נתן אדלר

Rav Nathan (Noson) HaKohen Adler of Frankfurt (10 Tevet 5502/1741 – 27 Elul 5560/1800) was a mekubal and rosh yeshiva, remembered above all as the rebbe of the Chasam Sofer. Born in Frankfurt am Main to a distinguished family, he was a child prodigy — when the Chida visited the city in 1752 to gather for the poor of Eretz Yisrael, he marveled at the boy. Rav Nathan learned in the beit midrash of Rav Yaakov Yehoshua, the Penei Yehoshua, then rav of Frankfurt, and his principal teacher was Rav David Tevele Schiff, who later became chief rabbi in London; he took kabbalah from Rav Avraham Abish, rav of the city. He is known in English sources simply as Nathan Adler, and is not to be confused with Nathan Marcus Adler, the later British chief rabbi who may have been named for him.

At about twenty he opened a yeshiva of his own, in which several leading rabbanim of the coming generation received their first teaching — among them Rav Avraham Bing, Rav Yitzchak Aryeh Wormser, and above all Rav Moshe Sofer, the Chasam Sofer, who held Rav Nathan as his foremost rebbe and called him ’the chassid among the Kohanim.’ Devoted to the kabbalah of the Arizal, Rav Nathan gathered a select circle around himself and adopted practices unusual for Ashkenaz: he prayed in the Sephardic pronunciation and nusach, hosting a Sephardi chacham in his home for months to master it, and had the Kohanim duchan every day as in Eretz Yisrael.

His private minyan and mystical conduct drew the suspicion of the Frankfurt kehillah, and in 5542/1782 a cherem was laid upon him, forcing him from the city; the young Chasam Sofer went with him into exile. He accepted the rabbanut of Boskowitz in Moravia, but opposition followed there too, and in 1785 he returned to Frankfurt, where the ban was renewed and only lifted shortly before his passing.

His mysticism kept him from publishing: he held that the inner Torah should pass by mouth to worthy talmidim, not by print. The brief notes he wrote in the margins of his Mishnah were later gathered by Rav Tzvi Binyamin Auerbach as Mishnat Rabbi Natan, and one of his responsa survives among those of the Chasam Sofer on Yoreh De’ah. He was niftar in Frankfurt at 27 Elul, leaving no children.