Israel Jacobson

In 1810 he built a synagogue in the school grounds and showed his sympathies for reforming ritual by adding hymns in German that were sung by a choir of boys, and prayers in German were added to those in Hebrew and Aramaic. He also had a pipe organ installed.^{[citation needed]} When, under Napoleon's rule, the Kingdom of Westphalia was created, and the emperor's brother Jérôme Bonaparte was placed at its head, Jacobson, who had removed to the residence of the king at Cassel, was appointed president of the Jewish consistory (Royal Westphalian Consistory of the Israelites [he]), established on 3 March 1808.^{[citation needed]}

Jacobson's innovations were quite restrained, and his mode of thought was still within a traditional framework. He justified himself on conventional halachic grounds, later enlisting scholars to write responsa in favour of his worship style. His role in the introduction of these early reforms made him a founding figure in the eyes of some partisans of Reform Judaism, but Michael A. Meyer noted that he lacked either a comprehensive approach or a sense of principled critique. His religious worldview, according to Meyer, did not stray beyond that of late maskilim; he "was not a conscious Reformer", interested in modifying religious mechanisms themselves, only exteriors.^[1] While his associates, mainly Eduard Kley, would later publish the first unequivocal Reform liturgy in 1818, effecting a concerted Orthodox backlash,^[3] the Westphalian Consistory's aroused little ire at their time. Its reforms were adopted by German neo-Orthodoxy, and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch "integrated fully into his worldview the program of the moderate Haskalah and even the aesthetic reforms of the Westphalian consistory."^[4]

After the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin emancipated its Jewish subjects in 1813, Jacobson bought in that duchy two feudal manor estates, Klenz and Gehmkendorf and the peasant village Klein Markow (all three are components of today's Jördenstorf). In 1816 he swore his oath of fealty to Frederick Francis I, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, thus becoming the first Jew with a permanent seat and vote in the Estates of the Realm of a German state. As feudal lord he also held the patrimonial jurisdiction over his vassal peasants and the patronage of the pertaining Lutheran churches, which he conveyed to a Lutheran confidant. In 1817 he further acquired the neighbouring estates of Grambow and Tressow. His life and work, especially this part, is commemorated—among other things—in the permanent exhibition on Mecklenburg's Jewish history in the museum Engelscher Hof and the half-timbered former synagogue in Röbel, 66 km south of Jördenstorf.

After Napoleon's fall (1815) Jacobson moved to Berlin, where he opened in his own house a hall for worship The Prussian government, remembering the French sympathies of Jacobson, and receiving continued complaints from the Orthodox rabbis, ordered the services at Jacobson's house discontinued.

His grave is in the Jewish cemetery on Schönhauser Allee in Berlin.

• Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, xiii. 619;
• Fürst, Bibl. Jud. ii.6.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Isidore Singer and H. Baar (1901–1906). "Jacobson, Israel". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
• Marcus, Jacob Rader (1972) Israel Jacobson: The Founder of the Reform Movement in Judaism. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press. ISBN 0-87820-000-2.

• Media related to Israel Jacobson at Wikimedia Commons