Isaac Breuer

Born in Pápa (today in Hungary) to Salomon Zalman Breuer and Sophie Tzipporah (Hirsch), daughter of Samson Raphael Hirsch, Isaac Breuer was educated in Frankfurt, Germany, at his grandfather’s Realschule and his father’s yeshiva. He later attended universities—studying philosophy, history, and law—where he developed as an Orthodox community leader, founding The Bund Jüdisher Akademiker. Breuer was a neo-Orthodox leader who advocated for the regeneration of Jewish faith and halakhah; his religious thought was influenced by Kantian philosophy. In his 1910 “Instruction [Doctrine], Law and Nation,” he argued that Jews should be considered a nation but that theirs was a unique kind of national identity based on the Torah, and not on a common language, territory, folk culture, race, and history, as would be the case with other nations. Despite his vehement anti-Zionism, he immigrated to Palestine in 1936 and created an organizational split within Palestine’s ultra-Orthodox community over his political participation in the Po‘ale Agudat Yisrael political party, which inclined toward participation in the political life of the Yishuv and, therefore, political interaction with the Yishuv’s Zionist majority and institutions. Breuer was a prolific essayist, in German, and to a lesser degree, English, and after his arrival in Palestine, in Hebrew as well.