Abraham Geiger

A central figure of Reform and liberal Judaism, Abraham Geiger was born in Frankfurt and served as a rabbi in Berlin and other cities. He studied at universities in Bonn and Marburg, associating with Samson Raphael Hirsch for many years until their ideological break. Geiger was influential in establishing the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau, though he did not receive an appointment there, and especially the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. Best known for advocating that modernizing Jewish practice and encouraging humanism would both reinvigorate religious sentiment among Jews and resolve antisemitism among non-Jews, in 1835 he began to publish Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für Jüdische Theologie (Scientific Journal of Jewish Theology).