Rabbi Wein on Robert Auman and parshas Vayishlach
mos...@mm.huji.ac.il
We'll see what this does.
Note, there are _two_ parts to this post.
Moshe Schorr
It is a tremendous Mitzvah to always be happy! - Reb Nachman of Breslov
The home and family are the center of Judaism, *not* the synagogue.
Disclaimer: Nothing here necessarily reflects the opinion of Hebrew University
Jerusalem Post December 16, 2005 www.rabbiwein.com/jpost-index.html
OUR NOBEL PRIZE WINNER http://rabbiwein.com/column-1054.html
We were all thrilled, gratified and emotionally touched at seeing
Professor Yisrael Auman receive his award as the Nobel laureate in
Economics for 2005. All of the other awardees, significant scholars that
they may be, paled in comparison to the Jew with the big white kippah and
the long white beard to match whose smile enlivened an otherwise overly
somber and very formal affair. Naturally, all Israelis (or almost all
Israelis) have received an added boost to our national pride by Professor
Auman receiving this award. But understandably most Israelis and Jews the
world over are not in the fortunate position that we at Beit Knesset
Hanassi are in of knowing Professor Auman as a fellow member and
worshipper in our synagogue. I am not going to indulge myself in a paean
of glory to Professor Auman from this humble sheet. Suffice it to say that
we are all blessed having him with us (and this was true even before he
was a Nobel laureate) and that our blessings go forth to him, his wife
Batya, a great person in her own right, and to the entire Auman family in
all of their generations. May there be many more families like the
Auman/Schlesinger family in the midst of Israel and may they only enjoy
further good health, happiness and continued achievements on behalf of
Torah, Israel and humanity at large.
Professor Auman’s achievement and award allows me a platform to say a few
words about the struggles that the observant Jewish society faces in this
world of modernity, personal autonomy and breathtaking technological and
scientific creativity. Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch addressed the problem of
Jewish participation in the general world and the surrounding society of
modernity in his writings and in the creation of the unique Orthodox Jew
that his kehilla in Frankfurt am Main represented. His advocacy of a
rational Judaism, intellectually oriented, open to secular knowledge and
Western culture, created a cadre of Orthodox professors, physicians,
lawyers, merchants, trades people and artisans, all of whom were
punctiliously observant of the laws, rituals and customs of Judaism
without compromise. They were the products of his Torah im Derech Eretz
approach and vision of Judaism. Rabbi Hirsch in effect beat Reform at its
own game by producing the cultured German intelligentsia figure of that
time. While Reform attempted to create this as well, they ended up
producing assimilated Jews susceptible in droves to conversion to
Christianity. Rabbi Hirsch did not feel, as later Orthodox revisionist
historians have sometimes made it out to be, that his view of Torah im
Derech Eretz was a temporary expedient necessary to meet the exigencies of
the time. Rather, he was convinced that this was a normative form of
Judaism and Jewish practice and that in the face of modernity it was
perhaps the normative form of observant Jewish behavior.
For various reasons, social, economic, cultural and societal, Torah im
Derech Eretz did not take deep root in Eastern Europe. There Chasidut on
one hand and Haskala on the other end of the spectrum controlled the
debate and movements of change in the struggle against the Czar’s tyranny
and anti-Semitism and the new ideas of modernity that swept eastward from
England, France and Germany. Orthodoxy, the yeshiva world and Chasidut, to
a great extent sought to defend itself from the onslaught of the new ideas
of modernism, Marxism and secularism, by isolating themselves from the
struggle of ideas. Thus was created a pretty much all-or-nothing situation
in the relationship of the Eastern European Jewish world towards such
subjects as secular knowledge, the struggle for Zionism and Jewish
nationalism (it should be noted that Hirschian Jewry in Germany was in the
main also anti-Zionist) and the shunning and banning of all technology and
ideas that were considered to be “modern.” This attitude, in differing
degrees and depending where Jews live (America or Israel for instance),
claims to be mainstream Orthodoxy today. As a natural reaction to the
destruction of Torah institutions in the Holocaust, the great rabbis of
the time concentrated on exclusively rebuilding Torah learning within the
Jewish world. Sixty years later, their dream of thousands of Torah
scholars populating the Jewish world has been realized, perhaps beyond
even their own visionary expectations. But this does not mean that Torah
im Derech Eretz should have no place in our Orthodox society. Professor
Auman and his accomplishments and the kiddush Hashem involved in his
receiving the Nobel prize comes to remind us of the different and noble
ways that Jews can serve their Creator, the cause of Torah and traditional
observance.
