ADLER Origin of surname

Nathan ben Simeon Adler ׂׂׂׂׂ(1741-1800), rabbi, born and educated in Frankfurt on Main, Germany, and when only 20 established a yeshiva where various prominent rabbis received their early teaching. Adler was attracted to mysticism, especially the system of Isaac Luria, and was the center of a kabbalistic circle. His followers claimed he was a wonder-worker. In 1779 the other rabbis and communal leaders prohibited -under threat of excommunication - the prayer assemblies in Adler's home. Adler persisted and eventually to avoid further conflict left for Boskovice where he became rabbi in 1782. However, after three years a quarrel broke out with the community and he returned to Frankfurt, where he reopened his yeshiva and refounded his congregation. He was excommunicated until a few weeks before his death

Hermann Adler (1911-2001), author, born in Dioszeg (now Sládkovičovo), Slovakia (then part of Austria-Hungary). He grew up in Nuremberg, Germany, and after graduating from a teachers' seminary in Wuerzburg taught in Landshut, Germany. In 1934 he returned to Czechoslovakia and in 1939 enlisted in the Czechoslovak legion in Poland. During World War II Adler fought in the Jewish resistance movement in Lithuania and Poland, participating in the ghetto uprisings in Vilna and Warsaw. He escaped to Budapest, was deported to Bergen-Belsen from which he was released and then made his home in Switzerland. A poet, playwright and essayist, his writings reflect his experiences of Nazi brutality. His later works were on psychological themes. He translated Itzhak Katznelson's Song of the Destroyed Jewish People from Yiddish into German.  His autobiographical work Sergeant Schmid received several awards.

Nathan Marcus Adler (1803-1890), rabbi, born in Hanover, Germany, where his father was chief rabbi. He received a liberal as well as a Jewish education, attending several universities. In 1830 he was appointed chief rabbi of Oldenburg and a year later, of Hanover. In 1845 Adler was installed as chief rabbi of the British Empire. He introduced modern standards into the British ministry and may be considered the creator of the British Chief Rabbinate.. His first efforts were directed at improving Jewish education in England and in 1855 he established Jews' College, the British rabbinical seminary. He was largely responsible for the establishment of the United Synagogue in the London area and took great interest in the provincial synagogues. The keynote of his life was an unflinching Orthodoxy and he was an early supporter of Hibbat Zion. Adler wrote a standard commentary on Targum Onkelos. He was succeeded in the Chief Rabbinate by his son, Hermann.

Cyrus Adler (1863-1940), scholar and tireless worker for the Jewish community, born in Van Buren, a small town in Arkansas, USA, the son of a cotton planter. After the death of his father Adler and his family moved to Pennsylvania, where he was influenced by his uncle and cousin and as a result came to love Jewish tradition and scholarship. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania and went on to obtain a Ph.D. Degree from John Hopkins University in 1887.

Between 1887 and 1893 he taught Semitic languages at John Hopkins becoming an assistant professor in 1890. From 1892 he was librarian at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, with a particular interest in Semitics and archeology. Between 1908 and 1940 he was president of the Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning and also Chancellor of the Theological Seminary of America and, under Solomon Schechter, he played an active part in the institution's reorganization. In 1905 he was chairman of the Board of trustees and when Schechter died in 1915, Adler became acting president of the Seminary. In 1924 he was elected full president. While insisting on the maintenance of high standards of academic excellence, he was also responsible for constructing the Seminary's new buildings.

He wrote many articles on comparative religion and Semitic languages and was a contributor to the "New International Encyclopedia", an editor of the "Jewish Encyclopedia" and a member of the committee which translated the Jewish Publication Society's version of the Hebrew Bible, published in 1917. He edited the first seven volumes of the "American Jewish Yearbook" (1899-1905). Between 1910 and 1940 he was editor of the "Jewish Quarterly Review".

