Volume with “Beit haMidrash” documents printed on parchment paper—Jerusalem 1938.

Volume with “Beit haMidrash” documents printed on parchment paper—Jerusalem 1938.

“Beit HaMidrash”, midrash and kabbalah and folk stories edited from manuscripts and rare printings, by Rabbi Aharon Jellinek, organized into ‘rooms’ (this volume contains the 2,3,4 sections), with a separate title page for each section in Hebrew and German plus an introduction and indices, some in German. Second edition. Printed on parchment paper. Large stain on the back of one page, other light stains, overall good condition.

Rabbi Aharon (Adolf) Jellinek, the son of Yitzhak Yehuda, lived from 1821-1894, was a Jewish-Moravian scholar and a leader of Jewish studies. He served as a Liberal darshan in Vienna. He edited the Beit HaMidrash series which collected more than 100 midrashim. As a boy he studied in yeshiva and at the same time studied secular studies and languages on his own. In 1838 he moved to Prague and was a student of Shlomo Yehuda Leib Rapaport (the Shir), through whose influence he opened a program for Jewish studies. In 1842 he moved to Leipzig, where he lived until 1856. In Leipzig he studied philosophy and Semitic languages at university, and from 1850 onward he is referenced in various works as a doctor. While in Leipzig he began to give drashot in the synagogue led by the district rabbi Zecharya Frankel, and he soon became famous as a popular darshan and speaker on religious and current affairs. In 1856 he moved to Vienna and became a leading rabbi at the Templegasse synagogue. In 1892 he was given the title Chief Rabbi, but he never called himself a rabbi but rather “Prediger”. In 1862 he founded the Rabbinical Beit Midrash (Israelitisch-Theologische Lehranstalt), which was meant to function in the middle space between the yeshiva world and the ‘modern’ beit midrash of the Reform movement. Aharon Jellinek was the grandfather of Mercedes Jellinek, after whom the famous Mercedes-Benz car company was named.