Breuer, Joseph (1882-1980)

Levi¹

I. Family and Educational Background
Joseph Breuer was born in Pápa, Hungary, to Rabbi Dr. Salomon Breuer and Sophie (née Hirsch), the third of their seven children. His grandfather was Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a leader of Neo-Orthodox Judaism who officiated as rabbi of the orthodox Israelitische Religionsgemeinschaft in Frankfurt am Main from 1851. When Breuer was eight years old, the family moved to Frankfurt. Breuer was educated in the Neo-Orthodox tradition of Torah Im Derekh Eretz (TIDE), attending the Samson Raphael Hirsch School (SRHS) from 1890 to graduation in 1898, and also studying in the Frankfurt Yeshiva founded by his father. Strongly committed to Orthodoxy, Breuer rejected all non-Orthodox Jewish movements including Liberal Judaism, assimilationism, and Zionism. He did not recognize the legitimacy of the mainline Frankfurt Jewish community and instead saw the secessionist congregation as the definitive Jewish community.

Joseph Breuer followed the professional path of his father. After graduating from the Samson Raphael Hirsch Schule in 1898, he went abroad to receive rabbinical training in Rabbi Koppel Reich’s yeshiva in Budapest between 1898 and 1903. After receiving his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Reich in 1903, Breuer enrolled at the University of Giessen for an unknown duration and later attended the University of Strasbourg from 1903 to 1905.² In 1905, Breuer graduated from the University of Strasbourg with his doctorate in philosophy. His mentor was German historian Dr. Friedrich Meinecke, and his dissertation thesis explored the political criminology of German legal scholar Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach.³ Following his doctorate Breuer returned to Frankfurt where in 1906 he joined the faculty of the SRHS and later at his father’s Frankfurt Yeshiva (not to be confused with the Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch below) instructing both secular and religious classes. Since many of his students were Eastern European Jewish emigrants, Breuer continued to be exposed to Eastern European Jewry. In 1911, Breuer married Rika Eisenmann from Antwerp and settled in Frankfurt am Main, where they were blessed with three sons and five daughters.

Breuer viewed the First World War as a disaster and a symptom of moral cultural decline, a position shared by his father and brothers. He criticized Western cultural and scientific achievements for failing to secure world peace.⁴ As much of the Neo-Orthodox elite patriotically supported the war, Breuer’s attitude was rather exceptional. By 1919, Breuer started officiating as rabbi of the Frankfurt Klaus synagogue.⁵ Between 1914 and 1927, Breuer authored a commentary on the Hebrew Prophets and the High Holiday liturgy. Around 1924, Breuer assumed his ailing father’s position as Rosh Yeshiva of the Frankfurt Yeshiva. Breuer was passionate about Talmudic learning and often treated his students as peers.⁶ Breuer articulated his grandfather’s Torah Im Derekh Eretz ideal and expounded the idea of a Jewish mission to ennoble humanity. However, as a child of the fin de siècle, Breuer expressed reservations on the redemptive potential of the Western Enlightenment.⁷ In 1926, Breuer’s father passed away, leaving vacant the rabbinical pulpit of the Frankfurt Neo-Orthodox congregation. This started a long feud between different factions of the community. Breuer’s family wanted his older brother Raphael to succeed their father, while the elite factions of the congregation refused to allow the rabbinate to remain in the Breuer family. Ultimately, the Breuer family did not win the rabbinical position, and this scandal caused much pain and resentment to Joseph Breuer, along with undermining his authority in the congregation.

II. Flight From Germany and Resettlement in New York
In 1933, Joseph Breuer temporarily moved his family to Fiume, Italy, returning to Frankfurt in 1934, under the belief that Hitler’s influence would be short-lived. Breuer’s return to Germany was meant to be temporary as he continued to look for long-term resettlement options elsewhere for both his family and students. He continued leading the Frankfurt Yeshiva until 1938, focusing on relocating his students and securing funding to transfer the Yeshiva abroad.⁸ Breuer explored options in England, the United States, and Palestine, promoting TIDE as an educational approach for Jewish students emigrating to safer countries.⁹ Breuer suffered greatly during the pogrom of November 9, 1938, and followed from the family home the destruction of the synagogue and kahal (also referred to as kehillah: Jewish religious community). On November 10, 1938, Breuer was briefly arrested by the Gestapo, forced to stand for eight hours, and narrowly avoided deportation to a concentration camp with the support of  a German policeman who knew him.¹⁰ Immediately after his release, Breuer and his family secured passage to Belgium, staying briefly in Antwerp. They emigrated to New York on the advice of Breuer’s former student Jacob A. Samuel, who was living there and helped secure a non-quota visa for Breuer and his family. They left Europe on January 28, 1939. The Nazis seized the family’s liquid assets, but Breuer was able to save his personal library.

