Yissocher Dov Illowy

Yissochar Dov (Bernard) Illowy was born in Kolín, Bohemia, around 1814, into a family with earlier rabbinic ties to that town, where his great-grandfather Jacob Illowy had served as rabbi. He studied at the Pressburg yeshiva of Rabbi Moses Sofer (the Chatam Sofer), from whom he received ordination, pursued further learning at the rabbinical college in Padua, and earned a doctorate from the University of Budapest — an unusually broad religious and secular education for a rabbi of his generation. Around 1852 he settled in the United States, where he led congregations in New York, Syracuse, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, New Orleans, and finally Cincinnati. A steady defender of traditional observance, he engaged Reform leaders through sermons and the Anglo-Jewish press and issued halachic rulings, among them a widely noted responsum questioning the kosher status of the Muscovy duck. His letters and decisions were compiled posthumously in Milhamot Elohim (1914).