Lazarus Jacob Riesser (, ; 1763 – March 7, 1828) was a German rabbi. He was the father of

Gabriel Riesser Gabriel Riesser (2 April 1806 – 22 April 1863) was a German politician and lawyer. Life Both of Riesser's grandfathers were rabbis; his paternal grandfather was Jakob Pinchas Katzenellenbogen, rabbi in Lemberg and later Oettingen, and hi ...

Biography

Riesser was born in the valley of Riess, the son of Jacob Katzenellenbogen, rabbi of

Öttingen-Wallerstein The House of Oettingen was a high-rank noble Franconian and Swabian family. It ruled various estates that composed the County of Oettingen between the 12th century and the beginning of the 19th century. In 1674 the house was raised to the rank of ...

. Riesser was known for his great erudition in the Talmud and his keen intellect, which led to his being chosen as the son-in-law of

Raphael Cohen Rabbi Raphael ben Jekuthiel Susskind Cohen, in German Rafael ben Jekutiel Süsskind Kohen ( Lithuania, 4 November 1722 – Altona, 11 November 1803), a kohen, was Chief Rabbi of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek from 1775. He was educated at Minsk unde ...

, the incumbent of the rabbinate of Altona-

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

Wandsbek Wandsbek () is the second-largest of seven boroughs that make up the city and state of Hamburg, Germany. The name of the district is derived from the river Wandse which passes through here. Wandsbek, which was formerly an independent city, is urba ...

. He resided in Altona and worked as the secretary to the ''

beth din A beit din ( he, בית דין, Bet Din, house of judgment, , Ashkenazic: ''beis din'', plural: batei din) is a rabbinical court of Judaism. In ancient times, it was the building block of the legal system in the Biblical Land of Israel. Today, i ...

''. When Kohen resigned his post in 1799 due to disagreements with the Danish government, Riesser lost his office and moved to Hamburg with his father-in-law. There, he entered the business world but met with little success. In his spare time, he wrote his father-in-law's biography, titled ''Ma'alele Ish''. This, along with two sermons by Raphael Cohen, was published under the title ''Zekher Tzaddik'' in Altona in 1805. In 1813, when Hamburg was blockaded by the Russians, Riesser moved to

Lübeck Lübeck (; Low German also ), officially the Hanseatic City of Lübeck (german: Hansestadt Lübeck), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 217,000 inhabitants, Lübeck is the second-largest city on the German Baltic coast and in the stat ...

. He returned to Hamburg in 1816. Riesser's correspondence with his son Gabriel, consisting of 20 letters from May 7, 1824 to February 22, 1828, was published by Isler in ''Gabriel Riesser's Leben'' (pp. 36–61). The Heimann I. Michael collection in the

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the sec ...

contains some of Riesser's manuscripts.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Riesser, Lazarus Jacob 1763 births 1828 deaths 18th-century German rabbis 19th-century German rabbis