Wilhelm Bacher

Born Vilmos Bacher in Liptovský Mikuláš in the Hungarian kingdom of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today Liptószentmiklós, Slovakia) to Deborah (Tedesco) and the poet and maskilic community leader Simon Bacharach, Wilhelm Bacher received a traditional education balanced with secular studies. He completed his doctorate in Leipzig at age twenty and obtained rabbinic ordination from the Breslau rabbinical seminary at age twenty-six. In 1877, he became the chair of the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, and in 1907, the rector. Bacher published more than forty-five books and nearly seven hundred scholarly articles across all fields of Wissenschaft des Judentums, with the bulk on biblical exegesis of the talmudic rabbis, Judeo-Iranian life, and Hebrew philology. He was the cofounding editor of Magyar Zsidó Szemle (Hungarian Jewish Review) in 1884.