Adler was one of the founders of the Jewish Welfare Board and also of the Jewish Publication Society, where he was chairman of various committees for many years. In 1892 he helped to found the Jewish Historical Society and served as its president for over 20 years. A joint founder of the American Jewish Committee in 1906, he was elected chairman of its executive board in 1915 in which capacity he represented the committee at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. In 1913 he was one of the founders of the United Synagogue of America and served as its president. Adler's views on Zionism were ambigious and this limited his relationships with the leaders of American Zionism and the leaders of American traditional Judaism.

Friedrich Adler (1857-1938), poet and dramatist, born in Amschelberg, Bohemia (then part of the Austrian Empire, now Kosova Hora, Czech Republic). A poet of simple, realistic power, he is the author of "Gedichte" (Berlin, 1893); "Neue Gedichte" (Leipzig, 1899); "Vom goldenen Kragen" (Prague, 1907), a volume of sonnets, and other poems.

His wide knowledge of languages enabled him to translate into German the works of many foreign poets, including the Czech poet Jaroslav Vrchlicky. In 1926 he completed a translation of Smetana's "The Bartered Bride", which he was commissioned to do by the government. A Spanish influence manifests itself in his comedies "Zwei Eisen im Feuer"; "Don Gi"l; and "Der glaaserne Magister". His three-act play "Freiheit" is his most ambitious effort in the drama.

Jankel Adler (born Jakub "Jankiel" Adler)(1895-1949), painter from the School of Paris, born in Tuszyn, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire), the seventh of ten siblings. In 1912, he went to Belgrade to study engraving, then in 1913 he went to Barmen in Germany where he attended an art school. He continued his studies at the Decorative Arts Academy of Düsseldorf with Gustave Wiethüchter. During World War 1, he was enlisted in the Russian Army, was captured by the Germans, but released quickly. I

Back in Poland in 1918, Adler shows his works at in Lodz and Warsaw. During these years, Adler comes closer to the Der Sturm art group. In 1919, in Lodz, he participated in the creation of the literary coterie Yung-Yiddish, together with the writer Moyshe Broderzon. He left for Düsseldorf in 1920. In 1922, he met Otto Dix and participated in the creation of the "Die Kommune" group. He also participated in the International Exhibition of revolutionary artists in Berlin. Adler had great success with the frescos of the Planetarium which he painted in 1925. After a short stay in Spain in 1930, he returned to the Academy of Düsseldorf to study with Paul Klee in 1931.

Adler drew a revolutionary placard during the elections at the Reichstag after the Hitler's accession to power. He left Germany and arrived in France in 1933. During the following years (1935-1937) he traveled to Italy, Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Russia and Poland. A major retrospective of his work took place in Warsaw in 1935. In 1937, Adler settled in Paris for some time, before enrolling in the Polish Army duringWW II. He was demobilised for health-related reasons in 1941 and having lived for some time in Scotland, he moved to London 1943. As he had lost a large part of his family in the Holocaust - none of his siblings survived the Holocaust, Adler vowed never to go back to Germany and refused to show his art in that country.

Adler died in Whitley Cottage near Aldbourne, England.

Many of his paintings have Jewish themes, he also painted a few abstract compositions. His works are on display at Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Tate museum in London, Jewish Museum in Berlin, and Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal. 

Guido Adler (1855-1941), musicologist, born in Eibenschuetz, Moravia (now Ivancice, Czech Republic). His family moved in 1864 to Vienna, where he studied at the Conservatory (with Anton Bruckner, among others) from 1868. In 1878 he received a doctoral degree in law from the Vienna University. Only then he abandoned law, was awarded a Ph.D. in musicology and became lecturer of music at the University of Vienna in 1881. From 1885 he was professor at the German University in Prague and in 1895 he succeeded his former teacher, Eduard Hanslick, as professor at the University of Vienna, retiring in 1927.
Among his writings concerning research methods of musical style are Der Stil in der Musik (1911) and Methode der Musikgeschichte (1919). Adler was co-founder and editor (1884-1894) of the Vierteljahrsschrift fuer Musikwissenschaft and from 1894 until 1938, was editor of Denkmaeler der Tonkunst in Oesterreich (Monuments of Music in Austria). He was also editor of a comprehensive Handbuch der Musikgeschichte (1924). Adler is also the author of books on Wagner (1904) and Mahler (1914). He died in Vienna, Austria.

