Jacob Itzhak Niemirower

Rabbi Dr. Jacob Itzhak Niemirower (Romanian: Iacob Isaac Niemirower, born March 1, 1872 in Lemberg, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Lviv, Ukraine - died November 18, 1939 in Bucharest, Romania) was a Romanian Modern Reformrabbi, close to reformistic trends in the Western 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.

Iacob Itzhak Niemirower was born on March 1, 1872, in the Galitzian town of Lemberg, or Lviv,then under Austrian administration in the frame of Austro-Hungarian empire, now in Ukraine. His father, Nahum Niemirower, was a Jewish trader. The family moved later to Iaşi, the capital of the Moldova, one of the main regions of the Romanian Kingdom. He received his first lessons of Torah from his paternal grandfather, then from the melamed (Jewish teacher) Mendel Barasch. From them he acquired a good knowledge about the hassidic teachings . Later Jacob became the pupil of the famous rabbi and dayan from Lemberg, Rabbi Isaak Aharon Ettinger. In 1890 Niemirower went to study in Berlin, where he became acquainted with the Haskalah and with the Western philosophy. There met the German philosopher and judaist Moritz Lazarus who became one of his best friends and exercised a great influence on his spirit. Niemirower studied at the Neo-Orthodox Theological Rabbinical Seminary of Berlin, and had as teacher one of its founders, rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer, ideologist of the Modern Jewish Orthodoxy. As demanded by the curriculum, he made parallel university secular studies, of philosophy, history and Oriental studies in Berlin, and then in 1895 he got the title of doctor in philosophy with "Magna cum laude at the University of Bern, in Switzerland. His PhD thesis debated about the reciprocal relations between the free will, the conscience, the reward and the punishment. At the end of the theological studies he got from the rabbi Ernst Abraham Biberfeld the licence of Orthodox rabbi. After some sources he got a licence of rabbi also from the rabbi Michael (or maybe Jacob) Hamburger from Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who was of more Reformistic orientation.

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