Beliefs
He was a supporter of the principles of Abraham Geiger, and while still in Germany advocated the introduction of prayers in the vernacular German, the exclusion of nationalistic hopes and the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem and the sacrificial services there from the synagogue service, and other ritual modifications, lobbying on behalf of these changes at the 1844 Frankfurt Assembly. He was chosen rabbi at Hoppstädten, and afterward chief rabbi of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1847, succeeding Rabbi Samuel Holdheim whose views were a major influence on Einhorn. An incident in which he blessed an uncircumcised child, which upset many of his more traditional congregants, led to his departure from Germany. He was called to Pest, Hungary in 1851 where his views met with such opposition that his temple was ordered closed only two months after his arrival there by the Emperor of Austria, who saw a connection between the Jewish reform movement and the Revolutions of 1848.
Read more about this topic: David Einhorn (rabbi)
Famous quotes containing the word beliefs:
“We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Both Eliot and Pound condense; their best verse is weighted—Pound’s, with sensual experience primarily, and Eliot’s with beliefs. Where the mind’s life is concerned the senses produce images, and beliefs produce dramatic cries. The condensation is important.”
—R.P. Blackmur (1904–1965)