The Symptoms of the Time

Rabbi and theologian Zechariah Fraenkel laid the ideological foundations of Conservative Judaism through a scholarly approach that balanced reform and tradition. Born in Prague, Fraenkel received a secular and rabbinical education. After earning his doctorate in Budapest, he held numerous Jewish public positions, including chief rabbi of Saxony and later president of the Rabbinical Seminary in Breslau. Supporting Jewish emancipation, his 1840 critique of antisemitic Jewish oaths in courts of law was pivotal in ending the practice in Saxony. Fraenkel developed the concept of “positive historical Judaism,” advocating for the Jewish acceptance and pursuit of historical and scholarly research. Asserting that Jewish identity was grounded not only in religion, but also culture and history, he wrote a number of significant Jewish historical and theological texts.