Rabbi David Tzvi Hoffmann רבי דוד צבי הופמן
head of the Berlin seminary; the posek of the Melamed LeHoil
He was born in 1843 at Verbó in Hungary, studied in the yeshivot of Hungary and under Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer at Eisenstadt, and then at the universities; he took his doctorate at Tübingen. From 1873 he taught at the Berlin seminary, and after Hildesheimer's death, from 1899, he headed it.
His responsa, the Melamed LeHoil, answer what earlier poskim were not asked: a soldier in the Kaiser's army, a physician on the Sabbath, a community among non-Jews. His answers are short and decisive, and people live by them still. As a scholar he wrote commentaries on Vayikra and Devarim, examining the books verse by verse against the school of Wellhausen, and the book The Chief Arguments against the Graf–Wellhausen Hypothesis, showing from the text itself that the Pentateuch is one.
He died in Berlin in 1921; his seminary stood for another sixteen years after him, until the Nazis.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The Melamed LeHoil—responsa — the questions of the new life
Scholarship
- The commentaries on Vayikra and Devarim — the examination against Wellhausen
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Verbó, Tübingen, the seminary from 1873, head from 1899, 1921
Basis: documents and evidence.