Israel Levi
Israel Levi is a French rabbi of nineteenth and twentieth centuries ( Paris , 1856 - 1939).
Grand Rabbi of France from 1920 to 1939, he was one of the greatest scholars of Judaism French of the second generation.
Summary |
The community leader
He did all his studies in Paris, attending the Talmud Torah Jewish Seminary of France, before entering.
Zadok Kahn , then Chief Rabbi of Paris, the remark made by the rabbi and deputy of the Synagogue de la Victoire , as well as his private secretary in 1882. It will also become his son and closest confidante. Given the success of his sermons, Israel Levi is entrusted in 1890 the conference on Sunday, organized by the Zadok Kahn, who became chief rabbi of France, to attract those who had lost the habit of frequenting the offices sabbatical. It does not, however, the succession of Zadok Kahn, the head of the Rabbinate of Paris, preferring to remain the assistant rabbi Jacques-Henri Dreyfus.
In 1895 , Zadok Kahn uses his son to take over the leadership of the Jewish universe after the departure of the Chief Rabbi Lazarus Wogue. Israel Levi did lead a year, but it will work longer. In his articles, he seeks to make knowledge of Judaism accessible to the simple faithful, in order to engage more fully in ltiurgie and celebrations. Meanwhile, it is an organ of defense against the anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism , saying the Jewish values vis--vis Christianity and, in full Dreyfus Affair , to refute anti-Semitic allegations against the Jews and the Captain, which he is a strong defender.
After the death of Zadok Kahn in 1905 , Israel Levi ensures informally the establishment of new structures arising from the Separation of Church and State. As a member of the Central Committee of the Alliance Israelite Universelle , he inspects in 1907 schools in the Middle East, including those in Ottoman Palestine.
For the 1908 election for the Grand Rabbinate of Central Consistory , he prefers Rabbi Lyon Alfred Levy , under pressure from the provincial delegates. But it creates for him the post of Assistant Chief Rabbi Chief Rabbi of the Central Consistory "in 1914. Alfred Levy health declining, Israel Levi provides a second time, again unofficially, the spiritual leadership of French Jewry.
In 1915 , he was sent by the Council President, Foreign Minister, on a special mission to Salonika , which would, according to his son Robert Levi, contributed to the entry into the war alongside the Allies in Greece. Elected Chief Rabbi in 1920, he continues to juggle his duties as rabbi and scholar, providing a course of Homiletics Seminar, representing French Jewry during the inauguration of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925.
Sensing the danger that poses the Third Reich on Judaism, it is no expense to accommodate the German refugees in France. Frail, he was forced to retire in 1936, the interim being assured by her step-brother, the Grand Rabbi of Paris, Julien Weill, and his disciple Maurice Liber , Director of the Rabbinical School of France.
The scholar of Judaism
In 1880, Zadok Kahn Israel Levi is appointed secretary of the League of Jewish studies , before entrusting him with the leadership six years later. In 1890 he was appointed to the substitution of the course of history and Jewish literature of Isidore Loeb in the Rabbinical School, successor to his death in 1892. He combines this with the support of Isidore Loeb Chair of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), as well as that of Joseph Derenbourg in that of rabbinic Judaism. He will be forced to temporarily leave the chair of history in 1907 to his disciple Maurice Liber given its many obligations, before resuming in 1916, the mobilization of it.
Besides its participation in the Jewish universe, Israel Levi wrote about 400 articles, working in various journals of Jewish studies, mainly the Journal of Jewish Studies which provides overall direction, but also to Monatschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums the Jewish Quarterly Review and the Jewish Encyclopedia.
His favorite subjects are, firstly the history of Judaism in the Second Temple period , and the literature of this period, especially the figure of Alexander in the Talmud and Midrash , on the other hand the History of Jews in France , examined through anti-Semitism and its claims on the one hand, the writings of medieval rabbis French on the other.
It also publishes, on the basis of a critical review of manuscripts excavated from the Cairo Geniza by Professor Solomon Schechter , the French edition of Ecclesiasticus or Wisdom of Ben Sira in two volumes in 1898 and 1901. Israel Levi, in the many conferences he spends, emphasizes the ambiguity of the work, specifically Jewish, but with many philosophical contributions of paganism.
He also wrote in 1912 critical of the Damascus Document , two fragments were discovered in 1910 in the Cairo Geniza by Solomon Schechter same. There demonstrates the relationship of this particular text, excerpted from the sect Sadduccean Damascus, with what we knew then Essenes , suspecting an important role of these in the birth of Christianity. Its assumptions are corroborated by the discovery of manuscripts of Qumran , 35 years later. His study of the document can also add to the indications of the Talmud and Josephus on the Sadducees and better understand the politico-religious climate of the two centuries preceding the destruction of the Temple.
A volume of mixtures was offered to him in 1926 on the occasion of his 70th birthday a collaboration, in addition to his colleagues at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, the Rabbinate and the Seminary, its students Reinach , Marcel Mauss , and others, as well as historians Anchel Robert Moses Ginsburg and Cecil Roth and other scientists from Germany, England, Austria, United States, Palestine and Poland.
Source
Israel Levi on the site of Judaism Alsatian
Notes
Related articles
Links and external documents
- "Connections and Convergences. The comparative perspective. Internal critique of the "legend of Abraham." " Excerpt from Essays in honor of Mr. Israel Levi, for his students and friends on the occasion of his 70th birthday, Journal of Jewish Studies, 82, 1926, pp. 35-44. Paris
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