I am honored to announce the website listing of German Refugee Rabbis to the United States posted by the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich as well as the publication of a book on the dramatic account of the German-speaking Rabbis who shaped American Jewry in the 20th century.
The Last Generation of the German Rabbinate
German Refugee Rabbis in the United States, 1933–2010
After the Nazi seizure of power on January 30, 1933, over 250 German rabbis, rabbinical scholars, and students for the rabbinate fled to the United States. The Last Generation of the German Rabbinate follows their lives and careers over decades in America.
Although culturally uprooted, the group's professional lives and intellectual leadership, particularly those of the younger members of this group, left a considerable mark intellectually, socially, and theologically on American Judaism and on American Jewish congregational and organizational life in the postwar world.
Meticulously researched and representing the only systematic analysis of prosopographical data in a digital humanities database, The Last Generation of the German Rabbinate reveals the trials of those who had lost so much and celebrates the legacy they made for themselves in America.
Link to book for purchase: https://iupress.org/9780253070197/the-last-generation-of-the-german-rabbinate/#generate-pdf
Link to open access version of book: https://publish.iupress.indiana.edu/projects/the-last-generation-of-the-german-rabbinate
My father, Rabbi Dr. William Weinberg, is listed, as so am I, possibly the only Rabbi on the list born after the Shoah!
The Last Generation of the German Rabbinate
German Refugee Rabbis in the United States, 1933–2010
byCornelia Wilhelm
Reference to Rabbi Wilhelm, ( Willism) Weinberg
P 184
In Wilhelm Weinberg’s case, fleeing eastward from Nazism was
just a prelude to an extremely difficult and dangerous flight that covered
nearly the entire globe. After staying in several countries in eastern Europe,
he crossed into the Soviet Union and ultimately into central Asia (Kyrgyzstan),
where he survived the Shoahunder communism while hiding the fact that he was an
ordained rabbi.
Weinberg was born on 3 April 1901, in Dolina, Galicia, and
arrived in Berlin to study for the rabbinate at the Hochschule in 1932. It
might have been his political activism in the Zionist movement that got the
attention of the Nazi Party because he soon ran into serious trouble with the
police. After a trip to Zurich inJune 1935, he was harassed, arrested, and
sentenced to one year and nine months for foreign currency violations. When he
was released from prison, he left the country and returned to Austria, where he
received his ordination from the Hochschule in absentia. This is evidence that
the faculty there did their best to give students the most support possible,
even under almost impossible circumstances.
Only after 1945 could Weinberg finally return to the
German-speaking part of central Europe, where he used to feel at home. He
joined the flow of so-called Displaced Persons and ministered to them in the
American occupation zone in Hallein near Salzburg and in Frankfurt am Main,
where he served as the first post war chief rabbi of Hesse until he left Europe
for the United States in 1951.
Reference to Rabbi Norbert Weinberg
P119
There were far fewer second-generation students at the JTS
than at HUC. Among them were Bernard Wechsberg, Bert Woythaler, Ludwig
Nadelman, Sol Landau, Ismar Schorsch, Pessach Schindler, HermannDicker, Michael
Leipziger from Sao Paolo, and Norbert Weinberg. Their assimilation went
smoothly, and their careers were likewise promising.
( Note that I am the youngest of the referenced students,
in the same list with my teacher and
later head of my Rabbinical School, Prof. Schorsch !)
This was just announced:
Leo Baeck Institute Invites to a Presentation of the New Database German Refugee Rabbis in the United States, 1933-1990
We are pleased to announce the publication of the online Digital Humanities Database „German Refugee Rabbis in the United States, 1933-1990” (http://mira.geschichte.lmu.de/ /). It was a research cooperation between Dr. Cornelia Wilhelm of the Department of Jewish History and Culture, the Center for Digital Humanities at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Goldstein Goren Center for American Jewish History at NYU and was funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
Here is the site:
http://mira.geschichte.lmu.de/
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| Rabbi William Weinberg |
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| Rabbi Norbert Weinberg |