Israel Taglicht (March 9, 1862 − December 13, 1943) was the Chief Rabbi of Austria.

Life

Taglicht was born on March 9, 1862 in Berezó,

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

, the son of Josef Taglicht and Nelly Spitzer. A descendent of the Maharam Schick, Taglicht attended a religious elementary school and a yeshiva. After graduating high school, he went to Berlin and studied at the

Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, or Higher Institute for Jewish Studies, was a rabbinical seminary established in Berlin in 1872 and closed down by the Nazi government of Germany in 1942. Upon the order of the government, the name ...

and the

University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

, graduating from the latter with a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in 1888. He qualified as a rabbi a year later and was elected Rabbi of the small Moravian town of Ungarisch-Ostra. He was Rabbi there for four years. In 1893, he was appointed spiritual leader of

Mariahilf Mariahilf (; Central Bavarian: ''Mariahüf'') is the 6th municipal district of Vienna, Austria (german: 6. Bezirk). It is near the center of Vienna and was established as a district in 1850. Mariahilf is a heavily populated urban area with many re ...

, in the Sixth and Seventh Districts of

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. After fourteen years there, he was elected Rabbi of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Districts. He succeeded Max Grunwald's rabbinic office in 1910. In 1932, he became rabbi of

Leopoldstädter Tempel The Leopoldstädter Tempel was the largest synagogue of Vienna, in the district (Bezirk) of Leopoldstadt. It was also known as the Israelitische Bethaus in der Wiener Vorstadt Leopoldstadt. It was built in 1858 in a Moorish Revival style by the ...

, Vienna's main synagogue. In 1937, he was named Chief Rabbi of Vienna. He wrote a number of studies in German about the Tanach, Jewish cultural history, and contemporary Jewish issues. He worked with

YIVO YIVO (Yiddish: , ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. (The word '' ...

in Vienna and published two studies in Yiddish. He had a large amount of material related to the history of Vienna, but in 1938 the Nazis seized his entire library, manuscripts, and the unpublished eleventh volume of ''Forschungen zur Geschichte der Juden in Österreich'' (Research on the History of Jews in Austria) in 1938. In October 1935, Taglicht's daughter Edith (a teacher for Jewish schools in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

) was arrested by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

and sent to

Moabit Moabit () is an inner city locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2016, around 77,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial and working-class neighbourhood i ...

prison for writing an anti-Nazi article despite insistences from her friends she never wrote such an article or took any interest in politics. He received promises from Cardinal

Theodor Innitzer Theodor Innitzer (25 December 1875 – 9 October 1955) was Archbishop of Vienna and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. Early life Innitzer was born in Neugeschrei (Nové Zvolání), part of the town Weipert (Vejprty) in Bohemia, at that time Au ...

and the Austrian legation in Berlin to help secure her release and he personally went to Berlin, although she wouldn't be released until March 1936, five months after her arrest. In April 1938, after the ''

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

'', he was returning home from Shabbat services when he was forced to picket two Jewish firms while holding a placard. He was only allowed to stop when a Jewish patron volunteered to take the rabbi's place. Several months before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

began, he managed to escape to England and spent the rest of his life there. In 1892, Taglicht married Rachel Rappaport. Taglicht died in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

on December 13, 1943. His funeral took place in Cambridge.

References

1862 births 1943 deaths Austro-Hungarian rabbis 19th-century Hungarian Jews Humboldt University of Berlin alumni People from Uherský Ostroh Moravian rabbis Chief rabbis of Vienna 19th-century Austrian Jews Jewish emigrants from Austria to the United Kingdom after the Anschluss People from Cambridge Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums alumni {{DEFAULTSORT:Taglicht, Israel