Samson Raphael Hirsch

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Samson Raphael Hirsch bigraphy, stories - Jewish theologian

Samson Raphael Hirsch : biography

June 20, 1808 – December 31, 1888

Samson Raphael Hirsch (June 20, 1808 – December 31, 1888) was a German rabbi best known as the intellectual founder of the Torah im Derech Eretz school of contemporary Orthodox Judaism. Occasionally termed neo-Orthodoxy, his philosophy, together with that of Azriel Hildesheimer, has had a considerable influence on the development of Orthodox Judaism.

Hirsch was rabbi in Oldenburg, Emden, was subsequently appointed chief rabbi of Moravia, and from 1851 until his death led the secessionist Orthodox community in Frankfurt am Main. He wrote a number of influential books, and for a number of years published the monthly journal Jeschurun, in which he outlined his philosophy of Judaism. He was a vocal opponent of Reform Judaism and similarly opposed early forms of Conservative Judaism.

Early years and education

Hirsch was born in Hamburg, Germany. His father, though a merchant, devoted much of his time to Torah studies; his grandfather, Mendel Frankfurter, was the founder of the Talmud Torah in Hamburg and unsalaried assistant rabbi of the neighboring congregation of Altona; and his granduncle, Löb Frankfurter, was the author of several Hebrew works, including Harechasim le-Bik’ah (הרכסים לבקעה), a Torah commentary. Hirsch was a pupil of Chacham Isaac Bernays, and the Biblical and Talmudical education which he received, combined with his teacher’s influence, led him to determine not to become a merchant, as his parents had desired, but to choose the rabbinical vocation. In furtherance of this plan he studied Talmud from 1828 to 1829 in Mannheim under Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger. He then entered the University of Bonn, where he studied at the same time as his future antagonist, Abraham Geiger.

Final years

During the final years of his life, Hirsch put his efforts in the founding of the "Freie Vereinigung für die Interessen des Orthodoxen Judentums", an association of independent Jewish communities. During the 30 years after his death this organization would be used as a model for the formation of the international orthodox Agudas Yisrael movement. Hirsch had a great love for the Land of Israel, which is apparent from his writings, but was opposed to the proto-Zionist activities of Zvi Hirsch Kalischer.

From reports of his family members, it seems likely that Hirsch contracted malaria while in Emden, which continued to plague him during the rest of life with febrile episodes.

Hirsch died in 1888 in Frankfurt am Main and is buried there.

Hirsch’s son Mendel Hirsch (1833–1900) was a scholar and writer; his granddaughter Rahel Hirsch (1870–1953) became the first female professor of medicine in Prussia.

Themes in his work

Hirsch lived in the post-Napoleonic era, an epoch when Jews had been granted civil rights in a large number of European countries, leading to assimilation and a call for reform. A large segment of his work focusses on the possibilities for Orthodox Judaism in such an era, when freedom of religion also meant the freedom to practice Torah precepts without persecution and ridicule.

The principle of "Austritt", an independent Orthodoxy, flows naturally from his view on the place of Judaism in his epoch: if Judaism is to gain from these civil liberties, it has to be able to develop independently – without having to lend implicit or explicit approval to efforts at reformation.

His other major work involves the symbolic meaning of many Torah commandments and passages. Indeed, his work "Horeb" (1837) focuses to a large degree on the possible meanings and symbols in religious precepts. This work was continued in his Torah commentary and his articles in the Jeschurun journal (Collected Writings, vol. III, is a collation of these articles).

A final area of his work, which has only recently been rediscovered, was his etymological analysis of the Hebrew language. Most of this work is contained in his Torah commentary, where he analyses and compares the shorashim (three-letter root forms) of a large number of Hebrew words and develops an etymological system of the Hebrew language. This approach is based on the idea that letters that share a phonetic similarity, have similar meaning. For example the words Zohar (light), Tzohar (translucent window), and Tahor (purity) are related words because the letters Zayin, Tzadie, and Tet are phonetically similar. This is an approach used in many places by the renowned biblical commentator Rashi as well. Although this effort was, in his own words, "totally unscientific", it has led to the recent publication of an "etymological dictionary of the Hebrew language".