Rav Shimshon Refoel Hirsch

Early years

Rav Shimshon Refoel Hirsch zt"l was born in Hamburg on June 20, 1808, at a time when the city was ruled by France. His father, Refoel Arye Hirsch, was a merchant, yet he devoted many hours to Torah study.

Torah ran in the family. Mendel Frankfurter, his grandfather, established the Talmud Torah of Hamburg and served without pay as assistant rabbi in nearby Altona. His granduncle Löb Frankfurter authored a number of Hebrew works, one of which, Harechasim Lebik'ah, is a commentary on the Torah.

His teacher was Chacham Isaac Bernays. The Torah learning he gained from him, along with Chacham Bernays's personal influence, persuaded the young man that he would not go into business as his parents wished, but would become a rabbi. To prepare, he learned Gemara in Mannheim with Rav Yaakov Ettlinger, and then enrolled at the University of Bonn, where Abraham Geiger, later his opponent, was a fellow student. Although he is often called "Dr.", he never earned a doctorate.

Torah and leadership

In 1830 Rav Shimshon was chosen as Landesrabbiner, the chief rabbi, of the principality of Oldenburg. There he wrote Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum (Nineteen Letters on Judaism), which came out in Altona in 1836 under the pen name Ben Usiel (or Uziel).

Nothing like it had been seen in German Jewish life. Written in classical German for educated readers, the book presented Orthodox Judaism with brilliance and defended every one of its practices and ordinances without compromise. It made a deep impression, and the beginning of Neo-Orthodoxy, a renewal of Orthodox Judaism in a more modern and gracious dress, is dated from its appearance.

In 1838 he issued Horeb, oder Versuche über Jissroel's Pflichten in der Zerstreuung, a textbook of Judaism for educated Jewish youth, meant to accompany the Letters. In truth he had written Horeb first, but his publishers feared that in a time when reform was fashionable, no one would buy a book upholding traditional Judaism. Two more works in letter form followed: Erste Mittheilungen aus Naphtali's Briefwechsel (1839) and Zweite Mittheilungen aus einem Briefwechsel über die Neueste Jüdische Literatur (1844). Both took issue with the reforms proposed by Geiger, Holdheim and others, and the second was aimed at Holdheim's Die Autonomie der Rabbinen (1843).

In 1841 he moved to Emden, from where he served as chief rabbi for Aurich and Osnabrück in Hanover. During those five years communal work took nearly all his time and writing had to wait. Even so, he established a secondary school offering both Torah and secular studies, the first place he put into practice his motto, Torah im Derech Eretz (Torah together with involvement in the world).

In 1843 Rav Shimshon applied to be Chief Rabbi of the British Empire. Thirteen candidates came forward, most from Germany, and the field was cut to four: Nathan Marcus Adler, Hirsch Hirschfeld, Benjamin Hirsch Auerbach and Rav Shimshon himself. Each of 135 communities had a single vote. On December 1, 1844, Adler was declared the winner with 121 votes; Hirschfeld received 12 and Rav Shimshon 2.

In 1846 Nikolsburg in Moravia called him to its rabbinate, and in 1847 he became chief rabbi of both Moravia and Austrian Silesia. For five years he occupied himself with reorganizing the Jewish congregations and teaching many talmidim. By virtue of his office he held a seat in the Moravian Landtag (provincial assembly), where he argued for greater civil rights for Jews. He also gave far more weight than religious Jews were used to giving to the study of the entire Tanach, not only the Torah and chosen readings, alongside Gemara.

He found these years difficult, drawing criticism from Reform-minded Jews on one side and, on the other, from a strongly traditional Orthodox group who thought some of his changes went too far.

In 1851 he accepted an invitation from a separatist Orthodox group in Frankfurt am Main, formed within a Jewish community most of whom had turned to Reform. Called the Israelitische Religionsgesellschaft (Israelite Religious Society), it grew under his guidance into a large congregation of about 500 families, and he served as its rabbi for the rest of his life.

He set up the Realschule and the Bürgerschule, where a thorough Jewish education was joined to the parts of secular learning that the Torah recognizes as true, in line with Torah im Derech Eretz. He also founded and edited the monthly Jeschurun (1855–1870, with a new series from 1882), and he wrote most of its content himself.

