endorsed the use of the Hebrew language as a means of opening the Wissenschaft des Judentums to international Jewish research and for transnational scholarly exchange. In 1928, he accepted an invitation to lecture at the young Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In 1922, he participated in the establishment of the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York before during the institute’s first semester while staying there. Although he was offered a permanent position there, as well as at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati (HUC), and at Columbia University, he ultimately decided to stay at the Hochschule. ²³ His stay also promoted a vivid exchange of young American scholars to Berlin to study under Elbogen in a period of “precarious blossom”²⁴ before 1933.

III. Profession and Career Before Emigration
During the rise of Nazism, Elbogen continued to pursue his academic work, as the volume Die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland²⁵ shows. Published in the midst of persecution, in 1935, his friends and famous historians Salo W. Baron and Alexander Marx called the work “a real public service.”²⁶ Neither did he refrain from assuming a leading role for German Jewry. When the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland was founded to counter the threat posed by the new regime, he served as a chairperson until his emigration in 1938. As the Hochschule underwent profound changes during the following precarious years, Elbogen was one of the figures who “personified the continuity in the Hochschule’s work.”²⁷ They did so by fighting for the survival of both the institution and the legacy of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, partly by the relentless support of their students’ emigration.²⁸

When Jewish scholars and students were forced out of the main universities, Elbogen was among those intellectuals who initiated an exceptional project which aimed to allow as many as possible to receive comprehensive education or maintain a living as lecturers.

Using the institutional structure of the Hochschule, they launched a covert academic program, inviting renowned scholars to teach different subjects in the humanities under the disguise of a Jewish-theological curriculum.²⁹ Those were “extraordinary times, in a time of oppression, which required extraordinary measures,” Elbogen stated.³⁰ At the time Elbogen was recognized as “the most representative figure of the Hochschule,” not just for his academic standing, but also because of his personality: “his kindness, his gentle but determined persuasiveness, his extraordinary resourcefulness, and a quiet and inoffensive sense of humour.”³¹

Accordingly, the departure of Elbogen weighed heavy on the Hochschule. He decided to leave Germany the same year his daughter migrated to Palestine – in 1937.³² His son had left two years earlier via Luxemburg, fled to Spain in 1936, reached Brazil in 1938, and the US in 1941, where ultimately he was reunited with Ismar Elbogen.³³ The HUC was a driving force behind a unique effort to enable the scholar to escape Nazi Germany by offering him a position as a “Research Professor in the fields of Jewish and Hebrew Research.” The effort was co-funded by the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Dropsie College in Philadelphia.³⁴ Shortly after his official invitation to the United States in May 1938, he left Berlin, travelled via Switzerland and Palestine and finally resettled in New York in October 1938.³⁵

Arrival in the United States/Employment and Public and Political Activities in the United States
After his arrival, Elbogen carried on his work under his new circumstances. He received an honorary professorship at the Jewish Institute of Religion in 1939 and became a member of the American Academy for Jewish Research that same year. There, he acted as a member of the executive committee from 1940 onwards,³⁶ and continued to play a central role in the rescue of former colleagues and students from Nazi Germany by suggesting suitable candidates for HUC‘s University in Exile Project.³⁷

V. Elbogen’s Intellectual Legacy
Whereas Elbogen continued his academic work until his death in 1943, his influence on American Judaism mainly results from the years before his migration. As an outstanding scholar of Wissenschaft des Judentums, he profoundly shaped the development of the academic discipline of Jewish Studies. He authored more than 400 publications, many still relevant today.³⁸ As a teacher as well as a leader of liberal Judaism in Germany, he conveyed his views on the role of Wissenschaft to generations of liberal rabbis in Germany and beyond. His influence on the shaping of the Hochschule was reflected in American institutions, such as the JIR and the HUC. Through his efforts during the era of National Socialism to rescue colleagues and students he played an important role in preserving fragments of the scholarly culture of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, to which he devoted his life.

