Joseph Breuer - Biography

Biography

Joseph Breuer was born in 1882 in Pápa, Hungary to the local Rabbi Solomon Breuer and Sophie Breuer née Hirsch, who was the youngest daughter of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. After the passing of Hirsch in 1888, Solomon Breuer was elected his successor as rabbi of the Austrittsgemeinde (seceded community) of Orthodox Jews known as Khal Adath Jeshurun. Here, Breuer Sr. founded a yeshiva (Talmud college) called the Torah Lehranstalt and became its first rosh yeshiva (head).

Joseph studied at the Torah Lehranstalt until 1903, when he was awarded semicha (rabbinic ordination), and in 1905 he completed university studies at the University of Strasbourg with a PhD on the work of legal scholar Anselm von Feuerbach. He became a teacher at the Realschule (secondary school) and lecturer at the Torah Lehranstalt. He married Rika Eisenmann of Antwerp in 1911. In 1919 he was also appointed rabbi of the Klaus synagogue of Frankfurt.

Upon Solomon Breuer's death in 1928, Joseph Breuer lost the election to succeed his father as rabbi of the community, but he did succeed him as rosh yeshiva. In 1933, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved the yeshiva to Fiume, Italy, where he had assumed the rabbinate, but this arrangement lasted only until the next year and the family and the yeshiva returned to Frankfurt. It was formally dissolved by the Nazis in 1935, but continued to function unofficially. On the day after Kristallnacht (10 November 1938), rabbi Breuer was arrested but subsequently released. The family left Germany, initially to Antwerp. A former pupil was then, with the assistance of Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel, able to procure an affidavit of support, which enabled Dr. Breuer and his family to relocate to New York in 1939.

In New York, Breuer took the initiative to start a congregation with the numerous German refugees in Washington Heights, which would closely follow the morale and customs of its "spiritual ancestor" in Frankfurt. The congregation came to be called Khal Adath Yeshurun (KAJ), but is colloquially called "Breuer's" after its founder. In addition, he founded Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a yeshiva elementary school and high school named after his illustrious grandfather. He also founded a teachers' seminary for girls that would be renamed the Rika Breuer Teachers' Seminary after his wife's death. All institutions purported to follow the teachings and ideology of Rabbi Breuer's grandfather, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. In the 1960s, the community invited Frankfurt-born Rabbi Shimon Schwab, then of Baltimore, to assist with rabbinical duties.

Towards the end of his life, the name Levi was added to his own name as a blessing to recover from an illness. He died in 1980, survived by his children Marc, Jacob, Samson, Rosy Bondi, Edith Silverman, Sophie Gutmann, Hanna Schwalbe and Meta Bechoffer.