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Joseph Herman Hertz (25 September 1872 – 14 January 1946) was a British Rabbi and biblical scholar. He held the position of Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom from 1913 until his death in 1946, in a period encompassing both and the Holocaust.
In 1911, he returned to New York to the Orach Chayim Congregation.
Hertz held the post until his death. His tenure was affected by arguments with a wide variety of people, mainly within the Jewish community; the Dictionary of National Biography describes him as a "combative Conservative". It was said that he was in favour of resolving disagreements by calm discussion – when all other methods had failed.
Despite his title, he was not universally recognised as the final rabbinical authority, even in Britain. While he was Chief Rabbi of the group of synagogues known as the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire, led by the United Synagogue, a minority of new immigrants who had arrived since the 1880s regarded it as insufficiently orthodox. Hertz tried both persuasion and such force as he could muster to influence them; he added to his credibility among these immigrants by persuading Rabbi Yehezkel Abramsky to become head of the London Beth Din.
Hertz antagonised others by his strong support for Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s, when many Jews were against it, fearing that it would lead to accusations against the Jewish community of divided loyalty. Hertz was strongly opposed to Reform and Liberal Judaism, though he did not allow this to create personal animosities, and had no objection in principle to attending the funerals of Reform Jews.
However, despite all this, his eloquent oratory, lucid writing, erudition and sincerity earned him the respect of the majority of British Jews and many outside the Jewish community.P. Paneth, Guardian of the Law, 1943Obituary, The Times, 15 January 1946 His commentary on the Torah is still to be found in most Orthodox synagogues and Jewish homes in Great Britain. Despite there being some Ultra-Orthodox Jews who do not look up to Hertz, prominent Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Nosson Scherman maintained that Hertz "was a great man," a courageous Rabbi, and that although he was affiliated with the Jewish Theological Seminary Hertz "was Orthodox, without any question."Scherman in an interview with Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter published in A Conversation with Rabbi Nosson Scherman On Chinuch (p. 66-73 in Ami Magazine, June 21, 2017), in which Frankfurter imprecisely stated that "it used to be that you would walk into any Orthodox synagogue and find the Conservative Hertz Chumash, but now the ArtScroll Chumash is everywhere, which cites the traditional mefarshim commentaries," to which Scherman responded "Hertz wasn't Conservative. He was Orthodox." Thereupon, Frankfurter questioned "wasn't he affiliated with the Jewish Theological Seminary?" Scherman replied: "He was, but in its early years the JTS was what today might be called Modern Orthodox. He himself was Orthodox, without any question. Rabbi Hertz did something that was very courageous. In the 1920s and '30s, which is when he was active, Orthodoxy was considered to be an anachronism that was dying out; it was only a matter of time. Hertz wrote his Chumash to show that the Torah was given at Sinai and that it's holy and not just a piece of literature. However, in order to gain acceptance in the modern world, he would also quote Matthew Arnold or the Church fathers. But his kavanah intent was to bring people closer to Yiddishkeit Judaism and to develop a respect for the Torah as Toras Hashem God's. Nowadays, the frum world looks down on his Chumash, but he was a great man. He was attacked by a lot of people because he believed in the Torah and wanted to spread that belief to others." (P. 70.)
Although Hertz vigorously denounced the horror of the The Holocaust (at one point relating an eyewitness claim that "German soldiers in football attire entered a stadium near. They snatched the infants from their mothers' arms and used them as footballs, bouncing and kicking them around the arena."),Hannen Swaffer (16 December 1942), "War's Worst Horror" Daily Herald Hertz was opposed to the Kindertransport if it meant Jewish refugee children would be raised in the homes of .Gertrude Dubrovsky Six From Leipzig Vallentine Mitchell (2004) p. 122 Hertz saw the British war effort in the noblest of terms, wishing Prime Minister Winston Churchill a happy 70th birthday in late 1944 with the message, "But for your wisdom and courage there would have been a Vichy France England lying prostrate before an all-powerful Satanism that spelled slavery to the western peoples, death to Israel, and night to the sacred heritage of man."Chief Rabbi Hertz, "70th Birthday Message to Churchill" The Jewish Chronicle 8 December 1944
He was ex officio President of Jews' College, and Acting Principal, 1939–45. He was President of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 1922–3 and after his tenure was over, he continued to preside over lectures at the society including a lecture by then Chief Rabbi of Cologne, Adolf Kober in 1937. He was also President of the Conference of Anglo-Jewish Preachers. He was on the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Chairman of the Governing Body of its Institute of Jewish Studies. He was Vice-President of a wide variety of Jewish and non-Jewish bodies, including the Anglo-Jewish Association, the London Hospital, the League of Nations Union, the National Council of Public Morals and King George's Fund for Sailors. In 1942, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, Hertz founded the Council of Christians and Jews to combat anti-Jewish bigotry.
