Place
Pressburg פרשבורג
The city of the Chatam Sofer and the main yeshiva of Central Europe: the Orthodox answer to Reform began here.
The Chatam Sofer led the Pressburg community for thirty-three years and ran the largest yeshiva in the Europe of his day. His famous formula 'the new is forbidden by the Torah' was said of innovations in the synagogue, not of life at large, but it set the line Hungarian Orthodoxy held for a century and a half.
Rabbis of dozens of Austro-Hungarian communities came out of the Pressburg yeshiva. The 1868 split of Hungarian Jewry into Orthodox and Neolog congregations grew from the argument he began.
On the timeline
5566 · 1806 CEThe Chatam Sofer and the Orthodox Response to Reform5551 · 1791 CEThe Haskalah, Moses Mendelssohn and the Emancipation of French Jewry
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Responsa Chatam Sofer, Yoreh De'ah 19 — the responsum where 'the new is forbidden by the Torah' is said
- The will of the Chatam Sofer — instruction to community and family — the programme of Hungarian Orthodoxy in a private letter
Basis: documents and evidence.