In February 1939, Joseph Breuer arrived in New York with support from his students, some of whom had arrived there earlier. Breuer was also assisted by Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel, then-president of Yeshiva University (then known as Yeshiva College).¹¹ Breuer’s students had already formed their own congregation in Washington Heights, the Khal Adath Jeshurun (henceforth KAJ), modeled after the German urban Neo-Orthodox congregations, and they invited Joseph Breuer to be their rabbi, which Breuer accepted in February 1939.

III. Activities in New York
Like other German Jewish refugees, Breuer’s dream was to create a new Americanized community aligned with the middle-class. Even though he personally spoke little English, Breuer and his family successfully established new institutions for his congregation. Between 1939 to 1944, Breuer provided private after-school instruction in religious studies for the children in his congregation and ultimately established the Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (henceforth YRSRH) as a private full-time elementary school for both boys and girls. This school was a uniquely American undertaking and was not the same as the Frankfurt Yeshiva. The school grew with the community, which by 1959 numbered over 1,200 congregants.¹² As the congregation expanded, the KAJ founded a Sisterhood in 1940 and organized community sermons about German Jewish heritage and arranged cultural excursions to theaters.

Breuer and his KAJ congregation avoided political activities. Breuer was grateful for the refuge he and his family found in the United States, which he hailed as a bastion of freedom.¹³ Breuer cultivated relations specifically with American Orthodox figures with whom he shared similar ideological values, such as rabbis Dr. Herbert S. Goldstein, Dr. Leo Jung, and Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz. Conversely, Breuer did not ally with the Orthodox Jewish Union, Yeshiva University (which was no longer headed by Breuer’s benefactor Bernard Revel), Rabbi Mendel Zaks’s Chafetz Chaim Yeshiva, Rabbi Aharon Kotler’s Lakewood Yeshiva, and local Chassidic communities. Breuer divested from Reform and Conservative Jewish communities, refusing funding from any non-Orthodox Jewish organizations and forbidding his congregants from joining any organizations that included non-Orthodox rabbis as members.¹⁴ Accordingly, Breuer’s insularity significantly limited his community’s potential to expand into a more creative force in American Jewish affairs. Breuer collaborated with other American Orthodox rabbis and leaders within the Torah Umesorah organization, founded in 1945 to establish all-day Hebrew schools for boys and girls in every American Jewish community. These school administrations recognized the importance of general education, and some of them (including Rabbi Mendlowitz and Dr. Ernst L. Bodenheimer) were familiar with TIDE. Breuer was a staunch supporter of Rabbi Mendlowitz, teaching at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath and providing extensive funding when it faced financial straits during 1959.

In sermons, Breuer often mentioned the Holocaust, framing it within a religious context to strengthen Jewish faith. He urged his congregants to find the resilience to uphold their commitment to Orthodoxy despite the trauma of the Holocaust and the challenges in rebuilding.¹⁵ Breuer did not return to Germany and was not involved in any efforts to reorganize Jewish learning and rabbinical seminaries in Germany.

IV. Impact and Legacy in New York
By establishing a German Neo-Orthodox congregation, including a German-style synagogue, private school, and communal sisterhood, Breuer was part of a transfer of knowledge from Western European Judaism to American Jewry. Breuer also aligned this exchange with fashionable American middle-class ideals, including the Protestant work ethic, American capitalistic ethos, progressive education, higher education, professionalism, and the attainment of the American Dream. Following his TIDE ideal, Breuer blended American middle-class cultural expectations with religious goals, espousing a Neo-Orthodox version of progressive education, and emphasizing the importance of careerism. Breuer’s openness to television and theater also distinguished his brand of Orthodox Judaism from other Ultra-Orthodox communities.¹⁶ As part of his efforts to transfer the German Neo-Orthodox heritage to New York, Joseph Breuer took a leading role in introducing Samson Raphael Hirsch’s religious writings to an American Jewish audience. In 1947, Breuer partnered with his New York congregant Philipp Feldheim to establish the Samson Raphael Hirsch Publications Society, which successfully raised funding to sponsor English translations of classic Neo-Orthodox religious literature. Among the translators Breuer recruited were his son Dr. Jacob Breuer, Austrian-born Jewish author Gertrude Hirschler, and his eventual rabbinical successor Rabbi Simon Schwab. By the 1960s, the Society had evolved into Feldheim Publishers, a prominent English-language company for the publication of general religious Jewish literature, as well as the largest outlet in North America for the distribution of English translations of Hirsch’s Bible and Siddur commentaries, religious essays (i.e. Die Neunzehn Briefe), and Halakhic works (Horeb).¹⁷ After Breuer’s death in 1980, the Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer Foundation was founded in 1982 and continues to publish new editions and updated translations of the pre-Holocaust Bible commentaries by Hirsch, his sons Mendel and Julius, as well as Breuer’s father Salomon and his brother Raphael.¹⁸

