Judah Leib "Leopold" Löw (, ; 22 May 1811 – 13 October 1875) was a Hungarian rabbi, regarded as the most important figure of Neolog Judaism. Biography Löw was born to the only Jewish family in the village Černá Hora, Moravia, then part of the Austria. His Jewish name, as appears in all his rabbinical correspondence, was Judah Leib. On his father's side, he was descended from the Maharal of Prague, and on his mother's from Menachem Mendel Krochmal. He received his preliminary education at the yeshivot of Třebíč, Kolín, Lipník nad Bečvou and Eisenstadt (1824 – 35), and then studied philology, pedagogics, and Christian theology at the Lyceum of Bratislava and at the universities of Pest and Vienna (1835 – 41). After having been a teacher at Prostějov, he succeeded to the rabbinate of Nagykanizsa (10 September 1841). Löw early in his career acquired a knowledge of Hungarian, and was the first to introduce it into the synagogue service, his first sermon in that language being printed in 1845. In 1844 he began his literary activity on behalf of the emancipation of the Hungarian Jews, taking the lead in that struggle until its object was attained (1867). The periodical Ben Chananja, edited by him from 1858 to 1867, was an especially influential factor in this movement. In 1846 Löw had been called to Pápa, where he encountered many difficulties. After the revolution he was denounced by his enemies, and was arrested, but was pardoned by General Julius Jacob von Haynau on 14 December 1849 and liberated after two months' imprisonment. In consequence of this persecution he accepted a call to Szeged, where he was installed on 10 December 1850. He refused subsequent calls to Lviv, Brno, and Bucharest, as well as to the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums at Berlin. He died at Szeged, Austria-Hungary. Influence on Hungarian Reform Löw brought his thorough knowledge of history, theology, and esthetics to bear upon the reform of the ritual in agreement with modern views. He was the foremost preacher of Hungary, especially in the vernacular, and was invited to participate in nearly all the patriotic celebrations and synagogal dedications. His Hungarian sermons (1870) formed the first Jewish collection of the kind issued in that language. Löw combined the careful, logical arrangement of the Christian sermon with a clever analysis of complicated haggadic sentences. His studies, beginning with the history of