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by Elias Auerbach
Author: Elias Auerbach
Publisher: Amsterdam : G.J.A. Ruys, 1953.
243 pages ; 23 cm
Elias Auerbach was the brother of Israel Auerbach (the husband of Bertha Datnowsky).
A German physician, Elias Auerbach was also a Bible scholar and historical writer who published books and essays on Jewish culture and history.
He was active in the Zionist movement in Germany, a member of the Jüdische Humanitätsgesellschaft, and of the Bar Kochba Athletic Association. He was the first German Jew to make Aliyah, and he opened the first Jewish hospital in Haifa.
Early life and Education
Elias Auerbach was born in 1882, the youngest child of Baruch Menachim (Borukh-Mendel) Auerbach, a rabbi in the town forest of Ritschenwalde in the former Prussian province of Posen (Poznan) (today Ryczywól in Poland). He was made familiar with the world of the Bible from his earliest youth and he understood Hebrew before he had fully mastered the German language.
In 1890 his family moved to Berlin (other sources mention that "his older brothers took him to Berlin when he was ten and enrolled him in a Gymnasium"). In Berlin, Elias studied medicine and in 1905 received his PhD., his final thesis being on the "innervation of the cerebral vessels"(*).
Zionist Work
By the age of 12, Elias was already influenced towards Zionism by his brother-in-law Heinrich Loewe's visits to his family home. (Professor Heinrich Loewe was a prominent German Zionist who married Elias' older sister Johanna.)
As a student he joined the Jewish Students' Union (VJSt, which later became the KJV) founded by his Heinrich Loewe, and decided early on to emigrate to Palestine during his lifetime. An early member of the first circle of young Zionists, he was engaged in the "Academic-Zionist Group" and participated in the Zionist Congresses of 1903, 1905 and 1907.(*). In 1901, Dr Auerbach was introduced to Herzl in 1901 as an "active Zionist student".
In 1903, while still a student, he participated to the 6th Zionist Congress in Basel. He attended as a journalistic observer, standing directly under the speaker's podium, where he followed the stormy discussions about Herzl's Uganda proposal, which largely dominated the congress. Auerbach joined the opponents of the East Africa project, which rejected Herzl's plans to consider Uganda as a temporary Jewish settlement area into consideration.
Medical career in Berlin
Elias Auerbach settled down in Berlin-Wilmersdorf as a general practitioner while also working as an assistant to a surgeon at the Physiological Institute of the University of Berlin.
In 1907, Elias Auerbach opened his private clinic in Uhlandstrasse, Berlin.
The same year, during the 8th Zionist Congress in The Hague, he proposed to Rachel Rosenthal, a childhood friend who shared his Zionist beliefs. The couple decided to move to Eretz Israel.
Eretz Israel
In the spring of 1909, Elias Auerbach went on a four-week reconnaissance trip to Palestine. Seeing Haifa, he said "Here I am going to live, work and die!"
Back in Germany, Elias Auerbach and Rachel Rosenthal married in August 1909 and then immigrated to Palestine. The couple settled in Haifa, where Auerbach was the first practicing Jewish physician of the city. The couple had two children, Zeruja and Daniel.
Elias claimed to have been the first German Zionist to settle in the land of Israel for reasons of personal motivation - two men had gone to Palestine because of their work in administrative posts, one for the World Zionist Organization, and the other for the Jewish Colonization Association. (Zionism in Germany 1897-1933, Stephen Poppel)
In his autobiography, Auerbach spoke of the difficulties he experienced settling down in the new country. The strange food, exhausting climate, the constant threat of malaria infection and poor hygiene conditions required much effort. He also recounted that he began to practise under conditions which were "barely imaginable", and how he had to educate not only his staff, but also his patients, until they came to accept his "European" methods.
I imagine my grandmother Ronya Datnowsky visited him during her trip to Palestine in 1910.
In 1911 the Auerbach family moved into a new two-story house behind the German settlement, which housed the living quarters next to Haifa's first Jewish hospital. There was room for Auerbach's horse, which he rode every morning to visit patients in the city.
Jewish Hospital
With the active help of the League of Jewish Women in Berlin and Baroness Rothschild, Elias Auerbach was able to open a small hospital in 1911, in which he himself had to do everything, from delivering babies to the most complicated operations.
Zvi Orloff (later Zvi Nishri) wrote in the Jüdische Turnzeitung (the publication of the Bar-Kochba Sports Association in Berlin) in November 1911:
Dr E. Auerbach was active as a doctor in Haifa for almost 50 years, with several breaks while he concentrated fully on the historical studies for which he became known worldwide. He became a recognised expert on the historical periods he studied, especially the earliest epochs of the Bible.
During his life, Auerbach published numerous books and essays on Jewish culture and history. He is known especially for his contributions to Jewish biblical scholarship. His two-volume magnum opus "Desert and Promised Land" appeared in 1936. (*)
Influenced by the results of the newest critical Bible studies, he became a sharp critic who rejected the traditional ideas of his youth and used new methods to search for knowledge of the Bible. As early as 1920 he had published a book about The Prophets. But his masterpiece is the much admired and much attacked work "Desert and the Promised Land".
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