Breuer’s attempts to reestablish Neo-Orthodoxy met with a mixed reception from American Jewish observers outside the Orthodox camp. Some considered the KAJ’s educational program to be unparalleled in any other American Jewish community.¹⁹ However, other critics argued that the KAJ was insufficiently acculturated and not modern enough.²⁰

As one of the few elder Neo-Orthodox rabbis who survived the Holocaust, Breuer enjoyed an expanded role as a spiritual leader of Neo-Orthodoxy, and his prestige was centralized among the surviving German diaspora. In this capacity, Breuer facilitated the emergence of a new sub-trend of American -Orthodox Judaism, creating a congregation that was uncompromisingly dedicated to Orthodox observance, while also being accepting towards Western culture and general education.

Breuer, Joseph. “Von der Frankfurter Jeschiwoh.” Jüdische Monatshefte 7, no. 1 (January 1920): 3–18.
Breuer, Joseph.“100 Jahre Chaurew.” Nachalath Zvi 7, no. 4 (January 1937): 100–19.
Breuer, Joseph. “Our Duty Towards America.” Mitteilungen 3 (January 1942): 1.
Breuer, Joseph. “Deutsche Jüdischkeit.” Mitteilungen 15 (April 1954): 1–2.
Breuer, Joseph. “Aus einer Predigt.” Mitteilungen 16 (July 1955): 1.
Breuer, Joseph. “The Relevancy of the Torah Im Derekh Eretz Ideal,” Mitteilungen 26 (August 1965): 1–2.
Breuer, Marc. “Rav Dr. Joseph Breuer – A Biography.” In The Living Hirschian Legacy: Essays on Torah im Derech Eretz and the contemporary Hirschian Kehillah, edited by Eliyahu Glucksman. Feldheim Publishers, 1988. 40–4.
Katz, Jacob. With My Own Eyes: Autobiography of a Historian. Translated by Ziporah Brody. Brandeis University Press, 1995.
Kranzler, David and Dovid Landesman. Rav Breuer: His Life and His Legacy. Feldheim Publishers, 2008.
Oppenheimer, Leopold. “Memoirs from the Frankfurt Am-Main Kehilla,” (1996). Unpublished manuscript. In the possession of Rabbi Moshe Loewenthal of Israel.
Plaut, Walter H. “The Nineteen Letters,” Commentary (October 1960). Accessed August 1, 2024, https://www.commentary.org/articles/walter-plaut/the-nineteen-letters-on-judaism-by-rabbi-samson-raphael-hirsch/.
Riemer, Jack. “The Joseph Breuer Jubilee Volume.” Conservative Judaism 17, no. 2 (1961): 120.
Stock, Ernest. “From the American Scene.” Commentary (June 1951). Accessed August 1, 2024, https://www.commentary.org/articles/ernest-stock/from-the-american-scene-washington-heights/.

Breuer, Joseph. Das Buch Jirmejah. Sänger & Friedberg, 1914. https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freimann/content/titleinfo/11113522.
Breuer, Joseph. Das Buch Jecheskel. Sänger & Friedberg, 1921.    https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/judaicaffm/content/titleinfo/10721453.
Breuer, Joseph. Am Heiligtums Quell des jüdischen Ehelebens. Kauffmann, 1923. https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freimann/content/titleinfo/409177.
Breuer, Joseph. Die Piutim des Machsors für Jomkippur, Vol. 1. Lehrberger, 1928. https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freimann/content/titleinfo/6397296.
Breuer, Joseph. A Unique Perspective: Rav Breuer’s Essays 1914-1973. Edited by Meta Bechhofer and Elliot Bondi. Feldheim Publishers, 2010.
Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer Foundation. Accessed November 16, 2024, https://www.rabbibreuerfoundation.org/publications.