Hugo Chaim Adler (1894-1955), cantor and composer, born in Antwerp, Belgium. Adler worked with Yossele Rosenblatt in Hamburg and served as cantor in Mannheim, Germany, between 1921-1939. Adler studied composition with Ernst Toch. In 1939 he escaped to the United States and was appointed cantor at the synagogue of Worcester, Massachusetts.
Adler set Franz Rosenzweig’s hymns to music, and was deeply influenced by Rosenzweig’s Juedisches Lehrhaus. He also composed the cantatas Licht und Volk (1931), Balak und Bileam (1934), Akedah (1938), Behold The Jew (1943), Jonah (1943) and Parable of Persecution (1946). In addition, he composed music for complete liturgies. He died in the United States.

Shulamit Aloni (Shulamit Adler) (1928-2014), Israeli minister and Knesset member who was a champion of civil liberties, challenger of the power of Israel's religious establishment and outspoken opponent of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, born in Tel Aviv to Polish immigrant parents. 

Aloni fought in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. She started her political career with the Labor-Alignment faction, then helped create the Citizens’ Rights Movement and, later, Meretz. A member of the Knesset for 28 years, she was the author of six books, including one of Israel’s earliest texts on civics.

In 1992, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin rebuked Aloni was who serving in his government as minister of education, for questioning the biblical version of creation and speaking in the same breath of the Hebrew matriarch Rachel and the prostitute Rahav. In 1993, after Aloni’s challenging of religious political leaders provoked a coalition crisis, Rabin demoted her from education minister to minister of communications, science and technology.

Aloni was awarded the Israel Prize in 2000 “for her struggle to right injustices and for raising the standard of equality.”

In 2008, at the age of 80, Aloni published “Israel: Democracy or Ethnocracy?” She wrote on the cover, “The state is returning to the ghetto, to Orthodox Judaism, and the rule of the fundamentalist rabbinate is becoming more profound.”

Israel Adler (1925-2009), musicologist, born in Berlin, Germany. He was brought to Eretz Israel in 1937 and studied at yeshivot. Between 1949-1963 Adler studied in Paris and received his Ph.D. in Musicology at the Sorbonne. For a period he was in charge of the Hebraica-Judaica department of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and published a catalogue of early Hebrew printed sources in the collection. Upon his return to Israel in 1963, Adler joined the Hebrew University staff, and founded and directed the Jewish Music Research Center at the institute. He was chief editor of Yuval from 1968 and of the music department of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. In 1969 Adler was made director of the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. In 1971 he was appointed visiting professor at Tel Aviv University and full professor at the Hebrew University Jerusalem. From 1974-1977 he was head of the Musicology Department at the Hebrew University. Adler’s publications include La pratique musicale savante dans quelques communautes juives en Europe aux XVII et XVIII siecles (1966).

Hermann Adler (1839-1911), chief rabbi of British Empire, born in Hanover, Germany, but brought to England as a child when his father Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler was appointed Chief Rabbi of Britain. He was educated both in England and Germany. From 1852-4 he attended University College school in London and then went to university in Leipzig, Germany. He was ordained a rabbi in Prague, Czech Republic. In 1862 Adler became principal of Jews College in London and two years later the rabbi of Bayswater Synagogue in London. In 1879 his father fell ill and son Hermann deputized for him for some twelve years. When Rabbi Nathan Adler died in 1891, Hermann was formally appointed to the position of Chief Rabbi in his place. In 1911 the Encyclopedia Britannica wrote that he had “raised the position to one of much dignity and importance.”

Adler followed many of the traditions established by his father, combining traditional orthodoxy with English dignity. His organizing skills and personality enabled him to unite the different British Jewish communities under his leadership. As a result of his behaviour and eloquence he was largely instrumental in securing recognition of the Chief Rabbinate as the accepted representative of Anglo-Jewry on public occasions alongside the heads of other religious denominations. The Reform and Sephardi Jewish communities also accepted him as their spokesman. Adler, however, never won the full confidence of the Russian and Polish immigrants who came to settle in Britain during the late 19th century. For them Adler's dress and manners were simply “too English”.