In 1876 Edward Lasker, a Jewish member of the Prussian Landtag, put forward the Austrittsgesetz (Secession Bill), under which a Jew could withdraw from a local religious community without losing his Jewish status. It became law on July 28, 1876. Even then a dispute arose over whether halachah actually required secession. Rav Shimshon taught that it did, even though this meant appearing in court and showing open disapproval of the Reform-dominated main community (Grossgemeinde). His contemporary Rav Isaac Dov Bamberger of Würzburg argued that secession was not needed if the main community made fitting provision for its Orthodox members. The split left deep wounds and hurt feelings, and its echoes lasted until the Nazis destroyed the Frankfurt community.

Teachings and seforim

Beyond the works already described, he wrote two anonymous pamphlets: Jüdische Anmerkungen zu den Bemerkungen eines Protestanten (Emden, 1841), answering a hostile pamphlet by an anonymous Protestant, and Die Religion im Bunde mit dem Fortschritt (Frankfurt am Main, 1854), answering provocations from the Reform-led main community.

His Torah commentary, Uebersetzung und Erklärung des Pentateuchs, appeared in five volumes between 1867 and 1878, and the first volume reached a third edition in 1893. It is an innovative and influential work. During the secession debate he wrote Das Princip der Gewissensfreiheit (1874) and Der Austritt aus der Gemeinde (1876). He later published his Uebersetzung und Erklärung der Psalmen (1882) and, in 1884, Ueber die Beziehungen des Talmuds zum Judenthum, which defends the Gemara and its literature against anti-Semitic slanders made in Russia. When he passed away he left a translation and explanation of the siddur in manuscript, and it was printed afterward.

He lived after the Napoleonic era, when Jews were gaining civil rights across Europe and calls for reform grew loud. Much of his writing considers what Orthodox Judaism can become in such a time, when religious freedom also meant being free to observe the mitzvos without persecution or mockery. From this came Austritt, an independent Orthodoxy that offers no approval, spoken or implied, to efforts at reform. A second great theme is the symbolic meaning of many mitzvos and passages of the Torah, central to Horeb and carried on in his Torah commentary and his articles in Jeschurun.

A third area, only recently rediscovered, is his analysis of the Hebrew language, found mostly in his Torah commentary. He examines the shorashim (three-letter roots) of many words and builds a system on the idea that letters which sound alike share a meaning. So zohar (light), tzohar (a translucent window) and tahor (pure) are related, since the letters zayin, tzadi and tes sound similar. Rashi uses this approach in many places too. Rav Shimshon himself called the effort, in his own words, "totally unscientific", yet it has led to the publication of an etymological dictionary of Hebrew. Later writers have found echoes of the Kuzari, the Ramban and the Maharal of Prague in his work, though he named no influences apart from traditional Jewish sources, and most of his ideas were his own.

Later years and passing

In his final years Rav Shimshon worked to found an association of independent Jewish communities, known as the Freie Vereinigung, the Free Union for the Interests of Orthodox Judaism. Within thirty years of his passing it became the pattern on which the worldwide Agudas Yisroel movement was formed.

He loved Eretz Yisroel deeply, as his writings show, but he did not support the efforts of Rav Zvi Hirsch Kalischer toward a political return. He held that Jewish independence in the Land depends on Divine Providence alone, and would not come before the Messianic era.

Family reports suggest that he caught malaria in Emden, and that it troubled him with fevers for the rest of his life. Rav Shimshon passed away in Frankfurt am Main on 27 Teves 5649 (December 31, 1888), and he is buried there.

Legacy

Mendel Hirsch (1833–1900), his son, was a writer and scholar. Rahel Hirsch (1870–1953), his granddaughter, was the first woman to become a professor of medicine in Prussia.

His collected writings, Gesammelte Schriften (also called Nachalath Zwi), began to appear in 1902. Most of his works have since been translated into English and Hebrew, largely by his descendants. Dayan Isidor Grunfeld of London rendered Horeb in the 1950s, his grandson Isaac Levi, also of London, translated the Torah commentary in the 1960s, and most of the Collected Writings were put into English from 1984 to 2012, dedicated to the memory of his grandson Joseph Breuer.

The Nineteen Letters appeared in Hebrew as Iggeros Tzafon (by M. S. Aronson, Wilna, 1892) and in English as The Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel (by Bernard Drachman, New York, 1899). A 1995 edition with notes by Rav Joseph Elias traces his sources in rabbinic literature and answers the claim that his thought was rooted in secular philosophy.