Isaac Abraham Euchel
Biography
Andreas Kennecke
Euchel was born on 17 October 1756 in Copenhagen to Abraham Israel (1731-1767) and Krenche (?-1784). After the death of his father in 1769, Euchel went to Berlin to study at the yeshiva. In Berlin he came into contact with the growing circle of Jewish enlightenment thinkers.
In 1773 Euchel accepted a position as a private tutor in Westphalia. During this time period, he broadened his knowledge of the secular sciences through self-education. Sometime between 1775 and 1776 Euchel moved to Hanover, where he most likely served as a private tutor in the house of Meyer Michel David. During his stay in Hanover, Euchel studied the natural sciences under the instruction of Raphael Levy, a Jewish mathematician and former student of Leibniz.
In 1778 Euchel moved to Königsberg, where he assumed upon recommendation from Meyer Michel David a position as private tutor for the Friedländer family, in particular for two children of the family, Michael and Rebecca.
Between 1782 and 1786 Euchel studied philosophy and Oriental languages at the Albertina in Königsberg. Although the professors Kant and Köhler supported his application in 1786 to become Köhler’s successor for Oriental languages, it was denied due to the university’s statutes preventing Jews and Roman Catholics from professorships. In 1782 Euchel published his first missive, Sephat Emet, in which he called upon the Jewish community to found a free school in Königsberg.; however, this appeal failed to generate a response within the Königsberg community. In December 1782 Euchel was substantially involved in the founding of the Gesellschaft hebräischer Literaturfreunde. The society’s objective was to familiarize Jews with the Enlightenment and to provide a platform for the reformers within the Jewish communities. In September 1783 the first issue of the monthly Hame’assef was published. This periodical served as a powerful mouthpiece for the Maskilim and was also the first fully-fledged journal in the Hebrew language. Its publication was announced in the Nachal Habesor, a work which outlines the first programmatic attempts to mold the Maskilic movement.
In the first issue of Hame’assef Euchel published an article entitled Ein Wort an den Leser. This article serves as an introduction to the periodical’s regular column Geschichte der Großen Israels. In its opening pages Euchel paraphrases Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft for the first time in the Hebrew language.
In 1784 Euchel began a new debate on the ‘early burial’ of the Jews via the German-language supplement to Hame’assef, Der Sammler. In this response to Anton Friedrich Büsching’s arguments, Euchel seeks to refute Büsching’s claims that the Jews would suffocate their dead before ‘early burial’ as a precaution against their mistakenly being buried alive. Although Euchel participated in the debate concerning the ‘early burial’ practice for many years, this article is the only one that he published in German. All of Euchel’s other publications on the issue were in Hebrew, i.e. they were intended exclusively for the inner Jewish discourse.
In 1784 Euchel traveled to Copenhagen shortly after the death of his mother. Members of the Friedländer family accompanied him on his travels; possibly among them was his pupil Rebecca. According to entries in his Album Amicorum, stops along the way included: 6 May, a farewell poem from the Gesellschaft hebräischer Literaturfreunde in Königsberg; 9 May, visit with his friend Magister K.L. Poerschke (since 1787 a university lecturer at the Albertina, 1794 named extraordinary professor in philosophy, died 1812); 13 May, stopover in Danzig; 1 June, entries by Hartwig Wessely and Schrenkendorf (a Saxon officer?); 28 July entry by Abraham Meldola in Hamburg; 7 September entry by the reform-oriented pedagogue Martin Ehlers in Kiel (1732-1800, since 1776 professor in Kiel); and the later burial of his mother in the Møllegade cemetery. During his journey to Copenhagen, Euchel wrote a letter onto the Danish King in which he champions the establishment of a Jewish school and a teachers’ seminar in Kiel. His proposal was not pursued by the Danish king. During his journey back to Königsberg, Euchel made a stop in Berlin in 1785. Here, he visited Moses Mendelssohn and others. During one visit together, Mendelssohn gave Euchel writings from to the first debate on ‘early burial’ for publication; these were subsequently printed in Hame’assef.
