Gottheil, Gustav

Gottheil, Gustav (gŏt`hīl), 1827–1903, American Reform rabbi, b. Prussia. He served as assistant (1855–60) in the Berlin Reform Temple and as rabbi (1860–73) in Manchester, England. From 1873 until his retirement in 1899 he was assistant rabbi, and then rabbi, of Temple Emanu-El, New York City. His influence on Reform Judaism in the United States was great; he was the founder of several Jewish societies and a governor of the Cincinnati Hebrew Union College. In 1886 he prepared the first American Jewish hymnbook, much of which was incorporated in the Union Hymnal adopted by most of the American Reform congregations. Gottheil was the most prominent American rabbi at the first World Zionist Congress (1897), and he became one of the founders of the Federation of American Zionists, later the Zionist Organization of America.

Bibliography

See biography by his son, R. J. H. Gottheil (1936).