page_title: Jacob Itzhak Niemirower
section_title: His activity in Bucharest: the aspiration to a "New Yavne"
hierarchical_section_title: Jacob Itzhak Niemirower / His activity in Bucharest: the aspiration to a "New Yavne"
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Romania, Bucarest, Sinagoga Română: Templul Coral (sinagog), Bucureşti, România English: Choral Temple synagogue, Bucharest, Romania This is a photo of a historic monument in București, classified with number B-II-m-A-19672
context_page_description: Rabbi Dr. Jacob Itzhak Niemirower was a Romanian Modern rabbi, close to reformistic trends in the Western and Eastern European Judaism, theologist, philosopher and historian. Served as the first Chief Rabbi of Romanian Jewry between 1921–1939, and was a member of the Romanian Senate from 1927 and until his death. An ardent supporter of Zionism and a courageous fighter against Antisemitism, Dr. Niemirower defended the civil and human rights of Romanian Jews and led them on the path towards modernization of community life, in the spirit of what he called Cultural Judaism. This meant adhering to Jewish tradition while remaining open to the Romanian language and culture and to universal influences.
context_section_description: In 1911, despite being Ashkenazi, dr Niemirower was invited by the old Sefardi Jewish community of Bucharest to be its rabbi.  
  He functioned also as the rabbi of the Bucharest garrison and as examiner of the new Hebrew language teachers, also was nominated by the Romanian Public Instruction Ministry  
  as the Jewish representative in the Committee for Welfare Affairs presided over by Queen Maria of Romania. As speaker of the Jewish minority in Romania rabbi Niemirower took part to the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 together with dr Wilhelm Filderman, the leader and founder of the Union of the Native Jews, who became his close partner in the defense of the Romanian Jews rights.
  The next years he had the satisfaction to be witness to the recognition by the Romanian authorities  of the civil rights of all Jews in the recently reunited great Romanian state.  
  After the failure of the effort of the more traditionalist orthodox rabbi Haim Schor to arrive to the leadership position in Bucharest, in 1921 Dr. Jacob Itzhak Niemirower 
  was elected as Grand Rabbi of the Old Kingdom Jewry (that is - of the Jews of Moldavia and Walachia), then as Chief Rabbi, a new office created by the community of Bucharest.
  In 1936 he was reconfirmed  as Chief Rabbi of the Federation of Jewish Communities in all Romania.
  Thus, after intensive efforts, he succeeded to achieve the centralization and the recognition by the authorities of the organization of the "Mosaic cult" communities of the Romanian  Jews, valid till now. Factually, he united under his leadership all the Jewish communities in Romania, from the traditionalist Orthodox to the modern Orthodox, called till the Communist era "Jewish of Western rite" and the Neolog Jews of Transylvania. He won the collaboration of the Gaon Rabbi Bezalel Shafran and other Jewish Orthodox rabbinical authorities in order to preclude such a scission as had occurred in Hungary and Transylvania between the Orthodox and the Modernists (who went on the path of the Neologs) and to preserve the modernizing trends within the frame of the Orthodox tradition (somehow similarly to the French Consistorial Judaism and the British modern Orthodox Judaism under the leadership of Nathan Marcus Adler)
  In this spirit Niemirower led to the foundation in 1936 of the Central Council of the Romanian Jewry which comprised  personalities with a wide range of opinions, as the adepts of the "civil assimilation" trend led by dr Wilhelm Filderman from the Union of the Native Jews, and also their Zionist rivals led by A. L. Zissu.
  Dr. Niemirower's main residence was the Choral Temple (Choral Synagogue) of Bucharest where the intellectual and religious
  modern Orthodox elite of the Romanian Jews created a kind of Jewish Academy -  the Cultural Institute of the Choral Temple.
  In his activity in Bucharest Niemirower was assisted by personalities as dr.Filderman, the bankier Ely Berkowitz, the rabbis Meyr Moritz Beck and dr.Meyer Abraham Halevy.
  The fundamental concept which guided Niemirower's work was a "cultural judaism" (constituted mainly by traditional, European, liberal and Zionist elements), based on ideas taken from his friend, the philosopher Moritz Lazarus from Germany, with adaptations to the local conditions, and combined with influences from Ahad Ha'am, the father of the "cultural Zionism" and from the historian Simon Dubnov, ideologue of the Jewish "spiritual nation".
  The antique model was, in his eyes, Yohanan Ben Zakai, the founder of the Academy in Yavne, after the destruction of the Second Temple (70 a.Ch). Niemirower dreamt about the foundation of a new Yavneist Academy in the Holy Land, to which should have participate many spiritual personalities of the world Jewry.
caption: The modern Choral Temple of Bucharest, the center of the activity of Dr.Niemirower and of Romanian Jewish chief rabbis in Bucharest
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