His daughter Judith married Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld. His great granddaughter is the economist Noreena Hertz.
He began his tour in South Africa , which had a Jewish population of 66,000, on 27 October 1920 and travelled throughout the country over a period of three months, covering 5,000 miles by railway, including stops in several smaller communities as well as the Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria, where he was greeted by Prime Minister Jan Smuts, followed by a trip to Bulawayo in neighbouring Rhodesia. He then proceeded to Australia, with 20,000 Jews, where he delivered lectures in 20 communities. His travels then took him to New Zealand, with 2,500 Jews, stopped in Fiji where a few Jewish families were living, before arriving in Canada, with 125,000 Jews, on July 4, 1921 for a six-week tour that took him across Western Canada with stops in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina and Winnipeg delivering eleven sermons and speaking at thirteen meetings as well as receptions with four Lieutenant-Governors, received by seven Mayors and visiting three provincial Premiers. He carried out many engagements in the large Jewish centres of Toronto and in what was then Canada's largest Jewish community of 40,000 in Montreal, highlighted by an address to 2,000 children in a park. He continued to Halifax, Nova Scotia before concluding with a Bible lecture in St. John, New Brunswick, departing Canada on August 16, 1921.
After returning to England, he wrote “I had preached love and loyalty to the Empire wherever I went, and sown the seeds of Jewish idealism and spirituality in all the far-off places I had visited.” He was granted a private audience with King George V at Buckingham Palace in November to discuss his visit.
A memorial plaque on his former London home at 103 Hamilton Terrace, Maida Vale was unveiled on 12 March 1996.
Hertz edited a Hebrew-English edition of the Jewish Prayer Book or Siddur (1946), and contributed to the Jewish Encyclopedia and the Encyclopædia Britannica.
It is also referred to as the Hertz Pentateuch, and it includes the following features:
It also includes views of the most important medieval Jewish commentators, such as Abraham ibn Ezra, Rashi, Nachmanides, Radak, Sforno and Ralbag (Gersonides).see preface to ChumashAppendix to 1947 edition
The actual writing, which produced five volumes, was done by four other people, but "Hertz recast their material into his own style."
When the five volumes were combined into a single volume (and published by Soncino Press), the Revised Version translation, but not the non-Jewish commentaries, were replaced with the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation. Both translations were lightly edited by Hertz (e.g., at Lev. 27:29 RV and Num. 10:33 JPS).
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Categories: 20th-century English Rabbis, 1872 Births, 1946 Deaths, American Emigrants To South Africa, American Orthodox Rabbis, American People Of Hungarian-jewish Descent, Emigrants From Austria-hungary To England, Emigrants From Austria-hungary To The United States, British Orthodox Rabbis, British People Of Hungarian-jewish Descent, Burials At Willesden Jewish Cemetery, Chief Rabbis Of South Africa, Chief Rabbis Of The United Kingdom, Columbia University Alumni, Commanders Of The Order Of Leopold Ii, Contributors To The Jewish Encyclopedia, Jewish Encyclopedists, Hungarian Emigrants To England, Hungarian Emigrants To South Africa, Hungarian Orthodox Rabbis, Hungarian Emigrants To The United States, Jewish Theological Seminary Of America Semikhah Recipients, Members Of The Order Of The Companions Of Honour, Naturalised Citizens Of The United Kingdom, People From Michalovce District, South African Orthodox Rabbis, 20th-century South African Rabbis, Immigrants To Transvaal Colony
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