SOLOMON HIRSCHEL was the youngest son of Hirschel Levin, who served as chief rabbi of the German community in England from 1758 until 1764. Born in 1761, he was the only British chief rabbi before Israel Brodie in the midtwentieth century to have begun his life in the country. However, his family left England for Halberstadt in 1764, and he was educated in Europe. After serving for nine years as rabbi in the Prussian city of Prenzlau, in 1802 he was invited to take up the chief rabbinate of the German Jewish community of London, a position that had been vacant (with an acting chief rabbi) for ten years following the death of David Tevele Schiff. Although he knew hardly any English, his British birth made him a popular appointment.

Hirschel had an impressive appearance, reflected in several portraits, including one in the pamphlet of his Trafalgar sermon. He reportedly had a ready wit, and a mastery of mathematics as well as of traditional Jewish texts. Although demeaned by opponents as a man of few scholarly accomplishments, he had a significant library of Judaica, including some 120 manuscripts, which went upon his death to the London Beit Hamidrash. He worked together with the Sephardi haham Raphael Meldola in trying to defend the traditions of Jewish life, and supervised the preparation of the Hebrew text for an 1822 edition of a prayer book (with English translation). His term as chief rabbi was marked by frequent conflicts with Jews in the community; towards the end of his life he was embroiled in the controversies surrounding the establishment of a congregation led by David Woolf Marks that insisted on reforms in the ritual. Todd Endelman characterizes his impact on Anglo-Jewish life as ‘limited’.

Preaching was not a major interest or preoccupation of Hirschel’s—subsequent chief rabbis were quite different in this regard—nor was there much sustained demand for it within the synagogue. Indeed, one of the ordinances passed by the wardens of the Great Synagogue in 1826 required that the rabbi receive prior permission from the wardens if he wanted to deliver a sermon on the sabbath afternoon.