Solomon Schechter

• Born: December 7, 1847
• Birthplace: Focşani, Romania
• Died: November 19, 1915
• Place of death: New York, New York

Romanian-born rabbi, religious leader, and scholar

Schechter uncovered the Genizah, fragments of ancient Hebrew writings, in Cairo. After teaching in England, he came to the United States to take charge of the Jewish Theological Seminary and to develop the Conservative movement.

Early Life

Solomon Schechter (SO-luh-muhn SHEHK-tur) was born into a Habad Hasidic family. In an important sense, his life represented the effort of an educated Jew to find a place in the modern world in the nineteenth century. In 1879, Schechter moved to Berlin to study Talmud at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. While there he tutored Claude Montefiore, who in 1882 invited Schecter to London. In 1887, Schecter married Mathilde Roth, who was his lifelong partner and who is said to have helped edit and improve the quality of his writing. They had three children. In 1890, Schechter was offered the position of lecturer in Talmudics at Cambridge University. In 1899, Schechter was appointed professor of Hebrew at University College, London.

While Schecter taught at Cambridge, two accomplishments cemented his reputation as a scholar. The first was the publication, in 1887, of the critical edition of Avot de Rabbi Natan. The second was his uncovering of the Genizah in Cairo. In 1896, Margaret Gibson showed Schechter a textual fragment that she and her sister, Agnes Lewis, had purchased in Cairo. Schechter recognized the fragment as belonging to the missing Hebrew apocryphal work Ben Sira. Up to that point the text was believed to have survived only in Latin and Greek, and the existence of a Hebrew version was even in doubt.

Schechter traveled to Cairo to examine the Genizah. In the attic of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo, he found an enormous cache of documents going back as far as a thousand years. He returned to England with 140,000 fragments, nearly half of all the documents in the Genizah. The impact of this discovery cannot be underestimated. Eventually, 190,000 documents were brought to Cambridge, to form the Taylor-Schechter Collection. During the remainder of his time in Cambridge, Schechter devoted himself to the organization and the analysis of these documents.

Life’s Work

In 1902, Schechter was invited to be president of the failing Jewish Theological Seminary. He was recognized for his vast rabbinic erudition, his traditional ordination, his earned doctorate, his Jewish traditionalism, and his scholarly accomplishments. He was seen as an ideal combination of tradition and modernity. These qualities gave him the credibility to work with the Jewish community, transform the seminary, and significantly alter its role in American Jewish life. He arrived on American shores on April 17, 1902; he occupied the presidency until his untimely death from a heart attack in 1915.

Prior to Schechter’s arrival, several German-born Jews had taken over the leadership of the seminary, providing it with substantial funding. It was their hope that, in reviving the seminary, Schechter would help make it a center to modernize Jewish immigrant life and make the synagogue relevant to the life of the new immigrant. In 1902, the American Jewish Yearbook said that in the wake of Schechter’s assumption of his duties, America would become “the centre and focus of Jewish religious activity and the chosen home of Jewish learning.”

Schechter did revitalize the seminary. He brought a group of scholars to the seminary and redefined the training of Conservative rabbinic students, which by 1905 numbered more than one hundred. Within a few years of his arrival, a new JTS building was constructed in Morningside Heights. He chose as the school’s symbol the Burning Bush and as its logo the phrase “and the Bush was not consumed” (Exodus 3:2). Schecter helped collect what was at the time the best Judaic library in America. Along with a group of laypeople, he founded the United Synagogue, the lay organization of the Conservative movement.

Schechter is best known for his role as an ideologue of Conservative Judaism. He was critical of the Reform movement for its willingness to cast aside Jewish law and its inability to see the positive aspects inherent in the development of tradition. He would, however, cooperate with the Reform movement in areas of Jewish learning and social welfare. He criticized Orthodoxy for its inability to see dynamic aspects in the Jewish tradition. He nonetheless worked with the Orthodox Union and its president, H. Pereira Mendes. Schechter was a modernist, basing his understanding of the development of Judaism on the teachings of Zacharias Frankel, whose concept of positive-historical Judaism considers Judaism a developmental, historical phenomenon. Judaism, as any historical entity, lives in history and develops according to the alterations of history.

Schechter probably created the term “Catholic Israel.” He meant by this term that Judaism’s development occurs in part through the behavior of the Jewish people, who define the norms of Judaism through a national consensus. This notion was drawn from his British experience, where two groups would quarrel vehemently with each other, even as they would agree that “His Majesty’s government as well as His Majesty’s opposition form one large community.” Schechter died suddenly while giving a lecture in 1915. He left behind a legacy of scholarship and communal activity that made a permanent mark on the life of American Judaism.

Significance

Schechter was a pioneering scholar and religious thinker. His contributions to the study of Jewish history were overshadowed by the great work he did in the United States in reviving the Jewish Theological Seminary. In that role he set the Conservative movement on a steady course.

Bibliography

Bentwich, Norman. Solomon Schechter, a Biography. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1958. This detailed biography of Schechter includes a bibliography of the principal writings of Schechter.

Cohen, Michael R. Schechter’s Disciples: How Solomon Schechter’s Students Created Conservative Judaism, 1902-1946. Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2008. This study shows how Schechter’s students took his ideas and made contributions to the development of the denomination in the United States.

Fierstien, Robert E. A Century of Commitment: One Hundred Years of the Rabbinical Assembly. New York: The Assembly, 2000. A detailed account of the activities of the Rabbinical Assembly, the professional organization of the Conservative movement. It includes discussion of Schechter’s activities.