Judah Leon Magnes
| Judah Leon Magnes | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
July 5, 1877 San Francisco, California, USA |
| Died | October 27, 1948 (aged 71) New York City, New York |
| Spouse(s) | Beatrice Lowenstein |
Judah Leon Magnes (July 5, 1877 – October 27, 1948) was a prominent Reform rabbi in both the United States and Mandatory Palestine. He is best remembered as a leader in the pacifist movement of the World War I period, his advocacy of a binational Jewish-Arab state in Palestine, and as one of the most widely recognized voices of 20th century American Reform Judaism.
Magnes was born in San Francisco to David and Sophie (Abrahamson) who named him Julian. He changed his name to Judah as a young man. As a young boy, Magnes's family moved to Oakland, California, where he attended Sabbath school at First Hebrew Congregation, and was taught by Ray Frank, the first Jewish woman to preach formally from a pulpit in the United States.
Magnes's views of the Jewish people was strongly influenced by First Hebrew's Rabbi Levy, and it was at First Hebrew's building on 13th and Clay that Magnes first began preaching. His bar mitzvah speech of 1890 was quoted at length in the Oakland Tribune.
Magnes graduated from Oakland High School as a valedictorian in 1894. He then studied at the University of Cincinnati, where he gained a degree of notoriety in a campaign against censorship of the "Class annual" of 1898 by the university faculty. He graduated from the University of Cincinnati with an A.B. in 1898. He also attended rabbinical seminary at Hebrew Union College, and was ordained a rabbi in June 1900. He then went to study in Germany. He studied Judaism at the Berlin Jewish College, Lehranstalt, and pursued his doctoral studies at Berlin University, where he studied under Friedrich Paulsen and Friedrich Delitzsch, and at the University of Heidelberg. It was while he was in Berlin that he became an ardent Zionist. He spent time traveling through Eastern Europe, and visited Jewish communities in Germany, Poland, and Galicia. In December 1902, he received a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Heidelberg, and returned to the United States in 1903.
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