Joseph Carlebach

Joseph Hirsch (Tzvi) Carlebach (January 30, 1883, Lübeck, German Empire – March 26, 1942, Biķerniecki forest, near Riga, Latvia) was a German Orthodox rabbi, natural scientist, and scholar of the history of the Jews in Germany.

Carlebach was the eighth child of Esther Adler (1853–1920), daughter of the former rabbi of Lübeck, Rabbi Alexander Sussmann Adler (1816–1869), and Lübeck's then-Rabbi Salomon Carlebach (1845–1919).

In 1919, Joseph Carlebach and his former pupil Charlotte Preuss (1900–1942) married. They had nine children. One of them is rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.

Joseph Carlebach became a rabbi, as did several of his brothers, to wit David Carlebach, Emanuel Carlebach (rabbi in Memel and Cologne), Hartwig Naftali Carlebach (rabbi in Berlin, Baden near Vienna and New York), and Ephraim Carlebach (rabbi in Leipzig). Initially, however, Joseph Carlebach completed extensive studies in natural sciences. From 1901 on he studied at Friedrich Wilhelm Universität in Berlin natural sciences, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and history of art. The quantum physicist Max Planck and the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (hermeneutics) were among his teachers. In 1908 he graduated as high school teacher (Oberlehrer-Examen) of natural sciences (at summa cum laude). In the same time Carlebach attended the orthodox Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin. In 1905 to 1907 Carlebach interrupted his studies in Germany and taught at the Lämel School in Jerusalem. There Carlebach made the acquaintance of a number of eminent rabbis.

In 1909 Carlebach obtained degrees in mathematics, physics and Hebrew at Ruprecht Karl Universität in Heidelberg. There he also was awarded his doctorate on the mathematician Levi ben Gershon (Lewi ben Gerson als Mathematiker). Carlebach gained an academic reputation by books on Levi ben Gershon as well as on Albert Einstein's relativity theory in 1912. From 1910 to 1914 Carlebach enrolled in the rabbinical seminary under Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann, receiving his semikhah (rabbinic ordination) in 1914.

During World War I Carlebach served in the imperial German Army, at the beginning as telegraphist. In 1915 he was assigned as educator - after recommendation by his brother-in-law Leopold Rosenak, a German Army Field Rabbi active in promoting German culture among the Jews of Lithuania and Poland during the German occupation (1915–1918).

Erich Ludendorff's intention was to evoke pro-German attitudes among Jews and other Poles and Lithuanians, in order to prepare the installation of a Polish and a Lithuanian state dependent on Germany. Part of the effort was the establishment of Jewish newspapers (e.g. the folkist Warszawer Togblat, וואַרשעווער טאָגבלאַט), of Jewish organisations (e.g. Joseph's brother German Army Field Rabbi Emanuel Carlebach (1874-1927) initiated in Łomża the foundation of the hassidic umbrella organisation Agudas Yisroel of Poland, part of a non-Zionist movement founded in Germany in 1912) and of modern educational institutions of Jewish alignment. Joseph Carlebach founded the partly German-language Jüdisches Realgymnasium גימנזיום עברי (academic high school) in Kaunas (Kovno; the interwar capital of Lithuania) and directed it until 1919. The school was based on the German Torah im Derech Eretz model. The school provided both Jewish and secular studies both for men and women (separately) and was the model for the Yavneh network that Carlebach later founded in collaboration with Leo Deutschlander. In 1925, Yavneh was taken over by Joseph Leib Bloch (1860-1930), who relocated it to Telšiai (Russ.: Telshe, Yidd.: Telz טעלז) and incorporated it into the Rabbinical College of Telshe, which managed to re-establish in 1942 in the USA.

From 1919 to 1921 he was rabbi of his native home town Lübeck. In 1921, Carlebach became headmaster of the Talmud Torah high school in Hamburg. Between 1925 and 1936 he served as chief rabbi of the Hochdeutsche Israeliten-Gemeinde zu Altona, after which he changed as chief rabbi to the Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeinde zu Hamburg, where he served until his deportation into death in 1941. Israeli jurist Haim Cohn described the effect Carlebach had on his students (as well as illustrating Carlebach's fairly unusual position that Orthodox Jews may visit churches):