Larry Adler (1914-2001), harmonica player, born in Baltimore, Maryland (USA), surnamed Lawrence . He first performed in revues and films and developed the technique of the chromatic mouth organ. Between 1934 and 1939, Adler worked in England but returned to the US upon the outbreak of World War II. During the war he performed before US servicemen. Simultaneously, he embarked on a career as a concert performer and appeared as a soloist with symphony orchestras.
Adler’s ambition was to establish the harmonica as an instrument worthy of the performance of serious music. Upon Adler’s initiative, Darius Milhaud composed his Suite for harmonica and orchestra (1945), Ralph Vaughan-Williams wrote his Romance for harmonica and orchestra (1952) and Oedoen Partos wrote Dialogue (1963) for him. Adler is the author of How I Play (1936) and Harmonica Favourites (1944). Adler died in London.

Elkan Nathan Adler (1861-1946), traveler and collector of Hebrew, Judeo-Persian, and Judeo-Tajik manuscripts from the Jewish Persian and Bukharan communities, born in London, England, the son of Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler, chief rabbi of the United Kingdom. He published numerous articles on the history of the Jews of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. He travelled extensively with the aim of studying the Jewish communities of Egypt, Eretz Israel, Syria, Yemen, Central Asia, India and Iran which at the time were not well known by European Jewish scholars. During his travels to Teheran in 1896 and to Bukhara in 1897, he acquired a rich collection of Hebrew and Judeo-Persian manuscripts.

The manuscript collection includes both secular and religious works and comprises transliterations of Persian classical poetry, original poems in Hebrew and Judeo-Persian, stories, folklore, charms, treatises on medicine and astrology, medical prescriptions and dictionaries, calendars, accounts of religious persecution, biblical and apocryphal texts, dictionaries of biblical and Talmudic terms, liturgical hymns, prayer books, works on Kabbalah and Jewish commentaries written by European religious authors of the Middle Ages.  

In 1921 Adler sold his manuscript and book collections to the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati and the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York. In his will he left his personal archives to the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York.    

Alfred Adler (1870-1937), psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology, born in Vienna, Austria (then part of Austria-Hungary), to Jewish parents - his father, Leopold Adler, was a grain merchant. Adler received a medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1895. During his college years, he joined a group of socialist students, among which he met his future wife, Raissa Timofeyewna Epstein. She was an intellectual and social activist who had come from Russia to study in Vienna. They married in 1897 and soon after Adler converted to Protestantism. Two of their four children became psychiatrists.

Adler began his medical career as an ophthalmologist, and then changed to general practice. He became interested in psychiatry and was able to join  Sigmund Freud’s group. He was a member of Sigmund Freud’s discussion group known after 1908 as the Vienna Psychoanalysis Society (1902-1911), President of Psychoanalyst. Soc. and Co-editor of Zentralblatt fuer Psychoanalyse (1910-1911). Adler made the earliest synthesis between Marxist and Freudian thoughts (1909).

During his relationship with Freud, Adler began to form his own ideas regarding aggression. This eventually led to his breakup with Freud and he formed his own group, The Society for Individual Psychology. The “Individual Psychology" was based on premise of individual’s aim of self-determination, future orientation and his “will to power” against basic feelings of inferiority. Adler diminished the importance of intra psychic phenomena and stressed the importance of social factors in the neuroses development. Adler founded the Society of Free Analysis, which he renamed a year later as the Society for Individual Psychology. He also founded the first child guidance clinic that was connected to the Viennese school system (1919).