In the years 1785 and 1786 Euchel initiated a conflict between Jewish reformers and traditionalists, beginning with the continuation of the debate on ‘early burial’. A number of Euchel’s articles in this period are geared towards disposing the rabbis of their perceived right to represent and preserve ‘true Judaism’. In 1787 Euchel persuaded Marcus Herz to publish his Über die frühe Beerdigung in Hame’assef and later as a monograph.
As did David Friedländer, Euchel also published a translation of the prayer book in 1786. Unlike Friedländer’s translation, however, Euchel not only wrote in German, but also used its script. Euchel’s translation was met with considerable resistance on part of the traditionalists, as he notes in his apologia Ein Wort an die Medabrim published in Hame’assef in the same year.
In 1787 Euchel returned to Berlin, bringing Hame’assef with him. In Berlin he assumed the management of the Jewish Free School’s print shop. 1787 also marks the founding the "Gesellschaft der Beförderung des Guten und Edlen" as the successor to his group in Königsberg. The focus of the new group, however, was no longer on the renewal of the Hebrew language, but rather on the more general enlightenment of the Jews and the reform of Judaism.
First published in 1788 in Hame’assef, Euchel’s biography of Moses Mendelssohn succeeded in becoming his best-known work. It is both the first biography of Mendelssohn and also the first comprehensive biography of a European Jew overall. It proved to be immensely conducive to the development of the dominant view of Mendelssohn among the Jews of Europe in the 19th century.
Euchel’s Briefe des Meschulam, published 1790 in Hame’assef, constitutes a further novum. In the form of a travelogue akin to that of the Persian Letters from Montesquieu, Euchel’s letters portray the thoughts of an enlightened Jew from Aleppo in Europe who, among other things, describes his appreciation for the history of the Jews in Europe.
The founding of the Gesellschaft der Freunde in 1791 in Berlin brought Euchel to concern himself once again with the practice of ‘early burial’, being that the society worked towards the establishment of a mortuary in Berlin during this time. Euchel was a member of the executive board of the society for a number of years, and he often mediated between its Berlin and Königsberg chapters.
His last article for Hame’assef, Ist nach dem jüdischen Gesetz das Übernachten der Juden wirklich verboten?, was written in German with Hebrew script. Here, he reflects upon the successes and failures of Hame’assef over the years, and he ascertains the failure of the attempts to renew the Hebrew language. Sorely affected by this, Euchel argues that the Jewish society had taken a completely different path from that which he had propagated. For Euchel, an imminent connection exists between the renewal of Hebrew and the reform of Judaism, and the strength needed for such renewal could only be found in Judaism’s own history. In the end, Euchel concludes that his project has failed.
It is therefore not astonishing that Euchel in his play Reb Henoch oder wos tu me dermit from 1797 addresses the differences between orthodoxy and the reform movement, between Hebrew, Yiddish and German, as well as between the educated, the uneducated and the semi-educated. In doing so, Euchel holds up a mirror towards his contemporaries: only truly enlightened Jews who avow themselves to their Jewishness can look into the mirror without shame.
On 18 June 1804, Euchel died in Berlin, leaving behind his wife and their son, Abraham. Abraham, who later took on August as his first name, settled later in Stettin. It is here where all traces of the Euchel family disappear.
References
Euchel, Isaak: Reb Henoch, oder: woß tut me damit. Eine jüdische Komödie der Aufklärungszeit, edited by Marion Aptroot and Roland Gruschka, Hamburg 2004.
Euchel, Isaak: Vom Nutzen der Aufklärung. Schriften zur Haskala, edited, translated and annotated by Andreas Kennecke, Düsseldorf 2001.
Feiner, Shmuel: יצחק אייכל- ה'יזם' של תנועת ההשכלה בגרמניה [Isaac Euchel – <Entrepreneur> of the Haskalah Movement in Germany], in: Zion, 52. Jg. (1987), pp. 427–469. [hebr.]
Kennecke, Andreas: Isaac Euchel. Architekt der Haskala, Göttingen 2007. (Register of Persons)
Pelli, Moshe: Isaac Euchel. Tradition and Change, in: Moshe Pelli, The Age of Haskalah, Leiden 1979, pp. 190–230.
