Manuel Joël (or ''Joel''; October 19, 1826 – November 3, 1890) was a German Jewish

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

and preacher. He was born in Birnbaum (Międzychód), Grand Duchy of Posen. After teaching for several years at the Breslau rabbinical seminary, founded by

Zecharias Frankel Zecharias Frankel, also known as Zacharias Frankel (30 September 1801 – 13 February 1875) was a Bohemian-German rabbi and a historian who studied the historical development of Judaism. He was born in Prague and died in Breslau. He was the foun ...

, in 1863 he became the successor of Abraham Geiger in the rabbinate of Breslau. He made important contributions to the history of the school of Aqiba as well as to the history of

Jewish philosophy Jewish philosophy () includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until modern ''Haskalah'' (Jewish Enlightenment) and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile ...

, his essays on Ibn Gabirol and Maimonides being of permanent worth. But his most influential work was connected with the relations between Jewish philosophy and the medieval

scholasticism Scholasticism was a medieval school of philosophy that employed a critical organic method of philosophical analysis predicated upon the Aristotelian 10 Categories. Christian scholasticism emerged within the monastic schools that translate ...

. He showed how Albertus Magnus derived some of his ideas from Maimonides and how Spinoza was indebted to the same writer, as well as to Hasdai Crescas. These essays were collected in two volumes of ''Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie'' (1876), while another two volumes of ''Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte'' (1880-1883) threw much light on the development of religious thought in the early centuries of the

Christian era The terms (AD) and before Christ (BC) are used to label or number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The term is Medieval Latin and means 'in the year of the Lord', but is often presented using "our Lord" instead of "the Lord", ...

. Equally renowned were Joel's pulpit addresses. Though he was no orator, his appeal to the reason was effective, and in their published form his three volumes of Predigten (issued posthumously) found many readers. Joël was the chief rabbi of the reform Jewish congregation when the New Synagogue was completed in 1872. He died in 1890 in Breslau.

References

Secondary literature

* George Y. Kohler, “Manuel Joel in Defense of the Talmud – Liberal Responses to Religious Antisemitism in Nineteen-Century Germany”, '' Hebrew Union College Annual'' 79, (2008/2010), p. 141-163 * Görge K. Hasselhoff "Manuel Joel and the Neo-Maimonidean Discovery of Kant", in: James T. Robinson (ed.) The Cultures of Maimonideanism, Brill (2009)

External links

Digitized works by Manuel Joel
at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York {{DEFAULTSORT:Joel, Manuel 1826 births 1890 deaths People from Międzychód 19th-century German rabbis Jewish philosophers People from the Grand Duchy of Posen Spinoza scholars German Reform rabbis