David Zvi Hoffman

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David Zvi Hoffman (November 24, 1843 - 1921), was an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, and Torah Scholar. Born in Verbó in 1843, he attended various Yeshivas in his native town before he entered the college at Presburg, from which he graduated in 1865. He then studied philosophy, history, and Oriental languages at Vienna and Berlin, taking his doctor's degree in 1871.

Shortly after, he became employed as a teacher in Samson Raphael Hirsch's Realschule school in Frankfurt am Main, and in 1873 moved to Berlin to join the faculty of the Rabbinical Seminary of Berlin where he eventually became rector in 1899 after the death of Azriel Hildesheimer. Though born in Hungary, he adapted the German Jewish approach of openness towards general culture, world and society. He employed the critical scientific method to the Talmud and wrote about the history of the development of form of the Oral law (as opposed to the development of the Law itself; the latter being an enterprise antithetical to traditional Jewish beliefs).

He was the leading authority on traditional Jewish Law (halacha) in Germany in his lifetime and was also well known for his efforts to disprove the Documentary Hypothesis as expressed by the Graf-Welhausen theory. He even published a book on this topic entitled Die wichtigsten Instanzen gegen die Graf-Wellhausensche Hypothese.

[edit] Writings

Some of his works include Die Erste Mishna, The First Mishna, a historical and linguistic analysis of the Mishnah and Melamed Le-ho'il a responsa on contemporary issues based on historical evidence of tradition. He also published a commentary on the Pentateuch that included a translation of the text into German. Later this commentary was translated into Hebrew, though today it is out of print.

Most of his writings were in German and remain so to this day. His The First Mishna was translated into English, and a selection of his comments on the Passover Haggada have been published in Hebrew as well. He published a translation of two of the orders of the Mishna into German, and was proficient in much of Rabbinic Literature, specifically in the area of Midrash halakha (legalalistic Biblical exegesis). Despite his worldly inclinations, he was an original member of the more traditionally oriented moetzes gedolie hatorah (council of great Torah sages). Though well known as a great scholar who mastered many areas of knowledge, Hoffman was also known to be a person of great moral conduct and piety.