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Rabbi S. R. Hirsch and His Perception of Germany and German Jewry

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Rabbi S. R. Hirsch and His Perception of Germany and German Jewry Matthias Morgenstern Rabbi S. R. Hirsch and his Perception of Germany and German Jewry Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888), the “champion of Orthodoxy” in nine- teenth-century Judaism in Germany, was, as Robert Liberles has noted, “a puzzle for his contemporaries and has remained so for later scholars seeking to unravel the complex components of his personality” (Liberles 1985, 113).¹ Contemporary and later scholarly literature paint an inconsistent picture of Hirsch and his work: One side portrays him as a radical’s radical, an uncompromising and militant defender of Orthodox principles, and an advocate of Orthodox independence, hence segregation. This view, therefore, holds Hirsch responsible for the orga- nizational division of the Jews in Germany in the nineteenth century (Lichtheim 1951, 37). Another side calls him a reformer, a modernizer, and revolutionary, or, at least, “the most progressive leader of German Orthodoxy” (Liberles 1985, 113). His contemporaries and later researchers perceived underlying tensions in his character – in his life and work, acceptance of moderate reforms in synagogue service² coexisted with fierce opposition to reform in other spheres. Cultural openness under the motto of Torah im derekh eretz existed on the one side, and a grim battle in the arena of congregational politics – the Orthodox fight for orga- nizational independence from the larger Jewish community in Frankfurt, the famous Frankfurt secession dispute – prevailed on the other. He fought for civic and political rights during the 1848 revolution in Moravia, which seemed to make him a liberal on the one hand; in his dealings with religious affairs, he insisted on scrupulous observance of the norms of the Shulhan Arukh as he understood them on the other.³ How then, does Hirsch’s attitude toward Germany and his perception of German Jewry, including its task in history, fit into this contradict- ing picture? The question of his relationship to Germany and German culture is part of the riddle. His “deeply felt attachment to German culture and his political loyalty to 1 I have discussed the diverse and contradictory features of Hirsch’s image in Morgenstern (2002, 108–109). 2 Hirsch advocated a well-regulated synagogue service and pleaded in favor of sermons in the vernacular; during his time as Landesrabbiner in Oldenburg, he was also willing to leave out the Kol nidre prayer in the Yom Kippur service; cf. also Haberman (1998, 76). 3 Elsewhere, I have tried to show that the Hirschian separatist principle and Hirsch´s cultural openness under the rubric of Torah im derekh eretz are not contradictory but part and parcel of one comprehensive strategy of Jewish self-assertiveness in the Frankfurt am Main context (Mor- genstern 2001, 14–28). DOI 10.1515/9783110367195-013, © 2018 Matthias Morgenstern, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. 208 Matthias Morgenstern the German land” (Liberles 1985, 133) gives reason to regard him, from a Jewish point of view, as an assimilated middle-of-the-roader and accommodationist theologian who retooled Judaism as a “religion” in the Western European sense and did away with all Jewish nationalism, indeed all ethnic ties (Japhet 1948, 105–106).⁴ At the same time, Hirsch consistently employed the language of Jewish nationhood, and he was either praised or criticized for his “latent nationalism” (Thieberger 1919/1920, 565) or even his “extreme religious nationalism” (Rosen- bloom 1962, 238).⁵ In order to understand Hirsch´s perception of German Jewry, we must first compose a picture of Hirsch’s perception of Germany and also of his understand- ing of himself as a Jewish leader working for his cause in the German-speaking countries. As Hirsch never addressed either of these topics openly and directly, we have to look for indirect indications in his oeuvre. His Biblical commentaries, a treasure trove full of – albeit never explicit – allusions to contemporary events can reward our search.⁶ 1 Germany as “fatherland, birthplace and paternal home” In his commentary on Genesis 12:1, published in 1867, Hirsch refers to God’s telling the Patriarch Abraham to leave his country and go unto a land that He will show him. In his remarks on this text, the author – with reflections on the phonetic shape of the Hebrew words, a kind of etymology or pseudo-etymology typical of his style – surprisingly does not focus on the land that God promised to the Patriarch and later gave to the Israelites. Instead, he starts by mentioning together form the soil בית and מולדת, ארץ“ :the “land” that Abraham was leaving 4 Cf. Gershom Scholem’s remarks on Hirsch (“bourgeois accommodation of an orthodox kind,” “ghastly accommodation theology”) in his critique of Isaac Breuer’s novel Der Neue Kusari (Scho- lem 1971, 328 and 329). (Originally in “Politik der Mystik,” Jüdische Rundschau, 17 July 1934, 1–2). 