During World War I Adler served in the Austro-Hungarian Army as a physician. Following the war, he was involved in various projects, including clinics attached to state schools and the training of teachers. From 1924 onwards, Adler was a much-appreciated lecturer. In 1926, he went to the United States to lecture, and accepted a visiting position at the Long Island College of Medicine. In 1934, he and his family left Vienna. His lecture tours included many institutions, including the Pedagogical Institute, Vienna (1924), Columbia University in New York (1927), and frequent lecturing tours to other places in the United States. Adler died of a heart attack on May 28, 1937, during a series of lectures at Aberdeen University, Scotland.

Alexandra Adler (1901-2001), neurologist, psychologist, born in Vienna, Austria (then part of Austria-Hungary), the daughter of the psychiatrist Alfred Adler. She studied at the University of Vienna and graduated as Doctor of Medicine in 1926. Following her father, she became an expert in individual psychology. After her graduation and internship, she was a resident and visiting physician at the Neuropsychiatric Clinic of the University of Vienna until 1935. She was also editor of International Zeitschrift Individualpsychoterapie.

Adler left Vienna for the USA in 1935. She obtained a position as resident fellow assistant and instructor of neurology at the Harvard University School of Medicine, which she held until 1944. She also held positions as assistant in neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, resident associate and senior visiting physician at Boston City Hospital. From 1944 until 1946, she was assistant psychiatrist at the Duke University Hospital, Durham, North Carolina. In 1946 she became faculty member at the New York University as assistant clinical professor of neurology. She was promoted to associate clinical professor in 1953 and clinical professor of psychiatry in 1969. During this period she additionally held positions as member of staff at Bellevue Hospital, New York (1946); from 1946 to 1955 adjunct psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York; and during 1946-1956 she was associate visiting physician at Goldwater Memorial Hospital, New York. In 1948 she was appointed psychiatrist at the Department of Correction, New York and was elected as medical director of the Alfred Adler Mental Hygiene Clinic, New York. She was also editor of the International Journal of Individual Psychology.

Alexandra Adler was recognized as a leading authority in the field of individual psychology with specialty in psychosomatic syndromes and psychopharmacology. She was an authority on schizophrenia, pioneer in the study of post-traumatic stress disorder, and one of the first women neurologists at Harvard. She was a member and elected president of the New York Association of Individual Psychology; a member of the International Association of Individual Psychology, the American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Neurology; and Assistant for Research of Nervous and Mental Diseases.
In 1978, Alexandra Adler received the Golden Cross of Honor of the City of Vienna.
She died at the age of 99 in New York in 2001.

Eugène (Eugen) Adler (1890-1942), cantor and educator, born in Antwerp, Belgium. He moved to Switzerland, where he served as cantor and teacher at the Jewish communities of Bremgarten 1915-1916, St. Gallen, where he served the newly established Orthodox congregation Adass Jisraoel until 1919, and then in Liestal, until 1921. He then became a cantor in Rexingen, Germany, during 1921-1923 and later in Luxembourg, until 1929, when he moved to Sarreguemines in France, serving there until September 1st, 1939. At the outbreak of WW II, he was evacuated to Jarnac in the department of Charente in south western France. He was arrested in 1942, detained at the Drancy camp and deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, along with his wife and three children.

Siegfried Adler (1903-1958), businessman, born in Hintersteinau, Germany, into a family of smallholder farmers.  He entered a business career at an early age, first as a messenger boy at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Following his marriage to Lieselotte Hoexter, he moved to Berlin and began working as a designer in the manufacture and printing of textiles. Following the rise to power of the Nazis, the couple fled Germany, first to Czechoslovakia and then to the Land of Israel. They tried to obtain an entry visa to United States, but ultimately, they immigrated to Brazil settling in Sao Paulo in 1935.   

Arriving in Brazil penniless, he managed to purchase Manufacturas de Brinquedos Estrel-la Ltda, a bankrupt rag doll workshop and four machines at a discount price. Along with Carlos Weil, also a refugee from Germany who was an expert in wooden toys, Adler created he company’s first doll with a cloth body and carved face. His company, known as Fabrica de  Brinquedos  Estrela became a well-known Brazilian brand.

Adler was active in the Jewish community of Sao Paulo serving as a counselor from 1945 to 1949 and as a treasurer from 1954 to 1956.