Weekly Parsha December 16, 2005 http://www.rabbiwein.com/parsha-index.html
VAYISHLACH http://rabbiwein.com/column-1059.html
In this week’s parsha, our father Yaakov, fresh from his successful escape
from Lavan, prepares to encounter his brother and sworn enemy, Eisav. He
sends malachim to deal with Eisav before he will actually meet with him
face to face. The word malachim signifies two different meanings. One is
that it means agents, messengers, human beings who were sent on a
particular mission to do Yaakov’s bidding. The other meaning is that the
world malachim signifies angels, supernatural messengers of God who were
sent to Yaakov to help him in his fateful encounter with his brother.
Rashi cites both possible interpretations in his commentary. When Rashi
does so, he is teaching us that both interpretations are correct at
differing levels of understanding the verse involved. The message here is
that the encounter with Eisav, in order to be successful from Yaakov’s
vantage point and situation, has to have both human and supernatural help.
Eisav is a formidable foe, physically, militarily, culturally and
intellectually speaking. He cannot be ignored nor wished away. He has
accompanied us from the time of Yaakov till this very day. At times he
threatens our very existence and at times he appears to have a more
benevolent attitude towards us. Yet at all times he is there, hovering
over and around us, and he has never relinquished any of his demands upon
us to either convert, assimilate or just plain disappear. While it is
Yishmael that currently occupies the bulk of our attention, it would be
foolish of us to ignore the continuing presence of Eisav in our world and
affairs.
Yaakov’s strategy is to employ both possibilities of malachim in his
defense. He prepares himself for soothing Eisav by gifts and wealth,
pointing out to Eisav that it is beneficial to him to have Yaakov around
and being productive He also strengthens himself spiritually in prayer and
in appeal to God to deliver him from Eisav. And finally as a last resort
he is prepared to fight Eisav with his own weapons, the sword and war. Two
of these strategies – gifts to Eisav and war against Eisav – require human
endeavor, talent and sacrifice. They represent the interpretation of
malachim as being human agents and messengers. The third strategy, prayer
and reliance upon heavenly intervention to thwart Eisav’s evil designs,
follows the idea that Yaakov’s malachim were heavenly, supernatural
creatures. In the long history of our encounter with Eisav we have always
relied upon both interpretations of malachim. Neither interpretation by
itself will suffice to defeat Eisav. Without human endeavor and sacrifice,
heavenly aid is often denied or diminished. According to the labor is the
reward. But it is foolish to believe that a small and beleaguered people
alone can weather all storms and defeat Eisav’s intentions. Without the
Lord’s help, in vain do we attempt to build our national home. Thus the
double meaning of malachim in this week’s parsha has great relevance to
our situation and ourselves.
Shabat shalom.
Rabbi Berel Wein
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YM
in
conjunction with secular studies, but he didn' mention Rav Kook. Rav
Wein
correctly points out that Hirsch's followers were anti-Zionist (at
least up
until his grandson Dr Yitzhak Breuer became pro-Zionist at the time the
Nazis came to power). This means, they viewed their goal was to have
the Jews, i.e. the Orthodox Jews, become "part of German society". An
extreme
phrasing that expresses the identity that at least some of his
followers had
was "Germans of the Orthodox Jewish religion"
Rav Kook also believed in being open to secular education, but for
totally different
reasons-because he felt that the Jewish people must return to Eretz
Israel and
build up a Jewish society, and that includes scientists, artisans,
soldiers, industrialists, artists, musicians, etc This openess to
secular education would
be within a Jewish state and Jewish society, NOT inside Germany or some
other non-Jewish and possibly Judeophobic country. Rav Kook felt that
building a Jewish society in Eretz Israel
was the only way Jewish society could cure itself of the spiritual
sickness that
had seeped in during the long years of exile..
It is interesting that Prof. Aumann is actually a good example of Rav
Kook's
view of secular education, bringing a Nobel Prize to Israel, the Jewish
state,
and not as Hirsch would have dreamed for, to Germany, where Prof Aumann
was born. The question of whether
Hirsch's hope that openess to secular education on the part of Orthodox
German Jews would bring greater respect for Jews and Orthodox Jews in
particular on the part of non-Jewish Germans has been shown by history
to be a bad joke. It is
odd that Rav Wein didn't point this out in his article.
