Alexander
ándorRosenberg (1844 – 11 August 1909) was a Hungarian
Neolog
Neologs ( hu, neológ irányzat, "Neolog faction") are one of the two large communal organizations among Hungarian Jews, Hungarian Jewry. Socially, the liberal and modernist Neologs had been more inclined toward integration into Hungarian society ...
rabbi.
Rosenberg was born in
Makó
Makó (, german: Makowa, yi, מאַקאָווע Makowe, ro, Macău or , sk, Makov) is a town in Csongrád County, in southeastern Hungary, from the Romanian border. It lies on the Maros River. Makó is home to 23,272 people and it has an area ...
; after studying at Vienna and Leipzig, and was trained in the
Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, where he was made Doctor of Philosophy. He officiated at the opening ceremony of the
Ujpest Synagogue in 1866. In 1868 he was elected preacher in
Nagyvárad.
[Susanne Blumesberger. ''Handbuch österreichischer Autorinnen und Autoren jüdischer Herkunft 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert''. K.G. Saur (2002). . p. 1139.] There, the progressive elements in the community seceded from the conservative majority in 1861, seeking to administer synagogue reforms. While the authorities forced reunification in 1863, they allowed the former to maintain a house of worship. In 1870, in the aftermath of the
Schism in Hungarian Jewry
The Schism in Hungarian Jewry ( hu, ortodox–neológ szakadás, "Orthodox-Neolog Schism"; yi, די טיילונג אין אונגארן, Transliteration, trans. ''Die Teilung in Ungarn'', "The Division in Hungary") was the institutional division ...
, the dispute was institutionalized and they formed an independent Neolog congregation. Rosenberg was its first rabbi. In 1876 he was appointed Neolog rabbi of
Kaposvár, and in 1886 he took the same office in
Arad.
In the 1890s, he was a prominent figure in the struggle for obtaining Judaism the status of an "accepted faith", fully equal to the Christian sects. In 1895, civil marriage were first enabled in Hungary. Rosenberg proposed that the Neolog rabbinate should not oppose such unions, citing the concept of
Dina D'Malkhutah Dina
Dina d'malkhuta dina (alternative spelling: dina de-malkhuta dina) ( arc, דִּינָא דְּמַלְכוּתָא דִּינָא, translation=the law of the Government n civil casesis law, or "the law of the land is the law") is a principle in ...
and also claiming that the
Talmud, in
Kiddushin 68:2, only banned intermarriage with idol worshipers. His suggestion aroused a severe controversy, and his colleagues condemned him.
Immanuel Löw refuted his arguments, and his opinion was not accepted.
[Judah Schweizer. ''Conservative Rabbis in Assimilated Jewish Communities in Hungary''. Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, 1997. p. 170.] Rosenberg died in Arad.
References
External links
*
“Dear diary, I don’t want to die” – The Diary of Éva Heyman'. Rosenberg great-granddaughter's Holocaust diary.
1844 births
1910 deaths
People from Makó
19th-century Hungarian rabbis
Neolog rabbis
{{Hungary-rabbi-stub