2021-05-28 19:45:15
1855: Selig Cassel who was the brother of Rabbi David Cassel, was baptized as a member of the Evangelical Church in Prussia today at St. Peter's Church, also changing his name to Paulus Cassel.
Before his conversion, he wrote a comprehensive history of the jews from the destruction of Jerusalem to 1847.
He was editor of the influential Erfurt Zeitung from 1850-56.
In 1867, Cassel was appointed missionary by the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews (which deserves its very own post, but that's another time. For now,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%27s_Ministry_Among_Jewish_People?wprov=sfla1), a position which he retained till March 1891. At the same time (1867) Cassel was assigned to the pastorate of the Christuskirche (ChristChurch)in Berlin, remaining there for twenty-four years.
Cassel was a member of the Prussian Parliament in 1866-67 but left to attend to his other concerns.
Philosemite and fellow preacher and professor H. L. Strack confessed that "it is not clear what induced Cassel to join the Christian Church, though his reasons were obviously not mercenary".
The German jewish magazine Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums said of him: “When the anti-Semites began to show themselves, Cassel remembered his origin, and opposed the leaders, Stöcker, Wagner, and others with great decision and manliness. It was this manly action that gives us some satisfaction for his desertion of the parental religion. We have to judge this apostasy very differently from that of many others in former and present times, as he did not forsake his old creed for any worldly reason, or to get honours and position, but rather because he followed a mystical line of thought. God alone can judge the veracity and purity of his life; we dare not. ‘Peace be to his ashes!'”
Another publication, the Jewish Chronicle remarked: “The deaths of David and Paulus Cassel remove two brothers, both of whom had won a place for themselves among the honoured names of Jewish scholarship… Paulus was the greater man of the two, a scholar and writer of a higher type, and his works will live. He took a worthy part in the struggle against anti-Semitism. Paulus Cassel was perhaps the first man to recognize what was really meant by writing a history of the Jews.”
Cassel also wrote Die antisemiten un der evangelische kirche (The Anti-Semites and the Evangelical Church) in 1881.
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