Creator Bio

Jacob Obermeyer

1845–1935

Born in Steinhart (Bavaria), Jacob (Jakob) Obermeyer was raised with both an Orthodox Jewish and secular education. He studied in Hamburg and Würzburg with leading German Orthodox Talmud scholars before traveling across North Africa and the Levant (from Morocco to Egypt, Palestine, and Damascus) and moving to Baghdad in 1869 as an Alliance Israélite Universelle teacher. Obermeyer also served as a reporter for the maskilic Hebrew-language Ha-Magid newspaper and as an instructor to Persian Prince Naib Alsultana, which allowed him to safely explore much of Mesopotamia. He was excommunicated by the Baghdadi Jewish rabbinic leader Ḥakham Yosef Ḥayim in 1876 for his critique of an affluent Baghdadi scholar and his attempts to Europeanize Iraqi Jewish community life and practice. He returned to Europe and in 1884 obtained a post in Vienna to teach Persian and Arabic.

Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator

Primary Source

Modern Judaism in Orient and Occident (East and West)

Public Access

Text

The author is no novice in this area of research; however, thirty years have passed since he was last engaged deeply in the history of religion. During the ten years of his stay on the banks of the…