Adler, Hermann Nathan

ADLER, HERMANN NATHAN: Chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire; b. at Hanover, Germany, May 30, 1839. He was educated at the University College School and University College, London (B.A., 1859), and also at the universities of Prague and Leipsic (Ph.D., Leipsic, 1861). He received the rabbinical diploma at Prague in 1862, and in the following year was appointed principal of Jews’ College, London. In 1864 he became minister of the Bayswater Synagogue, London, but continued to be tutor in theology in Jews’ College until 1879, when he was appointed delegate chief rabbi to relieve his father, Nathan Marcus Adler, whom age had rendered unable to perform all the duties of chief rabbi. On the death of his father, Adler was chosen his successor as chief rabbi in 1891, and at the same time was elected president of Jews’ College, where he had already been chairman of the council since 1887. He is also president of Aria College and the London beth din, vice-president of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Mansion House Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Poor, governor of University College, and a member of the committee of the King Edward Hospital Fund and the Metropolitan Hospital Sunday Fund. He has likewise been president of the Jewish Historical Society, vice-president of the Jewish Religious Educational Board and the Anglo-Jewish Association, and representative of the Russo-Jewish Committee at Berlin (1889) and Paris (1890). In addition to numerous briefer contributions, he has written Solomon ibn Gabirol and his Influence upon Scholastic Philosophy (London, 1865) and Sermons on the Biblical Passages adduced by Christian Theologians in Support of the Dogmas of their Faith (1869).