Baron, Salo W.  and Alexander Marx, “Ismar Elbogen.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 13 (1943): xxiv–xxvi.
Elbogen, Ismar and Johann Hoeniger. Festschrift zur Einweihung des eigenen Heims. Berlin: H.S. Hermann, 1907.
Elbogen, Ismar. Der jüdische Gottesdienst in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung. Leipzig: Fock, 1913.
Elbogen, Ismar. Ein Jahrhundert Wissenschaft des Judentums. Berlin: Philo, 1922.
Die Lehren des Judentums nach den Quellen, edited by Ismar Elbogen et al. Berlin: Schwedtschke, 1920–1929.
Encyclopaedia Judaica. Das Judentum in Geschichte und Gegenwart, edited by Ismar Elbogen et al. Berlin: Eschkol, 1928–1934.
Moses Mendelssohn: Gesammelte Schriften. Jubiläumsausgabe, edited by Ismar Elbogen et al. Berlin: Akademie, 1929.
Germania Judaica, edited by Ismar Elbogen et al. Breslau: Marcus, 1934.
The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, edited by Ismar Elbogen et al. New York, 1939–1943.
Jüdisches Lexikon: Ein enzyklopädisches Handbuch des jüdischen Wissens in vier Bänden, edited by Ismar Elbogen and Georg Herlitz. Frankfurt am Main: Jüdischer Verlag bei Athenäum, 1987.
Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, edited by Ismar Elbogen et al. Berlin: Philo, 1887–1937.
Elbogen, Regi. “Ismar Elbogen: 1874-1943. A Bibliography.” In Historia Judaica 8, no. 1 (1946).
Fuchs, Richard. “The Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in the Period of Nazi Rule.” In Leo-Baeck-Institute Year Book 7 (1967): 3–31.
Hoffmann, Christhard and Daniel Schwartz. “Early, but opposed – supported but late: Two Berlin Seminaries which attempted to move abroad.” In Leo-Baeck-Institute Year Book 36 (1991): 267–304.
Meyer, Michael A. “The Refugee Scholars Project of the Hebrew Union College.” In A Bicentennial Festschrift for Jacob Rader Marcus, edited by Bertram Wallace Korn. New York: KTAV, 1976.
Meyer, Michael A. ‘Without Wissenschaft, there is no Judaism’: The Life and Thought of the Jewish Historian Ismar Elbogen. Jerusalem: Graphit Press, 2004.
Rosenthal, Erwin. “Ismar Elbogen and the New Jewish Learning.” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 8 (1963): 3–28.
Steilen, Felix. “Berlin in Cincinnati: Scenes from the End of the ‘Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums.’” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book (2024): 145–162, https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article-abstract/69/1/145/7738290.
Strauss, Herbert A. “Das Ende der Wissenschaft den Judentums in Deutschland: Ismar Elbogen und Eugen Taeubler.” In Bibliographie und Berichte: Festschrift für Werner Schochow, edited by Hartmut Walravens, 280–298. Munich: K. G. Saur, 1990.
Strauss, Herbert A. “Die letzten Jahre der Hochschule (Lehranstalt) für die Wissenschaft des Judentums: Berlin 1936–1942.” In Wissenschaft des Judentums. Anfänge der Judaistik in Europa, edited by Julius Carlebach, 36–58. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992.
Strauss, Herbert A.  Über dem Abgrund: Eine jüdische Jugend in Deutschland 1918–1943. Berlin: Ullstein, 1999.
Thulin, Mirjam and Markus Krah. “Disciplining Jewish Knowledge: Cultures of Wissenschaft des Judentums at 200.” PaRDeS 24, no. 4 (2018): 9–16.
Völker, Heinz-Hermann. “Die Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin: 1900–1942.” In: Bibliographie und Berichte: Festschrift für Werner Schochow, edited by Hartmut Walravens, 196–230. Munich: K.G. Saur, 1990.
Wiese, Christian. “Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums”. In Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur 3, edited by Dan Diner, 75–81. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2012.
“Elbogen, Ismar, Dr. phil. Dr. h. c. mult. Prof., Historiker.” In Lexikon Deutsch-jüdischer Autoren 6, edited by Renate Heuer, 255–273. Munich: K.G. Saur, 1998.
“Elbogen, Ismar”, in: International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Émigrés 1933–1945 2, edited by Herbert A. Strauss, 256. Munich: K.G. Saur, 1999.
Achtundreissigster Bericht der Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, edited by the Kuratorium der Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. Berlin: Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, 1920.