An estimated 4000 to 7000 persons attended the funeral yesterday of Rabbi Joseph Breuer, an Orthodox rabbi who fled Nazi Germany and was spiritual leader of Congregation Khal Adath Jeshurun in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan since 1939. He died Saturday at the age of 98.
Breuer, a sixth or seventh generation rabbi, was bomb in Papa, Hungary. He was the grandson of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch of Frankfurt who in the mid-19th Century founded neo-Orthodoxy in response to the growth of the Reform movement. Neo-Orthodoxy sought to fuse Western culture with rigorous observance of traditional Judaism.
Breuer was rabbi of a congregation in Frankfurt where his father had been the rabbi before him when, in 1938, the SS assembled all Jews in the area sending those over the age of 60 back home and the rest to concentration camps. The rabbi was only 56, but on SS man allowed him to return home which he always regarded as an act of God.
Five years after he became rabbi of the Washington Heights congregation, Breuer founded the Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch which now has 800 students from kindergarten through graduate level. He taught classes in the Talmud at his home twice a week until his death and supervised the kashrut at restaurants, hotels, butcher shops, bakeries and groceries.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
