Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer רבי עזריאל הילדסהיימר

He was born on 11 Iyar 5580 (1820) at Halberstadt, studied under Rabbi Yaakov Ettlinger at Altona and at the universities of Berlin and Halle, where he took a doctorate. In 1851 he became rabbi of Eisenstadt in Hungary and opened there a yeshiva of a new kind: the Talmud in the old way and the sciences in the new, under one roof. Part of the Hungarian rabbinate received it with hostility; the students went out to the communities of Europe.

In 1869 the Berlin community Adass Jisroel, which had separated from the Reform, called him. In 1873 he opened the rabbinical seminary in Berlin—and for half a century it gave the communities of Germany rabbis in whom the Talmud and the university did not quarrel. With Rabbi Shimshon Refael Hirsch he stood for one cause, though they argued about the ways; his successor Rabbi David Tzvi Hoffmann was trained in his seminary.

He raised money for the settlement in the Land of Israel and for the Jews of Russia, wrote responsa and published the Halakhot Gedolot from a manuscript. He died in Berlin on 26 Tammuz 5659 (1899).