אברהם בינג

Rav Avraham Bing (5512/1752–5 Adar 5601/1841) was chief rabbi of Wuerzburg and one of the fathers of Torah Judaism in Germany — the rosh yeshiva whose talmidim manned the rabbinic seats of the land for a century. Born in Frankfurt, he was the talmid muvhak of the mekubal Rav Nosson Adler, in whose shadow the young Chatam Sofer also grew; the two became lifelong friends, calling each other “chaveri” in their letters, and the Chatam Sofer brings him often in his teshuvot.

At seventeen he was Klaus rav in Offenbach; at twenty-six, Frankfurt called him home as dayan on the beit din of the Hafla’ah, Rav Pinchas Horowitz. From 5556/1796 he served as chief rabbi of the Wuerzburg district — more than a hundred kehillot — seated at Heidingsfeld, for the Jews had been banned from Wuerzburg itself for two and a half centuries. He undid that decree: through his petitions the ban was overturned in 1813, and in 1814 he moved the rabbanut into the city itself, where he stood at the head of a great yeshiva and fought the rising Reform movement without compromise.

His yeshiva’s roster reads like the map of nineteenth-century Orthodoxy: Rav Yaakov Ettlinger, the Aruch LaNer, teacher of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch and Rav Azriel Hildesheimer; Rav Nathan Marcus Adler, chief rabbi of the British Empire; Rav Yitzchak Bernays of Hamburg; Rav Seligman Baer Bamberger, who succeeded him as the Wuerzburger Rav; and Rav Abraham Rice, the first rav to serve in America. Of his own Torah only Zichron Avraham was printed, by Rav Bamberger after his passing — but his talmidim were his sefer.