יוסף הירש דינר

Rav Yosef Tzvi (Hirsch) HaLevi Dunner (12 Tevet 5593/1833–Tishrei 5672/1911), known by the acronym the Ritzad and called in English sources Joseph Hirsch Dünner, was chief rabbi of Amsterdam and North Holland. He was born in a suburb of Krakow, a son of Eliezer Dunner, a poor tavern-keeper. His gifts showed early, and from the local cheder he was sent to learn by the rav of the city, Rav Chaim Nosson Dembitzer, who became his foremost rebbi and later gave him semicha together with Rav Chaim Halberstam. In his youth he inclined toward the Haskalah, and for it one of the kanaim of Krakow stabbed him in the back; once he had healed he left for Germany, tutoring privately in the Rhineland while he prepared for university. He took up Semitic philology and philosophy at Bonn in 5619/1859, and three years later received a doctorate for his research on Rav Avraham ibn Ezra.

That same year he was called from Bonn to direct the rabbinical seminary of Amsterdam, which under his hand became a school of Torah, ancient languages and Jewish thought. When the government proposed moving it to Leiden as a branch of the university there, he refused, and the seminary’s budget was withheld for two years. In 5634/1874 the parnasim appointed him rav rashi and av beit din of Amsterdam and of North Holland — a post no man had filled for some forty years — over the opposition of those who held against him that he was an academic and not a Dutchman. He headed as well the Ashkenazi beit midrash Etz Chaim, laid down takanot in education and religious life, and fought for a full Jewish school system rather than afternoon instruction; within a few years his talmidim held every rabbinical post in Holland save Rotterdam. For all this the government admitted him to the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands.

His Hagahot on most of the masechtot of Bavli and Yerushalmi appeared in seven volumes between 5656/1896 and 5682/1922, and his hagahot on the Mishneh Torah in 5689/1929; Mossad HaRav Kook reissued them in four volumes as Chidushei HaRitzad, marked by the academic tools he brought to them. He wrote as well on the origins of the Tosefta, holding that a redactor drew it together after the Talmud was complete out of authentic Tannaitic material and earlier baraitot. He was a member of Mizrachi to his last day and published a work on Zionism in German and in Dutch.

His talmidim filled the rabbanut of Holland — among them Rav Avraham Shimshon Onderwijzer, chief rabbi of Holland and translator of the Torah into Dutch, and Rav Eliezer Sarlouis, the last rav of Amsterdam. He was niftar on Isru Chag Sukkot 5672. His great-nephew, named for him, was Rav Yosef Tzvi Dunner, rav of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations in London and father of Rav Yehuda Aryeh Dunner, rav of central Bnei Brak.