Dob Berush Meisels

Dow (Dov, Dob) Ber (Beer, Berisz, Berush) Meisels (1798 – March 17, 1870) was a Chief Rabbi of Kraków (Cracow) from 1832 and later, Chief Rabbi of Warsaw (from 1856). He was a political activist in the Austrian partition of Poland and (later) in the Russian partition. A vocal supporter of Polish-Jewish cooperation, he supported the cause of Polish independence, for which he was persecuted by the Russian government.

Dow Ber Meisels was the son of Isaac in the Silesian town of Szczekociny, though his family came from Kraków's Jewish community; he also lived as a youth in Kamianets-Podilskyi, where his father was a rabbi. After marrying the daughter of the wealthy Solomon Bornstein of Wieliczka, he settled as a banker and rabbi in Kraków. He supported the cause of Polish independence, providing weapons for the insurgents in the November Uprising; some sources even describe him as a Polish patriot or nationalist. In 1832 he would become Kraków's Chief Rabbi, though he was not recognized by the entire community, a considerable part of which adhered to his opponent, Saul Landau. He occupied the Kraków rabbinate for nearly a quarter of a century.

Meisels always took a conspicuous part in the civic life of his place of residence; and in the stormy times of 1846 (see Kraków Uprising) he was chosen one of the twelve senators of the Kraków city council. In 1848 he was elected, with the aid of Catholic votes, to represent the city in the provisional Austrian Reichsrath (Austrian parliament), meeting at Kremsier, Vienna. He took his seat among the radicals, and when the president expressed his surprise at seeing a rabbi seated on the "left," Meisels replied, "Juden haben keine Rechte" ("Jews have no right").

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