Meyer Kayserling


Meyer Kayserling was a German rabbi and historian.

Life

Kayserling was born in Hanover, and was the brother of writer and educator Simon Kayserling. He was educated at Halberstadt, at Nikolsburg where he studied under Samson Raphael Hirsch, at Prague where he studied under S.J. Rapoport, at Würzburg where he studied under Seligman Baer Bamberger, and finally at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He devoted himself to history and philosophy. Encouraged in historical researches in Berlin by Leopold von Ranke, Kayserling turned his attention to the history and literature of the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula.
In 1861 the government of Aargau appointed him rabbi of the two Swiss Jewish municipalities of Endingen and Lengnau in Surbtal, an office he held until 1870. During his residence in Switzerland he argued in favor of civil equality for his coreligionists, and also maintained contacts with high-ranking Swiss politicians such as Jakob Dubs, Emil Welti, and Augustin Keller.
Kayserling founded the Swiss Jewish Cultural Society which campaigned for the civil rights of Jews in the Aargau region.
In the Aargau, the Jewish communities were given special exemption from a law requiring that animals had to killed by a blow to the head. Proponents of animal rights attacked this exemption for the purposes of schechita. Kayserling published a pamphlet in defence of the practice.
The society for animal rights and the Jewis community reached a compromise in 1889, which required the animals to be anasthesized before schechita.
Nevertheless, the practice of schechita was outlawed in Switzerland in the first popular initiative, in 1893.
Bereits 1854 schrieb der Kanton Aargau die Tötung des Viehs mittels Kopfschlag gesetzlich vor. Davon ausgenommen waren jedoch die jüdischen Gemeinden von Lengnau und Endingen. Ihnen war das Schächten gestattet. In Genf fanden der «Thierschutzverein» und die Israelitische Gemeinde 1889 einen Kompromiss: Das Schlachtvieh musste beim Schächten betäubt werden. Dasselbe wurde schliesslich auch in der eidgenössischen Volksinitiative verlangt.
In 1870, Kayserling accepted a call as preacher and rabbi to the Jewish community of Budapest, where he died 35 years later, aged 75.
Kayserling was a member of the Royal Academy in Madrid and of the Trinity Historical Society.

Works

Kayserling contributed to the different Jewish magazines published in Hebrew, German, English, and French; he also issued a new revised edition of Hecht's Handbuch der Israelitischen Geschichte.
From 1884 he prepared the part of the Jahresberichte der Geschichtsforschung which treated Jewish history.
Selected works: