Akiba Israel Wertheimer

Akiba Israel Wertheimer
Chief Rabbi
Successor	Jacob Ettlinger
Personal details
Birth name	Jacob Viktor Wertheimer
Born	1778 Wrocław, Kingdom of Prussia (modern-day Poland)
Died	20 May 1836, age about 57 Altona, Kingdom of Denmark (modern-day Germany)
Nationality	Polish
Father	Avigdor Wertheimer

Akiba Israel Wertheimer (1778-1835) was the first Chief Rabbi of Altona and Schleswig-Holstein.:

Akiba (or Ekiva or Akiva) Wertheimer was born in about 1778 in Wrocław, Poland, the son of Torah scholar Avigdor Wertheimer (?-1826) who came from the Prussian partition area of Poland. He went to the Talmudic academy of Akiba Eger, the most important in Mirosławiec.

He came with his parents to Altona, now a suburb of Hamburg but which was then an independent city under the administration of the Danish monarchy, where in 1805 he was a Melamed (teacher of Torah and Talmud school). In 1806 he was appointed Rabbi in and Lübeck. Due to the expulsion of the Jews in Lübeck and poverty in the Moisling Jewish community, in 1816 he moved to Altona where he remained until his death.

In 1819 he opposed the Hamburg-based reformers of Judaism and banned the use of the Jewish prayer book in the German language.

In 1823 he was appointed the first Chief Rabbi of Altona and Schleswig-Holstein. For the Altona rabbinate, he was successor to Rabbi Mendel Hirsch Frankfurter, the grandfather of Samson Raphael Hirsch.

Akiba Wertheimer died in Altona in 1835, and was succeeded as Chief Rabbi by Jacob Ettlinger.

Wertheimer had four daughters and four sons

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