A Rabbi's Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play

Joseph Krauskopf (born January 21, 1858, Ostrowo, Prussia - ?) was a prominent American Rabbi, author, and leader of Reform Judaism. In July, 1872, at the age of fourteen, Krauskopf emigrated to the United States and went to Fall River, Massachusetts, where he found employment as clerk in a tea-store. Through the influence of friends, in October 1875, Krauskopf secured admittance into the first class of Hebrew Union College located in Cincinnati. While studying there and in the University of Cincinnati, Krauskopf acted as a tutor, contributed articles to journals, and published (with H. Berkowitz) "The First Union Hebrew Reader" and "Second Union Hebrew Reader" and "Bible Ethics" (1883). He graduated from the university and from the Hebrew Union College (rabbi) in 1883. In 1885, the faculty of the college conferred upon him the degree of D.D.For a short time Krauskopf served as Rabbi in Peoria, Illinois, and in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Krauskopf received and accepted a call from the Bnai Jehudah congregation in Kansas City, Missouri. He was appointed by the governor of Missouri as a life-member of the Board of National Charities and Corrections, and in 1885 was elected vice-president of the Pittsburg Conference, of which Dr. I. M. Wise was president. In the same year Krauskopf received a call from the Reform Synagogue, Congregation Keneseth Israel of Philadelphia. Krauskopf entered on his duties in Philadelphia, October 19, 1887. He established a Sunday service in addition to the regular Shabbat service. Under his ministration the congregation flourished, and has become one of the largest Jewish congregations in the United States. Seventeen volumes of Krauskopf's lectures, embracing subjects in the fields of religion, ethics, and social science, have been published since 1888. He aided in the organization of the Jewish Publication Society of America, in the spring of 1888. In the spring of the year 1894, when the stream of immigration of Russian Jewish exiles into the United States was at its fullest, Krauskopf resolved to visit Russia. He made a study of the condition of the Jews within the Pale of Settlement and of the agricultural colonies in the interior. One of the institutions Krauskopf visited was the Jewish Agricultural School at Odessa, the excellence of which so impressed him that immediately after his return to the United States he set to work to establish a National Farm School, at Doylestown, Pa. Krauskopf was president of that institution, now called Delaware Valley College. By his efforts Keneseth Israel succeeded in building its present house of worship in 1892. Shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish-American war in 1898, Krauskopf was chosen by the National Relief Commission as one of three special field commissioners instructed to visit the camps of the United States and Cuba, and to render such relief as was found necessary. In March, 1903, he was elected director-general of the I. M. Wise Memorial Fund, and in July of the same year president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.