Levi (given after suffering pulmonary embolism, never publicly used)1
Joseph Breuer was born in Pápa, Hungary, to his parents Rabbi Dr. Salomon Breuer and Sophie nee Hirsch. When Joseph Breuer was 8 years old, the family moved to Frankfurt, where his father Salomon succeeded Hirsch’s rabbinical pulpit in the secessionist Neo-Orthodox congregation Hirsch had founded. Breuer’s appointment was marked with controversy, as other relatives vied for the position.2 Joseph Breuer received an intensely religious upbringing in the Neo-Orthodox tradition. Together with his brothers, Breuer attended the Hirsch Secondary School from 1890 until his graduation in 1898.3 There, Breuer received a solid general and religious education, as per the Torah Im Derekh Eretz ideal of Samson Raphael Hirsch, which encouraged openness to Western culture and the importance of general education. During his adolescent and early teenage years, Breuer’s schooling was supplemented with additional religious studies in the Torah Lehranstalt, a local Frankfurt yeshiva founded by their father Salomon Breuer in 1891. Most of the enrolled Lehranstalt yeshiva student body were poor young boys from Hungary and Galicia.4
Joseph Breuer embarked on a similar professional path as his father Salomon, who had earned both a university doctorate as well as rabbinical ordination in a traditional yeshiva. After graduating the Hirsch, Joseph went abroad to receive rabbinic training in Rabbi Koppel Reich’s yeshiva in Budapest between 1898-1903. After receiving his rabbinical ordination as an Orthodox rabbi in 1903, Breuer enrolled in the University of Giessen and later the University of Strasbourg from 1903-1905.5 In 1905, Breuer graduated with his doctorate. His dissertation thesis researched the political criminology of German legal scholar Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach. His mentor was German historian Dr. Friedrich Meinecke.6 However, in interpreting the TIDE ideal, Breuer emphasized the principal’s theocentric aspects and argued for the religious-cultural superiority of “Torah” against “Derekh Eretz.” As a child of the fin de siècle, Breuer expressed reservations on the redemptive potential of Western culture. Breuer interpreted “Torah” as an innately moral force (“God’s moral law”) and defined “Derekh Eretz” more narrowly than his grandfather to mean only secular subjects, including science, philosophy, and history. Breuer repeatedly emphasized that “these studies are only helpmates to the study of Torah for a clearer understanding of Torah’s uniqueness and superiority.” Significantly, Breuer did not regard the attainment of the Bildung ethic as a guarantee for leading a progressive moral life (“with all the knowledge in the world you can still be crude and uncivilized.”). Avoiding efforts to synthesize rabbinic Jewish teachings with Western scholarship, Breuer attacked an essay by Rabbi Dr. David Zvi Hoffman which “mentioned Rashi and Rambam in the same breath as Kittel and Wellhausen.”
Breuer, Joseph. Das Buch Jirmejah. Frankfurt: Sänger, 1914. Digitally available:
https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freimann/content/titleinfo/11113522
———. Das Buch Jecheskel. Frankfurt: Sänger, 1921.Digitally available:
https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/judaicaffm/content/titleinfo/10721453
———. Am Heiligtums Quell des jüdischen Ehelebens. Frankfurt: Kaufmann, 1923. Digitally
available: https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freimann/content/titleinfo/409177
———. Die Piutim des Machsors für Jomkippur, Vol. 1. Frankfurt: Lehrberger, 1928. Digitally
available: https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freimann/content/titleinfo/6397296
———. A Unique Perspective: Rav Breuer’s Essays 1914-1973. Eds. Meta Bechhofer and Elliot
Bondi. New York: Feldheim, 2010.
Bensousan, Barbara. Yeshiva and Mesivta Torah Vodaath: America’s Yeshiva: Celebrating a Century of Torah Leadership in America, 1919-2019. New York: Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, 2019.
Bernstein, Saul. The Renaissance of the Torah Jew. New Jersey: Ktav, 1985.
Breuer, Joseph. “Von der Frankfurter Jeschiwah.” Jüdische Monatshefte Vol. 4, No. 5 (no date 1917): 165-171.
———. “Von der Frankfurter Jeschiwoh.” Jüdische Monatshefte Vol. 7 No. 1 (Jan. 1920): 3-18.
———. “100 Jahre Chaurew.” Nachalath Zvi, Vol. 7 No. 4 (Jan. 1937): 100-119.
———. “Zur Einführung,” Mitteilungen Vol. 1 (Sep. 1939): 1.
———. “Our Duty Towards America,” Mitteilungen Vol. 3 (Jan. 1942): 1.
———. “Deutsche Jüdischkeit,” Mitteilungen Vol. 15 (Apr. 1954): 1-2.
———. “Aus Einer Predigt,” Mitteilungen Vol. 16 (July 1955): 1.
———. “The Relevancy of the Torah Im Derekh Eretz Ideal,” Mitteilungen Vol. 26 (Aug. 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. Ed. Eliyahu Glucksman. New York: Feldheim, 1988. 40-4.
Breuer, Mordechai. Modernity within Tradition: The Social History of Orthodox Jewry in Imperial
Germany. Trans. Elizabeth Petuchowski. New York: Columbia, 1992.
Katz, Jacob. With My Own Eyes: Autobiography of a Historian. Trans. Ziporah Brody
Massachusetts: Brandeis, 1995.
Kranzler, David and Dovid Landesman. Rav Breuer: His Life and His Legacy. New York:
Feldheim, 2008.
Lowenstein, Steven M. Frankfurt on the Hudson: The German Jewish Community of Washington
Heights, 1933-1983, Its Structure and Culture. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1989.
Morgenstern, Matthias. From Frankfurt to Jerusalem: Isaac Breuer and the History of the
Secession Dispute in Modern Jewish Orthodoxy. Boston: Brill, 2002.
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 (Oct. 1960), retrieved 8/1/2024
Posen, Elieser. “The Frankfurt Yeshiva.” In Ateret Tzvi: Jubilee Volume Presented in Honor of the
Eightieth Birthday of Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer. Eds. Marc and Jacob Breuer. New York: Feldheim, 1963. 149-56.
Riemer, Jack. “The Joseph Breuer Jubilee Volume,” Conservative Judaism Vol. 17 No. 2 (1961):
120.
Rosenheim, Jacob. Erinnerungen, 1870-1920. Frankfurt: Waldemar, 1970.
Spiro, Samuel. “Jugenderinnerungen aus hessischen Judengemeinden.” In Jüdisches Leben in
Deutschland: Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte im Kaiserreich, Vol. 2. Ed. Monika Richarz. Stuttgart: Leo Baeck, 1979. 137-154.
Stock, Ernest. “From the American Scene,” Commentary (June 1951), retrieved 8/1/2024
https://www.commentary.org/articles/ernest-stock/from-the-american-scene-washington-heights/.
Wollman-Tsamir, Pinchas. “Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer.” Light No. 201 (June 1980): 9-14.
