Organ, Slander and Exile: The Malbim’s Six Years in Bucharest

On Friday, 18 March 1864, the Chief Rabbi of Romania was arrested and thrown into prison in Bucharest. The accusation that put him there — that he was preaching against Christianity — had been born inside the Jewish community itself. So ended one of the stormiest rabbinic tenures in Eastern European history: the Malbim’s six years in Bucharest.

From Kempen to the Capital of the Principalities

Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser, the Malbim, was born in 1809 in Volochysk, Volhynia. By the time he reached Bucharest he was already a well-known rabbi: according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, he served from 1839 as head of the rabbinical court in Wreschen, in the province of Posen, and from 1840 to 1858 as rabbi of Kempen — so much so that he was known in German as “der Kempener.” The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) dates these posts slightly differently (1838–1845 and 1845–1860).

The sources disagree about Bucharest too. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the Malbim was formally installed as Chief Rabbi of Romania in the summer of 1858; the Jewish Encyclopedia gives 1860. He arrived at a moment of change: in 1859 Moldavia and Wallachia were united under Alexandru Ioan Cuza, and Bucharest became the capital of a new state preoccupied with modernisation, education and the civil status of its Jews.

Kashrut, an Eruv and the Schools: A Rabbi Who Came to Reform

The Malbim was not content with a title. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, he issued new kashrut regulations and imposed restrictions on the ritual slaughterers, built a new eruv for the city, supervised the educational institutions and preached tirelessly. Each of these steps touched the pockets or the habits of parts of the community, and together they drew a clear line: the community would be run according to halakha, under the rabbi’s authority.

Organ and Choir: The Struggle with the Progressives

On the other side stood maskilim and members of the well-to-do class, many of them of German origin, who wanted to adapt communal life to a modern European city. The symbol of the struggle was the Choral Temple. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the proposal to build it was raised as early as 1857, together with a plan to change the order of prayer, and it was completed in 1866 as the centre of “Progressive” Judaism. The Malbim opposed it fiercely because it was to have an organ and a choir.

In 1860 he published his commentary on Leviticus, which contained a sharp attack on the Reform movement. His opponents, writes the Jewish Encyclopedia, “did not shrink even from violence.” According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica’s entry on Bucharest, when the Progressives gained the upper hand in 1862 the authorities removed him from office — but the rabbi did not leave, and the struggle went on.

Denunciation, Arrest and Expulsion

It was a denunciation that settled the matter. His opponents falsely told the authorities that the rabbi was preaching against Christianity. An official proclamation in the government gazette, the Monitorul, called him a “sworn enemy of progress,” and on Friday, 18 March 1864, he was arrested and imprisoned.

According to both encyclopaedias, he was released through the intervention of Sir Moses Montefiore, the British Jewish leader — on condition that he leave Romania and never return. He was put on a Danube boat and landed at Ruschuk (today Ruse), the Bulgarian border town then within the Ottoman Empire.

Constantinople, Paris and the Years of Wandering

The Malbim did not accept the expulsion. He appealed to the Ottoman government in Constantinople — Romania was then still under the Empire’s formal suzerainty — and was turned down; he sought the help of the Alliance Israélite Universelle and spent some six months in Paris, to no avail.

Years of wandering followed. In 1866 he succeeded his father-in-law, Rabbi Hayyim Auerbach, as rabbi of Łęczyca in Russian Poland; he then served in Kherson (1869–1870, according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica) and in Mogilev on the Dnieper, where a familiar pattern repeated itself: wealthy members of the community denounced him, and the governor ordered him out of the town. He went on to serve as rabbi of the Polish community in Königsberg. In 1879 the governor of Vilna blocked his election as the city’s rabbi, and he set out to take up a post in Kremenchuk — but fell ill on the way and died in Kyiv, on 18 September 1879 according to the Jewish Encyclopedia.

What Remained of Bucharest

Of all his years in the rabbinate, it was the Bucharest years that defined his public image: a rabbi who saw the strengthening of halakha as his central task and paid for it with his freedom. And one thread links both sides of his life: the very Leviticus commentary that inflamed the controversy is part of his systematic commentary on the Bible, built on the premise that Scripture contains no true synonyms and that every turn of phrase carries meaning — a commentary still studied today.

In the city itself, his name was carried by the Malbim Synagogue on Strada Bravilor, demolished in the 1980s; we tell the story of that building in a separate article.

Visiting

There is no dedicated memorial to the Malbim in Bucharest, and the synagogue named after him no longer exists. Those who want to stand at the scene of the controversy can visit the Choral Temple — the very synagogue the Malbim fought against — which still stands in the old Jewish quarter and serves as the city’s main active synagogue. It is best to arrange a visit in advance with the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania (FCER).