Early but Opposed - Supported but Late Two Berlin Seminaries which Attempted to Move Abroad BY CHRISTHARD HOFFMANN AND DANIEL R. SCHWARTZ Berlin's two rabbinical seminaries, located on the same street, one Orthodox anJ one Liberal, faced, along with the rest of Germany Jewry, quite a dismal present in the 1930s, and as time went on could expect a more and more dismal future. However, they also looked back at quite a respectable past: since their foundation in the early 1870s, they had been among the central institutions of Wissenschaft desjudentums, and had produced generations of scholars, rabbis and teachers. Thus, it was only natural for their pilots to begin to think of transferring the institutions abroad. Indeed, both did try, one in 1933 and the other in 1939, but neither plan came to fruition. Although many of the individuals involved did emigrate, the institutions stayed in Berlin and died there. In this paper, we have attempted to reconstruct the two projects and the reasons they failed.* I. ON LITHUANIAN PATRONS, GERMAN CLIENTS, AND THE 1933 ATTEMPT TO TRANSFER THE HILDESHEIMER SEMINARY TO PALESTINE A. Introduction The 1933 plan to move Berlin's Rabbinerseminar Jur das Orthodoxe Judentum ("the Hildesheimer Seminary")** to Palestine was very shortlived: the balloon was *The two studies presented in this essay have been prepared within the context of a larger project on 'Wissenstransfer durch Emigration' sponsored by the Zentrumjur Antisemitismusforschung der Techni- schen Universitdt Berlin. Christhard Hoffmann, who is responsible for the second part of this contribution, is on the Zentrwris staff; Daniel Schwartz, who has written the first part, is on that of the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University Jerusalem. Both authors wish to express their thanks to the Zentrum's director, Professor Herbert A. Strauss, for his encouragement and advice, and to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft which has generously supported the general project. The section written by Christhard Hoffmann was translated from the original German by Belinda Cooper, and the author would like to thank the Zentrum for assuming the costs of the translation. Further thanks for valuable comments and additions are due to Professors Raphael Loewe, London, and Herbert Strauss, who read an early draft of this part of our contribution. **Thanks are due to Dr. Meir Hildesheimer of Bar-Ilan University, and to Mr. Marc Shapiro of Harvard University (who is completing a monograph about Rabbi Jechiel Jacob Weinberg), for their comments on a first draft of this part of the essay, and for various details which they supplied. Transliteration of Hebrew generally follows the practice of the 1971 English Encyclopedia Judaica, wherein articles may be found regarding most of the individuals and topics mentioned. Three abbreviations for collections of Hebrew letters: Ahiezer = Ch. O. Grodzenski, Ahiezer. Collected Letters, vols. I—II, ed. by A. Surasky, Bnai Brak, 1970. (Not to be confused with his Responsa Ahiezer.) Iggerot LaReiya = Iggerot LaReiya. Collected Letters From the Great Rabbis of his Generation to . . . Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, Jerusalem 1985/1986. 267 at Universitetsbiblioteket i Bergen on May 7, 2015 http://leobaeck.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from