Chapter 2
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Peter Haas
| the rise of Reform Judaism in Germany , one of the“red letter” events was the appointment of Abraham Geiger in 1838 as associate rabbi and dayyan in Breslau . What was so striking about this appointment was that it was made over the resolute and unequivocal opposition of the traditionalist senior rabbi of the community, Salomon Tiktin. Ismar Schorsch has used this incident to symbolize the emergence of the modern rabbi, that is, the replacement of the traditional Ashkenazi talmudic scholar with a university-trained preacher and pastor. What Geiger ’s appointment also demonstrates is that even an authority with the stature of Tiktin could at best delay, but not prevent, the course of Jewish religious development in mid-eighteenth century Germany .'
The massive change in the notion of the rabbinate that was spreading across Central Europe during this period was, of course, part of a much broader shift in how German Jews were coming to understand their Judaism . Part of this metamorphosis was, naturally enough, a reevaluation of the content, structure, and even validity of halakhah. The connection with a reevaluation of the office of the rabbi was clear and direct. We know from numerous sources that the role of the rabbi in the Jewish communities of pre-Enlightenment Germany was almost entirely judicial. Consider, for example, the description of the job as penned by Hirschel Levin , the last Oberlandesrabbiner of Berlin . In about 1798, complaining about the demands of his position he wrote to Friedrich Wilhelm ITI, King of Prussia, that his post requires, in addition to the most exacting execution of all religious prescriptions, an ever watchful eye for maintaining the purity of the faith