Ismar Elbogen

Ismar Elbogen was born into a traditional home in Schildberg, Prussia (today Ostrzeszów, Poland). In 1899, having completed his doctorate at Breslau University and received ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, Elbogen accepted a position at the Florence rabbinical college. In 1902, he moved to Berlin and began teaching at the Lehrenstalt/Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums; he escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 and secured a joint research post at a number of American religious seminaries, notably the Jewish Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College. Among his many scholarly writings, Elbogen edited a number of journals, Encyclopedias, lexicons, and the Liberal German prayer book Tefilot le-kol ha-shanah: Gebetbuch für das ganze Jahr bearbeitat im Auftrage des Liberalen Kultus (1932), which reinstated a number of prayers removed by German reformers in the previous century. His Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History (1913), a triumph of the Wissenschaft school, was valued across denominations and religious affiliations and remains a key work today.