Azriel Hildesheimer

Azriel (also Esriel) Hildesheimer was a German rabbi and a formative voice in what became modern Orthodox Judaism. Born in Halberstadt in 1820, he studied Talmud under Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger in Altona and went on to earn a doctorate at the University of Halle in 1844, joining rabbinic learning to a university education. In 1851 he took up the rabbinate of Eisenstadt in western Hungary, where he opened a yeshiva that paired traditional study with secular subjects. Called to Berlin in 1869 to lead its separatist Orthodox congregation, Adass Jisroel, he founded there in 1873 the Rabbinical Seminary for Orthodox Judaism. With Samson Raphael Hirsch, he was among the leading figures of German neo-Orthodoxy who held that observant Jews could engage modern scholarship. His halakhic responsa and Talmudic novellae were later collected as Shu"t Rabbi Azriel and Chiddushei Rabbi Azriel.