Rav Yitzchok Dov HaLevi Bamberger

Early years

Rav Yitzchok Dov HaLevi Bamberger zt"l, called in German Seligman Baer Bamberger, was a great talmid chacham and a leader of Torah-true Jewry in Germany. He was born on 6 November 1807 in Wiesenbronn, a village close to Kitzingen in Bavaria, the son of Simcha Bamberger.

At fifteen he went to learn in Fürth, where his rebbeim were Rav Wolf Hamburger and Rav Yehuda Leib Halberstadt. He was granted semicha (rabbinic ordination) five years later. Even so, he did not take a rabbinic post, because in the Germany of those days a rav was required to hold a university degree.

Instead he opened a general store in Kitzingen. The shop did not do well; it is said that he preferred to give every hour he could to learning Gemara. Two years later he married the daughter of Rav Seckel Wormser of Fulda.

Torah and leadership

In 1838 the Bavarian government convened a conference where several Reform-minded notables hoped to reshape how the Jewish communities were organized. Rav Yitzchok Dov stood there for the Orthodox camp, and his success brought an invitation from Würzburg to succeed Rav Avrohom Bing as its rav.

He served as rav of Würzburg from 1840 for the rest of his life, and so became known simply as the Würzburger Rav. He soon founded a yeshiva in the city. In 1855 came an elementary school, the first such school anywhere in Germany; until then, children had learned in small classes attached to the shuls.

In 1864, after two years of preparation, he added a seminary to train teachers of Torah subjects, who were then in short supply throughout Germany. It was called Beis Medrash L'Morim (House of Learning for Teachers), and in German the Israelitische Lehrer-Bildungs-Anstalt, often shortened to ILBA.

Teachings and seforim

Rav Yitzchok Dov was one of the last German rabbanim to author rabbinic seforim. His first, Meleches Shomayim (Altona, 1853), sets out the halachos of sifrei Torah, tefillin and mezuzos. Its name, meaning "the work of Heaven," is taken from the Gemara in Eruvin 13a.

In 1858 he published Amirah L'Beis Yaakov, on the three areas of halacha that apply especially to women: niddah, separating challah, and lighting Shabbos candles. It also includes a section on melichah (salting meat). The title echoes a pasuk in Shemos 19 and Rashi's words there.

He wrote Amirah L'Beis Yaakov in German. Rav Simcha Bamberger produced the first Hebrew translation, and Rav I. Nathan Bamberger later translated it into English. It has since appeared in more than a dozen editions and many languages, is printed in the well-known Korban Mincha siddur, and is still used today. Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and Rav Tzvi Pesach Frank wrote additions to it, which are included in the newest editions.

His other seforim include Moreh LaZovchim (1863), on the practical halachos of shechita, and Nachalei Devash (1867), which deals mainly with chalitzah. Yitzchok Yeranen (1861–62), named for words in the Shabbos Mincha tefillah, is a commentary on Shaarei Simcha of Rav Yehuda ibn Gayat, and it brought that manuscript into print for the first time. Korei Be'Emes (1871 and 1879), named for Tehillim 145:18, explains places where the Gemara or Midrash learn a meaning from a change in the letters of a word.

In 1850 he also wrote a pamphlet setting out how the Gemara regards non-Jews. It was meant to inform the debate in the Bavarian parliament over civil rights for the Jews.

Later years and passing

The Austrittsgesetz, passed by the German parliament on 28 July 1876, permitted a Jew to withdraw from his local religious community. By then the Reform movement controlled many communities, and their Orthodox members had banded together in minyanim of their own to protect their interests.

Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch of Frankfurt, a campaigner for the new law, ruled that Frankfurt's Orthodox Jews were duty-bound to leave the Liberal Grossgemeinde (the general community) formally. The Würzburger Rav travelled to Frankfurt and ruled that leaving was not required. A sharp exchange of public letters between the two rabbanim followed.

In the end only a fairly small number of Orthodox Jews left the main community. Until the Second World War, Frankfurt had two Orthodox kehillos: one within the Grossgemeinde, and Rav Hirsch's own kehilla, Adath Yeshurun.

Rav Yitzchok Dov passed away in Würzburg on the 16th of Tishrei 5639.

Legacy

The teachers' seminary he founded carried on until 1938. In that year its teachers and talmidim were sent to the camps of Buchenwald and Dachau, and the seminary came to an end.