James Kahn
>The question of whether
>Hirsch's hope that openess to secular education on the part of Orthodox
>German Jews would bring greater respect for Jews and Orthodox Jews in
>particular on the part of non-Jewish Germans has been shown by history
>to be a bad joke. It is
>odd that Rav Wein didn't point this out in his article.
Did Rav Hirsch really say that? Do you have a source?
On a related note, I'm curious whether anyone has studied the extent to
which the children and grandchildren of his community remained observant.
--
Jim
New York, NY
(Please remove "nospam." to get my e-mail address)
http://www.panix.com/~kahn
YM
James Kahn wrote:
> In <1141123997.0...@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com> "YM" <bar_ko...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
> >The question of whether
> >Hirsch's hope that openess to secular education on the part of Orthodox
> >German Jews would bring greater respect for Jews and Orthodox Jews in
> >particular on the part of non-Jewish Germans has been shown by history
> >to be a bad joke. It is
> >odd that Rav Wein didn't point this out in his article.
>
> Did Rav Hirsch really say that? Do you have a source?
>
> On a related note, I'm curious whether anyone has studied the extent to
> which the children and grandchildren of his community remained observant.
I am not sure how R. Hirsch expressed his ideas of how he perceived the
role of Orthodox Jews in German society, but I do know that he was
militantly anti-Zionist. In his work "Horeb", I recall that he
categorically
states that there will not be a renewal of Jewish sovereignity in Eretz
Israel prior to the Mashiach, thus indicating that the Jews would,
for the indefinite future, would remain in Europe. It is known that
he did opt for certain "reforms" of Jewish observance which would
"modernize" it, for example, men going bareheaded in public,
putting a choir into the Shabbat synagogue service, etc. These
obviously were done in response to pressure from the outside
world.
One of the most important principles of Hirsch's philosophy was
"the religion of separatism", i.e. NO COOPERATION WITH
NON-RELIGIOUS JEWS. Thus, when the community was
reconstituted in Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York, they
collaborated in areas
like kashrut with a community that would seem to be very different
than their's, the Hasidei Satmar, but Satmar also turns
separatism into a fundamental belief of Judaism. They are
willing to overlook the "worldliness" of the Hirschians (i.e.
their committment to secular education) as long as they
are separatists and anti-Zionist.
Ultimately, this is the reason today why Haredim will allow
the books of R. Hirsch in their homes, but not those of Rav
Kook, even though Hirsch, as I indicated above, was more
of a "religious reformer" than Rav Kook who was Haredi.
SEPARATISM--since R. Hirsch was for militant separatism
and anti-Zionism, he is "kosher" whereas Rav Kook is
"out". This, I believe is why R. Wein mentioned R. Hirsch
and not Rav Kook in his article. R. Wein is a part of the "Agudat
Israel"
rabbinical world which reveres separatism (although he is
something of a maverick).
Regarding the level of observance of Rav Hirsch's followers,
it is often stated by his "Hasidim'" that he singlehandedly
saved German Orthodox Judaism...this is an overexaggeration,
although he did make a major contribution to saving German
Orthodoxy from disappearing and he did create the
"Torah Im Derech Eretz" philosophy. His grandson
Dr Yitzhak Breuer pointed out that by 1900, many of the
young who grew up in the Hirschian community had
dropped out and even among those who remained
committed, their religious observance was rather
formalistic and arid. The thing that really saved German Orthodoxy
was the renewed contact between German Orthodox Jews
with those from Eastern Europe and both its traditional
Lithuanian Yeshiva elements and the Hasidic groups.
Their enthusiasm and deep emunah revitalized many
German Orthodox Jews (the contact began during
World War I when many German Jewish soldiers
were sent to Eastern Europe where they saw the
local religious Jews and continued after the war when
young German Jews were sent to learn in the Lithuanian
yeshivot). This in addition to the rapid degeneration of
non-Jewish German culture after the defeat in the
First World War, disillusioned many German Orthodox
Jews with the outside, non-Jewish culture to which
they had been previously committed, and they turned
inwards to a more Jewish (and many to a more pro-Zionist)
life.