Heinrich Gross (rabbi)

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Heinrich Gross (also known as Henri Gross) was a German rabbi and scholar born November 6, 1835 in Szenicz (then part of the Hungarian Kingdom, now Senica, Slovakia) and died in 1910.

He studied rabbinic literature with Judah Aszod and trained at the Breslau rabbinical seminary. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Halle in 1866; his Leibniz thesis won a university prize.

Afterwards, Gross worked as a private teacher for Baron Horace Günzburg in Paris. During two years in Paris he gathered material for his major work Gallia Judaica at the Bibliothèque Nationale.

In 1869 he moved to Berlin and joined Leopold Zunz, adopting Zunz’s research methods. In 1870 he became rabbi of Gross-Strelitz in Silesia. From 1875 he served as rabbi of Augsburg.

Gross wrote extensively on the history of Jewish literature, especially the French Jews of the Middle Ages. His Gallia Judaica (Paris, 1897) explores medieval geography and literary history of French Jews and became a standard reference. He contributed many articles to Jewish scholarly journals and also wrote Lehrbuch der Israelitischen Religion für die Oberen Klassen der Mittelschulen (a textbook on Jewish religion for upper middle school students).