Samson Raphael Hirsch - Influence and Controversy

Influence and Controversy

There is considerable controversy over Hirsch's legacy; this is a matter of debate between three parties: Haredi (sometimes called Ultra-Orthodox), Modern Orthodox, and Hirsch's descendants. While it is undisputed that his Torah im Derech Eretz was his real innovation, the exact implementation has been greatly debated.

Those on Orthodoxy's right wing hold that Hirsch himself approved of secular studies as a "Horaas Sha'ah", or temporary dispensation, only in order to save Orthodox Jewry of the nineteenth century from the threat posed by assimilation. While a yeshiva student in Eastern Europe, Rabbi Shimon Schwab obtained the opinion's of various Poskim (authorities in Jewish law) to this effect (see Selected Writings "These and Those" where Schwab himself disagrees).

To the other extreme, some Modern Orthodox Jews understand Hirsch in the sense of Torah Umadda, meaning a synthesis of Torah knowledge and secular knowledge - each for its own sake (this view is propagated in several articles in Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Thought, published by the Rabbinical Council of America). In this view, Hirsch thought that it was permissible, and even productive, for Jews to learn gentile philosophy, music, art, literature and ethics for their own sake.

In contrast, a third middle opinion held by Hirsch's descendants (his son-in-law and successor Rabbi Solomon Breuer, his grandson Rabbi Joseph Breuer and the latter's successor Rabbi Shimon Schwab), Rabbi Joseph Elias in his commentary to the Nineteen Letters (Feldheim 1995) and some Jewish historians, says that both of these understandings of Hirsch's philosophy are misguided; they refer to these readings of Hirsch as improper historical revisionism. In response to the "temporary dispensation" theory, they point to Hirsch in Collected Writings as continually stressing the philosophical and religious imperative of Torah im Derech Eretz for all times (Note that Hirsch himself addressed this contention: "Torah im Derech Eretz ... is not part of troubled, time bound notions; it represents the ancient, traditional wisdom of our sages that has stood the test everywhere and at all times." (Gesammelte Schriften vi p. 221); see further Rabbi Shimon Schwab in Selected Writings- "These and Those"). In response to the "Torah Umadda" theory they say that Hirschian philosophy demands the domination of Torah over secular knowledge, not a separate synthesis. On this basis, many adherents of Hirsch's philosophy have preferred the natural sciences over the humanities as a subject of secular study, seemingly because they are easier to judge through the prism of Torah thought than the more abstract humanities.