Rabbi Dr. Bernard Drachman (June 27, 1861, in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
– March 12, 1945 in New York City) was a leader of
Orthodox Judaism in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Biography
Drachman was born to parents who were immigrants from
Galicia and
Bavaria. After studying in a Hebrew preparatory school, Drachman earned a
B.A. from
Columbia College. He earned a scholarship at the
Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau where he received his rabbinic ordination. He also earned a PhD from the
University of Heidelberg.
In 1890, Drachman began serving as rabbi in the
Park East Synagogue
Park East Synagogue is located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in New York City.
Building
The building was built in 1889–1890. The architects were Schneider and Herter, who designed numerous tenements on New York's Lower East Side ...
, where he led for the next fifty-five years. Drachman was president of the
Orthodox Union and professor at the
Jewish Theological Seminary.
He translated
Samson Raphael Hirsch
Samson Raphael Hirsch (; June 20, 1808 – December 31, 1888) was a German Orthodox rabbi best known as the intellectual founder of the ''Torah im Derech Eretz'' school of contemporary Orthodox Judaism. Occasionally termed ''neo-Orthodoxy'', hi ...
's
The Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel into English.
This was ironic as the works of
Zecharias Frankel
Zecharias Frankel, also known as Zacharias Frankel (30 September 1801 – 13 February 1875) was a Bohemian-German rabbi and a historian who studied the historical development of Judaism. He was born in Prague and died in Breslau. He was the fo ...
of
Breslau, a man Drachman considered an important Orthodox leader had been condemned by Hirsch as heretical. Historically, Frankel is considered the founder or at least a forerunner of Conservative Judaism.
References
*
Goldman, Yosef. ''
Hebrew Printing in America, 1735-1926, A History and Annotated Bibliography'' (YGBooks 2006).
*Levine, Yitzchak. ''A Forgotten Champion of American Orthodoxy''. Accessed July 21, 2007.
External links
*
*
1861 births
1945 deaths
Burials at Mount Zion Cemetery (New York City)
Columbia College (New York) alumni
German–English translators
Heidelberg University alumni
Jewish Theological Seminary of America people
Orthodox rabbis from New York City
American people of German-Jewish descent
20th-century American rabbis
{{US-rabbi-stub