Please Note: The September 2 Glimpses Into American Jewish History column, dealing with the life of Rav Rifael Zalman Levine, the son of the Malach, was based to a considerable extent on information contained in a biographical essay about Rav Levine titled “A Learned Life” – a tribute written by Rabbi Dr. Yirmiyahu Luchins, musmach of Rav Levine. I used this material without having requested and without having received permission to do so from Rabbi Dr. Luchins. I regret and apologize for this error.
Professor Yitzchok Levine
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In 1840 Rabbi Abraham Rice was the first Orthodox rabbi to settle permanently in America. Thus from 1654, when Jews first settled in America, until 1840 American Jewry was without qualified Orthodox rabbinic leadership. Fortunately, Rabbi Rice’s arrival in the United States marked the beginning of the slow but steady arrival of other Orthodox rabbonim. One of the most qualified of these was Rabbi Dr. Bernard Illowy.
His Life in Europe
“Rabbi Bernard Illowy, Ph.D., was born in Kolin, Bohemia, in the year 1814. He came of a family distinguished for its Talmudic learning and its piety. The great-grandfather, the first of the name of whom we have any record, was Rabbi Phineas Illowy, who resided in Ungarisch-Brod, province of Moravia, Austrian Empire. In the collection of Responsa of the great Rabbi Meir of Eisenstadt, there is found a question from him in the matter of an Agunah and a reply thereto addressed to him. At that time, as appears from his signature, he was Haus-Rebbe or private chaplain to the banker Emmanuel Oppenheim, the son of Samuel Oppenheim, Court Jew, and in his day the foremost and most influential Israelite in the whole Austrian empire.
“His son, Rabbi Jacob Illowy, was called from Moravia to the Rabbinate of the City of Kolin and the district of Maurszim, the second largest congregation in the kingdom of Bohemia. As was the custom then, the occupant of the rabbinical chair also became, by virtue of his office, the presiding officer of the Beth-Din, the Resh-Mesivta. Rabbi Jacob was a great scholar, profoundly versed in the learning of the Rabbis; he conducted a Yeshivah and wrote voluminously elucidations, explanations and novellae to the Talmud, all of which are as yet in manuscript.
“The father of Rabbi Bernard (Rabbi Jacob Judah) was, as had been his fathers before him, a man well grounded in the Torah, a thorough Talmudic scholar, and, moreover, was possessed of much secular learning. Though only a private individual – he had been in trade in his younger years – he was one of the most distinguished members of the Jewish community, and such was the regard entertained for his character and his learning by his coreligionists, that, when he walked through the streets of the Jewish quarter, the people would rise and remain standing until he had passed. Although not professionally a teacher, he always had a number of pupils – Bachurim – young men whom he instructed not alone in…Talmud (though this was the sole purpose of his having pupils) but also in some branches of secular learning, more especially mathematics and German.
“Bernard Illowy received his early education in [Torah] from his father who had destined him to be a teacher in Israel, almost from his birth. He completed his theological studies in the famous rabbinical school of Rabbi Moses Sopher (the Chasam Sofer) in Pressburg, Hungary, from whom he received the Hattarat Horaah.” [i]
“Following receipt of rabbinical ordination, Illowy enrolled at the University of Budapest where he completed a Ph.D. in languages and classics. Still unmarried and undecided about his professional goals, Illowy traveled to Padua, Italy, where the distinguished scholar Samuel David Luzzatto had come to teach the Bible, philosophy, and Jewish history at a newly formed rabbinical seminary, one of the first Orthodox rabbinical seminaries to combine secular and traditional Jewish learning, the Instituto Convitto Rabinico (later Collegio Rabbinico Italiano).