Meyer Kayserling

Meyer Kayserling (also Meir or Moritz, 17 June 1829 – 21 April 1905) was a German rabbi and historian.

Life Kayserling was born in Gleidingen in the Kingdom of Hanover, and was the brother of writer and educator Simon Kayserling. He was educated at Halberstadt, at Nikolsburg (Moravia) where he studied under Samson Raphael Hirsch, at Prague where he studied under S.J. Rapoport, at Würzburg where he studied under Seligman Baer Bamberger, and finally at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He devoted himself to history and philosophy. Encouraged in historical researches in Berlin by Leopold von Ranke, Kayserling turned his attention to the history and literature of the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula.

In 1861, the government of Aargau appointed him rabbi of the two Swiss Jewish municipalities of Endingen and Lengnau in Surbtal, an office he held until 1870. During his residence in Switzerland, he argued in favor of civil equality for his coreligionists In the Aargau, the Jewish communities were given special exemption from a law requiring that animals had to killed by a blow to the head. Proponents of animal rights attacked this exemption for the purposes of shechita. Kayserling (1869) published a pamphlet in defence of the practice. The society for animal rights and the Jewish community reached a compromise in 1889, which required the animals to be anesthetized before shechita. Nevertheless, the practice of shechita was outlawed in Switzerland in the first popular initiative, in 1893.

In 1870, Kayserling accepted a call as preacher and rabbi to the Jewish community of Budapest,

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