Mordechai Breuer
| Rabbi Mordechai Breuer ZT"L | |
|---|---|
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| Personal details | |
| Born | May 14, 1921 Karlsruhe, Germany |
| Died | February 24, 2007 Jerusalem, Israel |
| Denomination | Orthodox |
| Residence | Bayit Ve-Gan, Jerusalem |
| Parents | Samson Breuer, Else Leah Neuenbürg |
Mordechai Breuer (Hebrew: מרדכי ברויאר; May 14, 1921 – February 24, 2007) was a German-born Israeli Orthodox rabbi. He was one of the world's leading experts on Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), and especially of the text of the Aleppo Codex.
His first cousin was the historian also named Mordechai Breuer. Breuer was a great-grandson of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.
Mordechai Breuer was born in 1921 to Samson and Else Leah Breuer. His paternal grandfather was Rabbi Dr. Salomon Breuer, son-in-law of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch. His mother died while Mordechai was a young child, and his father then married Agatha Jeidel. At age twelve, he and his family emigrated to then-British Palestine. There, he studied at Yeshivat Hebron and Yeshivat Kol Torah. He taught Tanakh in several yeshivot and schools in Israel beginning in 1947. In 1999 he was awarded the Israel Prize for original Rabbinical Literature. He was also given an honorary doctorate by the Hebrew University.
Breuer's position was that only a single correct text of Tanakh existed; any variants from this authoritative edition were therefore errors. Breuer's approach to establishing this correct text and punctuation of Tanakh was at first eclectic, based on several early manuscripts (and the Venice edition of Mikra'ot Gedolot) and their masoretic notes, as well as notes from Wolf Heidenheim and Minḥat Shai (Rabbi Solomon Norzi). He later gained access to the Aleppo Codex (dating from the tenth century) and found it to match almost perfectly with his work, supporting his thesis of only one correct edition. His edition was first published by Mosad Harav Kook in the Daat Mikra series and as its own volume. It was republished in 1998 and 2001 by different publishers. The last is the modern edition of the Tanakh known as Keter Yerushalayim (כתר ירושלים "The Jerusalem Crown"), referred to in English as the Jerusalem Codex. It is based graphically on the Aleppo Codex, and is now the official Tanakh of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and of the Israeli Knesset.
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