Heinemann, Jeremiah
HEINEMANN, JEREMIAH
HEINEMANN, JEREMIAH (1778–1855), German writer, educator, and communal leader. From 1808 to 1813 he was a member of the Jewish consistory of Westphalia and from 1825 to 1831 was principal of a school in Berlin. Heinemann was one of the last of the German maskilim (see *Haskalah) in the tradition of the *Me'assefim and Moses *Mendelssohn, who sought to adapt Jewish life in Germany to modern times. In 1817 he founded and edited the eight volumes of Jedidja, a periodical of Jewish studies in German (1817–31), which appeared in a new series in 1839–41 and later as Allgemeines Archiv des Judenthums (1842–43). His Hebrew commentary to the Torah, Be'ur la-Talmid, was published in a new edition of the Pentateuch along with Mendelssohn's translation (1831–33). His publications include a collection of articles and letters written by and to Mendelssohn, books on Judaism and Jewish education, a German translation of Isaiah, and essays on the legal and cultural status of the Jews of Prussia.
bibliography:
ej, s.v. (incl. bibl.); M. Eliav, Ha-Ḥinnukh ha-Yehudi be-Germanyah (1960), index.
[Zvi Avneri]