Page "Samuel Holdheim" Paragraph 8

Soon after, the most important work by Holdheim appeared under the title Die Autonomie der Rabbinen, ( Schwerin and Berlin, 1843 ).

In this he pleads for the abolition of the antiquated Jewish marriage and divorce regulations mainly on the ground that the Jews do not constitute a political nation.

The Jewish religious institutions must be rigidly kept distinct from the Jewish national ones, to which latter belong the laws of marriage and divorce.

The laws of the modern states are not in conflict with the principles of the Jewish religion ; therefore these modern laws, and not the Jewish national laws of other days, should regulate Jewish marriages and divorces ( see Samuel Hirsch in Orient.

Lit., 1843, No. 44 ).

The importance of this book is attested by the stir it created among German Jewish communities, many members of which found in its attitude the solution of the problem of how loyalty to Judaism could be combined with unqualified allegiance to their German nationality.

Evidence of its incisive character is furnished also by the polemical literature that grew out of it.

In these discussions such men as A. Bernstein, Mendel Hess, Samson Raphael Hirsch, Zacharias Frankel, Raphael Kirchheim, Leopold Zunz, Leopold Löw, and Adolf Jellinek took part.