הרב דוד צבי הופמן

Rav David Tzvi Hoffmann (5604/1843–5682/1921), known in later rabbinic writing as the Radatz, was among the leaders of German Jewry at the close of the nineteenth century and the head of the Rabbinical Seminary of Berlin. A master of midrash halachah and the foremost halachic authority in Germany of his generation, he is remembered above all for his commentaries on the Chumash, in which he met the Bible criticism of his day directly.

Born in Verbó in Hungary to his father Rav Moshe, a dayan of the local kehillah, he learned in the yeshivot of Verbó and Pápa and then under the Maharam Schick, one of the gedolim of the age, completing his studies there in 5625/1865. He went on to the universities of Vienna and Berlin, studying philosophy, history and the languages of the East, and in 5631/1871 received a doctorate from Tübingen for a work on Mar Shmuel. His rabbinic training was under the Maharam Schick and Rav Azriel Hildesheimer. He first taught at the school Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch had founded in Frankfurt, and in 5633/1873 joined the faculty of Rav Hildesheimer’s new seminary in Berlin; upon Rav Hildesheimer’s passing in 5659/1899 he was appointed its head, which he remained until his own passing.

His commentary on the Chumash grew out of the shiurim he gave at the seminary and appeared over many years, and for that reason not as a single run: first on Vayikra, then on Devarim, with a partial commentary on Bereishit, and a commentary on Shemot printed only long afterward. In it he addressed the Bible criticism of the day, among it the questions raised over the Names of Hashem and the antiquity of the Torah.

He also wrote Melamed LeHo’il, responsa on the practical questions of his time; Die Erste Mishna (“The First Mishnah”), a study of how the Mishnah took shape; and a work setting out his arguments against the Wellhausen theory of the Torah’s origins. When an apostate published a forged digest of Shulchan Aruch laws to defame the Jews, he answered it with a book on what the Shulchan Aruch and the poskim truly teach regarding people of other faiths. He sat as an original member of the Moetzet Gedolei HaTorah. Most of his writing was in German; his commentary on the Chumash was later rendered into Hebrew and is still cited.