Recent scholarship has given renewed attention to the leading non-Orthodox rabbis of nineteenth-century Germany. In 2000, Andreas Brämer published a book-length biography of Zacharias Frankel;Footnote ¹ in 2007, we saw the appearance of a volume of essays centering upon Samuel Holdheim;Footnote ² and not long ago, both Susannah Heschel and Ken Koltun-Fromm published books on Abraham Geiger.Footnote ³ Although Simon Bernfeld wrote a Hebrew biography of Michael Sachs as early as 1900, and more recently Franz D. Lucas and Heike Frank published their relatively brief, highly complimentary Michael Sachs: Der konservative Mittelweg, until now, Sachs had not received the extensive treatment offered by this ambitious, thoroughly researched, and copiously contextualized volume.Footnote ⁴

Born in Glogau in 1808, Rabbi Michael Sachs served as a preacher first in a moderately reformed congregation in Prague and then as the community preacher in Berlin for twenty years, from 1844 until his early death in 1864. Margit Schad has divided this study of Sachs, based on her doctoral dissertation at the University of Duisburg, into four parts: a biography, Sachs's rabbinical functions, his preaching, and his work as translator and scholar. This mode of organization has the disadvantage that we do not see our subject's development and multifarious activities within a single chronological framework, as we do, for example, in Alexander Altmann's comprehensive biography of Moses Mendelssohn.Footnote ⁵ But the approach does enable Schad to discuss each of the areas of Sachs's activity with detailed attention to both content and context.

Although Lucas and Frank made some use of the extensive Sachs papers at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, Schad has exploited them far more thoroughly. A large portion of the many citations in her volume comes from unpublished letters and notes found in Sachs's Nachlass, thus considerably enriching the biographical portion. Schad describes Sachs as occupying a middle position on the German–Jewish religious spectrum but is reluctant to place him fully within one of the existing streams. Although sometimes called Orthodox (in 1850, he was the first choice of the Orthodox separatist group in Frankfurt that finally chose Samson Raphael Hirsch) and certainly orthoprax in his personal life, both in philosophy and in favoring certain synagogue reforms, he does not belong in the Orthodox camp. At the same time clearly not a part of the Reform movement in any but the broadest and vaguest sense, he is best categorized as standing within the moderate center, identified by Zacharias Frankel's epithet as “Positive-Historical Judaism”—though Schad notes his lack of consistent involvement with Frankel's Breslau conservative seminary and his greater closeness to S. J. Rapoport and I. N. Mannheimer than to Frankel. Although Sachs is not significantly different from these other middle-of-the-roaders, Schad would like to see him as sui generis. She also rejects classifying Sachs as a romantic, although this term has been applied to him both by contemporaries (Geiger, Graetz) and by modern scholars (e.g., Altmann, Jay Harris, Ismar Schorsch), and she herself cites typically romantic passages from his writings (e.g., “my lively organic sentiment”). Schad seems to believe that romantic is a term of opprobrium, and she would like to rescue Sachs from that charge.

In addition to his duties as preacher in the Berlin community synagogue, Sachs also served as second Rabbinatsassessor, a lesser position than that of rabbi, but one that brought him into a variety of ritual controversies. Schad explicates the rabbinical opinions that he was called upon to render, even though, as she notes, he was not deeply versed in halakhah. She gives a great deal of attention to the two reform controversies that roiled Berlin's Jewish community after Sachs's appointment precipitated the establishment of a radical independent Reform congregation. They occurred in 1844–45 and again ten years later and, as Schad notes, have until now not received the detailed treatment that she offers. Sachs's reform proposals were exceedingly moderate, almost totally nonideological, and were in no way a violation of halakhah. They consisted mainly of externals: decorum, a male choir, abolition of the auction of honors, plus the elimination of some piyyutim; a few prayers could be said in German. Throughout his life, Sachs remained a sworn opponent of placing an organ in the synagogue, which he believed would set the aesthetic element above the religious. However, his proposals aroused the ire of the traditionalists, who regarded any tampering with existing minhag as impermissible.

Despite additional duties as educator and pastor, Sachs was popularly known especially as a preacher—and generally regarded as one of the best: charismatic, eloquent, and, upon occasion, polemical. Schad devotes about one-quarter of her study to his sermons, some of them published in two volumes after his death, many only to be found in some form among his papers. The long-neglected sermonic literature of German Jewry has received recent attention in books by Simone Lässig and Benjamin Maria Baader.Footnote ⁶ Schad uses the Sachs sermons to elucidate his sources of intellectual influence and inspiration as well as his mode of thought. She argues persuasively, though in stated opposition to Altmann, that Sachs's sermons are based less on the Protestant aim of edification (Erbauung) than on the Hegelian notion of elevation (Erhebung). Less convincing is her argument for a neo-Platonic influence, upon which she insists repeatedly despite the fact that Sachs never makes any reference to the works of classical neo-Platonism. As for the subject matter of the sermons, Schad argues that they focus upon the Jewish individual as human being. The more polemical ones attack Orthodoxy and, more commonly, Reform, uncharitably reducing the one to soulless observance and the other to political aspiration. Surprisingly, neither in Schad's analysis of German Jewish homiletics nor anywhere else in the volume, does gender become a consideration.

As he was not a halakhist, neither was Sachs a critical scholar of the caliber of a Zunz, a Geiger, or a Frankel. However, he gained considerable repute as a translator, first of Psalms and then, more prominently, of medieval Hebrew poetry. Sachs was less interested in origins than in the spirit and the possible contemporary impact of the sources that he studied, especially the midrash, to which he gave central importance. Although his Psalms translation sought to be entirely faithful to the text, his translations of medieval poetry were intended to be creative works that sought to retain the rhyme and meter of the originals, though often at the cost of a transmutation of meaning. Not surprisingly, he was especially drawn to Jehuda Halevi, though his own Jewish national sentiment is better understood as a spiritual peoplehood than an active messianic hope for the establishment of a Third Commonwealth. Schad not only cites examples of Sachs's translations but also helpfully provides the Hebrew originals for them.

Sachs was also a liturgist. His prayer books for the Sabbath and holidays enjoyed a wide and lasting acceptance in traditional religious settings. They contain almost no changes or omissions in the Hebrew text and only a few revisions in the German. (He has no problem retaining unchanged, both in Hebrew and in German, the Jewish man's blessing God for not having made him a woman.) The prayer books’ appeal lay principally in the elevating style of Sachs's translations, in what Schad calls Sachs's “humanizing” of the texts.

In the German tradition, this is an exceedingly comprehensive, detailed, and deeply researched study. Its understanding of Sachs is suggestive and challenging. Even if not all of Schad's interpretations are entirely persuasive, she has delivered a notable contribution to the understanding of a significant figure in the history of German Jewry.