Aaron Chorin

At the age of fourteen, he studied in the yeshivah of Rabbi Jeremiah Mattersdorf in Mattersburg, Austria, and two years later at Prague in the higher Talmudical school of Ezekiel Landau.

Chorin married on December 26, 1783, and entered commerce; but his business career being unsuccessful, he accepted the post of rabbi at Arad (then in the Kingdom of Hungary, today in Romania) in the spring of 1789, which he occupied till his death.

[2] In 1798, Chorin published his first pamphlet, Imre No'am (אמרי נועם Words of Pleasantness), in which he argued that as the sturgeon had scales it was permitted as food according to Scripture.

Rabbi Isaac Krieshaber of Páks wrote a refutation, Maḳḳel No'am (מקל נועם Staff of Pleasantness), which called forth a second pamphlet by Chorin, Shiryon Ḳasḳassim (שריון קשקשים Armour of Scales), (Prague, 1799).

The first and most important part, Rosh Amanah (Head of the Perennial Stream), in which he granted to the spiritual guides of the people authority to modify the traditional laws and adapt them to the requirements of the time, led to much opposition to him.

Chorin appealed to the imperial government which, on June 24, 1806, annulled the judgment and condemned the leader of his adversaries at Arad to pay the expenses of the lawsuit; the same was also to be punished for his scandalous conduct on Shabbat Shuvah, 1804.

In Ḳin'at ha-Emet (Zeal for Truth), a paper written on April 7, 1818, and published in the collection Nogah ha-Ẓedeḳ (Light of Righteousness), he declared himself in favor of reforms, such as German prayers, the use of the organ, and other liturgical modifications.

Influenced by Münz, Chorin recalled this writing on February 19, 1819; but a year later he published Dabar be-'Itto (A Word in Its Time), in which he reaffirmed the views expressed in Ḳin'at ha-Emet, and pleaded strongly for the right of Reform.

Michael Lazar Biedermann, a prominent man, proposed the appointment of Chorin at the new temple to be erected at Vienna; but the government being opposed to it, Isaac Noah Mannheimer was elected instead.

[2] The government of the grand duchy of Baden asked Chorin (on February 3, 1821), through the banker S. Haber, for his opinion about the duties of a rabbi, and about the reforms in the Austrian states.

In his Treue Bote (Prague, 1831) he declared himself against the transfer of the Sabbath to Sunday, but expressed the opinion that, considering the requirements of our time, synods might mitigate the severity of the Sabbatical laws, especially in regard to traveling and writing.

[2] In another treatise, Hillel, which appeared at Buda in 1835, he interpreted the prophetic promises about the reuniting of Israel to signify the establishing of a supreme religious authority at Jerusalem.

In 1819 he wrote Abaḳ Sofer (The Dust of a Writer), published by Landau (Prague, 1828), containing glosses about Yoreh De'ah, Eben ha-'Ezer, the phylacteries, an exposition of Proverbs I.10, et seq., and two riddles.