5 Rosenbloom quotes Zvi Kurzweil. For Hirsch’s emphasis on Jewish nationhood, see his Biblical commentary on Ex. 6:7 (S. R. Hirsch, The Pentateuch 2, 67): “… [I will] take you to be My people… a people, a Nation” (= Der Pentateuch 2, 53). Hirsch’s delicate distinction between the German terms Nation and Nationalität are beyond the scope of this essay. 6 Scholarly literature on Hirsch uses his Biblical exegesis in order to decipher his attitude to- ward contemporary events and contemporary life. As he did not state his views directly, scholars deduce them from subtle remarks and allusions, which leads to often controversial results. Cf., for example, Liberles (1985, 194–195); Morgenstern (2002, 146); Tasch (2011) (cf. my review in: Frankfurt Jewish Studies Bulletin 37 (2011/12): 161–165). See also Ganzel (2010). Rabbi S. R. Hirsch and his Perception of Germany and German Jewry 209 ,the country, the nationality ,ארץ .out of which the personality of people grows ,ארץ) ,with all the special bodily, mental and moral characteristics which it gives the cradle in ,ערש ,”to which our whole being is “married ,ארס as our country, is ,שם our ,שמים as the earth is our “cradle” and over it is ארץ …which we grow to life “there,” our future (Hirsch 1973, 223).⁷ Although Hirsch only hints at the reason for this apparent shift of interest, it seems clear that his decision to emphasize the land where Abraham was born, and not the Promised Land, reflects the commentator’s – and his readers’ – rela- tionship to the land where they were living, Germany: We have mentioned these thoughts innate in the Hebrew language to realise how deeply and intimately even our very language feels and values the worth of one’s fatherland and birth- place. It is certainly not meant to be any belittleing of this factor if the planting of the first Jewish germ demanded forsaking fatherland, birth-place and paternal home. It is rather just the appreciation of these factors wherein lies the greatness of the isolation demanded there. This demand itself placed Abraham in the completest contrast to the ruling tendency of his age (Hirsch 1973, 224).⁸ This observation fits in with the widely held understanding of Hirsch and his writings as typically German. In fact, this perception applies not only to Hirsch himself and his oeuvre but also to his independent Orthodox congregation in Frankfurt am Main, the Israelitische Religionsgesellschaft. Similarly, the tendency has been to regard German-Jewish Neo-orthodoxy as a whole as the most typi- cally Teutonic branch of modern Judaism. Undeniably, Hirsch’s life and work bore Germanic traits. Indeed, in the later decades of the nineteenth century, it was common to relate some characteristic features of his biography to central moments in contemporary German history.⁹ He was born in Hamburg, the city in which, on 18 October 1818, the fifth anni- versary of the Leipzig “Battle of the Nations,” a modern synagogue service with a German-language sermon and an organ had been instituted. The young Hirsch witnessed his family’s experiences in their fight against the local Reform move- ment (Liberles 1985, 115). Forty-five years later, on 18 October 1868, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Völkerschlacht, when Hirsch was rabbi of the segregationist orthodox Religions- 7 The German original is in Hirsch (1867, 183[on Gen. 12: 1]); on Hirsch’s relationship to the land of Israel, see Morgenstern (2014, 235–239). 8 The German original is in Hirsch (1867, 184); Hirsch’s interpretation here differs considerably from that of his grandson Isaac Breuer who, in his novel The New Kuzari (1934), focuses on the departure and on the country that the Patriarch is going to; cf. Isaac Breuer (1934, 149–150). 9 I have dealt with this perception of Hirsch in my From Frankfurt to Jerusalem (2002, 141–147). 210 Matthias Morgenstern gesellschaft in Frankfurt, at a public appearance, he linked the German national fight for freedom with his own stance as an Orthodox rabbi facing the assaults of what he called “non-Judaism,” i.e., the reformers within the Frankfurt Jewish community (Hirsch 1883/84, 41–56).¹⁰ Hirsch’s address, delivered in the syna- gogue of his Frankfurt congregation, was greeted as the best example of his German patriotism; its reception equaled that of his famous Schillerrede, deliv- ered four years earlier on the hundredth university of the German poet Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) (Hirsch 1912, 6: 308–321).¹¹ In the decades after the unifica- tion of imperial Germany in 1871, the Orthodox press in Germany emphasized a certain ideological closeness between the German-Jewish Orthodox movement led by Hirsch and Bismarck and his work.¹² Typically German, albeit in another way, were his endeavors in the years before being appointed rabbi in Frankfurt. As Landesrabbiner of Moravia and Austrian Silesia (1847–1851), Hirsch lobbied for a reorganization of the Jewish con- gregational system.
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