Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal - Legacy

Legacy

Teichtal wrote other works besides Eim Habanim Semeichah, in particular Mishneh Sochir (responsa). He was a prolific writer, and miraculously a number of his other works survived both his murder and the Holocaust. Some works are still in manuscript form and have not yet been published. The Mishneh Sachir Center located in Bnei Brak, Israel is an advanced Talmudic learning academy named in the honor of Teichtal carrying on his work and preserving his legacy.

Lately, Isaac Hershkowitz has completed a comprehensive study on Teichtal's works. He demonstrated that some of Teichtal's ideological changes that had been attributed to the war had indeed occurred even earlier – in the early 1930s. This metamorphosis is reflected both in his views and even more significantly in his halakhic methodology.

Moreover, by means of examining the dates of various parts of Eim Habanim Semeichah, and by analyzing Teichtal's ideological stances during the various stages of his compilation, it becomes clear that the book does not present a clear-cut stand on any of the basic issues of Religious Zionism’s conceptions, as well as Orthodoxy’s beliefs. Moreover, Teichtal’s doctrines are filled with retractions and contradictions, and his positions swing from Hungarian Orthodoxy to Religious Zionist thought.

In the earlier stages of Eim Habanim Semeichah, Teichtal spoke more of the importance of the Land of Israel and its building as a crucial stage of the Redemption, in order to stimulate significant down-to-earth developments. However, in the latter parts of his book, he granted theological and mystical value to indexes measuring inner unity in the Jewish nation, thus protesting actively against the creators of the Orthodox - non-Orthodox schism in Hungarian Jewry.

Hershkowitz argues that Eim Habanim Semeichah should be analyzed as a dialectical compilation, and not as a canonical work. Accordingly, it is not meant to outline a world with only one meaning, and consequently, Teichtal is not obligated to explain each division. The objective of the compilation is to float fundamental issues of nationalism and derivative ideas such as the link between God and Israel during the Redemption, the nature of Redemption, and methods of its implementation. Teichtal wanted to include within his book the boundaries various implications arising from an open discussion, and not to dictate only one world view. Thus, he did not attempt to obscure this tension; on the contrary, he gave it expression in various ways.

The essence of Eim Habanim Semeichah, and of the other shifts in Teichtal's religious concepts ever since the rise of the Nazi regime, is affixed to his ability to express harsh criticism of those rabbinic personalities who had shaped his own world, as well as the entire world of Hungarian Orthodoxy for close to eighty years, and publicly criticize the schism within Hungarian Jewish communities in addition to Orthodoxy’s shirking of a vision of Redemption.