2003
ISSUE 62
25
The College might have done
still more. Other applicants
wanted to come and were turned
down. But by 1938 the refugee
students made up 12 percent of
the total enrollment and there
was a serious question of how
many foreign-born, and general-
ly quite traditional, young rabbis
the American Reform movement
could absorb. Morgenstern had
to consider the situation in the
United States; obviously he could
not know what the consequences
of refusal would ultimately be.
Moreover, compared to other
Jewish institutions, the College
was doing better than its share....
Not only rabbinical students
desired the opportunity to leave
Germany for the sanctuary of
the Hebrew Union College. Just
as urgent were the needs of
Jewish scholars in Europe who
sought refuge from Nazi oppres-
sion and the chance to continue
with their work under condi-
tions of freedom. They, too,
hoped for a haven at the Hebrew
Union College. And the College
–
again far more than any other
American-Jewish educational
institution – recognized its
responsibility here as well.
Beginning in 1938, and despite
major political obstacles, the
College succeeded in bringing
no less than eight Jewish scholars
to the United States and in giv-
ing employment to three other
refugee professors who had man-
aged to make their way to
America by other means.
[
Samuel Atlas, Alexander
Guttmann, Abraham Heschel,
Franz Landsberger, Franz
Rosenthal, Isaiah Sonne, and
Eugen Täubler were brought
from Europe to Cincinnati on
nonquota visas. Julius Lewy and
Eric Werner were already in the
United States when the College
offered them positions; Guido
Kisch (a historian of law) was
already in the United States and
became a visiting faculty mem-
ber of the Rabbi Stephen S.
Wise’s Jewish Institute of
Religion in New York. Max
Wiener received his appoint-
ment while still in Germany but
gained entry to the United States
as a congregational rabbi. Ismar
Elbogen was brought to America
and maintained as a research
professor in New York through a
joint effort of HUC, JIR, JTS,
and Dropsie College.] Most of
them were not men the College
needed for its program of
instruction, and the expense of
providing for them all was con-
siderable. The majority of them
spoke English only with difficul-
ty. Yet Morgenstern felt the
College had no choice but to
pluck these brands from the fire.
One of the men, Abraham
Joshua Heschel, later said that in
this regard the HUC President
was “the least appreciated man
in American Jewry.”
Some of those who came to
Cincinnati, scholars like Max
Wiener and Franz Rosenthal,
spent only a short time at the
College. Others, such as Eugen
Täubler (Bible and Hellenistic
literature), Isaiah Sonne
(
medieval Jewish history), and
Franz Landsberger (Jewish art),
remained to devote themselves
primarily to research. The rest
eventually found their way into
the ranks of the regular teaching
faculty. Of the last group, the
one to achieve greatest promi-
nence, Abraham Heschel, chose
to leave the College after teach-
ing for five years and attaining
the rank of associate professor.
During the time he was in
Cincinnati, Heschel had drawn
to himself a small but devoted
group of disciples who appreciat-
ed his talents as a teacher of
philosophy and a creative Jewish
thinker. But his own traditional-
ism made him feel uncomfortable
in the College’s Reform atmos-
phere. In his letter of resignation,
Heschel wrote that the College
had become very dear to him
and that he wanted to be consid-
ered “a staunch friend of this
illustrious institution,” but, he
admitted, his own interpretation
of Judaism was not in full accord
with the teachings of the
College. He therefore accepted a
position at the Jewish Theological
Seminary....
The simultaneous absorption of
such a large number of immi-
grant scholars – at one point
equivalent to the entire remain-
der of the faculty – was not an
easy process....Most of the
refugee scholars were not given
regular faculty status until after a
trial period, and some were not
given it at all....But every refugee
professor felt grateful to
Morgenstern for giving him a
place at the College. They knew
that the alternative, for at least
some of them, would have been
almost certain death.
Hebrew Union College’s Rescue of Scholars
During the Holocaust
(
continued from page 23)
Meyer describes. “We wanted to
give women a proper amount of
attention and also to deal more
extensively with the inner histo-
ry of the Jews so that we could
get away from the idea that all
of German Jewish history had to
be understood through the lens
of the Holocaust.”
This study begins with a long
introductory essay dealing with
the Middle Ages, as prologue.
The bulk of the volumes cover
the 17
th
century through the
Holocaust, with an epilogue
dealing with the German-Jewish
diaspora and the new Jewish
community in Germany after
the war.
Meyer’s expertise led Michael
Blumenthal to invite him to serve
as an advisor for the initial plan-
ning of the permanent exhibition
for Berlin’s Jewish Museum,
housed in an extraordinary build-
ing designed by architect Daniel
Libeskind. Meyer likens this cere-
bral building to a work by Kafka,
which allows many interpreta-
tions, and praises the museum for
communicating a lost history of
German Jewry to a mostly non-
Jewish, German audience. He
faults the permanent exhibition,
however, for its tendency to see
assimilation as the major theme,
and wishes that the Reform
Movement and Rabbi Leo Baeck
would have been given more
attention – suggestions that he
has forwarded to the curator in
charge of revisions.
As someone who escaped Hitler,
how does it feel for Meyer to
return to Germany? “When I
first began to go back to the land
of my birth for scholarly confer-
ences, I had a good deal of
ambivalence about it. And for a
time, it was my practice that
whenever I was invited to a con-
ference in Germany, on that
(
continued on page 28)