Thursday, May 08, 2014

Better in the company of Shadal...

Here's a rather interesting little postscript to an 1860* letter from Jonas Bondi to Isaac Leeser:








It says, "In Jeschurun I am in the company of Luzzatto, better than Szold, Wise and Illoway."

This refers to the Jeschurun published by Joseph Kobak, not Samson Raphael Hirsch (of whom Bondi was a critic). And he is talking smack about some famous names among the American rabbis of his day - one of whom - Wise - would become his son-in-law! Apparently he liked the company in Jeschurun, but not the American Jewish publications of the day.

* Not 1865, as in the transcription here.

5 comments:

  1. very interesting. Note that the link is missing "edu"

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  2. Zackary Sholem Berger4:12 PM, May 09, 2014

    Who was Illoway?

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  3. Rabbi Bernard (Yissochor Baer) Illowy (he spelled with an a, his son Henry, without).

    He studied at the Chasam Sofer's yeshiva *and* in Padua, with Shadal (short time).

    His son published this. *Well* worth a read:

    http://hebrewbooks.org/7201

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  4. Zackary Sholem Berger10:14 PM, May 10, 2014

    Thanks. I heard of him before re his Confederate sympathies but it seems like his ideology was a lot more interesting than that. Do you know where he was rabbi in Baltimore? presumably he was there only briefly?

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  5. He was at the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, then Orthodox, now Reform. There was indeed much more to him than his Confederate leanings.

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