Uber die Autonomie der Rabbinen und das Princip der judischen Ehe Ein Beitrag zur verstandigung uber einige das Judenthum betreffende Zeitfragen. by Holdheim, Samuel - 1843

Schwerin und Berlin: Kurschner, 1843. Boards. Good. 263 pp. ex library with markings, boards with cloth spine, title of work written in whtie ink on spine, paper in good condition The most important work by Holdheim appeared under the title Die Autonomie der Rabbinen,. In this work 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. In his Ueber die Beschneidung he takes the position that circumcision is not, like baptism, a sacrament of initiation, but is merely a command like any other. Nevertheless he classifies it not as a national but as a Jewish religious law, and pleads for its retention. (from the JE)