(b. 1768, Halberstadt, Germany; d. 1828, Berlin, Germany)
A German Jewish philanthropist, Jacobson was also the financial agent of Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia
A “Father of (the American Jewish) Reform Movement.” [see also Abraham Geiger, Samuel Holdheim, and Leopold Zunz.]
He organized the first Reform service and later founded the first Reform Temple with the help of Jacob Herz Beer. Due to his belief in inter-racial association, he established a school for Jewish and Christian children in the Herz mountains in 1801. The Reform movement was also known as the “Liberal” or “Progressive” movement. It developed partly out of the political and cultural emancipation of Jews in Western Europe. Although Jacobson sought a basis for his ideas in traditional Judaism, the Reform movement soon sought to distance itself from Orthodoxy, nationalism, and the authority of the written and Oral Law and concentrate on the “universal” aspects of Judaism.
– after Eli Birnbaum