Modern converts to Christianity from Judaism

The number of post-Mendelssohnian Jews who abandoned their ancestral faith is very large. According to Heman in Herzog-Hauck, "Real-Encyc." (x. 114), the number of converts during the 19th century exceeded 100,000. Salmon, in his Handbuch der Mission (1893, p. 48) claims 130,000; others[1] claim as many as 250,000. For Russia alone 40,000 are claimed as having been converted from 1836 to 1875[2] while for England, up to 1875, the estimate is 50,000.[3]

Modern conversions mainly occurred en masse and at critical periods. In England there was a large secession when the chief Sephardic families, the Bernals, Furtados, Ricardos, Disraelis, Ximenes, Lopez's, Uzziellis, and others, joined the Church (see Picciotto, "Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History"). Germany had three of these periods. The Mendelssohnian era was marked by numerous conversions. In 1811, David Friedlander handed Prussian State Chancellor Hardenberg a list of 32 Jewish families and 18 unmarried Jews who had recently abandoned their ancestral faith (Rabbi Abraham Geiger, "Vor Hundert Jahren," Brunswick, 1899). In the reign of Frederick William III., about 2,200 Jews were baptized (1822–1840), most of these being residents of the larger cities. The 3rd and longest period of secession was the anti-Semitic, beginning with the year 1880. During this time the other German states, besides Austria and France, had an equal share in the number of those who obtained high stations and large revenues as the price for renouncing Judaism. The following is a list of the more prominent modern converts, the rarity of French names in which is probably because conversion was not necessary to a public career in that country.

A

B

C

D

E

  • Georg Eberti (1812–1884), professor of jurisprudence, Breslau
  • Alfred Edersheim (1825–1889), English theologian and writer
  • Christian Ferdinand Ewald (1802–1874), German divine[8]

F

G

  • Eduard Gans (1798–1839), professor of jurisprudence, Berlin
  • Hermann Goldschmidt (1802–1866), German astronomer
  • Karl Eduard Güterbock (1830), German professor

H

J

  • Carl (Karl) Gustav (Jacob) Jacobi (1804–1857), professor of mathematics, Berlin
  • Heinrich Jacobsohn (1826, Königsberg – 1890), professor of medicine, Berlin[10]
  • Ludwig Jacobsohn (1766–1842), professor of medicine, Königsberg
  • Heinrich Otto Jacoby (1815–1864), professor of Greek, Königsberg[11]
  • Philipp Jaffé (1819–1870), professor of history, Berlin
  • Ferdinand Joachimstadt (1816–1861), professor of mathematics
  • Jacob Josephsohn (1818 – ?), Swedish musical composer

K

  • David Kalisch (1820, Breslau – 1872), German dramatist
  • Christian Kalkar, aka Christian Andreas Hermann Kalkar (1803, Stockholm – 1886), Swedish writer and divine, father of Otto Kalkar
  • Julius Leopold Klein (1810, Miskolc – 1876), Hungarian-German litterateur
  • Heinrich Kossmann, born: Heumann Coschmann (1813, Reidt/Rhein – 1836, Karlsruhe), German mathematician[12]
  • Leopold Kronecker (1823, Liegnitz – 1891), German mathematician

L

M

N

P

R

  • David Ricardo (1772, London – 1823), British political economist
  • Johann Georg Rosenhain (1816, Königsberg – 1887), German professor of mathematics
  • Joseph Karl Rubino, aka Joseph Carl Friedrich Rubino, Joseph Rubino (1799, Fritzlar – 1864, Marburg), German professor of history, historian of law, Marburg[13]
  • Anton G. Rubinstein (1829, Ofatinţi – 1889), Russian musician

S

W

  • Jacob Philip Wolfers (1803), professor of astronomy
  • Oscar Ludwig Wolff (1799–1851), German professor of literature
  • Joseph Wolff (1795–1862), traveler

X

See also

Jewish identity
Modern

References

  1. ↑ "Divre Emeth," 1880, p. 47; 1883, p. 187)
  2. ↑ "Missionsblatt des Rheinisch-Westphälischen Vereins für Israel," 1878, p. 122
  3. ↑ (Johannes Friedrich Alexander de le Roi, "Die Evangelische Christenheit und die Juden," iii. 60)
  4. ↑ de:Franz Ferdinand Benary, de:Liste von Persönlichkeiten der Stadt Kassel
  5. ↑ http://d-nb.info/gnd/119065290/about/html, http://www.idref.fr/067062318
  6. ↑ hu:Ballagi Mór
  7. ↑ hu:Csemegi Károly
  8. ↑  Lee, Sidney, ed. (1901). "Ewald, Alexander Charles". Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement​. 2. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  9. ↑ de:August Wilhelm Henschel
  10. ↑ de:Heinrich Jacobson
  11. ↑ not Heinrich Jacoby
  12. ↑ http://88.217.241.77/amburger/index.php?id=1053027, http://www.kopernikus-gymnasium.de/projekte/gbkg/Schicksal/s_heuco.htm
  13. ↑ http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/ADB:Rubino,_Joseph, http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Rubino%2C%20Joseph%2C%201799-1864

Bibliography

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