Kunstadt, Isaac (Ignáz) ben eliezer Lipman

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KUNSTADT, ISAAC (Ignáz) BEN ELIEZER LIPMAN

KUNSTADT, ISAAC (Ignáz ) BEN ELIEZER LIPMAN (1838–1909), Hungarian rabbi. Kunstadt was born in Pressburg and studied under Abraham Samuel Benjamin *Sofer (Schreiber), and afterward proceeded to Vienna. He was rabbi of Nagyabony (Hungary) from 1862 to 1882, and of the "status quo" community (i.e., the moderates who stood between the Orthodox and the Neolog communities) of Nagyvárad (Grosswardein) from 1882 to 1884. In the latter year he was appointed chief rabbi of Radautz (Radauti, in Bukovina). He possessed a good knowledge of German and was a fluent preacher in that language, but his ignorance of Hungarian, which was then rapidly becoming the vernacular of Hungarian Jewry, was a stumbling block. He is the author of Lu'aḥ Ereẓ (2 pts., 1885–87), consisting of talmudic novellae and scriptural interpretations; Lu'aḥ Ereẓ he-Ḥadash, a second edition with additions, was published in Vienna in 1915. Many of the sermons he preached on special occasions were published as separate pamphlets.

bibliography:

M. Kunstadt, in: I. Kunstadt, Lu'aḥ Ereẓ he-Ḥadash (1915), introd.; C.D. Lippe, Bibliographishes Lexicon, 1 (1899), 216f.; S. Sofer (Schreiber), Iggerot Soferim, pt. 4 (1928), 94f.; P. Ujvári, Magyar Zsidó Lexikon (1929), 518; P. Vajda, A zsidók tőrténete Abonyban (1896), 96f., 148.

[Nathaniel Katzburg]