Solomon Schindler
Solomon Schindler was a prominent rabbi, writer, and social worker born in Neisse, Germany, in the 19th century. The eldest son of Rabbi Julius L. Schindler, he initially pursued religious studies but left the Breslau rabbinical program to complete his education in a secular gymnasium. After moving to the United States in 1871, Schindler became the leader of an Orthodox synagogue in Hoboken, New Jersey, before taking on a significant role at Boston's Temple Adath Israel. Here, he introduced several reforms aimed at modernizing Jewish worship and fostering community integration, which led to both controversy and increased membership.
Schindler's theological views evolved, and he published works arguing against traditional messianic concepts in favor of a universal religion focused on humanitarian efforts. His social activism included the merger of various Jewish charity organizations, which led to the establishment of the Federation of Jewish Charities in Boston, a pioneering effort in American philanthropy. Although he later renounced some of his radical ideas, Schindler's legacy remains significant in the realms of Jewish thought and social reform. His contributions are preserved in various archives and publications, reflecting his influence on both religious and secular communities.
Solomon Schindler
- Solomon Schindler
- Born: April 24, 1842
- Died: May 5, 1915
Rabbi, writer, and social worker, was born at Neisse, Germany (Silesia). The eldest son of Rabbi Julius L. Schindler and Bertha (Algasi) Schindler, Solomon Schindler studied the Talmud with his father. Upon his mother’s death in 1855, he entered the Breslau rabbinical School, combining his religious studies with a secular program at the local gymnasium. Schindler rebelled against his father’s calling and dropped out of the Breslau rabbinical program after two years. He did complete the Breslau Gymnasium curriculum in 1862. In preparation for a teaching career, Schindler attended the Royal Teachers’ Seminary at B ren, graduating in 1870. On June 24, 1868, Schindler had married Henrietta Schutz of Holzhausen, Westphalia. She bore him six children, of whom four survived (three sons, one daughter). He and his wife established a boarding school, but Schindler was forced to flee Germany in 1871, after he launched a scathing attack against Chancellor Otto von Bismarck over the Prussian Army’s annexation of Alsace-Lorraine.
The Schindlers arrived penniless in New York on July 18, 1871. Unable to make a living peddling shoelaces, and unwilling to accept money from his wife’s wealthy relatives, Schindler was forced to accept the only job offer he had—a position as the leader of an Orthodox synagogue in Hoboken, New Jersey. He remained there three years.
In 1874, Schindler was offered the leadership of Boston’s Temple Adath Israel, a congregation of well-to-do German-Jewish immigrants who desired an Americanization of Jewish religious life to foster their assimilation into the mainstream of Boston society. Schindler’s first reforms—the addition of family pews, a choir, an organ, a prayer book in the vernacular, and male worship without hats—generated controversy, and fifteen of the synagogue’s forty members resigned. However, the reforms served to attract new congregants, younger and wealthier, and, by the mid-1880s, the synagogue had tripled its membership. In 1885, Temple Israel moved to a new location in the then fashionable South End.
Schindler, the reluctant rabbi, tried to graft his rationalist view of the world onto Judaism. In Messianic Expectations and Modern Judaism (1886), he argued against the centrality of the Messiah in Jewish religion, analyzing its historical origins in the Jews’ experience of poverty and religious persecution. There was no further need for a Messiah, argued Schindler, in an America where Jews enjoyed liberty and freedom of religion. He argued further that all messianic concepts were historical vestiges of backwardness. Technological progress, not a Messiah, would be the real savior of mankind. What must replace messianic religion, said Schindler, was a universal religion of humanity; its church’s ideal role, the carrying out of charity work among its less fortunate citizens.
Schindler developed close ties with the Unitarians and Free Religionists of Boston, with whom he felt a close religious affinity. They often attended sermons and lectures Schindler delivered at Temple Israel and he, in turn, was recognized by the Christians of Boston as the leading spokesman for the Jewish community. He served as a bridge between the two populations and in recognition of this was nominated by all parties to serve on the Boston School Board (1888-1894).
Schindler found the social counterpart to his religious ideas in the secular socialism (“nationalism”) of Edward Bellamy. In 1888, Schindler joined the First Nationalist Club in Boston. He translated Bellamy’s Looking Backward into German (Ein R ckblick, 1890) and wrote his own “sequel” to the work (Young West, 1894), outlining a Utopian society in some ways even more radical than Bellamy’s.
In September 1893, Schindler was forced to resign as leader of Temple Israel. He was replaced by Rabbi Charles Fletcher, a man more cognizant of the fact that the members of the congregation didn’t want to revolutionize America, they wanted to become part of it.
Schindler “retired” to social work. In 1894, he played an instrumental role in the merger of several smaller Boston Jewish charity organizations into the Federation of Jewish Charities. The federation (today known as the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston) was the first permanent charitable federation in America and became the model for the nonsectarian community organizations of the twentieth century. Schindler served as its superintendent from 1895-1899. From 1899-1909, he managed the Leopold Morse Home for Infirm Hebrews at Mattapan, Massachusetts.
Schindler, who had been named rabbi emeritus of Temple Israel in 1908, returned there in 1911, to deliver a famous sermon, “Mistakes I Have Made,” in which he renounced many of his radical views on Judaism. However, as the editor of the Boston Jewish Advocate noted upon his death in that city, Rabbi Schindler “was a definite iconoclast in whom advancing age led to but little modification of radical views despite his recantation in his noted address. …”
Rabbi Schindler’s private papers are now in the American Jewish Archives, Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio. A collection of his sermons is kept at Temple Israel in Boston, Massachusetts. Among his works are Dissolving Views in the History of Judaism (1888), Israelites in Boston (1889), and many articles in The Arena magazine. Important secondary works that merit examination are A. Mann, Yankee Reformers in the Urban Age (1954) and Growth and Achievement: Temple Israel 1854-1954 (1954). Concerning the genesis of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, see B. M. Solomon, Pioneers in Service (1956). Of some use as well is S. D. Obst, The Story of Adath Israel (1917). A short biography appears in The Dictionary of American Biography; in Who’s Who in America, 1914-15; and the Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. XI. Obituaries appeared in The New York Times and Boston Transcript on May 6, 1915 and in the Jewish Advocate on May 7, 1915.