Lauterbach, Jacob Zallel

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LAUTERBACH, JACOB ZALLEL

LAUTERBACH, JACOB ZALLEL (1873–1942), U.S. talmudic scholar. Lauterbach, who was born in Monasterzyska, Galicia, studied at the German universities of Berlin and Goettingen and at the *Rabbiner-Seminar fuer das Orthodoxe Judenthum where he was ordained. Lauterbach went to New York in 1903 to work on the staff of the Jewish Encyclopedia, for which he wrote 260 articles. He later contributed to J.D. Eisenstein's Hebrew encyclopedia, Oẓar Yisrael, and to the Eshkol encyclopedia. Thereafter, he served as rabbi of traditional synagogues in Peoria, Illinois, and Rochester, New York, and of the Reform congregation of Huntsville, Alabama. In 1911 he became professor of Talmud at the Hebrew Union College.

Lauterbach's critical three-volume edition of the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishma'el, with English translation (1933–49), is a model of meticulous and thorough scholarship. The rest of his learned output consisted of essays, which include an epoch-making series on the Pharisees. The first of these, "The Sadducees and the Pharisees" (1913), clarified the attitude of the two sects toward the Written and Oral Law. Midrash and Mishnah (1915) was Lauterbach's major contribution to the literary history of the Talmud. Several preliminary and supplementary studies on the Mekhilta appeared in connection with the edition mentioned above. Lauterbach was especially interested in Jewish customs and folklore, which he treated with erudition and charm in a number of essays.

He served as chairman of the Committee on Responsa of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. In this position, he wrote opinions not only on ritual questions, but on other important issues of modern Jewish life. His responsa on the ordination of women as rabbis (1922), autopsy (1925), and birth control (1927) thoroughly review and analyze traditional decisions on these subjects before presenting practical conclusions. Lauterbach emphasized the continuity of Reform Judaism with older Jewish tradition, and attempted to show that Reform can derive enrichment and guidance from the halakhah, even though it does not accept earlier formulations as final and irrevocable. In 1951 Rabbinic Essays, a collection of a number of Lauterbach's most important articles, was published by the Alumni Association of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. This volume, edited by Lou H. Silberman, contains a complete bibliography of his writings. A second collection, Studies in Jewish Law, Custom and Folklore, appeared in 1970.