Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Kalisch, Marcus
KALISCH, MARCUS (1825–1885), biblical commentator, born of Jewish parents at Treptow, Pomerania, on 16 May 1825, was educated at the Gymnasium of the Graue Kloster, Berlin, and at Berlin university, and became proficient in both classical and Semitic philology. He afterwards graduated Ph.D. at Halle, and studied talmudical literature in the Rabbinical college at Berlin. The revolutionary movement in Germany in 1848 excited his active sympathy, and he deemed it prudent on its subsidence to retire to England. His father had at an earlier date resided for a time at Ipswich. Settling in London, Kalisch was secretary to the chief rabbi, Dr. N. M. Adler, until 1853, and was introduced during that period to the Rothschild family. He acted as tutor to the sons of Baron Lionel Rothschild, and remained throughout life on terms of intimacy with his pupils and their relatives. With their aid he published in 1855 the first volume—on Exodus—of an exhaustive commentary on the Pentateuch, and this was followed by a volume on Genesis in 1858, and by two volumes on Leviticus dated 1867 and 1872 respectively. Kalisch treated his subject in a thoroughly rationalistic method, and, although discursive, his work is valuable as an embodiment of the results of advanced continental scholarship. His literary labours were interrupted by illness in 1873, but he recovered sufficiently to publish two parts of a projected series of biblical studies—pt. i. on the prophecies of Balaam in 1877, and pt. ii. on Jonah in 1878. In 1880 appeared his ‘Path and Goal: a Discussion on the Elements of Civilisation and the Conditions of Happiness,’ a learned exposition of religious systems. He died on 23 Aug. 1885, at Baslow hydropathic establishment, Rowsley, Derbyshire, and was buried in the Jewish cemetery at Willesden. By his wife Clara, daughter of Dr. S. Stern, director of the Realschule, Frankfort-on-Maine, he left a son and a daughter.
Besides the works mentioned, Kalisch published a useful Hebrew Grammar, 2 pts. 1862–3 (pt. i. new edit. 1875); ‘Leben und Kunst,’ a collection of German poems, 1868, and two lectures on Oliver Goldsmith, 1860.
[Men of the Time, 11th edit.; Jewish Chronicle, 28 Aug. 1885; Jewish World, 28 Aug. 1885; Times, 31 Aug. 1885.]